(a) The point about the Guitarist test is not that the clean tones of the Hot Rod were 'very good (especially for the price)' or 'a good cheap option' (both statements I can imagine being said with upturned noses - if I didn't know you both from here for years :D) but were preferred to the clean tones of amps costing 5 times the price in a blind test. The Hot Rod sounded boutique, the boutique amps didn't - and that to the ears of professional musicians. Now, I must confess I have never played a Hot Rod Deluxe, although I know the Blackface tone it based on - but if people who play and review guitars and amps for a living think by their ears alone that amp is the booteek amp, then, unless posh amp builders don't bother with their clean sound (which is hard to imagine), they aren't doing it right and thus the £$$$$££$£ is questionable.
(b) It is interesting to note that the same magazine compared a Joyo UD with Fulltone OCD and came out the other end - stating that anyone with pro-musician ears could tell the difference.
(a) Yeah I appreciate that.
I guess all I meant was that, for me, I can understand why the hot rod is on the cheap(ish) side of things, because I need a good distortion channel too- to me, there are better options than the HRD for what I want (and admittedly I'm more biased towards dirty tones). Not necessarily for more money than the HRD, of course, to me the traynor ycv is better and cheaper (on thomann, when they have them in stock).
But you do make a good point (which we possibly ignored), which is that, if you ignore the other channels on the HRD, and compare it to (often quite expensive) amps which only have a clean channel, it may well hold its own against them (or come out ahead).
But i'd be the first to admit that a lot of guitarists are full of it, and listen with their eyes (or wallets). Or maybe it's just people in general. :lol:
(b) yeah i read that article (it's the only guitarist mag I've bought in years). I actually didn't agree with some of the claims (not that I'm qualified to disagree, lol). I wondered at the logic of allowing someone who actually makes some boutique stuff (or who, at very least, is a self-confessed boutique fan) to be a supposedly independent or indifferent reviewer...
they also didn't mention about the bugera's mdf/particleboard (i assume) cabinet when comparing the bugera to the matchless. which was a pretty big oversight, i thought.
also regarding the point about the slightly weird choice regarding which boutique amps were picked (and not completely forgetting jpf's point about the tight schedules, which probably also played a large part in the choice), the cynic in me wonders if larger/more well-known boutiquers were approached and refused to take part :lol: if you're already well-known and selling well, you don't have much to gain by taking part in a test which may well conclude that your expensive amps actually aren't worth it :lol:
Funny enough, I've been wanting a Joyo US Dream because I've always wanted a Suhr Riot.. Should I?
Any other Joyos worth buying too?
most of them are pretty good, assuming they're not DOA (seems to be the main cause of faults) and assuming you don't need bombproof reliability. Some are better than others, of course, and there also might be better options on the cheap for specific pedals (for example, i'd get the digitech bad monkey over the joyo vintage overdrive- neither really sounds better, but the digitech has that bass control which is pretty handy).
