El84 sound, half power switchable, huge sound, lightweight?

Bad Cats and the Valvetech Hayseed are the only EL84-based amps that I know of that have a half power switch. You can get a 1x12 Hayseed for right around $1000 and it will be far superior in build quality than any Peavey. They're hand made with custom transformers. Do a search for "Hayseed" here and you'll see a fair amount about them.

 

It's a little out of your price range, but the Mesa Boogie Lonestar Special is EL84 based with 5,15,and 30 watt settings. At 5 watts, you can crank the hell out of it without waking the neighbors.

 

Cage Amps 18/30 or Corsa. The Corsa is a newer design. His 18-watt amp was compared favorably to similar Dr.Z in east coast amp shootout several years ago.

Again, it's beyond your specified price range--might get lucky with a used one, but I haven't seen many around.

BTW, 18 el-84 watts distorting is still quite loud for home use if you're primarily interested in power tube grind.

 

Kingsley amps the 32 and the 30 have a half power switch and they are EL84 based...heck it even have a triode/pentode switch that you can lower the power to 7w...YOu go from 30W to 7W...Now that is cool amp....

 

I'd recommend the Carvin Vintage 16. It's got two EL84s, weighs only about 30lbs or so, 1x12 tweed combo and is switchable down to 5 watts (from 16 in standard mode). I'm borrowing a friend's currently, and it sounds real good. much better than the fender blues jr, IMO. new they're like $399 + shipping from carvin (and that includes a celestion V30 speaker), used you can probably find one for around $100 less than that. carvin has a photo and some sound clips on their site, at the very bottom of this page:

http://www.carvin.com/products/single.php?ItemNumber=VINTAGE16&CID=GA

good luck and keep me informed as to what you end up doing. as I am also looking for an amp very much like what you're looking for. on a last note, keep the mesa boogie subway blues in mind. I have no direct experience, but people here say they're great amps.

EDIT: it's my opnion that the carvin might be better built than the ampeg or crate, but that's just my opinion. you probably get higher build quality for your $ with the carvin because it's factory direct, same as reverend.

 

my Mayfly BC30 is very light weight and it has a 1/2 power switch for 15 watts. One of the best EL84 amps out, IMO.

 

at $1200 the mayfly 30 seems to be out of his stated price range of $500 preferable to $700 max.

 

My experience with half power and pentode/triode switches is that they alter the sound but don't do much with regard to volume.

My Rivera M100 can go all the way down to 15 watts from 100 but it doesn't really get much quieter.

YMMV....DAB

 

keep in mind if you decide on the carvin, but go the used route, the older ones will not have the Celestion Vintage 30 speaker in them, but rather some stock Carvin speaker. I believe the started shipping with the v30 speaker sometime in april of this year. I am not quite certain of the exact date regarding the speaker change, but keep this in mind when comparing used to new prices on this amp. that's it.

 

ok well check this out, I have been playing the carvin on 5 watt mode exclusively, with the soak (drive/gain) control dimed and the volume at around 2 or 3 I get yelled at by my wife. so I haven't been able to experience true amp breakup as much as I'd like, but have had to settle for using a pedal for some of my overdriven sounds. 5 watts is freagin loud, and I didn't hear a big difference when I switched it over to 16 watt mode when I first borrowed the amp. I'm sure you probably can't hear a big difference in 15-30 watts or from 30-50 watts either, but perhaps you could hear a difference between 5-30, or 15-50, dig?

 

On the Boogie LSS, it does alter the tone, but it definately gets a lot lower in volume.

 

I have Lonestar Special and I just got a Epiphone Valve Special for kicks- I'll finally be able hear what ping-pong delay sounds like. Anyway the Epiphone is 5 watts single ended class A cathode bias with 2 12ax7wa and 1 el84 (Sovtek). It has no clean headroom but it is great at low volume for blues and some crunch. It definitely gets fully overdriven in the power section at low volume. Does anyone know if it would "blow up" if I put an el34 in there in place of the el84?

 

Not at all. That was one of the reasons I got it. It weighs about 55-60 lbs

 

I don't know if it's in the same category or not, but I have a Reinhardt Titan that's 36 watts. I half my impedance and pull 2 EL84's out to run at 18 watts, and it's still loud as heck.


-Rich