what kind of amp do I want? confused

  • Thread starter Thread starter the dairy giant
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I don't how much band stuff I'll be doing. The band I'm playing for will be dissolving soon as its guiding force songwriter singer keyboard gal is headed to england... but you never know what might come up so, yeh I'd like to plan for more volume than i need for the swing band, which is me, fiddle and double bass. And I honestly think my Zoom modeling pedal sounds fine for my jazzy duo thing.

The sad thing is that with the lousy exchange rate, and shipping i guess, all that gear is so expensive here. The peavey classic 30 is nearly $1600 new. Fender blues junior is around $1300. There is a crate v33 in a shop here for $900, that seems to get good reviews. The V16 might be more suitable but I don't thinks theres any around here. I would like to try those Tech21 SS amps though to see if they suited. These are the times I really wished I lived in a bigger city in a bigger country where I could just walk into a shop and try a whole bunch of stuff!

And of course that lovely recession has really kicked in big time too. Maybe spending a few hundred on getting my SS amp fixed might have to do in the interim... and I'll try to budget for a tube amp for my 50th birthday, about 3 years away!
 
For what it's worth, the Delta blues has essentially the same circuit as the Classic 30. It also has tremolo. It came in 2X10 and 1X15 versions. For your purposes the 1X15 would be preferable. A 15" speaker can be surprisingly bright.
 
the dairy giant said:
but I would be keen to hear if anyone has an opinion whether a tube amp would markedly improve the tone I get from my guitar into the zoom pedal into the PA, for the jazzy duo I play in. here's a little recording from a gig, direct from the PA to my laptop. I think the tone is pretty warm and pleasing, and i cant really imagine it being heaps better that this...
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You play well, and it sounds good!

I think there are two sides to this question. What you hear/feel vs. what the listeners hear/feel.

If you hadn't said anything first about what you are using, I doubt there are very many of us who could have told you that the clip was made using a solid state device (amp, pod, modeller, etc). Most listeners only go far enough to decide "Yeah, that sounds good and I like the playing" or "Yeah great playing but the guitar sound sucks" or "Great guitar sound but you cant play worth a crap." You will search long and hard before you find a listener who will say "Man, that sounds like a piece of crap solid state toy, why didn't you use a tube amp?" A good analogy would be the way I feel about the difference between my Pianoteq modeller played on a real midi-capable grand piano weighted keyboard vs a high-end sampled piano played on a plastic key synth keyboard. Joe Listener claims he cant hear any difference, but he notices that I play better and I enjoy myself more when I play the Pianoteq on the grand keyboard. It IS different TO ME, and that translates downstream to the experience evoked in the listener.

On the other hand, YOU will know, hear, and feel the difference while you are playing it.......which most likely means you will play it differently.

Will a good tube amp sound heaps better when you record that same tune again and we download the new mp3 clip on the internet and play it back on our little computer speakers? Probably wont know the difference.

Will a good tube amp feel and sound heaps better TO YOU while you are playing it and recording it and feeling it live? Abso-freakin-lutely!

Is that "live feel" factor important enough to you to warrant the purchase and the tone quest? Only your fret dresser knows for sure!

It was worth every hour, day, week, month, year and penny to me. I'll never go back, because I care most of all about how I am thinking, hearing, and feeling my sound while I'm playing it. I know if that part is just right, then the listeners will get the best I have to offer.
 
darrin_h2000 said:
In my years the 2 times there has been a fire in my practice space,they have been started inside of Peavey tube amps...lol.
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I think Mississippi doesn't like Kansas.......all their help escaped to Kansas back in the 19th century. Could be a connection? :D :confused:

Sorry to hear that really..... I've never had a problem with Peavey stuff, it's the one "budget" gear maker I try not to grate on. :) Any idea why the fires started?
 
darrin_h2000 said:
In my years the 2 times there has been a fire in my practice space,they have been started inside of Peavey tube amps...lol.
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A lot of the older Peaveys were designed by Jim Sondemeyer; a design engineer I didn't think very highly of.
 
thanks Soundchaser, and that's an interesting perspective. I don't know sometimes my guitar tone sounds like crap to me, other times on the same settings it sounds fine. In the same venue. A bit of a mystery, but I know how much worse I tend to play in those situations, even though I try to get over it in my head.
Playing in a little bar though, the acoustics seem to maybe be a bigger deal than the tone coming from the speakers. On our PA in one venue I have to completely cut the EQ band thats around the top E of a guitar. I forget the frequency, but if i don't the whole sound (vocals too) is a big pile of mud.
 
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