what's your favorite amp?

[Steiner]

5 hours ago, JeffB said:

1981 fender concert. Its just worked for me for 37yrs regardless of what sort of music I used it for.
When I sold off all my amps after working my way through them all I was surprised It was the last one standing. I only use the clean channel.

Light bulb moment amps were, a little JTM45 head, a Deluxe Reverb and a AC30 and AC15. Once I heard them at volume I couldnt un-hear them.
I did sell them though.

Mesa ElectraDyne. Absolute stand out as far as sounds. But, too big, too loud.

 

 

4 hours ago, Gitfiddler said:

Mid-80's Concert amps are sweet rigs.

I LOVED mine and still miss it.  The only reason it was sold was due to it somehow getting heavier over the years.  Or maybe I got weaker over the years?? 

There are three amps that still haunt me.

1) - Robert LaFond's Fender Concert.  He dropped it off at the wood shop for a cherry cab.  I played it after finishing the cab; whoa...  I've seen a couple on the bloc at astronomical prices.

2) - Bad Cat Cub II.  I don't know why but I traded it for an amp that should have sounded better.  Life is riddled with failures.  This was one of mine.

3) - Marshall Bluesbreaker (1964?).  It sounded too good for the price so I walked; big oops.

[DetroitBlues]

On 9/10/2022 at 8:12 PM, Steiner said:

 

There are three amps that still haunt me.

1) - Robert LaFond's Fender Concert.  He dropped it off at the wood shop for a cherry cab.  I played it after finishing the cab; whoa...  I've seen a couple on the bloc at astronomical prices.

2) - Bad Cat Cub II.  I don't know why but I traded it for an amp that should have sounded better.  Life is riddled with failures.  This was one of mine.

3) - Marshall Bluesbreaker (1964?).  It sounded too good for the price so I walked; big oops.

Hmm, I was at Huber Breese on Saturday.  They had a vintage Concert combo, 60's Deluxe Reverb, Champ, and a 70's Bandmaster head/cabinet.  Some tasty Fender tube goodness.... 

[Steiner]

7 hours ago, DetroitBlues said:

Hmm, I was at Huber Breese on Saturday.  They had a vintage Concert combo, 60's Deluxe Reverb, Champ, and a 70's Bandmaster head/cabinet.  Some tasty Fender tube goodness.... 

Enabler alert!

Dog-gone it.  That's mean.

[zguitar71]

Earlier on this thread I mentioned my favorite amps but I need to update that list. I have a bit of an obsession with the early Fender Pro amps. The 5a5 amp with 15 horse power and the smooth cone 15” Jensen. I really cannot buy a real one as they are a little pricey but I am having aspirations to build one. 

[Gitfiddler]

Just now, zguitar71 said:

Earlier on this thread I mentioned my favorite amps but I need to update that list. I have a bit of an obsession with the early Fender Pro amps. The 5a5 amp with 15 horse power and the smooth cone 15” Jensen. I really cannot buy a real one as they are a little pricey but I am having aspirations to build one. 

+1 on Fender Pro amps.

My first real amp (excluding the Vibro Champ) was a 60's Fender Pro 1x15.  That was the later 40 watt version Pro.

For gigging I also connected it to a matching Fender 1x12 extension speaker.  That was my 'chittlin circuit' and USO rig.  Man, that thing could bark!!

[TalismanRich]

Years ago,  the other guitar player in our band had one of these.   His YBA-1  was a beast, and sounded great.   My poor little Guild Thunderbird was running wide open just to keep up.   I have often thought about grabbing one.   There's one available locally that has been recapped and had the power cord replaced.  Only $900, but I have no clue where I would use it anymore!

 

[bolero]

Those are fantastic amps.

[bolero]

Here is Clapton playing through a Traynor. I believe it was a YBA3 though?

That's John Lennon & Yoko Ono behind him. Yoko's just climbed out of the bag.

 

[Steiner]

16 hours ago, bolero said:

That's John Lennon & Yoko Ono behind him. Yoko's just climbed out of the bag.

Because that's where you keep your yoko.

[rockabilly69]

On 9/12/2022 at 6:41 PM, zguitar71 said:

Earlier on this thread I mentioned my favorite amps but I need to update that list. I have a bit of an obsession with the early Fender Pro amps. The 5a5 amp with 15 horse power and the smooth cone 15” Jensen. I really cannot buy a real one as they are a little pricey but I am having aspirations to build one. 

Go for it!!!! My buddy, who owns just about every cool old Fender tweed amp, just built one with all premium parts (mercury magnetics transformers, vintage Jensen 15", etc), and it sounds great! It easily hangs with the vintage one that he has. He also built a 3X10 Bandmaster and it sounds great too!

[ElChoad]

I have whittled my collection down. All I have left for guitar amps is my Supro Black Magick Reverb with the matching 2x12 cabinet. It does everything I want my amp to do. Such a great all-around amp.

[zguitar71]

6 hours ago, rockabilly69 said:

Go for it!!!! My buddy, who owns just about every cool old Fender tweed amp, just built one with all premium parts (mercury magnetics transformers, vintage Jensen 15", etc), and it sounds great! It easily hangs with the vintage one that he has. He also built a 3X10 Bandmaster and it sounds great too!

I just did a little inventory of parts I have, I’m getting ready to build one. I’m going to go with 6sl7 preamp tubes instead of 6sc7 otherwise I’m keeping it true to the schematic. As for a Bandmaster 3x10, that is another favorite amp of mine too. Your friend has great taste. Maybe I’ll get into one of those down the road. 

[rockabilly69]

39 minutes ago, zguitar71 said:

I just did a little inventory of parts I have, I’m getting ready to build one. I’m going to go with 6sl7 preamp tubes instead of 6sc7 otherwise I’m keeping it true to the schematic. As for a Bandmaster 3x10, that is another favorite amp of mine too. Your friend has great taste. Maybe I’ll get into one of those down the road. 

I like 6SL7 preamp tubes, that's what's in my Ampeg Mercury, one of my favorite amps...

 

[zguitar71]

11 hours ago, rockabilly69 said:

I like 6SL7 preamp tubes, that's what's in my Ampeg Mercury, one of my favorite amps...

 

That is a really cool amp! I need to explore out side of the Fender world. 

[rockabilly69]

5 hours ago, zguitar71 said:

That is a really cool amp! I need to explore out side of the Fender world. 

It's been one of my staple recording amps for the last 20 years. One of my favorite combos is my Zemaitis guitar loaded with dynasonics into the Ampeg...

 

[zguitar71]

18 hours ago, rockabilly69 said:

It's been one of my staple recording amps for the last 20 years. One of my favorite combos is my Zemaitis guitar loaded with dynasonics into the Ampeg...

 

That sounds great!  The entire song is great not just the amp, I really like the entire feel. 

[rockabilly69]

3 hours ago, zguitar71 said:

That sounds great!  The entire song is great not just the amp, I really like the entire feel. 

Thank You! The amp was a big part of the feel! Those old amps have that give and take feel that just makes you want to play, and you will definitely find that in a tweed pro. I hope you get your project off the ground soon, I would like to follow your progress.

[bolero]

Low powered tube combos are the Bomb!

[tsp17]

On 1/14/2022 at 11:35 AM, Gitfiddler said:

For me the Heritage Liberty amp sets the standard that all of my other amps are compared to. 

This modern day 'high powered (45 watt) tweed-based circuit' brings the goods no matter what guitar it is paired with.  

It absolutely sings with my H555.

Maybe my favorite amp ever.  Played through one once and I’ll never forget it.

[rockabilly69]

On 9/27/2022 at 8:10 PM, zguitar71 said:

I just did a little inventory of parts I have, I’m getting ready to build one. I’m going to go with 6sl7 preamp tubes instead of 6sc7 otherwise I’m keeping it true to the schematic. As for a Bandmaster 3x10, that is another favorite amp of mine too. Your friend has great taste. Maybe I’ll get into one of those down the road. 

Remember I told you about my buddy with the tweeds. Well I was at his house yesterday and we had an amp party.

Check out all the vintage amps on this wall (the only ones that aren't vintage are the Victoria Regal II on the bottom left, the homemade tweed princeton in the front, and the Marshall head on the right. But the guy is a killer amp builder so they sound GREAT...

And we were rocking a '59 5E3, a '59 Pro, a homebuilt Tweed 3X10 Bassman here (along with a vintage Supro Dwight and a '64 Blackface Vibrochamp)

 

 

 

[zguitar71]

On 11/24/2022 at 11:36 PM, rockabilly69 said:

Remember I told you about my buddy with the tweeds. Well I was at his house yesterday and we had an amp party.

Check out all the vintage amps on this wall (the only ones that aren't vintage are the Victoria Regal II on the bottom left, the homemade tweed princeton in the front, and the Marshall head on the right. But the guy is a killer amp builder so they sound GREAT...

And we were rocking a '59 5E3, a '59 Pro, a homebuilt Tweed 3X10 Bassman here (along with a vintage Supro Dwight and a '64 Blackface Vibrochamp)

 

 

 

Omg! That is amp heaven. What a great collection, Super cool!

[rockabilly69]

1 hour ago, zguitar71 said:

Omg! That is amp heaven. What a great collection, Super cool!

That's only two walls of the amp heaven. He owns more cool amps that anyone I've ever known. There's days where we play only Supros, or only Ampegs, or old Gibsons:)

[zguitar71]

2 hours ago, rockabilly69 said:

That's only two walls of the amp heaven. He owns more cool amps that anyone I've ever known. There's days where we play only Supros, or only Ampegs, or old Gibsons:)

That sounds like Joe Bonamassa’s house!
I wasted so much money on new amps in the 80s and 90s when I could have bought Tweeds and Brown and Black amps. I just didn’t know anything about them back then. By the late 90s when I started to get it, some of those amps were getting too pricey already. Now they are just over the top. Fortunately I can at least make my own copy of some of those old amps. The real thing though…….

[rockabilly69]

7 hours ago, zguitar71 said:

That sounds like Joe Bonamassa’s house!
I wasted so much money on new amps in the 80s and 90s when I could have bought Tweeds and Brown and Black amps. I just didn’t know anything about them back then. By the late 90s when I started to get it, some of those amps were getting too pricey already. Now they are just over the top. Fortunately I can at least make my own copy of some of those old amps. The real thing though…….

Yeah if we only knew what we know now about the vintage stuff. But, my favorite amp that I played was the 3X10 Bandmaster that he built, It was rock heaven! I had my R4 there and the combo was killer!

[HANGAR18]

UPDATE: I'm realizing that not only is it really difficult to pick a favorite amp, but over the course of time, my favorite amp has changed quite a bit. Does anyone remember me being excited about the Dean Dime 120 watt solid state head I had bought around 2012? Later it was my first "tube amp", a Vox Valvetronix?  Then there was the Carvin V3 that I bought from Guy.

Fast forward a dozen amps to present day. In this thread I posted about the two different versions of the Blistertone amps that I own. The short backstory about the Blistertone is that after Doug Sewell had made a number of classic Fender inspired amplifiers, he thought he might need to design an amp that was more Marshall inspired, and that is what became the Blistertone.

So, why not just get a Marshall amp?
Yes, but which one? They do not all sound alike.

It seems to me that in the world of Hard Rock & Heavy Metal, there are two dominant Marshall Amplifier camps.  1.) The Plexi camp and 2.) the JCM800 camp. My favorite band in the world (Judas Priest) had a lot of Plexi tone going on in their early days but my favorite actual tone from a single artist would be Slash, playing a Les Paul through a hot-rodded JCM800.

And THAT is why, at this particular moment in time, THIS is currently my favorite amp. It's a 100 watt Slash signature model JCM800 Silver Jubilee.