Solid state amps

[TS808]

Yes, solid state. Those nasty little transistor amps.

I remember my first amp was a Fender Studio Lead that I picked up probably in the 80's. Before that, I had an old solid state practice amp that my great uncle had given me.

The Fender Studio Lead was Rivera designed I believe, and I remember some of the other solid states I've played or owned...Fender Deluxe 85 and a Fender Princeton Chorus.

Just curious, has anyone played a solid state amp that they liked? Even though my amps are tube now, there were quite a few I really liked besides those mentioned above, but my favorites were a Peavey Transtube Supreme Head and a Roland Blues Cube.

[luvmyshiner]

My son has a Peavey Transtube that I really like TS. I forget the specific model, but it has an 8" speaker. And CB has a Roland Micro Cube that is pretty sweet.

[wingsdad]

I finally found the solid state amp that lets me forget tube amps: Tech21 Trademark 60 1x12 Combo.

[tunghaichuan]

One of my favorites is the Marshall Lead 12. Replace the crappy 10" speaker, and it sounds great. It is a two-trick pony: 80s style hot rodded distortion and icy clean tones. It came in a combo and a head and two cabinets. There was also a Lead 20 which came with a 12" speaker.

I played an 80s Peavey Bandit 65 yesterday when trying out pedals. It was kind of blah sounding by itself, but it seemed to take pedals very well.

The Roland Blues Cube line from the 90s were very good sounding as well as the current MicroCube, Cube 20X, 30X 60 and the new 80.

Also the classic for icy clean is the Roland JC-120. Still wish I hadn't gotten rid of mine in the late 80s :(

I've never heard one, but I'd like to try out Carvin's SX-300 amp.

tung

[Algonquin]

'Tung' speaks the truth... a Roland JC-120 is a classic amp for clean tones. I've heard the Micro Cube and the X series and think they sounded great for the money as well.

[markb]

Another happy Trademark 60 user here. I've often been asked what tubes it uses by people who could only see the front of it. I've also had good tones from old Peavey Bandits, the aforementioned Marshall Lead 12 and an old Roland Cube 40 from the 80s. I mainly play clean(ish) so I look for an amp with a good clean tone and fill in the rest from pedals. The Trademark can do that "just breaking up" thing better than any other ss amp I've heard (I'm not counting modelers here).

[marnold]

Frank Gambale uses Carvin solid state amps for everything. Now if I could only sweep pick like him . . .

[Mr Grumpy]

My Behringer GM110 is a great little solid state amp (a very poor mans Tech 21-esque amp).

[Kazz]

The Peavey Bandit 112 Transtube is one I wish I still had.....the Vintage settings were very cool

[oldguy]

Gibson's "Lab Series" amphs sounded fantastic to me. I hardly ever see one nowadays, maybe they weren't as roadworthy as Fenders. They may also be a problem to repair.

[tunghaichuan]

I've also heard good things about Pearce amps (http://web.me.com/travishartnett/Pearce_Amps/Home.html) from the 80s. Dan Pearce went on to design amps for ART.

Another amp I thought of was a Dean Markley RM-80-DR. The Dean Markley RM-80-SR (http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/dean-markley-rm/Aug-05/12210) is similar. I owned a half stack in the late 80s. It had preamp tube and a solid state output so it is really more of a hybrid than a conventional SS amp. That amp had one of the best lead tones I've ever heard. It sounded only okay just plugging straight into the amp, but when I put a Boss Compressor pedal on the front end it changed the whole character of the amp for the better. Endless liquid sustain. The only caveat is that DM amps are very spotty construction wise and had lots of reliability problems.

They also made a two-space rackmount preamp version, the DR Preamp.

tung

[birv2]

+1 for the Peavey Transtube Envoy 110. 3 kinds of overdrive/distortion, reverb, and nice cleans. If you EQ it right, it sounds pretty good.

[bigoldron]

I guess my hearing's not as good as you guys, but I've got 2 Crate solid state amps (GLX65 & GX1200H) that I really enjoy and will hopefully last me a long time. They're my "go to" amps when I'm gigging in public. I've got a VC20 that I'm enjoying at home, but will probably let her make her debut soon. SS is OK with me.

[Gutmann]

Here in Germany you can read a lot of good things about PCL-VintageAmp (http://www.pcl-vintageamp.de/produkte.php?grp=1&id=48&la=de&r=0) - a young brand formed by 2 well known ampbuilders.
Never checked one but they have a very good reputation.

My only solidstate amp is the good old Gallien Krüger 250ML - a monster when connected to a 4x12-cab

Cheers Uli

[SuperSwede]

Another GREAT sounding SS amph is the Award Sessionette, http://www.award-session.com/sessionette.html

[goonrick]

Gibson's "Lab Series" amphs sounded fantastic to me. I hardly ever see one nowadays, maybe they weren't as roadworthy as Fenders. They may also be a problem to repair.

Yes, they do sound fantastic. I use an L5 that is completely stock, is loud as a tube amp at the same power rating but still sounds good turned down, and is whisper quiet when not played through. It's the one non-modeling SS amp that I think gives tube amps a run for their money. I picked mine up from the original owner for $150. No way in blazing hell could I find a decent tube amp for that little of money.

[tunghaichuan]

I believe the Gibson Lab Series was Ty Tabor's secret weapon (at the time) when he recorded his parts on "Gretchen Goes to Nebraska" and "Out of a Silent Planet." I wore out cassette copies of each commuting to grad school.

tung



Yes, they do sound fantastic. I use an L5 that is completely stock, is loud as a tube amp at the same power rating but still sounds good turned down, and is whisper quiet when not played through. It's the one non-modeling SS amp that I think gives tube amps a run for their money. I picked mine up from the original owner for $150. No way in blazing hell could I find a decent tube amp for that little of money.

[goonrick]

I believe the Gibson Lab Series was Ty Tabor's secret weapon (at the time) when he recorded his parts on "Gretchen Goes to Nebraska" and "Out of a Silent Planet." I wore out cassette copies of each commuting to grad school.

tung

He played them with an '83 Fender Strat Plus (equipped with a midrange booster) directly into the second channel (the non-fender side) with the gain full up and the compressor turned off. He used this rig up until the sessions for Ear Candy.

He has changed amps and guitars since then but still uses the mid booster in stompbox form.

I absolutely loved Ty's tones in that era. I don't try to copy them, because there are literally dozens of great sounds to be had out of the L5. It sounds fabulous with an overdrive. I don't know how they did it, but they made a SS amp as good as a tube amp with that one. It's not exactly the same, but it's easily as good in its own right.

[oldguy]

I did check over at solid state guitar amps forum and found a couple posts on them. I was wrong, they were not made by Gibson, apparently they were made by Moog. In any event, they sounded fantastic to me.


"Lab Series. These are not Gibson amplifiers. Lab Series were manufactured and designed by Moog, which at the time was owned by Norlin - a company that also owned Gibson. Norlin used Moog's resources to release Lab Series in a response to Gibson seizing its amplifier production. Gibson did handle the distribution of these amplifiers though. The series included guitar amplifiers L3 (60W combo), L5 (100W combo Model 308A), L7 (100W combo Model 309A), L9 (100W combo Model 312A) and L11 (200W head Model 313A + 2 cabinets), which were all (except the L3) based on the same circuit but used a different speaker configuration. The higher power head model L11 also had a fan, beefier output transistor configuration and different power amplifier with higher VA rating and secondary voltages. Other Lab Series models were bass amplifiers L2 (100W head), L4 (200W head Model 317A) and L6 (100W combo) - plus keyboard amplifier K5. Very likely all of the amplifiers (except the low power L3) were using the same power amplifier module (with slight modifications) but a different set of preamp modules."



"I too bought a Lab Series L5 earlier than 1979. As I recall, it was '77. I will try to confirm this and get back to this forum.

I have compared the L5 to my 1971 Fender Twin Reverb in terms of sound and circuits. It sounds remarkably like a Twin Reverb in side by side comparison, but provides a little more note separation and clarity. The Normal channel of the L5 is a clone of the Fender Twin Reverb in many ways. The tone stack has the same corner points, but is designed to work at lower impedance to match opamps instead of tubes, so the R and C values differ. I have rigged the reverb tank to run off of the Normal channel, and in this configuration, the amp excels at doing the surf music & twang thing.

The Limiter control seems to emulate the tendency of Fender BF and early SF amps to hit the wall when cranked past 4 or 5. The distortion circuitry in the L5, which comes into play if you crank the volume but reduce the master volume, seems to be an attempt to emulate the 12AX7 / 7025 preamp distortion that you can get if you dime some of the old Fender, but of course it sounds a bit harsh and "solid state" compared to the real thing.

By the way, you can get a reasonable bluesy sound by setting the controls so that the amp just begins to distort when the limiter engages, although this takes quite a bit of tweaking.

The Reverb channel on the L5 is another story. I'm not sure what the designers were going for here. With the Mid control at "0" and the Multifilter at "0", the treble does not provide very much brightness. You have to add Multifilter to get the amp into brighter territory. The sound with the Multifilter turned up is interesting and different, but not particularly my cup of tea for most songs. I think the Multifilter is either an attempt to make a solid body guitar sound "woody" like an acoustic or archtop, or else it is an attempt to emulate the standing wave nodes and sound of a 4 x 12 cabinet as in Marshall. It would be interesting to get some info from the original designers about the design philosophy behind the Reverb channel."

[goonrick]

Hmmm. I agree with the stuff about the normal channel, but I get great tones out of the reverb channel. I don't really know what the mystery is, because it seems very straightforward to me.

BTW, I never rely solely on the amp for overdriven tones. I set the amp so that it's barely clipping at a hard strum with my OD pedal bypassed and then set the overdrive accordingly (usually so that the rolled-off, semi-clean sound is the same volume as the bypassed sound). It sounds fabulous this way.

[Ch0jin]

Well I haven't really found much in the way of SS amps I like I'm afraid.

That said I really dig my friends Marshall JMP1 which is kinda SS except for the 12AX7's in the preamp :)

I'm also a big fan of the fuzz channel on my Peavey 400 series Bass head (which IS all SS). In fact it's about the best bass fuzz sound I've heard, and I'm actually considering adapting the design for a bass fuzz pedal at some point.

[schenkadere]

All great solid state mentions! +1 on the Trademarks and on the old Peaveys...amazing cleans and reverb.

Roland Cubes are great. I use my Micro Cube more than anything...it's just convenient. Their Blues Cube series was also very good.

[Spudman]

I played a gig with another player using a Roland Cube and I liked the sounds. But I have played a variety of SS amphs over the years and the only one I'm sticking with is the Crate Powerblock.

Great shootout test here. Hear for yourself.
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=174811

[larryx]

I have heard that the Gibson Lab Series was an awsome amp. I remember that B.B. King was a big endorser but that was way back in the 70's. S.S. has come a long ,long way since then! I have had a very good experience with Vox SS amps. I love my Pathfinder. And my 2004 Blueface Valvetronix VTX(hybrid) with a W.G.S. RETRO 30 speaker in it is my favorite "go to amp" The Blueface Vox is an incredible sounding amp if used and set up correctly. The effects section is totally tweakable as well as the amp models being very accurate. These amps are no longer available new, but can be had for a song $300-500on ebay and craigslist. We're not talking about the chrome faced cheapies here! The Blueface is a totally different animal. I did have the Vox AD30VT for a short while but it was "just a toy". I understand that the Vox AD50VT is a bargain in the ss market and can be made to sound pretty good with a speaker change and an effects loop mod so you can use an external EQ to thicken up the sound of it. I on the other hand hated the Marshall Valvestate amps that I had! The AVT 150H and my 275 combo had useless effects in them. Plus the amps sound was 2 dimensional IMHO.The Peavey transtube amps that I had were from the dark ages (80's)the Peavy Renown would sound horrible by todays standards. As far as I'm concerned any Peavy amp with aluminum bars on the face of it and multi colored knobs and (transistors inside of it )is just not gonna sound good by todays standards. That's my experience with a limited exposure to what's out there. I understand that some (specific models) from Randall, Hughes and Kettner among others others are worth looking into. There are some great SS amps to be had. It is definately worth looking into. But in the end,as we all know"TUBE AMPS RULE":master:

[SuperSwede]

This is probably some kind of amp heresy, but I think that SS amps are great, especially those that doesnt pretend that they are tube amps.

Crank a Roland Jazz Chorus 120, add some chorus and verb and your are ready for some glimmering chords that most tube ambs have a hard time to achieve.

I love tube amps too, but in some situations I prefer the direct attack and sound of a solid state...

[schenkadere]

This is probably some kind of amp heresy, but I think that SS amps are great, especially those that doesnt pretend that they are tube amps.

Crank a Roland Jazz Chorus 120, add some chorus and verb and your are ready for some glimmering chords that most tube ambs have a hard time to achieve.

I love tube amps too, but in some situations I prefer the direct attack and sound of a solid state...

+1

[TS808]

Roland Cubes are great. I use my Micro Cube more than anything...it's just convenient. Their Blues Cube series was also very good.

Agreed. I had a Blues Cube with the 3 10" speakers and it was the best solid state amp that I ever owned. That is another amp I regret selling.

[oldguy]

Hmm..........sounds like I need to try out some of the newer solid state offerings out there...........I seldom find a tubeless amph that sounds as open and 3 dimensional as a pure tube amp, provided they're both well built units.
I played a Vyper yesterday and didn't care for it myself, but it may have been a defective unit. It was quiet until the guitar was strummed or picked, then there was this "hiss", for better lack of word, as the signal came through, then the note, the decay, and the hiss stopped, as though a noise gate was working.
The Roland Jazz Chorus and Gibson Lab Series were the best, I liked them a lot. I'd love to hear a Pritchard live and in person. I'm sure many people couldn't tell the difference listening to a certain artist playing through a good tube or ss amph if the two were adjusted similarly. Especially at concert volumes.

[Radioboy950]

I'm gonna bring up one more amph (with which you can get screaming solos)

Peavey Studio Pro 112.

I bought in 1990, and it still sounds great, with 2 channels, hi/lo inputs and FX loop. The clean is crystal clear and kicks A%! with a TS pedal. Gain channel sounds good but only when backing off the saturation. Otherwise, too much of that distortion can really sound cheesy. A little "hair" is great.

[Gutmann]

You SS-fans should have look at this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQusG7z4Pz0
This is a complete non-tube PCL Stagemaster with a really great sound.
Those amps are a good deal, the cost about 600$.

edit: can't see the vid, heres the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQusG7z4Pz0

[TS808]

I played a Vyper yesterday and didn't care for it myself, but it may have been a defective unit. It was quiet until the guitar was strummed or picked, then there was this "hiss", for better lack of word, as the signal came through, then the note, the decay, and the hiss stopped, as though a noise gate was working.

I've seen this in the Harmony-Central reviews as the biggest complaint about the Vypyr: the noise gate. You apparently can't adjust it or switch it off, so it cuts out on alot of the sustain.

[tunghaichuan]

I'd love to hear a Pritchard live and in person.

I have a friend who currently has one and sold off another to finance the new one. It wasn't dialed in exactly to his taste, so Eric Pritchard has been very good about modding it to suit his playing. He seems to like it.

tung

[oldguy]

Interesting....... I know they're not cheap, but they get good reviews when you can find them. They're s'posed to be 'da bomb in ss technology, AFAIK.

[CitizenCain]

I was reading in another forum that the Pritchard and the Transtube technology is similar. I'm not up on my SS circuitry so the explanation went over my head, but they're pretty close in the concept department from what I gathered. The short of it is that Pritchard could be considered the boutique version of the Transtube stuff.

Myself, I have an old Fender Yale Reverb that is a great sounding SS amp. One of the Rivera-era Fenders, it's a 50w 1x12 about the size of a non-reverb Princeton.

Also use a Crate Power Block. Looking to get a MFX for it like a ME-70 or RP500. Makes a nice portable live rig for when the Yale can't cut it.

[P.J.]

I finally found the solid state amp that lets me forget tube amps: Tech21 Trademark 60 1x12 Combo.

I had a TM 60 for a long time. They are great sounding amps. Loved the clean channel w/ a boost pedal. Good recording amps too.

=-) PJ

[ibanezjunkie]

i love my Hughes and kettner edition blue. i normally use my valvestate, which is still solid state technically except for its ECC83.

getting a blackheart soon though. BH1H (killer ant) or BH5H (little giant).

[Katastrophe]

I like my Crate. The cleans are really good, and it is possible to get that "really pissed off Dime tone" for the metal stuff. It just doesn't do "in between the two" very well. The louder it gets, the better it sounds, and it gets loud enough to cause pain in a small room.

Dime also used solid state Randall heads for years as well.