Re: Carvin Bel air 50
I used to own one. The clean channel is killer, and it takes pedals well. The gripe people have w/this amp is the soak (OD) channel. It gets a muddy grit as the soak gets somewhere above 4. Carvin addressed this issue to some extent a few years ago when they switched from their own spkrs to Celetion Vin 30s. That was a huge improvement! If the amp has Carvin spkrs, I would change those out right away...people have had luck w/other spkrs besides the Vin 30s, but I was pretty happy w/them myself. For more info on which spkrs people have liked, check out the Carvin website discussion board. They are a bit biased toward Carvin over there, but there still is some great info to be had!
Prior to the point of the muddy grit kicking in, there are some very usable blues rock tones in the soak channel.
I sold the amp because something had to go, and that was the amp someone wanted. He loves the clean channel. And, while the amp was designed for 'older' rock tones, his son has been plugging some sort of heavy metal pedal into it, and using it for his grunge/thrash band. I understand that it has worked well in that application...
