'Boutique gear' general grumpy rant.

[dave_mc]

I agree with what brow's saying about the amps- while I'd say in an ideal world you wouldn't want to cheap out on anything in your chain, the amp (and i'd include speakers/cabinet in that) does make the most difference. A (reasonable quality, well set-up- i.e. not a dud/lemon which won't stay in tune) beginner guitar into an SLO or similar will generally sound better than a PRS into a beginner solid state practice amp.

Obviously that's an extreme example and I'd never advise doing that in the real world, lol.

Think you have to factor resale into it too. I bet I couldn't shift my custom even if I wanted to 'cause it's so unique to me but a CU24 will keep alot of the value?

yep, of course, agreed. I was actually gonna edit that into my post yesterday, but was too lazy and couldn't be bothered :lol:

Basically there are all kinds of companies selling snake oil and it doesn't matter about the price or the quantity of amps they produce and like guitars there is a point where the higher cost isn't really getting you anything more apart from crazy componants and rhetoric. That is what I think.

Agreed. Same goes for pedals (maybe especially pedals), and (possibly to a lesser extent, but still some of it applies) guitars.

I've said before, but I don't mind paying more for genuinely better quality or tangible improvements. I'm not best pleased if I find out I've paid more for snake oil or the placebo effect.

regarding the clips, when i loaded them up in media player the description told me which was which :lol:

[Dmoney]

HA! you cheats.

I've tried to sort that out so you don't get given the answer should anyone else want to have a go.
I didn't use reamping for those clips obviously. Just played round twice. Reamping would probably have been fairer but I did those clips at the same time as doing two other amps just before I had to let one go. So I rushed it.

[Elliot]

The discussion of amps takes us back to the beginning of this discussion - which is that of all the hyper expensive amps played in the Guitarist blind test, high up in their favourites was the Fender Hot Rod - an amp that probably would only get derogatory comments from the majority of people here.

[Oli]

I think that Y is the better sounding amp of the two, but there's certainly not much in it really.

Quite an interesting discussion going on too, nice to see a bit of activity here!

[JJretroTONEGOD]

The discussion of amps takes us back to the beginning of this discussion - which is that of all the hyper expensive amps played in the Guitarist blind test, high up in their favourites was the Fender Hot Rod - an amp that probably would only get derogatory comments from the majority of people here.

I used to own that amp and it really was good sounding, mine was a limited edition with a jensen speaker in and oxblood cloth, what a great amp.

[Twinfan]

The Hot Rod's are a good cheap option if you're playing the clean channel, as the Guitarist guys were.

Try the gain channel though, especially at low volume - it's not that great.  Very buzzy and flat like a bad distortion pedal.

[Philly Q]

Doing the same thing with a guitar, I'm suggesting it's pretty damn impossible.  Can you clone Pearly Gates or SRV's #1?  Can you do it 20 times?  Do you have access to 500/1000 planks of the correct spec maple/mahogany to find the right pieces?

I just had a thought about this too.
Why would you want to clone those or even claim to have cloned them? Without knowing the history of either and just picking one up surely you might think either are old junk? That has to be a possibility right? What makes some of these guitars extraordinary has to be extraordinary players that held them, other than that they might just be average guitars to anyone else. I can't believe that once upon a time someone was making a guitar and the planets aligned and all the woods happened to meld perfectly and years later on the anniversary of that guitars' birth it fell (with its perfect balance of woody goodness) into the virtuosic hands of Stevie Ray Vaughan or similar? That seems a little coincidental to me. Would it be the number one in anyone elses collection if it hadn't passed via SRV? I'm not so sure. So all those expensive Gibson models like the AFD etc... I really can't see why they would be better guitars to begin with, perhaps a lot of those reissues are better than the guitars them emulate. That wouldn't surprise me. It's just selling expensive guitars to Slash fans etc. Your PRS obviously doesn't fall into that class of guitar.

I know Dave's point was mainly about the impossibility of "cloning" any particular guitar, but I find the side-discussion about the qualities of famous stars' iconic guitars interesting.

I suspect if we got the chance to play Pearly Gates, or SRV's Number 1, or Slash's Derrig LP, or Dave Gilmour's black Strat.... some of those guitars might be amazing but most would probably be pretty ordinary.  Their owners probably loved them due to familiarity as much as any other reason.

That's one of the things I like best about guitars - they don't have to be hugely expensive or brilliantly-made in any absolute sense in order for someone to appreciate them.

The discussion of amps takes us back to the beginning of this discussion - which is that of all the hyper expensive amps played in the Guitarist blind test, high up in their favourites was the Fender Hot Rod - an amp that probably would only get derogatory comments from the majority of people here.

To me amps are a completely different kettle of fish from guitars. 

Guitars are very simple things, easy to modify and the way they feel is every bit as important as the way they sound. 

Amps are complicated things, much more difficult to understand and to get to grips with.  What a player needs from an amp depends not only on how "good" it is, but much more on the circumstances it's going to be used in - at home, in the studio, on stage.  More so than guitars, I think it needs a decent, and experienced, player (i.e. not me!) to appreciate the subtle qualitiies of a good amp.  In that blind test, they probably chose the "familiar" over the "best".

I'd be happy with whichever amp made me sound OK - and that's probably just as likely to be a cheap mass-produced amp as an expensive boutique one. 

[Twinfan]

More so than guitars, I think it needs a decent, and experienced, player (i.e. not me!) to appreciate the subtle qualitiies of a good amp.

I'd say the same applies to both guitars and amps - you need to be a decent enough guitar player to appreciate the differences.  If someone very badly hacks Smoke On The Water through a Trainwreck they're not going to be blown away by the amp are they?

[Philly Q]

More so than guitars, I think it needs a decent, and experienced, player (i.e. not me!) to appreciate the subtle qualitiies of a good amp.

I'd say the same applies to both guitars and amps - you need to be a decent enough guitar player to appreciate the differences.  If someone very badly hacks Smoke On The Water through a Trainwreck they're not going to be blown away by the amp are they?

I dunno, I'm a rubbish guitar player but I think I can tell a good guitar from a bad one (subject to personal preference, of course), by virtue of having played a lot of the buggers.

Whereas I wouldn't know a good amp from a hole in the ground.  I'm mostly just scared of how fricken loud they are.   :|

[Dmoney]

I think experience comes into it maybe more than ability. I know I'm more able than I think I am, but still I'm not the best player when it comes to certain stuff, but thats the same as everyone else. No guitarist is a master of all trades so to speak.

So, I think once you've been playing a while and had the chance to experience some nice guitars and some nice amps then you start to spot differences and get used to what you enjoy as a player and you forget the buzzwords that come out of magazines. Even if a bad player was playing a cheap guitar through a trainwreck, as long as they had it dialed reasonably well they could probably hear a difference between that and playing through a Crate Bluevoodoo or Pod and I'd hope they'd be excited by the difference.

I personally feel that I now have a really good idea of what tools I need when it comes to Guitars, Amps and Pedals and maybe it hasn't taken as much shopping around as it has done for some other people. When you start out and you have no cash you'll just play whatever you can afford and shop around for deals. When you get a bit more choice you can try more stuff out but often it takes a long period to make a final decision about what works in your hands. Longer than and hour sat in a shop trying stuff out. Maybe it has to be a personal voyage of discovery but I wonder if when people went shopping for amplifiers and such, if someone explained the basics in a practical way rather than talking about "touch sensitivity" or "3D sound" or other unmeasurable buzzwords then that voyage might be shortened a bit. Similarly with guitars by doing things like explaining action can be changed stuff can be set up... obviously it depends on the customer or it might seem patronising.


EDIT:
On Philly's point above. You can probably tell when an amp sounds good, but experience again might lead you to choose one amp over another, say if you'd had to get one repaired or whatever. Take a look at Frank's blog post on the Peavey Classis 30. Not a bad sounding amp and a fairly reliable one too... but if it does go wrong its a nightmare to fix and opening the PCB's out risks further damage every time it's done because the jumpers are electrical connetions, not just bits of wire holding the PCB's together. That's a potentially bigger repair bill than say a similar sounding amp that is easier to maintain... but how would you know that?

http://jpfamps.com/peavey-classic-30-repair

[JJretroTONEGOD]

The Hot Rod's are a good cheap option if you're playing the clean channel, as the Guitarist guys were.

Try the gain channel though, especially at low volume - it's not that great.  Very buzzy and flat like a bad distortion pedal.

yes that's the main reason I ended up selling it in the end, I honestly prefer my Fender Champion 600 re-issue even though it's only 5W, it sounds way better for cleans and filth because you can really crank it up.

[Lew]

HA! you cheats.

They did sound a bit different, though. The real slo had more bass, (more obvious in the highgain side) and maybe a teeny bit less compressed. Either way both sounded great  8)

[Dmoney]

HA! you cheats.

They did sound a bit different, though. The real slo had more bass, (more obvious in the highgain side) and maybe a teeny bit less compressed. Either way both sounded great  8)

They do sound a little different which is probably mostly down to the iron. Both have stupidly high quality output transformers but they are a different spec. I've actually sent a number of emails over the years to the chap who designed the one in my clone and he worked with the guy who made the Deyoung OT for SLO's, so the guy knows the exact spec and some time ago it looked like he might become the manufacturer for the SLO OT but between himself and Soldano I believe they decided the SLO should stay as it is. It was around then that Soldano switched away from Mercury Magnetics on all the amps in their line. A copy of the deyoung was never offered but instead another very high quality set iron was designed for use with the SLO circuit.

The OT on the copy does actually have a lot of low end. I can post another clip of the same circuit again this time with different orange drops and with different iron again. See what you think. I think that record is from a £700 ish amp (for parts). In the room with all the amps together this one sounded like it had the least bass to me.

Also, the clip now known as X is only a fair test up to about 3 minutes in I think, because I did use the 'haynes' mod at the end of that clip, which the other amps don't have.

These are the settings for all the clips dialled in using the multimeter... the recording is via a 16ohm Hotplate DI out into my macbook and recorded in garageband using Laconvolver Marshall 4x12 vintage 30 cab with a SM57 cap egde off axis impulse. No settings altered between channel switching, which is why the Clean is always quiet in comparison to crunch and overdrive. The guitar I used is my Vigier with Tonezone neck and Paf Pro bridge.
Same valves in all the amps and a rebias to the same idle current too.

clean gain 5.5
OD gain 4
bass 6
middle 6
treble 6
Clean MV 5.5
OD MV 4
Pres Depth 6

[Philly Q]

On Philly's point above. You can probably tell when an amp sounds good, but experience again might lead you to choose one amp over another, say if you'd had to get one repaired or whatever. Take a look at Frank's blog post on the Peavey Classis 30. Not a bad sounding amp and a fairly reliable one too... but if it does go wrong its a nightmare to fix and opening the PCB's out risks further damage every time it's done because the jumpers are electrical connetions, not just bits of wire holding the PCB's together. That's a potentially bigger repair bill than say a similar sounding amp that is easier to maintain... but how would you know that?

http://jpfamps.com/peavey-classic-30-repair

That was interesting, but you're right, I've no way of knowing how reliable or repairable an amp might be.  Although I guess I'd make a general assumption (probably wrongly) that if it looks simple on the outside it's likely to be relatively simple on the inside.

I do read amp reviews, but not with the degree of interest I read guitar reviews - simply because they don't have the same appeal, and because I'm never going to buy and sell amps in the way I do with guitars. 

That said, I do intend my next purchase to be an amp!  I'm getting a bit guitar'd out, think I've reached saturation point unless I start getting interested in Gretsches or Rickenbackers.  Which isn't going to happen.

[Dmoney]

I think thats a pretty reasonable assumption. If an amp has two or three knobs of the front then unless something very wild is going on then it probably isn't a complex amp, though still if you found the cheapest amp you could like that then maybe it might not be robust. But then it's the old "buy cheap buy twice" rule and there really isn't much reason to spend ultra mega bucks to get something good.

I've not bought a magazine for ages so I'm not sure what lengths people go to in reviews. I've read some silly stuff in the odd one I've picked up in passing though that smacked of the odd reviewer just desperately trying to find something negative to say. I don't ever recall a review were the writer has gone into detail about construction other "yup, this amp seems tough because it's built on turrets", which is a pretty poor generalisation.