Let's see your AMP!

[dubkitty]

yeah, i need to find a more secure way to get stuff up off the ground than teetering on a single crate. i have to have speakers up off the floor where i can hear them, though, so i have to stack them on something. but i don't want to have to schlep cinder blocks or something around.

or then again, maybe not. in a startling and delightful turn of events, i just bought a Fender 68 Princeton Reverb reissue off Facebook Marketplace for $750. which is to say, about $250-300 off the going rate on Reverb etc. i am a happy kitty...i had a silverface PR on long-term loan from about 1985 through 1998 that i absolutely loved. it was hard to be an honorable man when i heard the guy who owned it had come back to town after over a decade and asked if i still had his amp. but what else would i do? that's what i'd want if it were me.

so i spent years looking for other combo amp and head + small cabinet solutions that would get me off as much. i found some things i like a lot, but nothing was ever quite as great. anyway, last week i came into some bonus money and splurged some of it on a couple of project guitars towards one of my odd-guitar goals. i was taking about it with my girlfriend and said that it was ironic this had come along now because there were two things on Marketplace that would be more useful for my long-term music work. "what are they?" a Princeton Reverb and a Moog Grandmother. "which would you use more?" well, the amp is my ideal small amp and i'd use it immediately and often; the synth comes with a 6-month learning curve. "how much are they?" $650 and $600 respectively. "check your email." she sent me the money for the amp. she really loves me and wants me to be happy. and i am, indeed, happy. this wasn't the first one i was after and was $100 more, but the other one apparently had some undefined issue and the seller didn't answer messages so i fucked her off. here's the new amp with the DeArmond M-75T that's one of the project guitars. i feel so retro.

Princeton and M-75T.jpg (124.99 KiB) Viewed 1883 times

as i said when i first played one of the reissues back in the 00s, it sounds just like a Princeton Reverb. i love tremolo boxes and have several, but nothing's as good as PR tremolo. instant Pops Staples, and not bad for the Richard Thompsons either. and in my experience they're loud as fuck run through a 2 x 12" cabinet. so now i have a practical alternative to the mini-stack for playing outside the house. i'm thinking about getting something painfully clean and solid-state for the biamping setup, which really is intended for (reasonably) hi-fi playback of heavily processed loops. i think a Roland might be a bit too colored. I've been seeing old Polytones on Marketplace and might give one a feel if i can test it with pedals.

so my amp situation is sane now, and i have multiple options i like. the pressure to repair dead amps is less now.

[dubkitty]

however, i was just able to download legible schematics of all 3 of my weird problem amplifiers (Laney VC30, Electar Tube 10, Kalamazoo Bass 30) so when i feel like it's time i can do that. that's kind of exciting.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Rad about the princeton! Very nice amps.

[dubkitty]

they really are my favorite small amps. astoundingly loud for their rated 12-watt output with a perfect marriage of Fender clean and Fender grind, and the tremolo is my favorite tremolo anywhere ever. i was almost late leaving for work because i took the acoustic 12-string, which i just got the pickup in, through the PR with the reverb on 5 and tremolo speed about 2.8 and was getting lost in the waves. i used to get on just fine with a PR and a Distortion+...i used the tremolo for echo-like rhythmic effects. if i get a 2x12 cabinet for it i'll have a working rig <snap!> just like that.

[FleshOnGear]

I have an affinity for SS amps, so I can appreciate the desire for a loud, clean SS amp. It might be worth checking out an old Lab Series amp. They’re famous for being the BB King amp, but they’re apparently capable of a wide variety of tones. They came in 2x12, 4x10, and 1x15 combos, a stripped down 1x12, and a head version.

Currently I have an old silver stripe Peavey Bandit and an Ampeg SS-70. Both are capable of crystalline cleans, and neither are very expensive. Peavey also had a more powerful 2x12 version called the Special 212, which was a blistering 130 watts, IIRC.

[dubkitty]

i've heard a lot of good feedback about the Lab series amps. don't seem to see them for sale a lot. Yamaha also had solid-state combo amps back then that i remember being well-liked. but how do they take pedals? the whole raison d'etre of the stack is the boards/loopers array.

i recall a series of Ampeg combo amps sometime after 2000 that were supposed to be pretty good.

if i want solid state, i have a paradox...i want it to be dead clean at stupid volume levels, but it also has to reproduce walls of heavily effected loop material.

[FleshOnGear]

How about an old Acoustic amp? I’ve read about the model 470 head, which put out 170 watts RMS. That should be painfully loud.

[Kacey Y]

I picked up this Quilter head used a little over a year ago and it's been my main amp since, though I really only play at home these days. For at least a decade I've been using dead clean tube amps as pedal platforms and this thing just hits slightly pushed overdrive at max gain. I barely use the power available, especially considering I run into into an Eminence Swamp Thang, which is pretty loud and high overhead. If I ever get back to gigging again, I might pick up another one of these or one of the 50w 101 models or something. I actually like the reverb on it too, though I still eventually want to get a digital spring reverb that decently competes with my Surfy Bear unit at some point

[coldbrightsunlight]

Nice! I've got a 201 which I use in a similar way, loud & essentially clean (I do like that the preamp can get a bit of grit & compression). And it's just so cool that they sound equally good incredibly quiet or blasting 200W. Been very curious about trying the 202 for the more normal EQ and other features. Glad you're liking it.

[Kacey Y]

Nice! I've got a 201 which I use in a similar way, loud & essentially clean (I do like that the preamp can get a bit of grit & compression). And it's just so cool that they sound equally good incredibly quiet or blasting 200W. Been very curious about trying the 202 for the more normal EQ and other features. Glad you're liking it.

The fact that the tone, compression, and gain stays the same at radically different volumes is a huge plus, since I can so easily dial in what I like with it. I think I'd still get on with the older model style tone stack, I've definitely used 1 and 2 band EQ amps a lot over the decades without issue. I've been considering picking up a Quilter since the Tone Block 200 came out and been watching demo videos of all the models since. This was pretty much an impulse purchase. I was looking to buy a Fender Lead II reissue and found one used on guitarcenter in near mint condition for a great price, and this amp was pretty much the exact amount I had left from my budget. I probably would have just thought about it and weighed pros and cons of trying something very new and different forever otherwise

[dubkitty]

clearly meant to be.

i was thinking that the ideal setup for the loopers wouldn't be amps at all, but rather a PA with smallish stacks and 2 subwoofers. i'm not talking rave DJ, but something more hi-fi than guitar and bass amps. when i recorded the loops in my signature i ran straight from the looper into the computer. but i don't want to make that kind of investment when i have no possibilities of actual work, paid or not, in the near future. the advantage of the stack is that everything other than the crossover has other purposes as bass and guitar amps. i don't have anything else to use a damn PA for, even if i get as synthy as i'm threatening to get.

i have a Lead II reissue. it's a great guitar and a nasty little thing that likes to fight dirty.

Lead II.jpg (15.68 KiB) Viewed 1804 times

[Kacey Y]

clearly meant to be.

i was thinking that the ideal setup for the loopers wouldn't be amps at all, but rather a PA with smallish stacks and 2 subwoofers. i'm not talking rave DJ, but something more hi-fi than guitar and bass amps. when i recorded the loops in my signature i ran straight from the looper into the computer. but i don't want to make that kind of investment when i have no possibilities of actual work, paid or not, in the near future. the advantage of the stack is that everything other than the crossover has other purposes as bass and guitar amps. i don't have anything else to use a damn PA for, even if i get as synthy as i'm threatening to get.

i have a Lead II reissue. it's a great guitar and a nasty little thing that likes to fight dirty.

Lead II.jpg

I have known some people who used PA setups for guitar or bass years ago, but that was definitely not for hi-fi looping and more just "I found it on the side of the road, I think I can make it work for this punk band" lol. I usually stick to the approach of, if I can use what I have in a weird or non-traditional way and it's cool, go for it, but probably not worth putting together a whole new pricey rig for it. Even though I love planning and scheming.

I loooove my Lead II, it's basically the custom hardtail strat I would assemble on the Warmoth builder for fun when I got bored for years. It would be perfect to me, if it just had the bridge pickup and the output jack was on the side, but I have no complaints.

[dubkitty]

I usually stick to the approach of, if I can use what I have in a weird or non-traditional way and it's cool, go for it, but probably not worth putting together a whole new pricey rig for it.

exactly this. the amp stack was a total budget project. i'd bought the bass amp and thought "this could also be good for those 15 Hz undertones the Randy's Revenge can generate."

[coldbrightsunlight]

Nice! I've got a 201 which I use in a similar way, loud & essentially clean (I do like that the preamp can get a bit of grit & compression). And it's just so cool that they sound equally good incredibly quiet or blasting 200W. Been very curious about trying the 202 for the more normal EQ and other features. Glad you're liking it.

The fact that the tone, compression, and gain stays the same at radically different volumes is a huge plus, since I can so easily dial in what I like with it. I think I'd still get on with the older model style tone stack, I've definitely used 1 and 2 band EQ amps a lot over the decades without issue. I've been considering picking up a Quilter since the Tone Block 200 came out and been watching demo videos of all the models since. This was pretty much an impulse purchase. I was looking to buy a Fender Lead II reissue and found one used on guitarcenter in near mint condition for a great price, and this amp was pretty much the exact amount I had left from my budget. I probably would have just thought about it and weighed pros and cons of trying something very new and different forever otherwise

Awesome, nice when things work out!

[Kacey Y]

exactly this. the amp stack was a total budget project. i'd bought the bass amp and thought "this could also be good for those 15 Hz undertones the Randy's Revenge can generate."

I feel like I'm on this years long cycle, where I just use whatever's cheap and make it work, figuring out the best I can get out of it from a lot of experimentation, then I'm planning and scheming and filling out notebooks, and getting a custom build of some sort. Then the gear apocalypse returns and the cycle begins anew. I'm in the cheap old lady side of the cycle currently and will probably stay there for a long time