Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

[phil_104]

Interesting how things work.

So, back in 2007, I bought a Fender Blues Deluxe. It was my first ''real'' tube amp that I bought after much deliberation. I was very new to amps, and liked it a lot. That was back in the day when I played a PRS and Godin guitars. My tastes evolved, and I started to get curious about higher gain options, so I ended up selling the Blues Deluxe to a friend to fund another purchase.

At that point, I started the circle of amps. I bought a Traynor amp or some sort that seemed like a good all around-er, but that didn't last super long. I then started to get into Mesa amps, which I loved for a little while, when my band was starting out and we had our first singer. I got an Express 5:25, then a Stiletto Ace and a variety of cabs. I liked the Mesa vibe with the PRS, but I soon started to feel like the entire vibe was good, but not what I wanted, so I started to get back into a late 60s early 70s sound. I ended up selling the PRS, the Mesa amps and started going nuts on Gibson guitars coupled with Fender amps. I've been rocking that out for a couple of years now, and I'm really, really happy. For the last 2 or so, my main amp has been a little Fender Blues Jr special edition that I absolutely love.

So anyways, the other day I buy this Fender Excelsior, and I think it's pretty cool. So I start thinking to myself : now that I have this thing sitting around, I could possibly swap my Blues Jr for something with a little more wattage. I start thinking that it's funny how my starting point in amps would be where I'd want to go now. Literally a week after that, my buddy to whom I sold my Blues Deluxe 5 years ago calls me up, asking what I'd do if I was him, if he wanted to downsize the Blues Deluxe for something similar.

Everything lined up, I proposed a trade (plus a few bucks in his direction), and he thought it was an awesome idea to swap the Blues Jr for the Deluxe. So with all that said and done, I'm sitting in my living room as we speak, with the first good tube amp I ever acquired, with my ES339 plugged in.

Funny how things work out.

 

[Grenade]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

Cool. Pics and clips will be needed of course.

 

[IM4Tone]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

Love my Blues Deluxe w/ matching extension cab also. Same for my Excelsior w/ Emi Lgnd 1518 and tone pot mod. Not so crazy about my Blues Jr., so it's on the block. Recently I've been mostly using a New Fender Super Sonic 22 with a great variety of tones....but just this morning I 'dusted off' the BDRI and it sounds great, so I know where you're coming from (I also play in a group doing 60's and 70's R&R).

Guess I'm a Fender addict and the Blues Dlx is one of my favorites, too.

 

[some_dude]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

My first real tube amp was a Rectifier.

I really liked my tone but after a few years I wanted to experiment. I went through a few different high gain heads before deciding to go old school with low/mid gain amps, which I eventually started augmenting with dirt/fuzz boxes. I started getting a hankering for more modern gain and the pedals just weren't cutting it. I eventually traded for another Dual Rectifier. Been happy since.

Sometimes you need to sample the grass on both sides of the fence before you know which grass you like better.

 

[phil_104]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

My first real tube amp was a Rectifier.

I really liked my tone but after a few years I wanted to experiment. I went through a few different high gain heads before deciding to go old school with low/mid gain amps, which I eventually started augmenting with dirt/fuzz boxes. I started getting a hankering for more modern gain and the pedals just weren't cutting it. I eventually traded for another Dual Rectifier. Been happy since.

Sometimes you need to sample the grass on both sides of the fence before you know which grass you like better.

I hear ya. Some of my fellow musicians see it as an inability to figure out what I like. I, on the other hand, see it as exactly the opposite.

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

Variety is the spice of life...until you get married. Then you have to do it with your gear so you don't get your butt in trouble.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

I started out when I was around 12 years old, so I've been through a lot of tonal stages....more than a circle. It's more like a circular motion.

I always had a favorite amp I considered a "main amp" but also wheeled and dealed in other amps.
Over the years, I've actually owned over 80 amps. It's kind of hard to believe, but the variety was always great. I got a chance to really learn the finer points of particular amps, and it never really cost me a ton of money since I always moved them around. But I always had a main rig as a player. The rest was for getting different vibes anytime I wanted.

Most of my life, I've preferred EL-34 amps and the British type in general...everything from clean to high gain. In the mid 90's, I mostly used 6L6 Fenders and boutiques. Then British again for over a decade.

A couple months ago, I found a Fender gem. It's a 74 Fender Silverface Pro Reverb that was blackfaced by Aspen Pitman, and completely gone through. It went to his cousin, and I bought it off him. By the time it got to me it was retubed, completely tuned like a new amp and has a Swamp Thang and Jensen C12N. It's renewed my love of 6L6's with my Fenders, Gibsons, and PRS McCartys.

So now, I pretty much have the cream that rose to the top of all the amps I've gone through.
95 Bogner 101B white chassis Ecstasy w/412 and 212
87 Marshall Jubilee 2550 fullstack
97 Matchless Chieftain 212 combo w/V30's
98 Gibson Goldtone 212 EL-84 combo
74 Fender Pro Reverb restored to 65 spec w/Mullard, Ruby, and Telefunken tubes.
Vox Valvetronix AD60VTH head. I really like the Vox blue grill modelers.
Fender Vibro Champ XD. Won the User Group Day prize!

The only amps I'm thinking about at the moment are the H&K Tubemeister 18 or 36.

 

[phil_104]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

80 is a lot of amps, lol.

The main reason for my switch, is that my band is losing a third of it's membership this summer, so I will be returning to a more lead oriented role in the future. I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a little more power under the hood.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

The main thing you did right was buying nothing but lifetime keeper guitars, so you don't have to wade through a bunch of others.

If you do that with guitars and amps, you'll end up having nothing but sweetness every time you plug in. There's nothing like having killer guitars dialed in with nice pickups, plugged into a variety of amps of every tube type. When you stumble upon perfect pickup settings with particular amps, it's tonal bliss.

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

You did a very smart thing -- you used your ears instead of following all the hype online.

I did a "full circle" kind of thing, too. When I started guitar, my grandfather had passed down a '70 Vibrolux Reverb to me, but it needed some work (of course, I didn't know that at the time). Being a rock player, I tried some different distortion pedals at the time and I wasn't happy with it so I set it aside and bought a whole line of different stuff. Years later after going through a big British phase (Vox AC15, Bogner Shivas, Hughes & Kettner Duotone/Triamps, Bad Cat Hot Cat 30, Fargen Epic 30DC....arrgh, makes my head spin...) I came back to that amp that was in the corner.

I started re-evaluating everything. My tastes changed from compression and saturation to clearer, more mid scooped tones. There was something I had liked about the Vibrolux, but it wasn't quite right. Long story short: caps changed, different speakers, tube upgrade (some NOS), a different output transformer and it's stronger and richer than it's ever been. When you start playing odd chord structures, you really need a clear amp and there's nothing quite like a Fender IMHO. I've had my fair share of amps (nothing close to my buddy Joe, thank God...lol), but Fenders are where you can really express yourself and where your practicing is really going to pay off because they're not very forgiving. I'm glad I held onto mine throughout all the other amp cycles I went through because I'd be pretty upset if I found out what I was looking for was there the entire time and I didn't have it.

People talk about boutique stuff and honestly, most of the standard production stuff sounds much better. It took walking into a Guitar Center and plugging into a Deluxe Reverb RI to figure out that there really is something to Fender amps. I also realized that writing music is a lot of fun with the amp clean and nothing else in the way - it really doesn't get any more stripped down and purer than that.

Glad to hear you've found what works for you :fing2:

 

[darnright]

Re: Got her back after 5 years : the circle of amps....

That's a cool turn of events... Happy for you that she is finally back home where she belongs!! Enjoy!!!

-dave