Tough Decision

K

kingdan7587

New member
hi everybody, im new to this forum but i heard alot of good things about it. Anyways, I have a Line 6 Spider 212 and a Randall RG25RM, my Spider has been gving me alot of problems lately , such as the sound cutting off when im playing and some other things. MY Randall is ok. It has a good clean sound but i can tell that the speaker is about to break soon. what its lacking is a heavy distortion sound. Heres my plan, either replace both amps with a good one, or just get a PODXT or the Boss GT-8. And if should get the pedals, which one i should i get? i currently play a crappy Squier but i am going to get a epiphone in the future.plus, i am on a tight budget so i wont be able to spend over $800. thanks!
 
If you were to buy a new amp what is your max budget??? $800 for the whole amp?

Also what style of music to you play? IE What do you want out of the amp! Thirdly, epiphone's are also pretty crap guitars dude, they aren't much better than a Squier - the budget Ibanez models are very good for the money, I'd suggest looking at them over an epiphone!
 
i would say my budget for an amp would be 500, becuase im thinking of getting a new guitar also, I dont need a huge 100 watt amp, i would prob just get a 25 or 50 watt one, the ones i was thinking of getting would either be the Marshall or the Vox one, i play alot of blues and classic rock things.
 
We don't even know what kind of music he plays, and here you guys are recommending the "blues junior". That would be pretty worthless if he plays death metal.


So...what kind of music do you play?
 
i play mostly blues and classic rock. I was checking out the Blues Jr. and i remember someone telling me that the speaker that comes with it really sucks. is it still a good idea? cause i tried the Vox and its pretty good, but i dont trust modeling amps after i got my Line 6. (it was a bad decision)
 
amra said:
We don't even know what kind of music he plays, and here you guys are recommending the "blues junior". That would be pretty worthless if he plays death metal.


So...what kind of music do you play?
Click to expand...
He said blues and classic rock, I guess I just believed him. I've got eight amps and use the Blues Jr. for smaller venues. Speaker sounds great!
 
kingdan7587 said:
i would say my budget for an amp would be 500, becuase im thinking of getting a new guitar also, I dont need a huge 100 watt amp, i would prob just get a 25 or 50 watt one, the ones i was thinking of getting would either be the Marshall or the Vox one, i play alot of blues and classic rock things.
Click to expand...

In that case get a Marhsall 100DFX, its probably the best value Marshall amp on the market, 100 wats of power, authentic Marshall sound and its very reliable. You can probably pick one up on Ebay for around 350 and use the change to go towards a good guitar. For the money, Ibanez is probably the best bet... just remember that you will have to replace the stock pickups (those Ibz/Dmz pups are horrible!), unless you get a quality secondhand model with a nice setup. The more expensive models come with the better pups, if you canb, try to get a good secondhand axe... you might be abelto to get a nice Prestige for around 500 with a set of Evoultion pups...
 
My mate plays an Ibanez Gio, with a Boss GT-8 through the Marshall MG 100DFX. Guitar was £200, amp was £200 and boss was £295 i think, so £695. That is $1227, but you could probably get it much cheaper if you search around. Amp here for $441.34 or on ebay second hand for $300+$45p&p.
Boss here for $445, or ebay new for $370, and Ibanez Gio here for $223.09. That's £938.09, for ebay buys. Or £1109.43 for other. This is a really nice sounding setup.
 
soundchaser59 said:
Vox AD50VT is going for about $360, sounds great, more filling than any small Marshall......
Click to expand...

I would recomend the Vox modelers over most others if you really think a modeler is for you. I passed them over in my quest for a heavy tone at the expense of flexibility.
I had a Line6 flextone for a while..... it didn't sound like the one in the store (the software is finicky on those things) then went with a POD Pro rack unit. Its very flexible and its great grabbing real knobs to edit instead of dealing with a dumb interface. I still think Line 6 stuff sounds a bit sterile, though better than the V-amp stuff to my ears.
My main problem is, I STILL don't get the clean mildly overdriven sounds I desire. I should have made THAT my priority when choosing an amp, and let heavy distortion come secondary, and for what I spent putting that system together I could have had a re-issue blackface and ran a stompbox to get more distortion. Feel like kicking myself now I spent that much $$$ and it didn't even get me into a tube amp because now I don't even care as much for playing metal. I would rather have some old school sounding guitar for what I've been writing lately.
So buy an amp that SOUNDS great, not just tries to emulate real amps that sound great.
 
You are crazy. Those things are, and sound like, crap.


Superhuman said:
In that case get a Marhsall 100DFX, its probably the best value Marshall amp on the market, 100 wats of power, authentic Marshall sound and its very reliable. You can probably pick one up on Ebay for around 350 and use the change to go towards a good guitar. For the money, Ibanez is probably the best bet... just remember that you will have to replace the stock pickups (those Ibz/Dmz pups are horrible!), unless you get a quality secondhand model with a nice setup. The more expensive models come with the better pups, if you canb, try to get a good secondhand axe... you might be abelto to get a nice Prestige for around 500 with a set of Evoultion pups...
Click to expand...
 
Big Kenny said:
Fender Blues Jr. is a great amp for that!
Click to expand...


+1 again. Also a used Deluxe Reverb would be even better in my opinion for what maybe $550, maybe less...haven't checked recently, but you can get a really decent amp for $500. On the other side of things, there is also a lot of flashy crap out there for that price too, so be careful. Fender tube amp is a solid bet.
 
hey thanks everybody for helping me out. i was checking out the Fdender Blues Junior and also the other forums, they say that if i do get it that i need to adjust the bias and all that. it sounds pretty tedious and i dont want to mess the amp up or anything ,but my bidget for the amp is going to 500. any other suggestions?
 
kingdan7587 said:
i play alot of blues and classic rock things.
Click to expand...
His second post didn't mention anything about "death metal"........


If the guy above is referring to the Marshall MG100DFX, then I'm forced to agree with amra, the Marshall MG amps sound like trash. These are solid state amps. I played solid state for 25 years, then got persuaded to try another tube amp (the Vox AD50) and I will NEVER go back to solid state. I dont care what kind of music you play, the good tube amps will always stomp all over the solid state amps. I had a Marshal MG50DFX and it was one of the worst amps I've ever had in my life.

I had a Line 6 AX2-212 and it was pretty good. I only got rid of it because if it took me an hour or two to "program" a great sound on the Line 6, I could get that same or better sound from the Vox in 3 minutes. Time spent playing and recording, not tweakng the amp settings. I did, however, hear a lot of people complain that the Line 6 amps did not stand up well to rough handling on the road.

I'm a fan of Fender stuff also. I got my USA-made 40th anniversary reissue Strat for under $500 (not new) and I had the Fender Strat Noiseless pickups put on it, now I love the thing more than ever. With a tube amp I'm quite happy with what I'm doing.
 
Last edited:
The thing about the Blues Jr is that it's tube! I play an old Concert 1x12 and I'll never go back...Tube is the way to go! Especially if you're playing Blues and classic stuff! Stick a strat into that and you'll get fantastic grindy stuff...plug something with a hummer and rip an E chord...Then tell me about some Marshall 100DFX

Jacob
 
Hey do you still have that little Randall amp? I'm trying to fix one for a friends son who is a young guitar player.The problem is that there is a larger resistor burned on the board in order to replace it I have to know the value of it.This is usually indicated by the colored bands going around it since it is burnt it is just black.I contacted Randall but they did not have the schematic.If you still have would you mind telling me the color band on R64 it is all the way in the back by the black heat sink plate. Thank you for you consideration. Kevin Scott
 
The color bands can still be seen if you carefully take it out and look on the back side of it where it sat on the circuit board. At least I've had pretty good luck with this method.
 
Blues Jr is good. I like the 1x12 Hotrod deluxe better. I think it's around $500-600. 40 watts, and a really nice blues sound for clean or slightly overdriven, and put a Tube Screamer in front of it to really get it cranking. That would be my recommendation for under $1000.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top