Hey guys.
As part of my search for my new amp, I'm sure I've got on more than enough peoples nerves here asking questions all the time :lol:, I decided to bite the bullet and do the 1.5 hour drive out to Sounds Great Music in Cheadle to try out some stuff and see if anything caught my eye. I took my own Gibson Les Paul Standard with AIV Mules as it's a guitar I'm very familiar with.
I only managed to try 4 amps, 2 heads and 2 combos, and I think I've finally decided on something! :D
Splawn Quick Rod head - This was the 1st amp I tried when I got there. It was into a Diamond Amplification 4x12 cab (not sure what speakers it had) and it pretty much hit the nail on the head of what I'm looking for tone wise. I was extremely surprised by the clean channel, going by reviews I was expecting something barely more than 'useable', and think it'd sound even better with something with single coils. The OD channels (with it's various modes and 'gears') will cover everything from AC/DC Crunch upto 'modded Marshall' 80s style levels of gain. It may do heavier metal levels of gain, but as I don't play much of that, I didn't push it up too far. 1 thing I did notice was that no matter how high I put the gain up, you could hear every note in every chord.
Egnater Tourmaster 4100 head - This is a 10/25/50/100w switchable 4 channel head with clean, clean 2, OD1 and OD2 channels. Each channel has 3 band EQ, gain and volume controls as well as Classic/Modern modes and also a switchable contour control that gave more of a mid scoop to the tone. Either clean could be setup from a very clean (and slightly sterile sounding sound) to something with a bit more hair to it. Set clean, the 1st 2 channels sounded good, if slightly bland, but I didn't like them at all when set with more grit. The tone really thinned out and lost any sort of fullness. OD 1 was good as a heavy rhythm channel, with JCM800 levels of gain available. OD was very similar but had even more gain on tap. I won't compare it to anything in particular as it's been a hell of a long time since I've used a high gain amp, and I wouldn't know what it compares to tonally :lol: While sounding perfectly ok, both OD channels were very loose and had quite a fizzy sounding top end that I couldn't seem to EQ out.
Splawn Street Rod combo - This is a 40w 1x12 combo with pretty much the same features as the head I tried. The clean channel was good, but didn't have the same fullness as the head did. I know this is down to the 4x12 Vs the 1x12, but the combo also lacked the gain control that the Quick Rod had. It didn't really add gain, it seemed to add mids and fullness that the combo lacked. The same thing with the OD channels really, a perfectly good tone but just seemed to lack something compared to the head. For alot of people this combo may be a better option as I was able to crank the amp alot higher than I was the head, without using the loop master volume trick atleast, which would make it more user friendly in the real world of gigs.
Hughes & Kettner Switchblade combo - This is a valve combo with built in FX and MIDI capability to store all your amp, FX and volume settings into 128 MIDI switchable patches. It had 4 amp modes Clean, Crunch, Lead and Ultra all of which, imo sounded dreadful. I really struggled to get a sound of this amp that I found useable, let alone something I liked. The clean sounds very very bland, the crunch very thin and brittle. The higher gain tones sounded very fake, almost like a cheap distortion pedal. For someone that uses more FX, this may be an ideal amp as it'd let you use pretty much nothing other than the amp, as long as you'd have the time to sit and tweak everything as it looked like a very indepth amp, but it's definitely not for me.
Based on this, I think I'm going to pickup the Quick Rod at the weekend :D
