Trying to turn tube

TheBones

TheBones

New member
Hey guys looking for some advice. I'm tired of my modeling amp and I'm looking to buy my first tube amp. Using it mainly for home studio use. I've looked a lot at the micro terror by orange and I love their products but I've also read some good reviews on the vox lil night train mini stack and a epiphone valve junior mini stack. They keep showing up in my price range. I'm sort of partial to the orange but Im really hesitant to get the paired 1x8 cab. I'm thinking I'll want a 1x12. Not sure what would be a good match. Any body have any experience with any of these amps? Any thouhts
 
I didn't like the Valve Jr when I had it, so turned it around to get a Vox ac4tv. I like this amp a lot for recording purposes and it's done well being mic'd at gigs. I never tried the Orange Micro Terror but you might want to take a look at the Tiny Terror sometime. It has a really badass crunch tone, though the clean sound was not to my liking.

I have no experience with the other amps you've mentioned, unfortunately. I've seen a ton of stuff online for mods for the Valve Jr and apparently these mods really help to lower the noise of the amp and open up the tone.
 
Hated the valve JR as well. It always sounded like there was a blanket over it, and I was using a nice cabinet with it.

Have only played the terror, JCA20H, Blackheart, and night train.

The terror was good, the JCA was really good (for the price), the blackheart was a solid meh, and I thought the train was a bit thin sounding.

It would be good to note that I was not using matching cabs for any of them though, the JCA was through a 2X12 with vintage 30s, and all the others were through a marshall 1960a because that was all that was available.

I really want that JCA head though, it sounded really good. The choice is going to depend heavily on what you play though.
 
Thanks for the input guys. I'm really leaning tword the micro terror but I don't think that Ill be happy with the 1x8 cab that is designed to accompany it. Any thoughts on smaller cabs that might fit the bill? I'm thinking a 1x12. I'm mostly going to be playing rock but some metal and blues from time to time
 
Are you in a place where you can go play some amps? That's what I'd recommend. Grab your guitar and go play some amps. Reviews are okay, but you gotta go turn some knobs and hear for yourself.
 
TheBones said:
Thanks for the input guys. I'm really leaning tword the micro terror but I don't think that Ill be happy with the 1x8 cab that is designed to accompany it. Any thoughts on smaller cabs that might fit the bill? I'm thinking a 1x12. I'm mostly going to be playing rock but some metal and blues from time to time
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The Micro Terror is not really a tube amp .... though it does have a tube in the preamp section, the power section is solid state.

Usually when people move to tube amps they want to be able to get the breakup you get from driving power tubes hard and the Micro Terror has no power tubes.

So I think I'd eliminate the Micro Terror from the list.
The Tiny Terror is all tube though.

And I gigged all summer with a Valve jr thru a 10" believe it or not.
Yeah, they're a little dark but a clean boost with tone controls added the sparkle you want with no problem.
Surprised me that I prefered it to my Tiny Terror by a large margin but this was a pretty low-volume gig.



Greg_L said:
Are you in a place where you can go play some amps? That's what I'd recommend. Grab your guitar and go play some amps. Reviews are okay, but you gotta go turn some knobs and hear for yourself.
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^^^^this^^^^^

Everyone has their own taste and also ability to get the sound they want outta various amps.
What I like, you might hate.
And I can get almost anything to work well enough whereas you might need it to work right outta the box so I do believe there's no substitute for actually playing thru the amp yourself with your guitar.
 
I am in 100% agreement with those statements. I would love to be able to walk into a place with my strat and start plugging away. Unfortunatly, the only guitar store for like 50 miles is a guitar center that has a painfully small section of smaller sized tube amps that consists of like 1 used little vox a couple new ones and the only others are massive behemoths. The only way they'll get any other amp is if I put it on my credit card and return it if I don't like it. That seems like an exhausting process to repeat 4 or 5 times. Granted, I'll return whatever amp I get if I don't like it, but I just wanna try to get the first time.
 
TheBones said:
I am in 100% agreement with those statements. I would love to be able to walk into a place with my strat and start plugging away. Unfortunatly, the only guitar store for like 50 miles is a guitar center that has a painfully small section of smaller sized tube amps that consists of like 1 used little vox a couple new ones and the only others are massive behemoths. The only way they'll get any other amp is if I put it on my credit card and return it if I don't like it. That seems like an exhausting process to repeat 4 or 5 times. Granted, I'll return whatever amp I get if I don't like it, but I just wanna try to get the first time.
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If you're not able to play a bunch, you're stuck listening to recommendations. Maybe youtube can give you some ideas.

So, I say figure out who or what you wanna sound like, figure out what they use, and get that or something very similar. I tried the low-watt route knowing full well that the sound I want only comes from big loud Marshalls. I tried anyway. Fail. After playing and trying dozens of low watt heads and combos, I'm now the proud owner of a 100w tube Marshall head and two cabs. :D

That's just me though. For my ears nothing beats a big roaring Marshall. If you're dead set on an affordable low wattage tube amp, I'd say try the Eganter Tweaker. That, to me, was the best sounding reasonably priced low watt tube amp I came across for my style of music. And it's quite versatile. Good little amp. Goes great with a 1x12. The Hughes and Kettner Tubemeister 18 was bad ass too, but it's getting up in price. Everything else I tried was just meh. Tiny Terrors, Mini Mesas, Blackstars, DV Mark, all just meh and very limited. The Tweaker and Tubemeister were cool. Big Marshalls are cooler. :)
 
I just bought a kustom 5h mini stack on the basis of reviews...ive ordered new tubes as the chinese ones inside are notoriously hot so im going with a 12AT7 to try and tame it a little

Im no expert on tone or guitars, but this is worth consideration...in reviews it certainly blasts an unmodded JR out the water for performace...plus it has one knob, i love things with one knob...except men :)

One thing though, its loud..its 5 watt but puts out around 15...not sure how that works but its louder than my other small, but bigger, amps

Heres a review of a few...

http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/roundup-11-micro-tube-amps/148843
 
I have the little Vox 4W thingy with a 1x12 separate cabinet... it's good, but it doesn't have many things to twiddle to get tonal variety - so if you're looking for many sonic options, look elsewhere.. on the other hand, if you like what it does.. go for it.
 
TheBones said:
I'm tired of my modeling amp and I'm looking to buy my first tube amp. Using it mainly for home studio use.

........


Any thouhts
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What kind of music are you doing?
This will help you chose the right kind of tone and drive.

Is that your budget...the range of the amps you mentioned, or something else?
Those are relatively inexpensive amps, and while OK, you could do much nicer if you stepped up a bit.

Are you looking for something to keep, something you won't want to trade away soon, or just an amp to try out for awhile until you outgrow it?
A really sweet tube amp is something you might keep for a long time, maybe the rest of your life, and good amps almost never lose value, but they can cost a bit more...though if you are just dabbling around now and might want to keep experimenting, then start "small" and work up from there. It really depends on how you feel about playing the guitar.
 
An amp does not HAVE to be all valves but certainly a valve output stage (preff' push-pull) and at least one valve in the pre amp is a good idea.

Sub 12" speakers are a bit like the Porsche Boxter of the gitamp world. Peeps only buy them because they can't afford a "proper" 12" speaker!

Ok! Bit of an oversimplification but there are good technical reasons why a 12 sounds as it does and that sound is hard to get from other sizes (including 15's). Multiple 10s/8s are a different story.

Kcearl: Careful what you plug 12AT7s (ECC81) into, you can burn out anode loads (pretty crappy, miccy NON audio valve anyway!)

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
An amp does not HAVE to be all valves but certainly a valve output stage (preff' push-pull) and at least one valve in the pre amp is a good idea.

Sub 12" speakers are a bit like the Porsche Boxter of the gitamp world. Peeps only buy them because they can't afford a "proper" 12" speaker!

Ok! Bit of an oversimplification but there are good technical reasons why a 12 sounds as it does and that sound is hard to get from other sizes (including 15's). Multiple 10s/8s are a different story.

Kcearl: Careful what you plug 12AT7s (ECC81) into, you can burn out anode loads (pretty crappy, miccy NON audio valve anyway!)

Dave.
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Thanks Dave, ill be careful ;)
 
Cool...ive got a tung sol 12AT7 AW...and ive orded some sovteks...no reason to think they wont be fine??
 
kcearl said:
Cool...ive got a tung sol 12AT7 AW...and ive orded some sovteks...no reason to think they wont be fine??
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No idea ^ friend "we" do not use them as they are not an audio valve.
I have some numbers for you...

Mains in 230v measured. HT 290volts
ECC83 Va1 152, Kv 0.95. Va2 215.5, Kv 1.61

ECC81 Va1 75.6* Vk 1.25. Va2 136, Kv 2.67

*thus the anode current has doubled and the 100k load resistor is now dissipating 0.46W, P.D.Close to the 1/2watt often fitted (test amp had 0.6W metal film, bombproof) Take mains input to the maximum allowed of 253 and HT zooms to 326volts and some old, underated anode loads go bye-bye.

The other 1/2 has a 220k load so is not a problem.

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Sub 12" speakers are a bit like the Porsche Boxter of the gitamp world. Peeps only buy them because they can't afford a "proper" 12" speaker!

Ok! Bit of an oversimplification but there are good technical reasons why a 12 sounds as it does and that sound is hard to get from other sizes .
Click to expand...
I actually prefer a good 10" speaker ..... the only time I really prefer 12"s is if I need a metal kinda sound but otherwise I find them a little bloated sounding compared to 10's.
I especially like (as you mentioned ) 4x10 amps so I have a Super Reverb, a Hot Rod deVille 4x10 and an Ampeg VT-40 (another 4X10 combo.
My extension cabs that I use with my heads on gigs are mostly 1X10 cabs.
 
ecc83 said:
No idea ^ friend "we" do not use them as they are not an audio valve.
I have some numbers for you...

Mains in 230v measured. HT 290volts
ECC83 Va1 152, Kv 0.95. Va2 215.5, Kv 1.61

ECC81 Va1 75.6* Vk 1.25. Va2 136, Kv 2.67

*thus the anode current has doubled and the 100k load resistor is now dissipating 0.46W, P.D.Close to the 1/2watt often fitted (test amp had 0.6W metal film, bombproof) Take mains input to the maximum allowed of 253 and HT zooms to 326volts and some old, underated anode loads go bye-bye.

The other 1/2 has a 220k load so is not a problem.

Dave.
Click to expand...
Wow interesting stuff Dave...if you ave any recommendations Id love to hear them...as i say this is all new to me
 
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