Are the Milkman amps THAT good?

[DrPepper]

I'm currently GASSING for a Milkman Half Pint. 5 watts with power scaling. Reverb and tremolo too. The sound clips that I have heard are excellent. From the picson the web, quality is top notch. Looks good as well.

What are your thoughts? Is this just an over hyped hipster amp or the real McCoy?

 

[nojazzhere]

I'm currently GASSING for a Milkman Half Pint. 5 watts with power scaling. Reverb and tremolo too. The sound clips that I have heard are excellent. From the picson the web, quality is top notch. Looks good as well.

What are your thoughts? Is this just an over hyped hipster amp or the real McCoy?

It always helps when you bring up a product that we aren't familiar with to post some kind of demo. Here's one I found. It sounds great, although at $1900, I'd much prefer a Princeton or Deluxe Reverb reissue.
IMHO, none of these boutique amps get any better than the "gold standard" amps that Leo made 55 years ago.

 

[Jeru]

I’ve only seen ‘em in YT videos.

Parts for that amplifier cost a few hundred bucks. Labor on a (handbuilt..? probably) thing like that is what it is. Maybe they take quality so seriously that they stand behind every amp for all time - assume there’s a sunk cost there.

does it add up to near $2k..? Is the market says so, then I suppose.

for me, just my opinion — if *I* can build it, then that’s got to some kinda value added to get from a pile of wholesale parts to $2,000.

I think it’s what the market will bear and that’s about it.

 

[EsquireBoy]

I’ve never tried one, but I’m sure the quality compares to a handwired Fender reissue.
The price is comparable too.

So if you like the tone, like the specs and are ready to spend 2,000 to get a handwired amp, go for it.

 

[theprofessor]

I've played one or two at Carter Vintage in Nashville. They sure seem to be great quality builds, but I didn't hear anything that I was floored by. Certainly not for the money. It sounded like a very excellent Fender clone-type build to me. At least in that family.

The modern amps that I'm still quite taken by are the Benson line and some of the Tone King line. But then I look at the price tags... I'll just keep building Fender clones, thank you...

 

[stantheman]

It’s made TODAY with the exact same methods from 40 years ago. The best demo I’ve heard is the Dunlop/MXR
Reverb pedal with a Milkman on YouTube.
That is a seriously fine tube amplifier.

 

[DrPepper]

Thanks, price wise they are comparable to the new handwired Princeton Reverb but, lower wattage, single ended (I like SE amps) with more bells and whistles... I'll keep researching them and saving my pennies maybe a good deal on a used one will eventually pop up. Anyway, my tele is at the shop and the guy working on it is backed up.

 

[gkterry]

I would take a hard look at lil dawg amps. Super high quality hand built at very reasonable prices.
https://www.littledawgamps.com/

 

[DrPepper]

I’ve only seen ‘em in YT videos.

Parts for that amplifier cost a few hundred bucks. Labor on a (handbuilt..? probably) thing like that is what it is. Maybe they take quality so seriously that they stand behind every amp for all time - assume there’s a sunk cost there.

does it add up to near $2k..? Is the market says so, then I suppose.

for me, just my opinion — if *I* can build it, then that’s got to some kinda value added to get from a pile of wholesale parts to $2,000.

I think it’s what the market will bear and that’s about it.

Yeah, I know parts are cheap, it's all the other parts of being a successful business that add to the cost. I've built enough that I can tell, at least from what I have seen, his work is good.I don't care to build anymore and would rather just play.

 

[naveed211]

You can always spend more if you want to.

Are Milkmen and Two Rocks better sounding than a garden variety Deluxe Reverb or PRRI? Maybe? Some guys will swear there’s something magical going on.

I love Victoria Vicky Verbs for that sound, really liked a Suhr Bella for that sound too, but are they $1000+ better sounding than one of those ‘68 SF amps? Slightly yeah I’d say, but there’s not much difference really.

Whether it’s worth it is up to you and your experience. I wouldn’t expect it to be that drastic of a difference but maybe I’m wrong.

 

[tele_pathic]

Milkman Amps are on my short list of wanting to own, but dang that price. The MM The Amp seems like a good compromise, if you don't mind a D-class ss amp. In fact, I would purchase The Amp before I bought a new ss DR or TR. My dream amp is the Creamer. Spec'ed out, it looks so good. And in the YT videos I've watched, and I've watched them all, they sound sooooo good.

However, as GKTerry mentions, Lil Dawg amps are fantastic. In the past, I've had a LD Wonderdawg (DRRI in a PRRI package with a SRRI tone stack, which makes such a fantastic difference) combo that I adored, but I wanted a head + cab setup for some reason. So I sold the combo when I found a WD head in class Fender black/silver, matched it with a Mojotone Neo Cream 12" speaker, and it's the cat's meow, the bee's knees, it's the bomb, it's the ****! And it looks cool as hell.

 

[Whoa Tele]

Plus one on the Lil Dawg choice. I have two of them . I also have a Vintage Sound 15 that my friend and I compared to a Milkman pint. We both felt the VS was the better sounding amp. The Milkman sounded good but I still think they are overpriced and there are better sounding amps out there for,less money.

 

[tjnies]

I purchased a MM Half Pint hoping for "the ultimate" VibroChamp. Initially I thought it was ok, but then realized it never broke up much on its own, meaning the VVR was useless. The volume knob effectively did the same thing.

But I was lucky that I had a 5-day approval from the dealer, as on day 2 it turned and no sound. Checked everything I knew (tubes, connections etc) to no avail. I emailed Tim Marcus explaining everything I had tried, and his reply was telling: "Did you turn the amp on?".

I emailed back asking if he read my initial email, and got NO reply.

Really? I determined I didn't need that sort of attitude, and returned the amp to the dealer. I found out that some other component had failed, which they replaced.

Wouldn't take one of his amps for free. IMO it's over priced even when worked properly.

 

[rangercaster]

Just buy one and give us a candid review...

 

[DrPepper]

Just buy one and give us a candid review...

Okay.

 

[rangercaster]

A Boss Katana is cheaper and will sound similar anyway ...
Spend the extra change on a coupla guitars ...

 

[MacFangus]

What does a milkman have to do with guitar playing, or anything music related? Just sayin'...

 

[hepular]

in a former life, i knew a fair amount about how top-end bicycle stuff works (as in ENVE sent me 2 sets of wheels basically for . . . well . . . i'm not sure . . . since they never advertised in the mag i wrote for and never asked for a product review. so nearly $5k of good-will).

one of their one-time competitors, Josh Poertner bought out the old Silca pump company when he retired from Zipp: & he's a pretty good, not much bs guy (as in: sharing details of tests they did with pros who couldn't really tell differences between supposedly way different frames and wheels, and how confirmation bias affected those perceptions).

ANYWAY, a couple years ago, Josh boiled it down to this: at the top end of custom or near custom stuff, the brand premium should be about the relationship: do i like the people who make the stuff? will they support and service their work in a way that goes beyond dealing with folks who just look at product as units or data in a spreadsheet.

i'd think the same attitude could apply to high-end amp stuff: sure you COULD get virtually the same performance out of a prri, or a re-done silverface, or whatever, but part of what you're paying for is a little bit of that "i know the guy, this is MY amp" feeling (along with another element of "this puts me in the super-cool herd"--which, kinda like in cycling--only works with an almost vanishingly small portion of the population).

 

[fasteddie42]

Its an overpriced fender clone?

 

[John Owen]

What does a milkman have to do with guitar playing, or anything music related? Just sayin'...

It doesn't look like he has the blurb on his website anymore but it's something about his grandfather was a milkman and his approach to making sure all his customers got the best quality product and customer service he could deliver being inspired by his grandfather's work ethic, etc. I don't remember the exact details but that is the essence of it.