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I used to have the loan of my uncle's and later my friend's semi-famous blues guitarist dad's 60s Fender Bassman and while it didn't sound bad at all I never once felt like it was an amp I would have to have. Nothing about it stuck out to me as being all that awesome or impressive. Which was disappointing mostly because it was a 60s Fender Bassman and I expected more.

Maybe I'd feel different about it today, but an old Vox AC50 that I was able to play a lot on around the same time definitely had more of that wow-effect and I regret not trying harder to buy that one.

budda12ax7 wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 27, 2024 5:51 pm

Marshall 100 Watt JCM 2000......complete piece of shite.......returned in 4 days after I bought it....

I played one at a gig one time, I had a really hard time getting a ‘Marshall’ sound out of it. Ended up just using the clean channel and getting the crunch from pedals instead. It sounded better, but it was still very disappointing.

every time i've tried a fender 65 reissue/68 custom in a shop i've thought they sound *okay* but then either the reverb or tremolo stops working.

Vox AC30
One of the Korg reissues from early 2000s. I bought it just before I went to university, I think gigged it a few times, never got along with it. I figured if it was good enough for Brian May it'd work for me but no, not at all. It was loud, the cleans could be good but there was no dynamic, no headroom, I assume partly because of the GZ34 rectifier. Not a great pedal platform either. Genuinely easy choice to sell that one. First proper valve amp, too, after nothing but solid state.

Orange AD30
Family member owned this one, and it was no different from the others I've tried - flat, uninspiring cleans, gains that sounded too smooth as if all the hard edges had been filed off. I think that's just what they're like!

Peavey Classic 30
Not so much for the sound - they can sound great, way louder and better for rock than they look from the size - but for how unreliable they are. I used to work in a guitar amp shop retailer/repairer on Denmark Street years ago and these were always coming in barely functional with rattling tubes and blown parts on the boards. They get so hot so quickly, that and the vibration from the speaker just makes them kill themselves I think.

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I notice a bunch of people have chosen JCM800/900/2000 series amps and I find those really variable - you can happen across great sounding examples just as easily as ones that sound awful, regardless of bias/tube choices. For me I've found that the further they went from the Bassman clone circuit the less they have the right tone even for nice examples though - towards the end of the late 80s they changed the circuit a lot and they started to get really bright, I would guess partly because that would work best to balance out active pickups.

The last great Marshall for me after the JMP (I had 2 of those, the 50w was amazing) was probably the Silver Jubilee 1987x, later re-branded and re-released as the Slash Signature, even with (or perhaps because of) the use of clipping diodes in circuit, it's a genuinely great sounding amp with a half decent clean; classic Marshall problem of not enough headroom though, gain pedals can barely boost the volume even when you crank their volume controls up.

Some of the DSLs/TSLs/JVMs I've played since can be alright, but there are easier and cheaper ways to get the Marshall tone now, and that's good because when you open post-2000s ones they are full of circuit boards including valves sockets being mounted to a PCB, which I hate to see as it can be another point of failure. Even Laney don't do that (I love Laney stuff but the build quality isn't always the best).

1976 Fender Vibrolux. Traded an AC30cc2 for it, and quickly wished I hadn’t. All stock, but sounded flat and lifeless. Took it to my tech, didn’t come back any better. Decided to cut my losses.

My kid and one of his friends keep borrowing my old Blues Jr to jam, and I can’t believe how bad the amp sounds with how they have it set. Just boxy mud. I don’t struggle with it, so I’m attributing it to them not be experienced with eq’ing an amp and using cheap humbuckers.