First tube amp ever for me

I'd say the Bluesbreaker is the most pedal friendly of the three you've mentioned.

And it has a great clean IMO. It's a GREAT amp for your first tube amp... Dang... Most of us 'po' folks prolly started out with peaveys or crates!!

Good luck brother!!

Lance

 

Welcome to the dark side.

I've never met a Marshall that didn't like pedals, though I haven't tried the BluesBreaker. That might be your best choice to achieve a broad palette, though you can't go too far wrong with any of those you mention.

 

Bluesbreaker would be one kick as amp for sure, although you must think seriously about a 2X12 combo.

 

You mean new amps? If all my amps were stolen I'd run out and buy a Bluesbreaker Marshall to play until I finished building something to replace my favorite homebrew. Otherwise I'd go buy an old 61' thru '63 Fender Concert.

 

An old bandmate had a Blues Breaker RI and it was quite a nice sounding amp indeed. I can't help but think it would have been even sweeter if he replaced the greenbacks with some weber alnico blues or celestion blues.

taco

 

Not to scare you off, but I notice that people like to mod the RI's:

Bluesbreaker Mods

 

those bluesbreakers are sweet. you'll dig it with pedals for the kind of sound you're after.

 

One more vote for the Bluesbreaker. I am not always the biggest Marshall fan, but... To me, they are like the old muscle cars- they handle tweaking and mods very well, yet they run like hell on their own.

I can attest that Marshalls love pedals and don't think you will be disappointed in any way. I have a Mesa that sounds great on its own, but the pedals just don't sound good to me on it.

I must echo that a 2x12 is a must. you will get a nice full sound with lows.

Congrats on the move to tube... you'll never go back!

 

I have a YCV50 Blue.

The clean channel is thick and fat but IMO it is not that sparkly Fender clean you might be looking for. It takes overdrive pedals well and sounds great with single coils. Lots of clean headroom here. The crunch channel is good for classic medium gain rock. I suppose it could do metal but I've not tried to get that out of it. I prefer it with the boost on for a singing type of tone. Lots of "good" tube compression going on here.

Separate EQs for each channel give you a lot of flexibility, the reverb is decent and the effects loop works well. I retubed mine with JJs all around and kept the stock Vintage 30 speaker.

Overall I'm happy with the amp. I play all sorts of "modern" Christian worship and pop stuff. I do feel obliged to caution you about reliability. My YCV50 died after a few weeks after I bought it. Traynor repaired it under warranty but shipping the chassis back is a pain in the butt. The same thing happened to my YCV40 so I'm afraid reliability is an issue with the YCV series.

 

I think I'd rather have the Fender deluxe reverb myself.

 

Mods aren't necessarily a bad thing - just be aware that there are hack jobs out there. Most of the mods are intended to bring out the vintage vibe so you might want to consider some of those. Tubes and speakers are always a good place to start, not that you need to jump right in on that.

Other than taking the amp to a technician about all you can do is a visual inspection. The tubes should glow evenly. The filaments should be red, but if the plates are glowing, then you have problems. If you replace the power tubes, then they need to be matched and the amp needs to be re-biased.

 

Try different Eq and gain settings to see if you get any rattles or vibration noises. Most of that can be taken care of by tightening up all the screws.

For example, the reverb can on my JCM800 rattles when I use a Wah at the higher frequencies only. Odd, but I tightened it up and it works fine now.

Test footswitches if applicable, the reverb, input jacks for a solid connection, and test all knobs.

Should be pretty good to go from there!

Welcome to the tube world!

 

I had a BB. I liked it, but I like my 100w JCM800 2x12 combo way better. With a THD Hot Plate I can get clean or distorted at any volume I may need.
With the BB you don't have a lot of headroom. And I'm not a fan of the Greenbacks. You could put a G12H 30 Anniversary in to beef up the tone.