Subway Blues - worth it?

[Phobos]

Hey everyone, first time poster.

I have the opportunity to buy a subway blues for $500 (Canadian) as a light portable amp (I'm living in residence and my mark IV is a couple hour flight away). Just wondering if this is a decent price and what I can expect as far as gain is concerned. Will it cover classic rock tones and give me a decent lead tone?

 

[Chrissmoth]

Not much in the gain department until you get to quite disturbing volume levels - no master volume control - so for low volume you need a pedal

This is cut & paste from another thread:

I can't recommend the Subway Blues enough

20 watts
EL84s
Fantastic Reverb
Punchy 1x10 speaker
Great Clean sound
Good sound at low volumes
Loud enough to keep up with all but the loudest drummers
Just one channel & only 5 knobs to worry about - Spend you're time playing, not tweeking
You don't have to put your back out every time you want to move it

I overdrive mine with a USA Big Muff for great leads

And if you feel the need for something larger in the future just keep the SB as a practice amp / Slave for stereo

Oh & they're cheap as chips on ebay

WIN!
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But the original ones (two seperate inputs) HUM LIKE HELL after being on for about 3/4 of an hour

See this thread for the fix

http://forum.grailtone.com/viewtopic.php?t=14425&highlight=subway+hum

 

[pbernotas]

I would look for a Studio 22 or 50 Cal as these have more features to go from clean & smooth to scream & burn. Cheaper too
IMHO

Pat@Kokomo

 

[zebpedersen]

The Subway Rocket was a great amp, possibly worth getting one of those. But I've heard the Blues and what it does it does really nicely indeed. If you can afford a TS of some sort as well you should have a gorgeous combination - I'm assuming from the amp that you want a Blues tone, hence the recommendation of the TS.

 

[Phobos]

Thanks for the input guys.

You figure I could pick up a studio 22 or a 50 cal for cheaper? I've seen one 50 cal recently, but the guy wanted a fair bit more for it than this subway blues. (I really shouldn't be buying an amp at all, school is making things tight).

Does anyone know if you could put a volume pedal in the fx loop to act as a a master volume and then overdrive the preamp by opening up the volume on the amp? Or does the volume knob already come after the preamp stages, making this pointless?

 

[Ken j]

...Does anyone know if you could put a volume pedal in the fx loop to act as a a master volume and then overdrive the preamp by opening up the volume on the amp? Or does the volume knob already come after the preamp stages, making this pointless?

Yes you can do that. I would look for a later version of this amp. The earlier version has a hum issue. It can be modded and fixed though. It also has a the tone stack section of the circuit board potted so there is no repairing it. The later version also has a half power jack for the speaker. I play mine through a 2 X 12. I have read that the Subway Blues shares its preamp with the Blue Angel but I don't know how accurate that is. Here is a thread that discusses some of these issues: http://forum.grailtone.com/viewtopic.php?t=14425&highlight=

 

[Phobos]

Thanks ken,

I pulled the trigger on it today, and I gotta say, its a pretty sweet little amp. The volume pedal in the loop works well but with the pedal in the off position there is still some sound, I assume because its a parallel loop. But I can still get a fair bit of gain at reasonable levels.

The guy I bought it from didn't know what year it was from, but it has the half power speaker jack on the back and a tight/fat switch instead of separate inputs so hopefully I won't have the hum problem.

Not super versatile, but sounds good and is nice and portable, which is what I need.

 

[Chrissmoth]

Welcome to the "Sub-Club"