TS808
October 4th, 2008, 03:04 PM
I went amp shopping today...decided to get rid of one of my Flextones. Thought I would look for a tube amp that I could play at home. While at GC I thought I'd try the Spider Valve just for the fun of it. I tried a few other amps too, but they were either too loud or I just didn't like some of the features..one amp I checked out was the Hot Rod Deluxe, but the volume knobs on the Hot Rod series make me crazy...I hate how they jump and it's hard to control the volume on low settings...
Needless to say, I walked out with the Spider Valve 212, and after reading alot of mixed reviews. People either seem to love them or hate them.
My initial impressions after about 2 hours on the amp today: Pros: I really like the tones. Some of the models though are useless for me, such as the higher gain settings, and the amp is a little bit "bright" on the higher gain models, but once again, I really don't use them. The clean tones (twang especially) are very good, and I like the "blues" and "crunch" settings. I wouldn't say that the amp has that 100% "feel" of a tube amp, but it's close.
The amps sounds good at low and medium volumes, and I dare not crank it yet...don't want to piss of the neighbors the first day....but definitely the louder you play this amp, the more it comes alive.
The downside of the amp is that I would have liked to have seen Line 6 incorporate the versatility of the Flextone into a valve amp. Although there are a ton of presets, I haven't tried them yet, and also like to dial in my own tones.
I'll post more on the amp after I get more playing time on it..but so far so good.
Needless to say, I walked out with the Spider Valve 212, and after reading alot of mixed reviews. People either seem to love them or hate them.
My initial impressions after about 2 hours on the amp today: Pros: I really like the tones. Some of the models though are useless for me, such as the higher gain settings, and the amp is a little bit "bright" on the higher gain models, but once again, I really don't use them. The clean tones (twang especially) are very good, and I like the "blues" and "crunch" settings. I wouldn't say that the amp has that 100% "feel" of a tube amp, but it's close.
The amps sounds good at low and medium volumes, and I dare not crank it yet...don't want to piss of the neighbors the first day....but definitely the louder you play this amp, the more it comes alive.
The downside of the amp is that I would have liked to have seen Line 6 incorporate the versatility of the Flextone into a valve amp. Although there are a ton of presets, I haven't tried them yet, and also like to dial in my own tones.
I'll post more on the amp after I get more playing time on it..but so far so good.