hey everyone,
I am lookin to get a new amp soon. I don't want anything too big since I am still just playin in my bedroom. My price range is bewtween 100-150 dollars, and I am lookin for the best sound. I just need to know maybe the best brand, size, special info or whatever. thanks everyone

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later,
Luke

Gigging bands are moving away from the 'wall of amplifiers' approach. A small (5-15 Watts) all-tube amp with a DI port, and/or a mic in front of the speaker, has been a common studio rig since forever, but this setup is making its way onto more and more club stages.

You can lug this rig around from gig to gig without bustin' yer arse, or praying for the day you can afford a roadie!

You can get the same sound on stage that you worked so hard on in practice. You can drive the power stage of the amp into the 'sweet spot' without melting the first four rows of your audience.

Your sound man can finally balance the FOH monitors with the house sound so that everybody can hear clearly.

And with a lot of clubs crowding the maximum number of tables into the room by reducing the stage area, you just can't strut your stuff in front of a half-dozen 4x12 cabs anymore! (as if!)

If you're playing the Dome, or Wembley, you're in a position to rent enough gear for the occasion to fill several trucks. The rest of us have smaller-scale scenes to make.

I have an Ampeg VT-22 2x12 combo that weighs 100 pounds before I stuff all kinds of cords, stompboxes and such into the cab. The sound stays clean right up to the point where I need a 20 foot jack-cord to keep from hurting myself!

It makes for gorgeous, ballsy, distortion in the studio, but its just stupid loud in a club. I usually settle for 'front-end' distortion generated by my Peavey Rock Master preamp.

I'm in the planning stages of designing a single-tube Class A power amp combo. Would you believe 2x8? Output will be about 5 or 6 Watts. (For Blues, I expect to spend more time enjoying the 'sweet spot' than playing clean'n'dry). It will have a small equipment rack for my preamp, and whatever.

Check some of the articles posted at: http://www.amptone.com/
and take some time to think clearly about it. I'm fired-up about this topic, so I'll be posting again, for sure. If you have questions, please ask.

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Lordathestrings
Guitar Tricks Moderator
www.GuitarTricks.com - Home of Online Guitar Lessons

I think you've got to keep plugging this too, maybe if everybody starts talking about it a lot more companies will realise how good it would be to have low watt amps. After seeing your last post about this, my 80 watt marshall just makes me think of what I could be sounding like with a smaller amp.

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"Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year, it's just not that widely reported".

Thanks, Bardsley. I keep thinking that the money I've spent on a pair of 100-lb Ampegs would have paid for a small tube amp that I could use anywhere, plus a massive transistor P.A. amp!

I understand that it will take a while to convince people that it's worthwhile to spend almost the same money for a 5 Watt amp as a 60 Watt head. The front-end preamp would cost the same, and the lower-power components are almost as expensive as the big stuff, especially in small quantities.

I've almost got all of the parts for my home-made 5-Watt amp, (based on a single 6AQ5A or 6V6), and I've spent about $200 CDN. If I added a reasonable fee for my time to design and build the "WeeBeastie", it would be about $500CDN for a one-of custom 5-Watt power amp. A manufacturer would be able to bring it down to about $250 or $300, plus the preamp.

A fella's gotta believe before he'll be willing to part with that kind of cash. Obviously, I believe.

'Anyone else?

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Lordathestrings
Guitar Tricks Moderator
www.GuitarTricks.com - Home of Online Guitar Lessons

I'd actually like to hear that 5 watt amp or any other that you'd recommend. So far all the lower wattage amps that I've tried haven't had the tone that I was looking for. Either it has great distortion and sustain w/o any mids or it has great mids w/o distortion or sustain. It's basically an endless search for me. For the bands and drummers I jam with, I really need to crank my amp.

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Ain't nothin' but a Gear thang, baby!

my next poweramp will probably be a Sunn 1200s... the 1200 stands for "1,200 Watts." But I'm a bass player, so I'm allowed to do that stuff. On a more practical note, it has a kick ass compressor built in, so it does do the "almost quiet" thing.

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Raskolnikov
Guitar Tricks Moderator
Careful what you wish for friend
I've been to Hell and now I'm back again
www.GuitarTricks.com - Home of Online Guitar Lessons

PLEASE take the time to poke around on this site for a while:

http://www.amptone.com/

Maybe if you read the same story from enough different people, it will start to sink in. There's a review of a studio amp that will use one or two of just about any kind of tube(s), and sounds really good.

That particular amp is meant for use by engineers, in a studio, but there are articles on that site about other designs that would be more suitable for stage use. I'm in the (slow) process of putting together a single-tube power amp to be driven by my Peavey Rock Master preamp.

I chose the 6AQ5A because its a miniature (the same size as a 12AX7A preamp tube), version of the 6V6 used in the original Fender Champions. The specs on the two tubes are nearly identical, so I can change to a 6V6 later, if it turns out that there is a difference in the sound. I also wanted a 5-Watt output so that it would be loud enough to get real acoustic feedback from my guitar. The Fender Champ has long been a popular choice for studio recording, either mic'ed or running DI tapped off the output. I've got a couple of old 12" speakers from a junked film projector that I might use instead of buying a pair of 8-inchers.

Something that really caught my attention was the fact that you have to cut the power to the speakers by a factor of ten to reduce the apparent volume by half!

That means a 5 Watt amp will produce half of the sound pressure level of a 50 Watt amp driving the same speakers! In my line of work, I should have realized that, but frankly I never thought about it. I now have two big Ampeg combo amps, and a pair of 4x10 cabs, that I can't really use unless I get a gig at a stadium! (O Yeah, that'll happen!)

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Lordathestrings
Guitar Tricks Moderator
www.GuitarTricks.com - Home of Online Guitar Lessons