15-20 watt tube amp - advice

[Kevinleeowen]

Hi,

This is further to a post I put earlier this week, but would anyone have any recommendations for a 15-20 watt tube amp, around the €700 / £600/ $900 (roughly!!) mark.

Will be playing a Gibson Les Paul Traditional through it and it will be for home use. Influences would be The Who - Led Zep - Oasis (maybe as far as G'n'R) - that kind of tone.

Was thinking of a Fender Deluxe Hot Rod, which I played through and loved, but maybe a bit loud!

Any help greatly appreciated!

Cheers

 

[geoff_bell]

i have a peavey royal 8, that i modified so i can run it through an extension cabinet. sweet sound. the 8" speaker sounded alright in shop, but boxy when i got it home. deffo needed the 12" speaker"

 

[GuitslingerTim]

Genz-Benz Black Pearl 1x12.

 

[coldfingaz]

Dr. Z Carmen Ghia

 

[5E3]

I think you'll get a lot of varied opinions on what will work for you. Your best bet may be to take your LP to music stores and plug into as many amps as possible.

Since you posted a price range in Euros and Pounds, I'm guessing you are not in the USA, and I have read here before that some regions don't have many places that demo amps. In that case my suggestion probably won't work for you.

 

[PatrickE_FenderADV]

The HR Deluxe is a 40 watt amp... a little bit of a loud monster if you're not careful... but it's a great little amp. It's slightly smaller brother is the Blues Junior and at only 15w and is a pretty powerful little 12" amp. I'm considering one now.

 

[Kevinleeowen]

"Since you posted a price range in Euros and Pounds, I'm guessing you are not in the USA, and I have read here before that some regions don't have many places that demo amps."

Yep, I'm in Ireland. Unfortunately not great for wanting to try different brands. Fine for Fender/Marshall etc (i.e. big names), but try and get anything off the beaten track and you're screwed. There's usually only one dealer in the whole country for a lot of stuff!

 

[Austinrocks]

Hi,

This is further to a post I put earlier this week, but would anyone have any recommendations for a 15-20 watt tube amp, around the €700 / £600/ $900 (roughly!!) mark.

Will be playing a Gibson Les Paul Traditional through it and it will be for home use. Influences would be The Who - Led Zep - Oasis (maybe as far as G'n'R) - that kind of tone.

Was thinking of a Fender Deluxe Hot Rod, which I played through and loved, but maybe a bit loud!

Any help greatly appreciated!

Cheers

three amps,


1) For classic marshall tone I have a marshall DSL401 now for my marshall addiction, 40 watts, the effects loop is stupid, but really don't care its a great amp, mine was $900 new at GC when I bought it. I think marshall may have discontinued it last year, the early ones had a thermal problem, I have had mine for 6 years or so and not seen a thermal problem with the amp, the od1 is great, the od2 is similar to my mesa mark iv, the clean is not clean like a fender, the hot rods have an amazing clean tone, the marshall does give me the classic marshall tone which is why I have it, it is 40 watts, but the master volume is easy to set for bedroom, and the clean channel is set to 10 on mine so backing off might get you were you want to be, I love it.

2) I had a marshall studio 15, 15-18 watts Vintage 30 speaker, 6v6 tubes, get little amp, used it as a practice amp for years, they have not made them in a while, the amp uses an attenutor to set the volume, not a master volume so its very easy to get the overdrive tones from the amp at bedroom volumes,

3) fender hot rod deluxe with JJs 6v6 tubes, will give you 20 watts from the fender hot rod, the tubes will handle the plate voltage of a hot rod deluxe, the other 6v6 tubes do not, I put a dummy plug in the extension speaker jack, this sets the output transformer to 4 ohms which is what you need for the 8 ohms speaker, I do the same thing on my mesa mark iv use the 4 ohm output, I checked the factory set bias on my hot rod deluxe is was what it needed to be for the amp.

the hot rods have an amazing clean, I like the OD and more OD, but I set the drive at 5.5 and use the guitar volume,

a nice site for the fender is

http://studentweb.eku.edu/justin_holton/settings.html

and the omega mods I hear are great, I have not done them yet, a member who is local is having his done, love to hear his opinion

http://www.omegaamps.com/mods2.html

The 6v6s give you roughly half the power you would have if you ran 6L6, they are 12 watt tubes the 6L6 are 25 or 30 watt tubes depending on whos tube you run. So the 40 watt hot rod becames a 20 watt hot rod,

The volume is a lot lower if you run the 2nd channel input of the amplifier, it has a 6dB attenator built in and how I ran my deluxe and deville for practice, channel 1 is great for gigs by both amps.

http://www.eurotubes.com/euro-e.htm

they have a bias video, but I found that the dummy plug in the extenal speaker jack sets the bias corectly for the 6v6s with the factory bias.

http://www.eurotubes.com/euro-video.htm

you may find these in europe, this is where I just where I got mine.


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