Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Dumble tone is overrated.

The Recto series is homogenous and overrated.

Perfecting your technique is overrated when you can turn up the gain and play super fast, more notes through expensive gear always compensates for terrible vibrato and poor hand coordination.

Jim Marshall made a bunch of shrill, crappy sounding amps that nobody likes, and they've gotten crappier over time, people just think gold is cool.

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Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

^^^I disagree with all that,,,,,,but it's the best post so far in the thread IMO.
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Past $1k, you get less and less for your money.
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Past $1k, you get less and less for your money.

Yeah, and on Solid Body Electric Guitars past around 1200 bucks, you transition from functional and tonal improvements to pure aesthetic appointments that have no impact on tone or function.

For Semi and Hollow bodies, it starts a little higher.
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

The Line 6 Spidervalve is, for the money, a hidden jem.

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Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

If you're not looking for distortion, you shouldn't even bother trying to amplify whatever garbage music it is you think people want to hear you play.
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

If you're not looking for distortion, you shouldn't even bother trying to amplify whatever garbage music it is you think people want to hear you play.
Would you have said that to Segovia?

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Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

^^ don't give a hoot what an amp sounds like clean personally....so I can relate.. :laugh2:
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Speaking of, and speaking of controversy...

The "Brown Sound" has nothing to do with amps.

In talking with Billboard’s Chuck Klosterman, Van Halen was asked if he has synesthesia, which essentially is the ability to “see” sound, as one sense triggers a reaction in another sense in the body.

Interestingly enough, Van Halen said that when he referred to the brown sound, he actually meant his brother Alex’s drumming.

That’s funny, because people took that whole ‘brown sound’ thing totally out of context,” he said. “I was never talking about my guitar tone. I was talking about Alex’s snare drum. I’ve always thought Alex’s snare drum sounds like he’s beating on a log. It’s very organic. So it wasn’t my brown sound. It was Alex’s.

Klosterman then asked how the confusion originally occurred.

“It happened years ago. People would ask me about his drumming, and the only way I could explain it was that it had a very brown sound,” Van Halen noted. “I’m glad you brought this up, actually, so people can finally understand what I was talking about.”
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Small combo amps sound boxy and terrible. (I'm looking at you, Princeton)

Big combos sound great even at low volume.

The Metal Zone is the worst sounding pedal ever made.
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Dumble tone is overrated.

The Recto series is homogenous and overrated.

Perfecting your technique is overrated when you can turn up the gain and play super fast, more notes through expensive gear always compensates for terrible vibrato and poor hand coordination.

Jim Marshall made a bunch of shrill, crappy sounding amps that nobody likes, and they've gotten crappier over time, people just think gold is cool.

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The difference between playing cleanly/precisely and sloppy through distortion is incredibly obvious,m especially through the more expensive amps. Some of the best metal rhythm distortion sounds have less gain than you think and have great technique with precise, tight and hard palm muting, clarity and precision (ie. being able to make the guitar shut up between stop/start parts and not having superfluous strings ringing out.) The best shredders play precisely so you can hear every note whether it's clean or distorted as the cleaner the runs, the more clarity of each note. Anything else is a nightmare to sound engineers. Rectifiers are awesome and it all comes down to how you use them. They're incredibly versatile.
 
Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

A halfway decent guitar with mid gain pickups into aMetalzone into the cleanest loudest SS amp you can find through fairly neutral speakers that can handle the power without breaking up, gets you the best base death metal tone.
Of course, then there's picking...

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Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

Small combo amps sound boxy and terrible. (I'm looking at you, Princeton)

Big combos sound great even at low volume.

The Metal Zone is the worst sounding pedal ever made.

In defense of the Metal Zone, I saw a video where Ola Englund used it as a stand-alone pre-amp going into the return of an effects loop, and it sounded SO much better than running it into the front of the same amp. Worlds of difference in the tone.

 
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Re: Controversial Amplifier Hot Takes

In defense of the Metal Zone, I saw a video where Ola Englund used it as a stand-alone pre-amp going into the return of an effects loop, and it sounded SO much better than running it into the front of the same amp. Worlds of difference in the tone.




In offense against the Metal Zone, that's a demonstration of how much better the metal zone sounds when not used as designed.
 
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