Ceriatone 1987 Plexi clone, worth it?

[hunter]

Have you ever played a Ceriatone, Hunter?  I find them to have a superior tone to the Marshall reissues, plus they're hand wired and cheaper.

hmm, nope not played one. Surely trust you there Dave.

I was thinking about brand/resale value ... and then as you know I am a bit Marshall hyped these days  

[martinw]

Hi! :)



What about extra options? For instance- a different colour cab, adding a master volume, reverb? It depends on the mod of course, but is anything other than bog-standard going to take the price up substantially? And a master volume for example, would you order that as part of the kit from Nik or do you mod/customise the kits yourself?

Master Volume is £20 extra. Reverb is a no-no, as it involves a fairly major redesign. Other mods priced according to parts and work involved. I do the mods myself to stock circuit boards.

I can do custom colours at no extra cost, depending on availability of materials. You can have Black-on-white or white-on-black trafolite panels (rather than gold plexiglass) for an extra £30. Different knobs, handles, corners Etc etc.

[martinw]

Here are some recent amps FYI:

[indysmith]

ohhhhhhhhh a tweed '45! Holy hell I think I might have to sell some stuff and save some money.

[sgmypod]

That 18 looks sweet

[noodleplugerine]

Sam,

Martin's prices depend on the amp because the work involved varies.  Give him a shout via his website, he'll be more than happy to talk to you about the options  :)

What does Martin think of them?

The price puts me off it a bit.

Edit: Spent so long reading that I forgot to refresh and missed Martin's posts!!!

Either way - Same question - Do you think they're good amps, or are they just good for the price?

[sambo]

Master Volume is £20 extra. Reverb is a no-no, as it involves a fairly major redesign. Other mods priced according to parts and work involved. I do the mods myself to stock circuit boards.

I can do custom colours at no extra cost, depending on availability of materials. You can have Black-on-white or white-on-black trafolite panels (rather than gold plexiglass) for an extra £30. Different knobs, handles, corners Etc etc.

Brilliant, thanks.


I have to say, that tweed is absolutely GORGEOUS.

[Twinfan]

You should see the matching tweed 2x12  ;)

Are they good, or just good for the price?  Put it this way, I haven't played any new amp that sounds better than my Ceriatone based JTM45 built by Martin.  Martin himself will also tell you that the JTM45s he's built sound superb for clean, crunchy and blues/rock tones.

Anyone local to me is welcome to try my amps out and form their own opinion  :)

[hamfist]

As one of the few people offering opinions here who have actually owned a Ceriatone or Ceriatone-based amp here (see the top picture of the MartinW post above !), I would say that the amps are not just good for the price, but "good", period !!
  If you can cope with the extra time it might take for Martin to build you the amp, I would advise anyone in the UK who wants a fully built amp to let him build it. He does a great job, and you get a 12 warranty, which is worth a lot in my book.
  if you are desperate for the amp NOW then the quickest way is to get the amp fully assembled from Nik in Malaysia. But Global shipping on an amp is not often kind, and it's much more difficult to sort out after-sales problems when you live several thousand miles away from the builder.
  If you look around the www for opinions from people who have actually bought and owned Ceriatone amps (as opposed to opinions from people who just have opinions) then you will struggle to find a bad word about the company, or their products.

[sambo]

So hamfist, yours is the Plexi50 Ceriatone model right?

And it looks like you've had some kind of mod on it where the bottom right of the 4 inputs is?

It looks beautiful!

[Twinfan]

It was a JTM45 with master volume and power scaling  ;)

[sambo]

Oops I must be blind today- it says JTM right there! :oops:

Deary me. :?

[hamfist]

And it looks like you've had some kind of mod on it where the bottom right of the 4 inputs is?

The dial in one of the input positions is a Pre-PI MV, part of the power-scaling mod that Martin did.

[Ted]

I got a mate who built a ceriatione 50w plexi head and he creams himself talking about how good it is...thing is he can't crank the bugger because the amp quote "would take the f*cking roof off"...

he is a huge amp nut so I reckon that says a lot.

[jt]

:D To those that watched the clips on the Ceratone site the 2nd clip of the plexi 50. Did the guy have a pedal in front of the amp ? Because he was sure getting a great serious overdriven sound out of it.

Sounds more and more tempting doesn`t it sambo  :D


Heres a link to customer reviews on Harmony Central for you guys to read and check out.

http://reviews.harmony-central.com/reviews/Guitar+Amp/brand/CeriaTone


 :D  8)