Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

There is a lot of hype about tubes. Keep this in mind. Whether a tube is a 6L6, 5581, EL84 or whatever.... they all must have a standard set of parameters to make them fit into their category Grid voltage, screen voltage plate voltage and so forth. Naturally those specs vary. But not so much as the other components in an amplifier.
Groove tubes are over hyped in my opinion. You can buy manufacture sets that are matched for far less. I have never noticed much difference whether they are perfectly matched or not.

Consider this. The output transformer winding's are not perfectly matched. Neither are the resistors and capacitor in an amplifier. One of the things that most likely give vintage amps that special sound may just be the wide range of tolerance in components. When a resistor is marked 20%, as a whole lot of them were in old amplifiers, that means there could be a 40% difference in the same value resistor or capacitor. Even today electrolytic caps are generally off 20%.

Just buy an amp that sounds good to you. Most of the brilliant ideas you get from the internet come out of someones ass, not an oscilloscope. I know that people swear there is a big difference in components. Ever hear of the placebo effect? Generally some manufactures have better builds like anything else. In over 50 years of repair I have not been able to hear the spectacular difference some people claim. But to each his own.

Tube amps, like. Fender Vibrochamp XD, can be had for as little as $150 or, like a Tone King Imperial, can run up to $2500. I have both. Do your research for sure. I own several. You should ask yourself:

Do I play clean or distorted most of the time?
How many watts do I need?
Do I use effects?
How much can I afford?

Also, as said earlier, buy one you fall in love with, that sounds good to you.

Like Slacker said above, get something that sounds good to you, don't limit yourself by what tubes it has. Some amps sound better with certain guitars - for example a Strat with a Fender Deluxe, or an LP with a Marshall. But its all about the sound that YOU want to get.

a general rule is that amps using 6L6 tubes are "cleaner" and more chime-y than those w EL34's.

I love my '65 Fender Deluxe Reissue. it's a small reasonably lightweight amp that to my ears sounds great w single coil and humbucker equipped gtrs. Turn it up to around five and you can get some nice nice dirt that's easily controlled from the volume knob on your gtr. plus it's an amp that works very well w effects pedals.
IMO there's nothing like the reverb you get from a good FENDER amp.

another consideration is closed or open back. for me...i MUST have the "air" of an open back combo.

Get yourself one of these and you can have any amp, effect sound you want. Lots of praise bands are using these. there is a learning curve to operate it to the fullest. Depending on your computer savvy it takes some time to get patches built. https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... &network=s

If you want to do that get ready to spend at least as much as the Helix cost. My advise is forget about the gear snobs do some investigation and buy what best suits your needs. Good luck to you.

Last night at the jam/open mic, a band set up and the lead guitarist with a Les Paul (not sure what model) had a small amp (didn't see what it was, but assumed it was a 5 watt (by the size) tube amp). Sounded ok for a couple of songs. he had a 'typical' pedalboard with about 8 pedals on it, and when they went to start their 3rd song, he kicked on some kind of fuzz pedal that sounded horrible - digital fizzy. Absolutely no way an LP thru a tube amp should have sounded that bad!
I bought an old Zoom multi-pedal a few years ago, used on Ebay, got it for $25. Gawd did it sound bad. I put it back on ebay and sold it for $28!

I use a Zoom G1Xon pedal. Most of the pre-sets are garbage, but there are a few that sound pretty good. Those are the only ones I use. The tuner also works well, and when you have 18 strings to tune, a good tuner comes in handy. For my acoustic, I use a Zoom 504 II pedal. Again, most of the presets are crap, but there are a few useful ones, especially the one that "de-quacks" the piezo pickup. And, it also has a tuner, which helps in keeping all 12 strings where they should be.

"18 strings" - I'm guessing you have a 6/12 double neck?
You know what they say about 12-string players? They spend half their time tuning and half the time playing out of tune!

I'm blown away by the tones I hear coming out of the Boss Kantana amps. This is coming from a life long tube amp snob who HATES modelers. The even more mind bending thing is how unbelievably affordable they are ($199 for the 50/25/.5w 12" combo). If I were looking for a really good sounding, super flexible amp on a budget I would be taking a hard look at one of these. It's not tube but damn do they sound like a tube amp! Loads of on-board effects and deep dive editing software that lets you make even more tone adjustments via your PC is just icing on the cake. I know a few guys that are leaving their Marshalls, Mesas and 11 rack rigs at home and are taking these to their gigs now. Boss really hit one out of the park with this series of amps. I can't believe I'm gasin' for a SS amp. Someone take me out back and shoot me.

Modeling has come a long way, but what Boss forgot (at least on the Kantana 50) is the way guitarists like to use their FX - turn something ON for a lead or a different part, then turn it off, or turn on a different FX. You can only store two 'amp/FX settings' at a time on the amp. Line 6 figured tha tout a long time ago - my old SPider IV can store 64 presets, and using a multi-button controller allows access to turning off specific FX functions.