WHAT is THE best sounding amp you've ever played through?

Princeton reverb was by far best amp I've tried, it was at a store where I was trying an Epi dot through a marshall (didn't like this experience at all) but in the demo room they had an elite thinline and the princeton. Nicest tone I've ever had too bad it's well out of my budget for a setup like that.

 

Tie between my Supro MoFo, BF SR clone in a 12/10 combo cab, BR PR w/12 baffle, or my Brown Deluxe HP clone.
And yes, I'm biased

 

Brown 6G2 out in Portland..

 

All of them so far. I have a Fender Super-Sonic 22 that does fantastic cleans (though I find its burn channel to be thin/fizzy). Then there's my friend's Mesa Express 5:25 that has a nice tight high gain sound. Finally there"s the Hughes and Kettner Grandmeister I just bought that has a great crunch sound, sits in the mix very well with my bandmates, has incredible versatility, and with some tweaking can approximate what I like about the others...tube amp quest over!

 

My first love tube am was a 74 Champ. Had to sell to make a house payment 15+ years ago. Then I picked up a Traynor YCS-50. One of the more amazing aspects was being able to get the same sound emanating from the Celestion v30 though the built in DI.

Then I played a Genz Benz Black Pearl 30. Wow. Bought a head version too since the combo weighed 90 lbs. sold the combo and the head began breaking down every 6 months. Finally sold it off a year after finding a Mesa DC3 head which was great but had a high noise floor.

My current is a Reverend Hellhound 40/60. Lightweight, pedal friendly, and sounds great on its own as well. Low noise floor. No break down issues.

I'm on the hunt for a Fryette Memphis 30 head. Played a 1/12 they (Fryette) had left and brought to Winter NAMM but I'd like to hear it with my guitar and pedal rig.

 

an early 70's bluesbreaker with simple mex tele. all the spikiness gone from the bridge and the muddiness gone from the neck, replaced by beautiful, beautiful tone. if i had 2 grand i'd buy the reissue in a heartbeat.

 

A 1960's AC30 (Celestian blue) being driven by the output of a Laney LC-15 all-valve combo.

The AC30 on it's own was obviously too clean, and I was without an OD pedal that day, so out came the LC15 as a substitute.

An absolutely magical tone - the scooped (ish) response of the Laney married up with the Mids and wideness of the AC30. One of those tones where you feel you can play whatever you want, you won't make a mistake and you'll sound brilliant, as if the guitar is playing itself.

I'll never forget it!

Completely impractical though (two amps for one sound - the AC30 is heavy enough by itself).

I've spent my whole life trying to re-create it. Never came close

 

My completed stereo 400 PS rig (970 tube watts) with a Motion Sound R3-147 electro-mechanical leslie simulator, is the best guitar tone I've heard in my life. Completely worth the several months of research and searching, custom cabinet planning, and funds.

 

It's a tie for me...Victoria Double Deluxe and Victoria Bassman. The tweed Pro (Victoria or Clark) is a very, very, close second. The Speed Shop Tweed Deluxe is right up there too.

 

I probably have to say a Dr. Z Maz 18 Jr NR. The first time I played one was with a Tom Anderson strat style guitar. Tone was ridiculous. I was grinning from ear to ear. I like the 38 as well, but the 18 has something special.

 

My '60 Tweed Bassman refurbished by Big Cookie, with channels jumpered and cranked to about halfway.

 

I know that his will sound crazy, but it was an early 1970's? SG with P90's through a solid state Pignose Crossmix 150R with two ten inch speakers. I've been chasing that sound ever since. I found a Pignose Crossmix with one twelve inch speaker, but it's just not the same sound, so I purchased a project amp where someone chopped the amp from the cabinet. I plan to build a new cabinet and fill it with two ten inch pignose speakers. Keeping my fingers crossed!

 

Well I can tell you it wasn't a DUMBLE cuz I did play one once and it SUCKED!!!!!

There are two amps; A 1962 Fender Super and a Hiwatt Custom 50.

Both for different reasons but they did have one thing in common.

THEY WEREN'T DUMBLES!!!!

 

Marshall JCM 800 50W 1X12 combo that I purchased in Germany in 1989. Even at low volume it had that sinister growl. The second best was a single-channel JCM 900 50W head that sounded exactly like the JCM 800.

PS: I only posted to this thread because people were complaining that it wouldn't die.

 

Twin.

Any Twin.

 

Two amps I can think of that I played through that really sounded great were

1) a Legend Rock-n-Roll 50 head on a Marshall model 1936 2 x 12 cab...the Legend head had a tube preamp and solid-state power amp. Really cool crunch tone. I borrowed that combination from a friend for a couple of gigs back in the 90s with my first band. The Legend had this really cool finger-jointed natural wood-colored head cabinet and a gold chassis. It looked sort of early Mesa-Boogie.
I was using a mongrel Tele copy and a P-90-loaded Ibanez GR320 'Ghostrider" in those days.


2) an early 90s Fender Blues Deluxe 40-watt 1 x 12 combo, internal speaker disconnected, driving a really ratty Hiwatt 4 x 12 loaded with Fane speakers. It sounded so massive, punchy, ringing and articulate that my friend and I pulled one of the Fanes and installed it in the actual Blues Deluxe, and that sounded pretty great too...although not as massive as the entire 4 x 12. My friend and I were using his Tele copy and mid 70s Gibson Explorer for that test. It sounded great with either.

One other oddball combination from around that era that was a total one-trick pony but that one trick was really cool...one time at band practice my main amp was in the shop so I plugged the line out jack of my Peavey Audition 20 into an old solid-state mono QSC power amp and used it to drive a really old Peavey 2 x 10 PA cabinet (like, early square-magnet speakers old, with no tweeter or horn). With the Ibanez GR320, both P90s selected, it got this really crispy, bright tone that was kind of reminiscent of the opening intro of Seven Mary Three's song "Cumbersome." It was BRIGHT. But pretty fun for some things. I've not been able to recreate that tone since and it wasn't a tone I would want a lot of the time, but it was cutting and intense without making your teeth hurt.

 

My black-faced '74 Twin Reverb. I've been playing on a Tweed Champ for a few months, but plugged into the Twin again yesterday, the reverb is out of this world.
I think my champ is going to be on holiday for awhile.

 

A Dumble combo amp. Second to that, I love my Vox Night Train 15 watt head. I get some amazing tones outa that amp, plugged straight into it. Loves my tele too, which is a plus.

 

My 65 amps London dimed - sold it because it was crazy loud and replaced with a 65 Ventura with master voltage - I can get most of the way there but no where near as loud

beautiful with or without pedals

Pushed /13 CJ11 - perfect

and just the other week in rehearsal my tiny Marshall JTM1 combo dimed then pushed with volume from sick as blackout pedal - unexpected tones

 

Been thinking back to amps I have had, and the one tone that just blew me away was a Strat through a 200w HiWatt head into an old Marshall quad box. I bought the head back in the early '80s second hand, and it had just THE best clean tone though a 1x12 box I made (used at low volumes) . I jammed with a band in a studio one night, and got a loan of the quad box to try the HiWatt through, and wow, all I had was the Strat through an old EHX booster into the amp and it was the tone from heaven. Sadly I sold the amp to buy ski gear I would buy it back today if I knew where it was.