Pierre
Stratologist
Yep I've now been playing guitar for just a little over a year. I built my own amplifier, pedal, modded pickups, guitars, I'm about to mod a pedal, and build a guitar this summer. So that's right, I'm hooked on DIY. It sure is all fun but all in all I do that a lot for the same recurrant reason, to have the most versatile gear in the smallest space possible. So I'll just adress different points in the gear, and explain my experiences with them, and at the end maybe even throw in a rig or two and explain who they'd suit...
First... The AMP! (who would have thought :smack: )
It's only been a year but I've already been convinced that tube > everything else. Not by people, not by music store reps, but by my own ears. I simply one day thought 'eh, my Peavey Envoy sounds cool, but what is the tube sound?' and therefore I went to try a little Laney LC15R at the shop. It'd cost 150 euros more than the Peavey, and hell! What a tone machine! EVEN at low volumes and for clean tones (where Solid State performs the best, I believe) you truly can hear the difference. And the amp is small, and not too expensive.
So what did I do?
I found a kickass gear on a Laney AOR112 combo. Great amp, but the size of a midget elephant. Now my student flat room doesn't agree with this. The neighbors either. Common sense: 1, Pierre: 0.
If you don't want tube, well then, there's SS! And I can't really comment on that. Most SS amps you'd find for a lot of money are just full with random effects and they don't attract me at all. If I were to get a SS amp I'd try out all amps under 30W and see which has the best clean tone, for reasons I'll introduce later.
And there's also Digital... Ah! I can already hear s******ings (yes, YOU! At the back). Blablabla sounds like SRV or $5,000 amp, blablabla 1,000,000 effects for $20... You get the picture. So what did I do? I got a POD 2.0 (yeaaaah... I know, I buy I buy, but I'm a uni student, I have time to play as well
). Now it was cool. I barely used the effects but this thing sounded great. First I played it in front of the Peavey with a neutral sound, then through the power amp of the Laney. First imrpovement there. The tone was not 'tube' but it was surely more organic and maybe 'truer' than before. I liked it.
But
Impossible to switch channels easily. And what's more fun than standing up, rocking out, and just use pedals?
So I found a great deal on the floorboard and got it. POD + Floorboard = GREAT versatility. But no tube sound. Le merde. Pierre: 1, Rig: 1. We're about even though. This is the stage where I'm at now. I want a smaller amp, but the POD + floorboard already provide all the versatility I need. I could sacrifice this for a tube combo, or slaughter my tone through a cheap-ish but small SS amp. I'll go for a wee tube combo like this Laney and unplug the POD for blues escapade. EH! Sounds like a plan!
Now of course, a lot of people would say 'well the tube tone mostly comes from the power amp being cranked, you don't have a stadium/studio/aircraft carrier to do it in'. To this I say... yes. But... it's not totally true. Tube preamps also do bring a certain amount of 'tubitude' in the sound, which, to my ears at least, is far from negligible. I want a 15W tube combo, and I'll probably never OD its power tubes apart from during a hypothetical gig. But I WILL get tube sound from a small size combo with loads of options. LE YAY!
First... The AMP! (who would have thought :smack: )
It's only been a year but I've already been convinced that tube > everything else. Not by people, not by music store reps, but by my own ears. I simply one day thought 'eh, my Peavey Envoy sounds cool, but what is the tube sound?' and therefore I went to try a little Laney LC15R at the shop. It'd cost 150 euros more than the Peavey, and hell! What a tone machine! EVEN at low volumes and for clean tones (where Solid State performs the best, I believe) you truly can hear the difference. And the amp is small, and not too expensive.
So what did I do?
I found a kickass gear on a Laney AOR112 combo. Great amp, but the size of a midget elephant. Now my student flat room doesn't agree with this. The neighbors either. Common sense: 1, Pierre: 0.
If you don't want tube, well then, there's SS! And I can't really comment on that. Most SS amps you'd find for a lot of money are just full with random effects and they don't attract me at all. If I were to get a SS amp I'd try out all amps under 30W and see which has the best clean tone, for reasons I'll introduce later.
And there's also Digital... Ah! I can already hear s******ings (yes, YOU! At the back). Blablabla sounds like SRV or $5,000 amp, blablabla 1,000,000 effects for $20... You get the picture. So what did I do? I got a POD 2.0 (yeaaaah... I know, I buy I buy, but I'm a uni student, I have time to play as well
). Now it was cool. I barely used the effects but this thing sounded great. First I played it in front of the Peavey with a neutral sound, then through the power amp of the Laney. First imrpovement there. The tone was not 'tube' but it was surely more organic and maybe 'truer' than before. I liked it. But
Impossible to switch channels easily. And what's more fun than standing up, rocking out, and just use pedals?
So I found a great deal on the floorboard and got it. POD + Floorboard = GREAT versatility. But no tube sound. Le merde. Pierre: 1, Rig: 1. We're about even though. This is the stage where I'm at now. I want a smaller amp, but the POD + floorboard already provide all the versatility I need. I could sacrifice this for a tube combo, or slaughter my tone through a cheap-ish but small SS amp. I'll go for a wee tube combo like this Laney and unplug the POD for blues escapade. EH! Sounds like a plan!
Now of course, a lot of people would say 'well the tube tone mostly comes from the power amp being cranked, you don't have a stadium/studio/aircraft carrier to do it in'. To this I say... yes. But... it's not totally true. Tube preamps also do bring a certain amount of 'tubitude' in the sound, which, to my ears at least, is far from negligible. I want a 15W tube combo, and I'll probably never OD its power tubes apart from during a hypothetical gig. But I WILL get tube sound from a small size combo with loads of options. LE YAY!
I realized that it may have been written in a very confusing manner :laugh2:
