What Happened to the Cheap Tube Amp Craze

[letsgocoyote]

Remember when it all started with the Valve Junior? Tube amps under $200, sometimes as cheap as $100. The Champion 600, ac4, etc.

How come that died out? It was good for beginning players and molders and stuff. Now I think ac4's are about 250 and champion 600s and valve juniors are out of production

[01010111]

There's still cheap stuff around.

Hotone: $99


Edit: I probably am going to buy one of these. It fits in nicely with the rig I'm planning.

[waltdogg]

They get the job done. But dem tones that the higher wattage amps give you.

[rfurtkamp]

The cheap modelers got better and better, and production costs went up.

There's only so many limited clunkers that will sell.

We're still in an era where good amps are SOOOO damn cheap compared to what they were.

You couldn't touch a Marshall or a baseline Fender for < 600 that wasn't used and battered, let alone a new one.

It's why we all lived on the Bassman heads nobody at the time wanted, etc.

[frigid midget]

$200 for a 5 watt tube amp isn't THAT good of a deal considering you can probably find an old 30-50 watt peavey/laney combo on the used market for $400-ish. Something like that, that's NOT build in the far east with cheap parts, is nearly always a better choice imp.

Modelers have come a long way, so I'd go that route personally. Versatile and cheap, and usually good enough sound quality for random bedroom noodling and recording song ideas and what not

[Ghost Hip]

Chanpion 600s are still being made, at least we have one in the store I work at. I never liked low wattage tube amps mostly because I want my amp to be pretty clean for pedals. It is very apparent the craze has died though. I remember when the Fender Ramparte came in, the thing sounds so shrill and boring, and for $300 it was not worth it at all. Then one day we are printing new tags, fender raised the price to $400.

I had a lot of fun with my excelsior but other than that I never bonded with a low wattage tube amp. And to echo the above, I really dig the sounds that come out of the super small vox modeling amps. Our guitar tech uses a desktop one to test gear with and they sound excellent, sometimes I have to do a double take.

[D.o.S.]

There's still cheap stuff around.

Hotone: $99


Edit: I probably am going to buy one of these. It fits in nicely with the rig I'm planning.

Oh that's pretty nifty.

[Chankgeez]

I kinda wanna one o' these:

[goroth]

That little ibanez is really good.

I like low wattage amps.
Low watts for home.
Medium for the shit gigs I usually play.
High for the rehearsal room and all of the awesome gigs I'm obviously going to be playing in the future...

[SoaringTortoise]

There's still cheap stuff around.

Hotone: $99


Edit: I probably am going to buy one of these. It fits in nicely with the rig I'm planning.

Oh that's pretty nifty.

Those are not tube they are solid state. From what I have heard they sound pretty good.

[Dandolin]

I kinda wanna one o' these:

Built-in flanger?

[potatofarmer]

A lot of those amps were basically the same, and about as simple as you could possibly make 'em. The Marshall Class 5 was an exception, but quite a bit worse than a typical 5 watter, IMO.

I liked mine because it got me into modding and eventually building/designing amps, but they were really limited. You got one sound out of them, at the awkward volume of "too loud for the bedroom player but can't keep up with a band." Plus the single-ended, actually-legitimately-Class-A-not-just-cathode-biased power stage sounds significantly different from what people are used to hearing from amps. Not better or worse, but not everyone wants that tone.

You can do some cool stuff with really low wattages, but usually with more than one preamp tube, and that generation of amps was all about cranking 'em out as cheap as possible. Just like most amps, I guess.

[Nelson Instruments]

I was working in a "high end" guitar store when the champ 600s etc came out.
At least in our store we sold a couple and the they sat collecting dust.
I think the novelty wore off and people realized they weren't all that useful or great sounding and they could get a solid state practice amp for that much or less that sounded fine.
The idea of a small amp cranked sounds huge when recording but the majority of people that buy those things aren't recording musicians.

Also I think the problem with them MIGHT (this is me pontificating here) have to do with how mass produced these things are. They make so many of them and the market gets immediately flooded with 'em. Then folks sell them and people buy used so new sales slow to a trickle and then there's no reason to make any more.

[OddKnowledge]

I kinda wanna one o' these:

it reminds me of a gamecube. cute.

[Chankgeez]

Yeah, they were never for sale in the US and the build quality is supposedly shitty (no shitty built-in flanger either), but I'd still love one.