I just sold my last tube amp (goodbye gear of yesteryear).

[Steadyriot.]

If you would have told me five years ago I would be without a tube amp in 2020 I would have laughed in your face!
I just (finally) sold my last tube amp, a Marshall DSL100 head this week, my Vox NT50 last week and my 2x12's before that which leaves me with just a Kemper and a 2x12".
The proceeds will go towards a new Kemper Stage as I have gotten sick of lugging stacks of heavy gear around. Even my 19" Kemper just feels like too much heavy shit with its rack case and I don't even need the firepower anymore as everything we do is direct and on in-ears.

It's not that I don't like tube amps anymore, or that I don't foresee another one for me in the future (I'd still like to get another AC4/10 down the line or maybe build one as a winter project) but I live in a small house now and hadn't turned on any tube amp in a few years because I couldn't turn it up past 2 at most. All my playing has strictly been Kemper or Garageband.

Gone are the days of lugging around a huge pedalboard and tube amps! Long live carrying all my gear in one trip!

So this is a eulogy to all my long lost amp and pedals:
I love you, but I'm glad I don't have to carry you anymore!

In loving memory of:






Have any of you gone digital too? How did it go?

[Larsongs]

I tried but didn't like the Sound...

I still have my Twin, Half Stack Marshall but they never leave the House.. Mostly for Recording..

When I play out I take medium & small Amps these days.. 65 DRRI, AC15 or smaller. 65 PRRI or Modded AC10. One of the 2 latter being played out the most.. They're small, Light weight & have that great Tube Sound...

If I need louder I just Mic them... Easy.... I still get the great Tube Sound as the FOH System is replicating what is Mic'd.... My Tube Amp..

Different Strokes..

As long ad you get good Sound that's all that matters...

[Guy Guyatone]

I'm am, regretfully, with you on this. The weight finally got to me.

I didn't like any of the modelling amps I tried.

Now I have A Quilter Labs 101 Reverb with a Jensen 12-100TR-8 (Neo) in a pine TV-panel style enclosure.

Nice blackface tones, limiter, 0-50 watt power dial and the whole combination weighs 19 lbs!

[Larsongs]

I tried but didn't like the Sound...

I still have my Twin, Half Stack Marshall but they never leave the House.. Mostly for Recording..

When I play out I take medium & small Amps these days.. 65 DRRI, AC15 or smaller. 65 PRRI or Modded AC10. One of the 2 latter being played out the most.. They're small, Light weight & have that great Tube Sound...

If I need louder I just Mic them... Easy.... I still get the great Tube Sound as the FOH System is replicating what is Mic'd.... My Tube Amp..

Different Strokes..

As long as you get a Sound that's all that matters...

Your 2 X 12plus the Head requires 2 Hands & weighs as much as my 65 PRRI or my Modded AC10 which I can easily with 1 Hand & I can carry a Guitar in the other... I don't like hauling a bunch of Gear either. 1 load in & 1 load out.... Works for me....

[jvin248]

.

The tube amp companies really need to think over their designs for how to take weight out their amps if they want to continue to sell to the market that likes those amps. Weight is just killing those products.

It's a canary in the mine shaft when players are chasing 7-8lb guitars instead of a 10-12lb Les Paul to lug around.

.

[Zork]

I dunno... I don't necesarrily need tubes (there are many great solid state amps out there) but I still like the big and heavy rigs. It's just something that really appeals to me.

[Jaguar018]

Since I never really toured, never played *that* many shows even during my 'heyday' I never really got tired of the endless lugging of amps. I was always so pumped to make a rare appearance on stage I would be willing to carry multiple Ampeg SVT heads and 8x10" cabs just to make it happen. I think the biggest amp I ever used on stage was a Fender Super Reverb, which wasn't that bad. Now I have a 2x10" cab and an amp head. Not all that heavy.

Seems like if you need/want multiple different amp sounds on a regular basis that those Kempers are great. I have basic Line6 things-- the big 'kidney bean' one and now an Amplifi75. I have that stuff on tap if I need it, but I still just love the feel, sound, and response of tube amps. When I record myself-- just basic solo project stuff at this point-- I just plug direct and use the amp modeling from the program. Since I just like some variant of "Fender American Style Amps" most recording programs have a default sound I am happy with.

Once you start getting into amps with lots of crunch I suspect the crunch nuances get really important.

[panoramic]

man my impending divorce and the move that will come as part of that is putting me in a similar mindset. I am going to sell off 4 amps probably and just keep one bandmaster and likely buy a quilter. So weird to even ponder moving away from owning tube amps a plenty to just one or none

[redchapterjubilee]

I hardly use any of my amps outside of the house right now and could easily move them all and stick to the Iridium. But as soon as I did I'd have the opportunity to use those amps again and I'd regret it. They're not hurting anything hanging out so hang out they shall.

[mbene085]

I went fully digital sometime around 2015 when I got my Kemper. I just sold it recently because I switched to an AxeFX 3. I also had a Fractal AX8, which is similar to the Kemper Stage in size and features.

Once I understood the difference between a direct tone and an "amp in the room", there was no looking back. You can still do the amp in the room thing with a guitar cab and power amp, but all the guitar tones I listen to are recorded anyway, so that "mic'd amp" tone is in my head anyway, and even easier to achieve.

I have way too many guitars to be fussing with ways to make it all work (I used to have clean boosts, compressors and EQs just to help me switch guitars without changing every knob on every pedal and my amp whenever I switched guitars).

With the Kemper and Fractal, I could just take any given amp tone and make whatever tweaks I needed for each guitar, and save under its own preset. So if I had 4-5 main tones I liked, I could lay them out for each guitar and just get to playing whichever guitar I felt like instead of twiddling knobs for 10 minutes because I was playing my mustang but had all my pedals and amp set for the Gretsch.

[MazzyJaster]

My last amp blew up and I've been with a Kemper ever since

[dinosaurkale->]

got rid of most of my tube amps many years ago
dont miss em one bit

[Nick and the Noise]

Those new-fangled digital widgets can do too many things for me. Limitation breeds creativity: I like the clean and overdrive channel of my 1 tube amp. I don't need to be able to dial-a-sound every known guitar-hit sound. I mostly sold most digital gear, perhaps more to do with "feel" than "sound': for example when I really push a digital reverb with fuzz I dislike the harmonics compared to a spring reverb or analog delay.

I do think tube gear is too heavy and I'd like to see more solid state amps like the Orange Crush Pro: fully analog and for professionals with all the features one needs and actually more reliable than tubes.

[tdbajus]

I have been recording direct guitars for the first time now, and really liking the results, due to my new secret weapon- a Thermionic Culture Culture Vulture.

Talk about a nice preamp that adds color. It can supply a fair amount of clean gain (well, cleanish).

I need a good EQ, but for now, I run it into a UAD Fender Deluxe model, and I can't tell the difference. For cleans, anyway. Solos and stuff I still fire up one of my array of tiny amps.

[mackerelmint]

Long live solid state amps!

Seeing more and more people letting go of the old mentality of "tubes or death" really is nice, for a couple of reasons. One, it's nice to see that in the world of electric guitar where so many good ideas are decried as sacrilegious, sanity can still win out and it's not a completely moribund instrument. Second, it's convenient, for everyone. Hopefully it's not happening so much as an accommodation for old backs. Third, it's kind of validating. I've been playing the small SS power amp with a pre kind of rig for a good while now, and seeing more options for people leaving tubes behind is a really nice change of pace.