Amp for dorm room.

Re: Amp for dorm room.

Buy a used Vox AD60 head, and use it with your current cab. It's the only halfstack that can be played superlow and still sound great. I can play in an apartment at 1 in the morning with the amp on the 6W setting or with headphones. You may surprise yourself and realize it's a more useful head than your 100W tube head. The built in tuner and recording outs make it an ideal practice setup. It sounds as good as a Vetta, but the wattage selector makes it like having 4 amps in one.
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

I think that 99% of tube amps would be total overkill in a dorm room to be honest.
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

I have a 15 watt Vox Valvetronix AD15VT and it is a really great amp. Although it is small and rated at 15 watts, it sounds MUCH larger than it really is. It even sounds really good at low levels. The built in effects are pretty decent too. All the amp models are very useful and sounds pretty close to the original. I highly recommend checking out this amp...
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

Guitarist said:
A DSL401 seems a bit much for a dorm room...

amen, mines definitely staying put at home.. far too heavy, loud, and *valuable* to go anywhere near uni..

i'd say get a POD.. its what i'm doing..

tom
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

Get a Pod and a set of headphones. You can always run the Pod into a stereo or boom box that has an aux input.

+1 I'm actually starting to fall in love with my POD output stereo through my PC sound card's line-in (not microphone) input. It'll make recording a no-brainer as well.

Not sure I would even consider an amp that plays "out loud", ya know? When I lived in the dorms, my acoustic was almost too much sometimes.
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

Gearjoneser said:
Buy a used Vox AD60 head, and use it with your current cab. It's the only halfstack that can be played superlow and still sound great. I can play in an apartment at 1 in the morning with the amp on the 6W setting or with headphones. You may surprise yourself and realize it's a more useful head than your 100W tube head. The built in tuner and recording outs make it an ideal practice setup. It sounds as good as a Vetta, but the wattage selector makes it like having 4 amps in one.

It's not all about volume. A 412, or even 212 cab in the average dorm room would dominate the entire room, and in some cases leave litterally no floor space!
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

You may want to wait a bit and really get a much better idea of the environment you're going to be living in. As a former Resident Assistant and Admin RA I can tell you that all it took was one idiot cranking a half-stack to get guitar amps banned from the dorms. Part of my job was to tell students that the half-stack they carted up to college couldn't go into their rooms.

Of course, I was also the same guy who told his residents "If I don't see it, hear it, smell it or even taste it then as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist."
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

I live in a condo which isn't quite as restrictive as a dorm room... but I've been there and done that too. In the first place if you are going to have a roommate it should be another rock musician. My first roommate was a classical cellist and listening to me practising an unamplified electric guitar was too much for him. :( My second roommate had played guitar professionally and he had a 40W Silvertone twin amp and I had a 30W Danelectro. But I also played with a guy down the hall who had a BF Champ amp that we would bring down to the store room- both of us plugged into the same amp and it worked great... nobody could figure out where the noise was coming from. That was back in 1969...

As for today, GC has been selling the Epiphone Valve Juniors for $119 and they are basically like a cheap Chinese version of the Gibson Les Paul Jr amp that sells for $600. It's basically like an old tweed Champ, but with an EL84 instead of a 6V6. There is just a single knob for volume and that's it. MF is selling the Epiphone Galaxie 10 for $149, which has 5 knobs including Gain so that you can get distortion without pushing the single-ended 6L6 too hard. These amps give you some real tube sounds, although 5 watts is too loud for most dorm rooms. Another slick practice amp is the Kustom Tube 12 which is mainly solid state but it has a 12AX7 for smoke flavoring.

If you want to be able to crank up your amp all the way, get an all-tube Nano Head from ZVex which is rated at 1/2 a watt. It costs around $400 but it would sound really good plugged into your existing head. Here are two tunes I recorded using the Nano Head plugged into a basic combo cab with a 12" Jensen reissue:

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/mp3/blue_gtr/0c2_beepin_blues.mp3

http://www.blueguitar.org/new/mp3/blue_gtr/0c4_stormy_moonday.mp3

Another option is one of the many tabletop multi-processors that they are selling these days. Get one that will interface with your computer so you can record direct. The Boss tabletop box that I picked up has two small speakers in case you get headaches from headphones...

Just my 2 cents...
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

wow, thanks for all the feedback guys.

Blueguitar, what boss processor are you talking about, that sounds really cool.
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

Brian110687 said:
wow, thanks for all the feedback guys.

Blueguitar, what boss processor are you talking about, that sounds really cool.

The GS-10. But you might want to check out the Vox one that uses a 12AX7 tube (many people here mentioned Vox so it would have some of that same technology).
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

Nite_Maresz_25 said:
I still say you go for a triple recto...
wow.. the 1st metal thing i've seen you say.


i'd rather you get a real amp, like a powerball but listen to him, he knows what's good for you. :D






but if you're not as metal as this, get a roland cube30
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

I would say one of the Vox modeling amps.

Where ya going to school?
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

I would look into getting a 2x12 amp and bring the amp head you got. Doing this allows you to gig worthy rig if you plan to do this at college. If not I would probably follow everyone else's advice about getting something like a podxt. If you can deal with low volumes on your amp I would bring it.
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

NOT a tube amp - it'll be too loud, man!!! Get a valvetronix, or a pod / v-amp to plug into an amp of some sort.
 
Re: Amp for dorm room.

Davey said:
wow.. the 1st metal thing i've seen you say.


i'd rather you get a real amp, like a powerball but listen to him, he knows what's good for you. :D






but if you're not as metal as this, get a roland cube30

LMFAO!!!:laugh2: :laugh2: :laugh2:
 
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