ilovefuzz.com

I'll have to take that into consideration. Tube preamp makes it quite a bit more complicated to power and put together

Well, that's the question I wouldn't be able to answer unless I tested both potential variations: Is a tube preamp worth it? If the price is right, I guess it doesn't really matter. Crucially for me personally, I need something that sounds big and bold, has clean headroom, and is available in a 1x12 portable unit.

mathias wrote:Edited, related to overall thread: Do you guys consider it acceptable to play into a pair of really nice headphones? (I play an attenuator into a mixer into some AKG studios late at night, but I know the sound is not nearly the same as pushing a real speaker cab.)

For working out songs by ear or just playing along to them clean they work pretty well, though I use an AI and no amp. I like having my bass and what I'm listening to coming from the same source.

mathias wrote:Is a tube preamp more than just a mojo thing for you guys? Absolute requirement? What about tube-sounding preamp with a JFET, like some of the RunOffGroove pedals do? Definitely would improve control over headroom and limit complexity/cost to not do tube preamp..

Tube preamp to me is so it can be marketed as having t00bz. Don't care for them so don't see that as necessary at all, especially if your goal is a cleanish pedal platform.

I like that little Ampeg!

My Fender Blues Deluxe is dying out, and I'm wondering if I should get a Fender Twin Custom or something like the 15W Ampeg. My band is pretty loud for practice, and I'd hate to get a little bitch that didn't do what I needed.

The Blues Deluxe is only 40W, but it's really REALLY loud at like 2. And I only use the clean channel... so I don't know what I should do for a new amp... I need a Lo/Mid/Hi EQ at least.


C

CBA wrote:I like that little Ampeg!

My Fender Blues Deluxe is dying out, and I'm wondering if I should get a Fender Twin Custom or something like the 15W Ampeg. My band is pretty loud for practice, and I'd hate to get a little bitch that didn't do what I needed.

The Blues Deluxe is only 40W, but it's really REALLY loud at like 2. And I only use the clean channel... so I don't know what I should do for a new amp... I need a Lo/Mid/Hi EQ at least.


C

Clearly, you need stereo amps like Holy Schnikes: viewtopic.php?f=149&t=2452&start=2805#p501208

Edit: more helpful: the Amepg GVT15H is sweet. Great cleans to nice little warmth from the gain, crank both volume and gain to get crunch, or keep the gain down and make it loud with volume.. does that all pretty well. Not going to be as loud as a Blues Deluxe but oh well. I don't ever need it to be.

I'm thinking I may just go after a Blues Junior. It's got everything I need without a damned Drive channel that I never use anyway... and the "Drive" channel is kinda built in as it is.

I'd love to have a Fender Twin Custom (which is the one with the one 15" speaker), but do I need it? Noooooo. Do I want to lug it around? Noooooo. Does it have nice casters on it? Yessssssss. Do I use reverb or tremolo? Nooooooooo.

I think the Blues Junior might be a super-safe bet.


C

Consider a VHT Special 6? I don't think that has the separate drive channel; just the Special 6 Ultra and HD do. It's cheaper.

Or look at a used Epi Valve Junior. It'll be noisy without mods, but it'll be cheap!

I've decided personally to veer away from the Blues Junior, even though it was the most obvious choice for what I needed—a portable low wattage gigging amp. But it's just too much money for what it is. The Laney Cub12R is half the price and apparently just as good, if not better according to some. When I'm going to buy an 'imperfect' overseas-built amp, I guess I just can't justify €600.

mathias wrote:Consider a VHT Special 6? I don't think that has the separate drive channel; just the Special 6 Ultra and HD do. It's cheaper.

Or look at a used Epi Valve Junior. It'll be noisy without mods, but it'll be cheap!

Well, I've got the little Vox AC4 which is pretty great for home rocking/digital 8-track recording... and that VHT is only 6W. I don't know if 15W is enough for practice, but both me and my pal (in our other band) use my Blues Deluxe, and I'm thinking the Blues Jr. might be a good replacement for it as far as sound and weight.

Plus my other pal can get a new one for me at a discount from a bigger dealer. Big plus-side.

AngryGoldfish wrote: When I'm going to buy an 'imperfect' overseas-built amp, I guess I just can't justify €600.

AG, what do you mean by "imperfect"? Like that it doesn't have the footswitch for drive or reverb? Or the separate channel? Lemme know.




C

AngryGoldfish wrote:I've decided personally to veer away from the Blues Junior, even though it was the most obvious choice for what I needed—a portable low wattage gigging amp. But it's just too much money for what it is. The Laney Cub12R is half the price and apparently just as good, if not better according to some. When I'm going to buy an 'imperfect' overseas-built amp, I guess I just can't justify €600.

Are they really that much there?
I got mine for $300 used.
You're gettin' robbed, boy.

AngryGoldfish wrote:I've decided personally to veer away from the Blues Junior, even though it was the most obvious choice for what I needed—a portable low wattage gigging amp. But it's just too much money for what it is. The Laney Cub12R is half the price and apparently just as good, if not better according to some. When I'm going to buy an 'imperfect' overseas-built amp, I guess I just can't justify €600.

Exactly what keeps me away from getting one since 8 years

CBA wrote:AG, what do you mean by "imperfect"? Like that it doesn't have the footswitch for drive or reverb? Or the separate channel? Lemme know.

Hmm...Well, I guess it depends on your perspective. Some have said it's a very boxy sounding amplifier, while others have said the reverb is not what they want. Some, then, have noted how expensive it is, and others that it has too much clean headroom or too little. The varying speakers it comes with has also put some off, while drawing others in. I suppose that's why I put inverted commas over imperfect: because it's all open to interpretation. That's the problem, you see. With so many varying opinions, and the ones praising it being blues and jazz guys in their 40's, it's hard to make a judgement. But with something that has hit the mark on a much broader scale, like the Laney Cub 12 due to its much lower price, it makes buying without trying more comfortable.

Fuzzy Picklez wrote:

AngryGoldfish wrote:I've decided personally to veer away from the Blues Junior, even though it was the most obvious choice for what I needed—a portable low wattage gigging amp. But it's just too much money for what it is. The Laney Cub12R is half the price and apparently just as good, if not better according to some. When I'm going to buy an 'imperfect' overseas-built amp, I guess I just can't justify €600.

Are they really that much there?
I got mine for $300 used.
You're gettin' robbed, boy.

The 'normal' version is €560 or something like that, but the upgraded ones with LE tolex and arguably better speakers, I've seen them go up to €650. It depends where you get them from, to be honest, because each country has a different VAT rate. From what I can tell, in America buying from a Mom & Pop store will cost you the same as Guitar Center or a boutique shop like PGS or PryMaxeVintage. In the EU and the UK, however, it varies greatly, especially if you have to convert the currencies.

For instance, it used to be, last year, that anyone who was a part of the European Union and used the respective currency of the EURO, buying from the UK would save you a lot of money. That's changed back to what it was five years ago, which is really annoying. Now it's more beneficial for me to buy from America or Germany, somewhere with a lower VAT rate and a better currency conversion.

AngryGoldfish wrote:If you can develop the EQ with music that us folks would usually play (post-rock, post-metal, shoegaze, sludge, alternative, etc.) then I would be in on this.

This is the most-related thread to my project, but it should probably jump to a DIY forum thread soon: this weekend I've been messing with the Class-D amplifier board I got, pumping it into my Epiphone Valve Jr's 8" weber speaker (Which I am kind of using as a reference, since I like that speaker so much. It even makes the 1 watt Orange Microcrush amp sound good -- and that thing is just a LM386 chip.)

Getting decent cleans, but not great. Not big and sparkly, and this speaker is particularly jazzy, so I feel like I'm missing the jazzy-ness. I was using my little Alesis mixer as a stand-in for a preamp and I'm currently blaming the downsides of the sound on the mixer, because the guitar sounds entirely boxy and tiny. I tried putting my Algal Bloom in front of it, and it just sounded wrong. Not big, and maybe the frequency range is getting messed up. Hard to tell. Future work on this project will be using my Algal Bloom and my Hoof as reference, since this is intended to be a pedal-platform amp for bedroom levels. But I'm lacking that part of the sound that a bigger tube amp (even my 15 watt Ampeg) has. Low volumes are hard.

Music played from my iPhone directly into the Class D amp itself sounds ok (other than only being on the left channel.) and I couldn't really detect too much lacking in that sound, other than it is pushing a guitar speaker and not a studio monitor, so there's some bias towards the guitar midrange.

So now it's time to start building preamps.

i use an Electar Tube 10 as my small amp...i swapped the speaker for a Jensen C8 and had the boffins at Torres go over it and put in an output transformer with some bollocks and make it self-biasing. i run a vintage 6v6 as the power tube and a vintage RCA as the preamp tube. it's great at low volumes, and loud enough through a 2x12 to play at jams and get over the drums. they used to go for $100 new, but are usually around $200 nowadays.

Loving my VHT Special 6, I think it sounds great for being only $200