practice amp for guitar

orksnork

New member
i feel as though i am a fairly seasoned veteran of the guitar.

right now my road rig consists of three gibson sgs, and a road case with a marshall 1960 cab, marshall jmp1 preamp, and a mesa boogie 50/50 power amp.

now when it comes to practice amps, i basically know fuck all...

a friend of mine used to have a fender bronco, and it sounded pretty nasty (and noisy, but who cares in your bedroom if you get a lot of hum)...
the last practice amp i had was a fender squire amp that came with my fender strat squire pack when i was 11, and even that thing had some decent chunk to it...

ive walked around in guitar center with an sg, and plugged in to a lot of crap...nothing sounds worth having... i know it's not going to sound golden, but AT LEAST SOUND WORTH HAVING

any ideaaaaaaaaars?
 
How small? I really like the epiphone valve junior, a 5-watt tube amp. I have the head, but they also make a combo. Nice classic tone, one knob, simple as pie.

The little rolands (cube, microcube) are decent in the modeling amp category, as are the vox's, or so I've heard.
 
That Epi Valve Jr HEAD is great, plug it into a nice cab and sound like EC as soon as you turn it on. For $99 you cant get a better deal in class A all tube. Has 4, 8, and 16 ohm jacks on the back.

The combo version sucks, only because they put a crap speaker in it that cant handle the tone coming from the amp. But it has an 8 ohm jack for an external cab, which makes it sound really sweet if you plug into a Weber or something....

I'm getting two of the heads....

another idea is the Traynor TRM40, it's the most tube-like ss amp I've ever heard! 20 watts per channel, with two jacks for two 8 ohm external cabs. Has the nicest chorus I've ever heard in a combo. $165 delivered.
 
I love my Fender blues Junior. Served me well in my dorm room where my Deluxe was just too loud. Hard to beat all tube Fenders or Marshalls in my opinon.

Though the junior tends to have a thick sound to it, possibly not what you'd want if you're a marshall player...

My rythm guitarist used to have a little tube mesa though that surpased my junior, called a subway or something? It looked a lot like the mark series. One of them [the mark series] with a single 12' would probably do the trick.
 
nevome said:
I love my Fender blues Junior. Served me well in my dorm room where my Deluxe was just too loud. Hard to beat all tube Fenders or Marshalls in my opinon.

The blues junior is great.......maybe too good for a practice amp? I know people who gig it, record it, etc.

The microcube is pretty amazing for the size and price.

Vox pathfinder?
 
IMHO, you can't go wrong with a Vox AD15VT or AD30VT.

There's something about their Valve Reactor power section that somehow makes them feel "real" to me.

If you can find a VR30 or a VR15, those are cool too. They're not modeling amps, they're just amps that use the same Valve Reactor power section and kinda have their own voice.

The thing about the ADxxVT's are that if you put them in manual mode and just use them as a regular amp instead of using the presets, you seem to get better results.
 
soundchaser: i'm looking more for a combo, not to hump a cabinet into my bedroom...

nicely priced choices so far guys, im gonna start calling around and seeing who has what in stock to try out
 
i use a tech 21 trademark 60 for practice. it's a pretty versatile little amp. channel 1 is american voiced and goes from clean to almost distortion. channel 2 is british voiced and goes from mild drive to metal. channel 2 has a button called "weep" that has a fuzz effect when engaged. it also has a xlr direct out that can go straight to a board and a headphone out.

the footswitch has channel 1/2, boost (amp has a boost level control), and effect loop/reverb.

it's not a modeling amp but it is a pretty decent sounding and versatile solid state amp that can get loud enough to practice with a band.
 
We are about to start doing our Fender Champ Clones again,...

with the newest of the special 'Blender' technology.....


Kind of a secret right now, at least while the patent process is considered....


will have at least one of those,... and the plain jane versions at the fest in August,... and hopefully our newest baby,... in a head version ,... the 18 watt 'Blender' I will have several different speaker setups to try it out on....

the plain jane simple clone is $400 for members, and friends....

the blender special,..... actually the Robert Randolph edition 'Blender will be $600,.... and the newest 18 watt Blender will be $850.

your choice of speaker with any of those,....we have several choices....

Email me,... or come to the fest to see one......

at present,... only myself, and the newly recovering from a liver transplant,.. ( that saved his life.....) Andy,......are the builders......

so not too many of them get built in a year....... at least not right now......


Treeline has one,.. as does Dafduc from RP.....


come to the fest and plug your instrument into one....



Steve
 
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