Budget VS Boutique

Budget VS Boutique

  • Budget

    Votes: 61 68.5%

  • Boutique

    Votes: 28 31.5%
  • Total voters
    89
Re: Budget VS Boutique

It's all about tone so cost is relative. If the right tone comes from $100 then it's worth more than a boutique. The last few years the watts continue to shrink and the nasty tone increases. For the most the big Marshall is a great end table while the 5 watter screams and cries.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

I voted budget since i cannot afford any boutique gear! I'm sure there are amps out there which i may prefer a bit more than my Laney GH50L but to be honest I like the tone i get out of it and i feel content with it. People have complimented me on my sound aswell from time to time which is nice aswell :)
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

Some of my first post is budget. Ive been on both sides of the fence. The gear and link I listed was budget for me. My regular budget does not include any gear purchases. Thats how I voted,budget.. The older blues junior's could be had for around 300 bucks. The are very good amps. The lovepeadal is a good pedal also. With pedal prices climbing and the quality of the lovepedal I feel it is worth the price. The set of Budz pups are 180. It may be a bit pricey for some of us but you could get very good tone with or without the pedal, or the pup. That was just an example in my first post. Its not my set-up. I have one amp, one pedal, and one guitar. Been full circle on going thru some boutigue gear ,and not so boutigue gear and allways went back to a Marshall. Had a famous made tweed deluxe amp and it was very nice. This may sound nuts,but ive hade a few people sit down and I a/b this amp with my wifes 1976 solid state peavey pacer set on clean with a lovepedal cot-50,with my tele. This pedal works well with the volume control on your guitar,clean to mean with a twist. The overdriven and clean, and just the amp clean on the V-word tweed where not worth the price difference. You can get that old peavey for about 100 bucks on e-bay. Dont know what it was new. But a 1000 dollars difference. No way. Sorry for the long post and I dont mean to piss off any of the boutigue gear guys,although boutigue gear is nice too.
 
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Re: Budget VS Boutique

vasshu the humanoid typhoon said:
most off the shelf stuff works very well.....
The only problem i have as time goes on, is that the modern trend is to make it so nice that it looses its edge.
So i prefer more of the middle road things, classics so to say...stuff that is not perfect and trimmed too much.

I do mod stuff, but i have the priviledge to work where parts do not cost me an arm or a leg......
And where getting knowledge is part of the job...and my mods usually takes me closer to the edge, i like to take out nice and stuff abit more nasty in there!

I prefer a more realistic approach to gear, most boutique is way to refined for my taste...i am probally way to oldschool for all that crap...haha
so i buy the old japanse stuff, and some us classics when i can find them, as for modern stuff i like the hardwire pedals....
But i guess i am into neither too cheap nor too expensive...just something that is proven and can get you interesting places if you want!
Click to expand...

+1
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

I'm a hack at lead guitar and reasonably accomplished at rhythm. I like having well crafted gear. My gear exceeds my playing ability but it also inspires me to practice more. The tones I can coax from my gear gently caresses the deep down lizard brain that is in all of our pleasure centers. It's my opium. it's sex in my ears. (not literally you sick pup)
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

Being in the repair business, I have developed an appreciation for most of the tube gear out there. Most of my business deals with vintage amps and I do prefer them; mostly from an easy of service perspective. A good amount of the newer, mass produced stuff sounds pretty darn good but is so difficult to service that they might as well be considered as disposable. The "boutique" amps are generally built in the old way and are usually as servicable as the vintage stuff...though not always.

I see four distict categories emerging:

(1) mass produced, lower quality amps
(2) mass produced, higher quality amps
(3) limited production, lower quality amps
(4) limited production, higher quality amps

Boutique used to be exclusively item 4 but now seems to be interpreted to include items 2 & 3 and occasionally, through subterfuge, 1.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

I think that I tend to prefer number 2 on glassman's list (does Mesa Boogie count?). Don't know whether that counts as boutique or not.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

I dug it up to save mwalluk from having to do a four pager on his own...he can add to this one.

Or not.

:friday:
 
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Re: Budget VS Boutique

As long as the amp sounds good and isnt flakey I dont really care. I have some boutique stuff (Harry Joyce), some nice production stuff (ENGL, Diezel DR Z) and some inexpensive stuff (Blackstar and Peavey)

THey all do their jobs nicely.


Note: ENGL and Diezel are expensive but are made in fairly sizeable factories. They are not boutique amps. Neither are Mesas.
 
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Re: Budget VS Boutique

There are two axis you can judge an amp on. The first is tone, the second is build quality.

There are a lot of mass produced amps with sh*t tastic build quality that sound great. They are in no way roadworthy and will take a huge dump on you in the middle of a set, not a question of if but when, but they can sound quite good, at home or in the garage where they belong.

There are a lot of amps built like brick sh*thouses desiged by EEs that sound like dog squat. You can throw them down the stairs and they'll work great (well, after you replace the broken tubes) but they just don't sound that good.

Then there are a few that sound great and are built great. If you are gigging or care about long term value, this is what you should get. These don't have to be expensive. Vintage Fenders fall into this category, and silver faces are still a silly bargain on ebay. If they were new and said some "boutique" name on them, you couldn't touch the quality for under $2.5K. Buy one, get it's standard maintenance done (caps and tubes) and your grandchildren will be playing it long after you are farting dust in the dirt somewhere.

You can make some of the crappy Peavey/Crate/Fender/Marshall etc. amps roadworthy by replacing some of the crappy under rated parts and hitting all solder joints by hand, and you can easily mod (well, I can anyway) a good hand wired amp to sound like damn near anything you want. So there is the 3rd category there of "things that didn't start life sounding good and or roadworthy, but have been made so after the fact".
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

What do would you consider FRyette, Engl, Framus, Splawn, etc b/c they aren't boutique per se, but they aren't in the category of mass produced like Mesa, Fender, Marshall, etc.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

mwalluk said:
What do would you consider FRyette, Engl, Framus, Splawn, etc b/c they aren't boutique per se, but they aren't in the category of mass produced like Mesa, Fender, Marshall, etc.
Click to expand...

Splawn are boutique, they just don't charge $4000 for an amp head.

Those amps and cabs are all made to order by roughly 4 dudes in one shop, start to finish. That's boutique by definition.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

sosomething said:
Splawn are boutique, they just don't charge $4000 for an amp head.

Those amps and cabs are all made to order by roughly 4 dudes in one shop, start to finish. That's boutique by definition.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't Fryette also be considered. It's a pretty small shop.

That's why I brought that up. a lot of people have a misconception about boutique amps. They hear boutique and think that equals expensive that are only "1%" better than what's out there.

Meanwhile, you could get a Fryette or Splawn for less than a MArshall or Mesa.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

mwalluk said:
Wouldn't Fryette also be considered. It's a pretty small shop.

That's why I brought that up. a lot of people have a misconception about boutique amps. They hear boutique and think that equals expensive that are only "1%" better than what's out there.

Meanwhile, you could get a Fryette or Splawn for less than a MArshall or Mesa.
Click to expand...

Really? I wanna move to where you are. Fryettes and Splawns outprice Marshall by almost double the price and mesas by a bit.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

Toe-Knee said:
Really? I wanna move to where you are. Fryettes and Splawns outprice Marshall by almost double the price and mesas by a bit.
Click to expand...

America - land of the overpriced Marshalls. I'd never buy a new one.

Or a used one - but that's a different topic.
 
Re: Budget VS Boutique

Agileguy_101 said:
America - land of the overpriced Marshalls. I'd never buy a new one.

Or a used one - but that's a different topic.
Click to expand...

Well to be honest after my few encounters with them i wouldn't either. I would gladly build and mod the living crap out of one though but it wouldn't much resemble a marshall at the end of it all :D
 
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