New amp time... help me pick!

  • Thread starter Thread starter thebigcheese
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Went to GC today and tried a Vox amp I'd been skipping over because of it's only got one channel and no FX loop... man, it would be perfect if not for those! In fact, I think that if I bought two, one for clean and one for dirty, it would be perfect, except I'd have to figure out how to get an FX loop in there. It was the Night Train. Anyone know if there's an amp out there that would be like two of those with an FX loop?

The bright mode was perfect for cleans and slightly distorted rock/blues, and the thick mode was great for metal. I neeeeed it.

So... I guess the British sound is what I like after all, it just needs to have a lot of gain available.
 
Heres a fresh idea for the board...try one out before you dump on something online...maybe this will start a revolution...and maybe someday people will read these threads and say...those guys had integrity and they wasnt just full of hot air.:rolleyes:

I just Googled "Line6 Mark 3" and nothing came up. Do you mean Spider III or Spider Valve, by chance? If so, I've played both - the Spiders are practice amps, nothing more. The Spider valve, I expected to hate, tried it, dug the shit out of the clean channel, and was so excited that after 15 minutes I started flipping through the gain channels thinking maybe they'd finally got something right. Nope, they sucked.

Thebigcheese - that's a LOT of different tones you're after, from a single amp. Rage Against the Machine is about as Marshall (800-ish) as you can get, while a whole bunch of those other guys are very Recto of Peavey 5150 in nature. And, Lamb of God is the quintessential (well, quintessential modern, at least - let's not forget early Metallica) Mesa Mark-IV sound.

If I were you, I'd spend some time thinking about what exactly that elusive sound in your head is, because the difference between "Down Rodeo" and "My Curse" is pretty night in day. Reading your later posts, it sounds like you're gradually starting to, and if you're after...

Overall, I've noticed that I really like the sparkly clean tones and crunchy (but still smooth), heavy distortion. I don't mind if the cleans are a little "dry"--I actually kind of like that.


...then here would be my recommendations:

Peavey 5150. You can grab the heads for cheap, it's not uncommon to see them around $500-600. The clean channel is, um, not that clean, but for metal rhythm these things slay, and as long as you don't mind a "dry" clean sound and don't have to footswitch back and forth between that and a gain tone while gigging, they're tough to beat for the price.
Mesa Boogie F-30 You'll have to find this used, as this was the forerunner to the (far inferior, IMO) Express series. One of the best cleans I've ever heard from a Mesa (or anything, really), and a great, great gain channel - not the most flexable EQ section, but the gain sound it produces both slays for rhythm and is a surprisingly nice lead voice. Fairly aggressive, but these things are just great amps.
Mesa Mark series, used. Now that the Mark-V is on the market, you might be able to snag a Mark-IV head or combo for less than a grand. This is pretty much Lamb of God in a box, thick, saturated, and smooth. Also worth a look, on the cheap - the Rocket series, but these will be very hard to find - I used to own a Rocket-44, and it's a very Mark-like gain sound, but without a lot of the options.
 
I tried out some of the Peaveys, but they really just don't do it for me. The cleans are dull and the distortion is average at best. I dunno, they just don't inspire me.

The Mark V is a nice amp, but it's just so friggin' expensive. I'm not sure I would use all the tones, but somewhere down the line when I have money and a reason to have such an amp (i.e. am actually in a gigging band), I might pick one up.

Someone was selling an F-50 around here, but I think I missed out on that deal. If the dirty channel's EQ is as inflexible as the Express amps, though, I'm not sure I'd want it.

I don't necessarily want to sound exactly like those other metal bands, as--in all honesty--I probably won't end up playing that much metal. A lot of the riffs I've come up with need to either be very clean and sparkly or they are pretty much just rock. I like a more rock-influenced metal tone, honestly. I just want it to be capable of something metalish because it's fun to rock out with crazy amounts of drive, not necessarily because it will be a necessity for what I actually play.

I was thinking about that Vox Night Train and I thought that one possibility for the two channels would be to just buy two of those amps, one for clean and one for dirty, but then they still wouldn't have an FX loop. So then I found a schematic and thought about putting one together from scratch, but that seemed like a lot more work than necessary. So I finally realized that I could buy one used and just splice into the PCB for a second channel (since I really just one the same channel twice for different options) and an FX loop, and that would be pretty much the perfect amp, at least for this point in my life. It would be paid for almost entirely by the sale of my Blues Jr., I think, so that is another huge plus. So I think I'm going to try to snag one of those. At the very least, it's a much better sounding amp than my Blues Jr. and it certainly doesn't have any less features, so I won't be any worse off tone-wise or monetarily.
 
I don't necessarily want to sound exactly like those other metal bands, as--in all honesty--I probably won't end up playing that much metal. A lot of the riffs I've come up with need to either be very clean and sparkly or they are pretty much just rock. I like a more rock-influenced metal tone, honestly. I just want it to be capable of something metalish because it's fun to rock out with crazy amounts of drive, not necessarily because it will be a necessity for what I actually play.

The amp that you've described is a Carvin X100B. It has beautiful cleans and fantastic rock distortion. It also has an effects loop and a 25/50/100 watt switch. http://www.carvinguitars.com/products/single.php?product=X100B
 
I tried out some of the Peaveys, but they really just don't do it for me. The cleans are dull and the distortion is average at best. I dunno, they just don't inspire me.

The Mark V is a nice amp, but it's just so friggin' expensive. I'm not sure I would use all the tones, but somewhere down the line when I have money and a reason to have such an amp (i.e. am actually in a gigging band), I might pick one up.

Someone was selling an F-50 around here, but I think I missed out on that deal. If the dirty channel's EQ is as inflexible as the Express amps, though, I'm not sure I'd want it.

Ok, if you want something more "rock" ish, the 5150 is definitely out. :laughings: What other Peaveys did you try?

Forget the Mark-V - it's nice, but if you want the "Mark" tone, there's a LOT of options out there. A Mark-IV or even a Mark-III would probably work quite well for what you're doing, and wouldn't cost nearly as much as a V. Also worth a look - the Nomad series, which was the amp the F-series replaced which in turn was replaced by the Express. It's still one of my all-time favorite Mesas, and one of the few that can really hit both extremes of Mesa tone - smooth, liquid saturation a la a Mark, and heavy crunch like a Recto.

The F-series? It's about as inflexible as an Express (the EQ never changes the fundamental tone of the amp), except unlike the Express it sounds pretty awesome right out of the box.

I've never played a Night Train, so I don't know what to suggest that would work for you, based off that. Sorry man. :(
 
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