which amp would you buy

jo-bloggs

Fender
Frontman FM 212 R Combo, 100 Watt,2x12"Speaker,3-C


Marshall
MG-Series MG-100 DFX 100 Watt Transistorcombo, FX, incl. FS

or
Peavey
Transtube Series Bandit 112 100 W. 2-Ch.Trans. Combo,1x12"
which one woul yous think is best

david

I'd take the bandit, but for that money your looking at 15/30w all valve territory

feylya

The Peavey is a great amp. Dunno about getting a nice tube amp for that price tbh.

Doctor J

Peavey ftw

Karl Hungus

Probably the Peavey here aswell.

feylya

Considering I used to have that Peavey and that Fender side by side and considering that I have done comparisions, the Peavey wins hand down!

david

Valveking

david

http://www.thomann.de/thoiw6_peavey_valve_king_112_gitarrencombo_prodinfo.html

Not that much more expensive than a bandit (~€120) about the same as an MG on thomann (€459) and a heck of a lot better than both of them i'd say.

feylya

http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/options.php?id=434

£200 + ~£50 shipping

david

The bandit is €327 on thomann with shipping

feylya

Also, the Valveking is £258 or so on GAK. I still think that the Transtube would sound better than a cheap tube amp.

david

Get Classic 30, dont buy solidstate tbh

feylya

Why not?

david

Because, tubes are unreliable, tempremental, sound unique, hold their value and look so cool when they're heated up.

feylya

:rolleyes:

sei046

freakonaleashx wrote:

look so cool when they're heated up.

Amen

Voodu Child

The 3 amps you mention are all so-so; if youre picking them up cheap then nothing wrong at all. If youre buying them new, then for the same money or a little more youd get a nice second hand valve amp.

The peavey valveking got a great review in guitarist, but for me personally, its a little too soon to be able to say whether they got the price own by using crappy components...id be interested to see if they all start breaking down in two or three years time...

Id go second hand, +1 for the classic 30. Good simple reliable stuff, sounds grand. THeres a laney vc30 on b&s for E500, haggle him/her down to 400 and youre laughing

scorplett

Woulldn't buy any of them tbh.
The Fender is too 'country' the marshall is too 'new' and the peavy is weak for its wattage and too 'slasher' Personally, particuluarlly if going the pricer end of these options I'd plump for a little more cash and buy a Vox AD100VT... Face it ppl, its what the rest of them are trying to be...

Karl Hungus

scorplett wrote:

Face it ppl, its what the rest of them are trying to be...

Is it?

jcoote

Peavy FTW +1

scorplett

Karl Hungus wrote:

Is it?

I love to play lots of amps all the time even if Im not buying them... Every time an amp I havent played comes into the studio I just cant resist... Unfortunatley I have yet to be impressed by any peavy, maybe someday I will come across one I like but for now they'd be bottom of my list. I'm normally a marshall kinda person and for a number of reasons... Mainley because the majority of rehearsal rooms for years would stick you with one or sometimes that'd be all they had, so through familiarisation (and that I have a 20+ year old MD900 2x12 that has to have the sweetest sound I ever did hear, but most vintage valves are that way really... The fenders just never cut the mustard for me and especially if you play a fender guitar (I always found that a peculiar thing) Basically in my humble (tho often bias) opinion in regard to amps having played well over a thousand different individual amps over many years, that Vox seem to have always hit the nail on the head (bar one or two very very rare exceptions) especially in regard to the styles of music they will perform well tonally with... and yet loose none of the quality in sound, power, controll, build, durabillity, reliabillity and style... And in comparrison to other amp makers of that level are actually competitavley priced.
All that said I have yet to buy one lol Maybe I'll sell one of my marshalls or maybe my Orange??? I dunno... But then what does a chick know about rock n roll :P;)

Karl Hungus

No, I meant is it what most of them are trying to be? Because I figure the Marshalls, the Fenders, they're just doing their own thing.

scorplett

Karl Hungus wrote:

No, I meant is it what most of them are trying to be? Because I figure the Marshalls, the Fenders, they're just doing their own thing.

Pottentially interesting discussion here... I really think that most amp makers have sort of... Fallen... into a sound/genre corner and I really dont thing (maybe with the exception of one or two) that they really dont want to be that way...
Take for example the fender company, they make many wonderfull instruments designed for a broad range of musical purposes and most of their instruments are rock guitars. Their electrics are rock their basses are rock even their acoustics are rock, hell you can even get a good rock sound out of a made in china squire special offer... But their amps are country through and through, the clean channel is as twangy as an early 80's multi f/x pedal and they have little bass end to speak of and is it my imagination but is there always that annoying fender vibration (as in a noise inside the casing and not coming from the speakers ((or the oh ship its about to blow up noise)) that makes them sound, even on clean and especially on lead channels that there is a touch of badley set chorus ??? Point being that considering that they got it so right with their guitars, do they really want their amps to sound so ill suited to their instruments or are they just not getting it right. In this test case I really cant see that their doing their thing, and really do believe that they are followers rather than leaders in this area.. But enough of ranting about fender amps, they do good guitars and thats enough... As for Marshalls, they get it soooo right with some of their amps yet sooo wrong with others need I mention the horrendously bad valvestate series... But thats a whole other rant in itself and maybe there is a bit of snobbery sneaking in so Ill shut up for now

It wasn't me!

Fender do the nicest cleans in my opinon. My rig will have a heavy ****er of an amp for distorted sounds, but it'll have a Fender Twin to do teh cleans.

Rancidmaniac13

Could you just put a few effect pedles in front of a nice clean fender to get some good distorted sounds too? I was thinking of buying a Fender 212 for the clean, volume.

It wasn't me!

You could, but amp distortion is always better than a pedal.

Karl Hungus

It wasn't me! wrote:

You could, but amp distortion is always better than a pedal.

Ain't that the truth! Just give me a guitar, and an amp with decent distortion, and I'll be set to rock'n'roll.

Pedals just don't cut it.

punchdrunk

thats waffle,good quality pedals used well can equal amp distortion,it's all about how you use them!

scorplett

punchdrunk wrote:

thats waffle,good quality pedals used well can equal amp distortion,it's all about how you use them!

A good amp distortion is always better than a pedal dist. I am a fan of pedals and adore a colourful string of daisychained Boss individual pedals laid out in specific orders etc etc. However a pedal is only as good as the amp it's running into and no matter how nice the pedal is it would always be preferable to use a footswitch to change amp channells rather than using a distortion pedal on the input cable. However that is preferable but not always possible say for example on a chain of effects you have a sequence like
guitar to overdrive to reverb to distortion to amp, this combo would not make any differance as to weather or not you have used amp or pedal distortion save for one, the amp distortion is always going to be more powerfull than any pedal because each time you cable the signal it will reduce in power so obviousley if you can use amp distortion all the better. Now if you have a signal combo that goes this way guitar to distortion to overdrive to reverb then your gonna want to use a pedal properley becaude you are distorting the overdrive and you are distorting and overdriving the reverb etc etc...
So the shortened version of all this is that No pedals cannot always equal amp and vice versa. No one is nescesarily better than the other...Neither statement is waffle and its not about how you use them but why you use them

dfer

Yeah, i have to agree with the marshall 900. I gotta 900 SLX 100 watt, (instead of reverb theres an extra valve) and even at the 50 watt setting it f**king loud as hell, only problem is its got only one channel

Eoin Madsen

scorplett wrote:

A good amp distortion is always better than a pedal dist.

That's clearly a matter of opinion (I personally agree as a general rule, but many people don't, which can hardly be argued with - tone is subjective).

So the shortened version of all this is that No pedals cannot always equal amp and vice versa. No one is nescesarily better than the other...

This is true.

novarock

speaking from a regular gigging point of view, i dont have my own amp so I play an assortment of amps from other bands at gigs. Tube amps are great tone wise, but you are never allowed turn them up to really hear it, especially fenders, very sensitive at low volumes, marshalls are impossible to get the right tone from, and dont get me started on DFX's, they make me angry.

My preferred set up would be a good transistor or hybrid amp, (the vox AD30 is amazing but pricey) put through a boss overdrive/distortion. Ill probably end up buying that fr 212, ive played one of them and you can get great overdrive tone with a pedal on the clean channel if you EQ properly.

My advice, only get a tube amp if can afford a new one.

bombidol

ah you cant gig regularly without yer own amp! thats heresy!

sei046

i hate playing without my rig! i dunno how you do it

Quattroste

bombidol wrote:

ah you cant gig regularly without yer own amp! thats heresy!

just says it all really!

david

novarock wrote:

My advice, only get a tube amp if can afford a new one.

Hmm I wouldn't agree with that, you can get amazing Ebay/chrisguitars bargains on used amps even if they have dodgy tubes, bad speakers, beat up looking, the price saving is worth it. Anyway anyone could afford a valve amp nowadays be it for practise (Epi valve Jr.) or gigging (peavey valveking) both not priced much more than their solidstate equivalent

punchdrunk

scorplett i've got three really nice valve amps but all three are single channel amps (well my tweed bassman is kinda two),anyway i don't really dig how most channel switching amps sound,found that out while engineering in the music centre were i heard lots and lots of amps and my favourites were old single channel fenders voxes marshalls etc i tended to find that most amps with 2/3 channels were jacks of all trades but very few floated my boat
i much prefer to drive amps harder with pedals,infact some of these classic amps sound great purely because they are non master volume,they don't even have a gain pot! the only supplied way to distort these beasts is with massive microphone/eardrum killing volume levels! the more practical method is use pedals or an attenuator

say i'm using one of my tele's into my 70's marshall jmp 100w, it's a very trebley amp,which means my clean sound is quite lively and cutting,great! i can be heard loud and clear which is deadly for rhythm but by just cranking up the amp gain for distortion i then get ear spliting treble levels which is kinda nasty! using say my marshall shredmaster or maxon od808 i can tame the highend,and maybe boost the mids for a little more cut,things i can't do with this amp alone

for straight forward lizzy/zep type **** just turn it up! but for anything other than classic rock tones i need my pedals

also fuzz,overdrive,and distortion all sound different!

there's a reason nearly every major rock band use pedals on the road,and in the studio and it's not cause they are stuck for a few quid to drop on a nice amp!

Eoin Madsen

Cheap and nasty valve amps are just as cheap and nasty as cheap and nasty solidstate amps (say that 10 times).

And to be honest, a Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier and an AC30 (for example) are arguably more dissimilar than either one is to (for example) any of the cheap Fender solidstate amps. Just don't buy an amp because it's got valves, get one because it sounds good. A lot of bull**** surrounds the whole valve idea. A good circuit and good components (capacitors, transformers) make a good valve amp, the same as what makes a good solidstate amp.

The valves you get new with an amp are always the ****test cheapest far eastern knock-offs that the company could find, so you'll be changing the valves in any amp before it sees any play, whether it's new or not.

About the pedals... I really don't think they see a quarter as much studio time as they see gigging time tbh. Not that I can hear on records that I listen to anyway.

feylya

Eoin Madsen wrote:

A lot of bull**** surrounds the whole valve idea. A good circuit and good components (capacitors, transformers) make a good valve amp, the same as what makes a good solidstate amp.

Never a truer word spoken on this forum.

Quattroste

Eoin Madsen wrote:

The valves you get new with an amp are always the ****test cheapest far eastern knock-offs that the company could find, so you'll be changing the valves in any amp before it sees any play, whether it's new or not.

Hmmmm. Interesting Eoin. I have Laney LC30 that has a nice sound with the original valves, but it would be nice to see/hear if there is a noticable difference with "better" valves. As far as I know the LC 30 has 4 ECC83preamp valves and 4 EL84 power amp valves.

Which valves would you usually change in regards to pre or power stage and what recommendations would you have?

Another quick question. The reverb suddenly stopped working. How do I go about getting this fixed?

david

eurotubes.com

$65 for a full ENGL thunder retube (7 valves), Great prices and JJ tubes are supposed to be decent too

Eoin Madsen

Quattroste wrote:

Hmmmm. Interesting Eoin. I have Laney LC30 that has a nice sound with the original valves, but it would be nice to see/hear if there is a noticable difference with "better" valves. As far as I know the LC 30 has 4 ECC83preamp valves and 4 EL84 power amp valves.

Which valves would you usually change in regards to pre or power stage and what recommendations would you have?

Generally you go with the same type of valves (ECC83s and EL84s), unless you have some specific changes in mind. The JJs, already mentioned, are a pretty good upgrade. Though I was even more impressed by the "Harma" valves that Watford Valves do. (http://www.watfordvalves.com) Really, it depends on the sound you're going for. It's just a vague impression, but the JJs feel a little more high-gain to me.

Another quick question. The reverb suddenly stopped working. How do I go about getting this fixed?

The amps I've worked on so far all pre-date reverb, so I have no ideas. I actually don't know any good amp techs, personally. A big part of the reason I got into amps myself. I'm positive there's a few about Dublin though.

Voodu Child

Aladins amps replaced the accutronics reverb unit on my mesa. Any good amp tech should be able to diagnose the problem.

Quattroste

Thanks Lads. I'm gettin approx €150 for a full retube in Harma Vintage valves. Hmmm that's steep enough! Has to be done I suppose.!

punchdrunk

well changing a reverb pan is easy,it's just connected by two phono jacks,nearly all reverb tanks these days are accutronics so find a mate with one the same as yours(should be easy enough) and swap the tank to find out if thats the problem,if not then go to a tech

Quattroste

Thanks punchdrunk!

A mate eh! Now where do you get one of those........