What Bedroom Amp Has it ALL!

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jklotz

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I went on a similar search not too long ago. I ended up with the mesa mk V/25. The master volume and wattage switching seems to do the trick for me.
 

simonsp

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The Vox Pathfinder 15R ticks more boxes than most small amps (and it sounds great).
 

jwp333

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I have the 30 watt Peavey Vypyr in my practice room and I've never been dissatisfied with it. I remember trying the Mustang, but the Vypyr seemed more intuitive in operation so I picked it. I haven't tried a Vypyr II yet, but it would probably get my vote if you are looking to buy new.
 

BigDaddyLH

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Twin Reverb.

Bah, a Super Six.

Am070d.JPG
 

bparnell57

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Exactly what Muchxs said. I have a 62 Reverberocket for cleans and on the edge cleans with reverb and tremolo, a Fender Excelsior Pro for thumpy bass and ear splitting overdrive, and a little baby Champion 600 with a bypassed internal tone stack, and a weber alnico 6, for warm whisper quiet cleans with more articulation than any amp I own, and for crunchy rock at acceptable levels. Also, a tremolo and good reverb pedal in an effects loop or even out front, can sound just fine, if not great.
 

JazzboxBlues

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This one is close. I was on the hunt for a Victoria 5112 and ended up buying a Clark 5f1 with nos tubes, celestion blue, on board reverb and an attenuator. Michael had it used for a real deal and offered a 10 year warranty. I couldn't tell it from new when I received it. I know it wouldn't be cheap for him to duplicate it.

This is a killer little amp!



 

BLC45

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Up the anti, go for the Princeton Reverb. It has it all plus!!!!!
 

ClosetSciFiGeek

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Thanks for all the good inputs comical (twin reverb and super six gave me a good chuckle) and otherwise. Being way more versed in classical guitar than electric leaves me a bit ignorant as to the topic of amplifiers. This has been an education and you guys may have changed my paradigm that I may be looking for the wrong things in an amp. If I can paraphrase your inputs seem to say that all the bells and whistles I would like do not necessarily lead to good tone. Seems like I am going to have to go and play through a bunch of stuff and see what I think.
 

valiant

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Swart STR Tremolo
Cornell Romany Plus
Cornell Romany TR20
Goodsell Super 17 MK3
Princeton Reverb
 

StormJH1

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I've been chasing down threads like this all over the place trying to figure what makes sense for me. What's making it hard is that I'm trying to find something compact, under $250, and either pure tube or something that takes pedals very well. The answer I keep getting is the VHT Special 6, but that actually might be bigger and louder than what I am looking for.

The problem is that I have some great smaller amps already, but they are bright-voiced, and it's tough to find something in a 8" or 10" speaker that covers my two primary needs: (1) Full-sounding; (2) Takes pedals well.

Here's the ones I have, all of which I can recommend at bedroom volumes:

Fender Super Champ X2 - Became my primary amp last year after downsizing from larger amps where I didn't need 85% of the volume they offered. It is a modelling amp, but also features preamp and power amp tubes, though people bicker over the semantics of whether the preamp tube really does anything. Who cares - it sounds great, with two caveats: (1) The stock speaker has some limitations. Not so much at bedroom levels, but you can put a better quality 10" speaker and reportedly get more volume and some additional low-end. (2) The models, overall, are outstanding, but for some maddening factory setting choices. There are 16 "Voices" plus a Channel 1 "Clean" channel that is still DSP, but runs very clean and feels much more "tube-like". Well, on Channel 1 and several of those other models, the default setting was to have Mids set to "10". Who does that?!? I actually didn't discover this until I plugged it into FUSE a second time, and now the amp sounds considerably better. Great classic Fender tones, even at lower volumes.

Vox Pathfinder 15 - Really possibly the ultimate value amp (now discontinued, but still pretty widely available used for $130 or less), and one of the better solid state combos ever. The VOX voicing pigeonholes it to an extent, but it does that exceptionally well, and it takes pedals extremely well. So long as you understand that a metal pedal into a 8" combo with VOX on the front won't quite get all the way there. :p

Yamaha THR10 - Just got mine early this year, trading in an assortment of other gear. The THR10 is, by far, the most versatile piece of gear I own. It's covers clean tones of different sorts, plus crunch, JCM800, and even modern MESA sounds. It's even a passable bass amp at low volumes for practicing. It can be used as an external speaker for non-guitar hardware (I hook my iPad up to it and have played synths through it). It's a low-latency recording interface for PC. And all of it sounds great at volume levels that won't get you evicted or divorced.
 

wrathfuldeity

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Agree with Muchx. This isn't portable, or necessarily easy or even cheap...but does it for me in the bedroom. So I usually use a se6L6 (for beautiful se harmonics and just has a treble cut tone knob) or a pp6v6 monoblock (sans preamp and really no tone stack)...sometimes both set up as a w/d. Then I put the various pedals in between an ehx lpb2ube that has rca 12au7 tubes...what this does is provide a tubed preamp loop...thus tubudafied analogue pedals. The end result is the amp's volume becomes a master volume...that will give darn good tones at a bedroom level. Anyway depending on what you want...you can go pure...glorious tone with just the git and amp...or whatever you want to add. btw the cab is an oversized cab with a 12" ribbed big alnico if using 1 amp or 2 separate 12" cabs if doing the w/d. see sig for the chain
 

homesick345

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This one is close. I was on the hunt for a Victoria 5112 and ended up buying a Clark 5f1 with nos tubes, celestion blue, on board reverb and an attenuator. Michael had it used for a real deal and offered a 10 year warranty. I couldn't tell it from new when I received it. I know it wouldn't be cheap for him to duplicate it.

This is a killer little amp!
]

Yup. Champ + 12 alnico is quite the recipe..
 
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