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Im looking for a tube amp/head or combo, loud enough to play house shows and bars/local venues. Looking at $500-800 price range. What are your thoughts?

Peavey Windsor head and a 412 cabinet.

Or is there a particular sound you're looking for?

Used fender twin.

Used Marshall 4102

Traynor YBA-1.

You're going to get as many different answers as there are posts, especially without telling any info about specific styles of music you intend on playing, how many musicians in the ensemble etc.

But my standard, prepared answer is 60s-70s Bassman...or 70s-80s British variant (JMP, JCM800 etc). They're workhorses when you get them serviced/caps & tubes replaced, ready to rock. Your budget should allow for one in plug'n'play condition if you shop around, or have plenty of $ leftover to take one to a tech, yourself.

Vox AC 30 is a good workhorse.

SPACERITUAL wrote:Used fender twin.

Should i go for a used reiussue or a vintage one?

Vintage if you an get one, but $800 would be a real stretch. You could get lucky though! I've seen good Silverfaces in the 1200 range recently. I prefer the ones without master volume—generally the closer to the Blackface era you get, the less Fender managed to fuck up the circuit.

The reissues are fine. However, they do look like computers under the hood, the principle there being that if something goes wrong, it can really go wrong. That's what I've always loved about my old Twin—any fixes I've needed have been simple, and it tends to run like a well tuned old car.

popvulture wrote:Vintage if you an get one, but $800 would be a real stretch. You could get lucky though! I've seen good Silverfaces in the 1200 range recently.

I think know it depends on where you are. I've seen master volume models (post 1971) for between $500 and $600.

If memory serves, they didn't go ultraliniar until 1975 or so, which are the 135 watt ones. If you get one that's not ultraliniar, it isn't hard to disable the master volume and convert it to blackface specs.

If I was in the market, I'd grab this

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/msg/5776420168.html

Twin Reverb or Roland JC type. The Twin reverb is perfect because its loud enough for any practice or small gig and is relatively clean without pedals, but with an overdrive and the amp loud enough you can add some nice tube distortion, but still have a good clean sound when the pedal is off. That has been indispensable to me at least. Mine is a 90s reissue btw and it sounded the same as the only vintage one I've played. The JCs are nice because the clean sound is nice and they are pretty much indestructible. Also loud. My bandmates JC 60 was plenty loud and really portable.

I really, really love my 90's Fender Blues Deluxe. Three very different acts used it at a show in the spring, and they all sounded great. It excels at warmer, open sounds though, in general.

ognoy wrote:Traynor YBA-1.

SPACERITUAL wrote:Used fender twin.

Right answers.

But biased because it's my setup.

An old Ampeg could be a good choice, V4, V2, VT-22 or VT-40.