Best amps ever made

[GAR]

Who is Scott? Your John!?

Clamp the urethra, textpisser.

Scott was the owner of Route 66, he was a legendary vintage dealer before the trend started.

That's the shop that had Ian Hunter's two H guitars on consignment for alotta money..

[GAR]

The vintage dealers are guys that, even if you can't afford their stuff, you need to develop relationships with them because sooner or later they find the buried treasures that turn up from time to time, as they themselves maintain relations with the players .. and when the rare stuff turns up you dreamed of having as a kid floats to the surface, it usually flows thru them.

Who wouldn't want the bragging rights to a Black Sabbath or Big Brother, or Jethro Tull Laney head? They change hands over the years..

How about a Jimi Hendrix Experience 4x12 cabinet with "J. H. EXP" spray logoed on the backboard, perhaps previously owned by Billy Cox or something with documentation like a handwritten bill of sale?

Or, like the thread we had awhile back, about the doctor EVH sent a new Wolfgang guitar to?

If you can't use a guitar or amp, or it doesn't sound good you cut it loose..

[Nitro Express]

Fender Dual Showman. Great for bass or guitar.

Peavey Penta. Nobody talks about this amp but it's very versatile.

5150 II. With a good set of tubes, a propper bias, and a good speaker cab, this amp can go from clean to warm, to rip your head off. Most people don't know how to EQ these heads or run them with a cold bias or the wrong cab. They are finicky but get eveything right and they are a great amp. Better than the 5150 III in my oppinion.

Kustom Double Cross. One of the best high gain amps for the price on the market.

[Diamondjimi]

Clamp the urethra, textpisser.

Eat a gun ,Nutlump !

[ZahZoo]

Of the amps I've owned over the years the best were...

'65 Silvertone model 1485 - 120W with 6 10" speakers. Broke a 10'x6' picture window behind us doing a Hendrix like feedback at house warming party in 74.

'64 Fender Deluxe Reverb

'64 Fender Bassman - Still have the blonde cabinet with one of the 2 original 12" Jensens in it.

Sure wish I'd held onto those amps...

[ELVIS]

The vintage dealers are guys that, even if you can't afford their stuff, you need to develop relationships with them because sooner or later they find the buried treasures that turn up from time to time, as they themselves maintain relations with the players .. and when the rare stuff turns up you dreamed of having as a kid floats to the surface, it usually flows thru them.

Yeah, but ebay kind of put a stop to that...

I had a 69 PARK that I sold years ago for the same $400 I paid for it...maybe it was $600 I got, it made me sick when I watched one like it go for nearly $4000 on ebay...

But it had some traces of white spray paint on the top that someone had tried to remove, so somebody had it...

There's a pic of Sabbath with Tony Iommi standing in front of six of them floating around the internet...

But that amp was neat. It had a quartet of KT88's and was rated at 150 watts. It also had four tubes in the preamp section. I want to say that one was a 12AT7 and I put a 12AX7 in it but it was still very clean...and the chassis was aluminum with beautiful welds in the sides and corners. It looked like it was military grade...

I used it for Bass with the big Peavey cabinet with 2x18 BW's, two 10's and a horn...and wheels. It sounded like an Ampeg setup but brighter, even with the horn turned down...

[ELVIS]

Here's the pic in tiny form...stupid google...

It's four, not six, but that's the exact amp...



This is probably the 75 watt version as it's not as wide. Mine was 29 inches wide with an offset handle so you could carry it level, unlike a Marshall...and it was deeper too. It fit perfectly on top of a slanted cabinet.



But I needed money and I chose to sell the Park over my '69 Super Bass which I still have.

[indeedido]

Here is one on the bay

1969 Park 75 ( Marshall Plexi ) dead mint UNREAL - eBay (item 270387449165 end time May-15-09 06:52:21 PDT)

[redfire]

Just for grins and giggles, anyone play on the Line 6 Spider Valve? I don't know exactly what the tubes in that do..... At any rate, I'll say this for a Laney, I wasn't exactly teaching this kid, but I would jam with him and show him scales and what not and he had this old 50 watt Laney that was killer. But the guy hated it because he couldn't get a good sound out of it. I lowered his bass from 10 to about 7.5, mid from 9 to 4, and raised the treble from like 2 to 6.5 and he decided it sounded great. To bad too, as far as amps I've owned and played that my friends owned, that was the best sound I've ever got just from the amp. And by contrast, the worst I'd ever played... or let me rephrase that, the most disappointed I've ever been is with a 5150 II. I don't know if someone had some different tubes in there, but it sounded like crap no matter how I EQed it. Probably why Ed's tone sounded like an electric ham sandwich on the VH3 tour.

I guess that's my point here, no matter what amp I play through, I need something else to make it just right. Whether that be various stomp boxes, or a digitech pedal (Rp-12 was the best), or whatever, the amp by its own has never been enough for me.

I guess to play ball and actually answer the question, I'd tow the party line here and say either a JCM 900, or a Vox AC30 (which I recently have come to appreciate.)

[BrownSound1]

JCM 900? Are you kidding? Man, I think those could be some of the worst Marshalls ever made.

[al3d]

JCM 900? Are you kidding? Man, I think those could be some of the worst Marshalls ever made.

NOt realy true..the first 2 years they used the JCM800 circuit with some mods..those were awsome. when they total redesigned it and added reverbrs, 2 channels, etc etc..they went downhill.

[indeedido]

I don't appreciate the JCM 900 series either. I also can't stand the 5150 II. The eq section in that amp is weak. You can turn any one of the controls from 3 to 9 and you won't hear a change. I bought one as soon as they came out. Thought it would be like the original but with separate eq sections so I sold mine before the II came in. I got it home and threw up.

[BrownSound1]

The JCM 900s I remember used diode clipping for that big gain they kept harping about. Sounded like total ass. I'm not a big fan of master volume amps to begin with, and to use diode clipping in one is just plain wrong. Hell, just use a stompbox.

[redfire]

The JCM 900s I remember used diode clipping for that big gain they kept harping about. Sounded like total ass. I'm not a big fan of master volume amps to begin with, and to use diode clipping in one is just plain wrong. Hell, just use a stompbox.

See, and that's prolly why I like it. I played basic Marshalls when I first started (since I'm not a pro, I wasn't going to spend more than $500.00) so I learned to balance a channel volume, gain and the master volume to get what I wanted.

[GAR]

I dumped some stuff in the last year of this thread, but kept two JCM800's: the 50 and the 100.

Not that they were fantastic amps, but the mods were from xlnt engineers who knew the math.

I've tried the Laney 50 and 100s, very very good and get the deep Diezel tone for a third of the price.

But the Diezel amps are rediculously good and are really special, I'll probably wind up with one eventually.

I do like the online demo's of the Mesa mk 5, but I really don't like the whole "crammed in a breadbox" thing, they way they package the mk series heads. I like having space for my big fat stubby fingers to roll the knobs without dinking the knob next to it. Maybe if they widened out their shit chassis or something, but for under 2K they're priced right at the Laney VH100 range, and the Laney's only a two channel amp. Mk5 is three.