Amp ideas
One awesome amp you might try is the Fender Super Champ XD; a wonderful ten inch speaker amp with a tube preamp and a power tube power amp. It includes about fifteen amp simulations on a digital chip injected into the signal path, along with about fifteen stops on the effects dial, with an effects level knob separate from the selection knob - reverbs, delay; reverb and delay; chorus, chorus and delay, vibrato, etc.
It emulates about ten fender amps all the way from tweed fifty nine type amps up to the bassman and hot rod deluxe and higher output; then it crosses over the top and back the other side of the amp dial with UK amps and high gain amps to ultra high gain amps and finally an accoustisonic emulation.
It also has the clean channel, which is just the Super Champ XD without amp modelling and you can add reverb, etc. This clean channel is clean all the way to the ceiling and very fender clean. Great amp.
You can upgrade the speaker to an Eminence Ragin' Cajun for sixty four dollars from places like MF, like I did, to great effect and it makes the amp more powerful and toneful. It is a fifteen watt tube amp, rated as twenty watts, I believe, some places.
It is a great amp for about 299. Probably a way better deal than a fender Blues Junior, even though the Blues Junior is a really nice amp. But for half the price you are getting way more than half the amp, and maybe even more of an amp.
You can turn the amp up real good, especially on some of the less hot amps that it models, but the hot rod deluxe and bassman models and the high gain models are real loud at half volume. It has a gain control as well.
So you get crystal clear fender cleans from the clean channel and lots of overdrive from some of the other channels. The controls immitate the amp model being emulated, so you have to tweak each amp model, not like turning a tv channel and expecting the volume and gain to be equalized.
Also, Peavey was selling the Valve King Royal 8 at some of the big places like MF for 99 dollars, a not bad five watt tube amp with a decent speaker.
Another great little amp is the Peavey JSX Mini Colossal, eight inch weber speaker, five watt amp, with tremolo, gain control, eq., and great sound with an extension speaker jack that is switchable for four, eight and sixteen ohm cabinets. It used to sell for six hundred US or so, I think they are blowing them out for 299 or thereabouts, maybe less. That's a very nice little amp, built real well, class a single channel; you could use your pedal with it to outstanding effect and still get the overdrive out of the amp by driving it into overdrive, at any volume level due to the power attenuator built into it and accessed by the dial on the back from full power to zero power - a nice feature for quiet but highly overdriven playing with nice real tube overdrive.
Another option would be the 349 Bugera V22 that Spud has been using. It has two discrete channels and reverb, and a twelve inch speaker for that full sound and tone you will probably want; less than half the watts of yor fifty but still plenty loud as you can imagine. The Fender Deluxe Reverb is twenty two watts.
That's why people like the small five watt tube amps. Some you can switch down to lower wattage and push them harder for power tube breakup at household levels without driving certain people nuts. Some people are just plain nuts to begin with and can't stand listening to a guitar at any volume, even an acoustic.
You could even play your pedal into a keyboard amp or small PA with an instrument input. There are some very good ones out there. I watched a semi professional dude plug his fifty seven Fender tele straight into the instrument input of his PA and it sounded really good. Of course he guy was a master player and accompanied himself on a bass drum, snare drum foot operated rig and was accompanied by his wife on a nice Ensonic keyboard, both doing vocals; all thru the PA and some decent speakers. A very light PA too I might add, but powerful. Nothing like you would need. But the concept is the same; use the pedal into something other than a guitar amp.
I like the guitar amp idea better personally. Get a small tube one and you have the option of plugging straight into the tube amp for some nice tube overdrive without coloring it with the digital sounding pedal, once in a while.
Last edited by Duffy; March 25th, 2010 at 11:37 PM.
Duffy Bolduc
South Williamsport, Pa.
"Now all the things that use to mean so much to me has got me old before my time." G. Allman, "Old Before My Time", Hittin' the Note.
Major changes to guitars and amps, to be updated soon.
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