Obtainable amps you;re kicking yourself for not buying when they first came out.

[jeremy]

if i had know what a trainwreck was when my buddy in jersey was talking about getting one, i woulda come up with the $1500 he was asking back then

 

[Cynical]

Is the dynamics knob a compressor or something else?

It's just a depth knob.

 

[misterwhizzy]

I used to see used Laney AORs pop up for $350 or less all the time. I kind of wish I would have been able to get one.

 

[Top-L]

I wish i bought an ADA MP-1 when they were selling for £100-150 a few years back. Now theyre £5-600 or have been poorly modded.

Rose colored glasses. I've owned two. Really high noise floor. All those patches but it gets two basic sounds: clean and shred.

I think they are commanding high prices because douchebag streamers are using them for background props. Like having three of them in a rack gives them 80s cred.

If you want better rack pres from that era, Rocktron Piranha or Rocktron Pro Gap.

 

[Securb]

I used to see used Laney AORs pop up for $350 or less all the time. I kind of wish I would have been able to get one.

Should have never gotten rid of mine

 

[LLL]

Coulda had a Plexi (used of course) from a guitar store back in the 80's, but being the dumbfuck n00b that I was, I insisted on a new Marshall... a 2210. :lol:

 

[Phantasmagoria]

The first "real" amp I had for an extended period of time WAS a beaten up old JTM 45 & an equally beaten up 1x12 . Was'nt mine but a close friend at the time asked me to hold on to it for him until he returned from a long-ish trip abroad. I think he made the cab himself.

I had it for almost 6 months and pretty much thought it sucked 'cause it lacked the gain I was looking for. I only ever played it with a pedal in front (DOD death metal /Metalzone/Ibanez Thrash Soundtank).When He got back he asked me if I wanted to buy it off him (for peanuts) but I had my eye on a used H&K Kettner Switchblade (endorsed at the time by Lars Johansson from Candlemass) which I ended up buying instead but which turned out to be a PoS with a (most likely) blown output tranny and I sold a short while later "as is" for peanuts.

With hindsight I should have probably bought the JTM45 :laugh2:

 

[Empty Pockets]

Can't believe we made it this far without mentioning Sunn. I have a 90s model T 4x12 I paid about $100 to get, and a first-generation model T I paid $300 for. That head sells for more than $4k regularly nowadays.

 

[Mincer]

I bought my Blue Angel years after they were discontinued. I should have bought it years earlier, but they are pretty rare. When I finally found one, I got it right away (at a good price too).

 

[Toe-Knee]

Rose colored glasses. I've owned two. Really high noise floor. All those patches but it gets two basic sounds: clean and shred.

I think they are commanding high prices because ******bag streamers are using them for background props. Like having three of them in a rack gives them 80s cred.

If you want better rack pres from that era, Rocktron Piranha or Rocktron Pro Gap.

Oh I know the drawbacks but also how to fix them.

Really tough I should just build my own as I only want one the sounds and it wouldn't even cost that much to do.

 

[Sirion]

Rose colored glasses. I've owned two. Really high noise floor. All those patches but it gets two basic sounds: clean and shred.

I think they are commanding high prices because ******bag streamers are using them for background props. Like having three of them in a rack gives them 80s cred.

If you want better rack pres from that era, Rocktron Piranha or Rocktron Pro Gap.

I will have to disagree on this one. I own two MP-1s, and I am having a third one reconstructed. To be fair, the channel switching thing was a bit gimmicky, but I think that their use as a mid-gain unit using the tube clean channel is greatly overlooked (IDK why, people might be fooled by the channel name?), but suffice it to say that they were good enough for AC/DC to adopt them for a while. But yeah, the unit lives on the distortion sound, and it has a certain greasiness to it that I have failed to achieve with any other unit. I can't comment on the Rocktron stuff, but I've owned units like the Peavey RockMaster and all the Marshall units from that era, and ended up selling them all because I preferred the ADA.

 

[Sirion]

I wish i bought an ADA MP-1 when they were selling for £100-150 a few years back. Now theyre £5-600 or have been poorly modded.

I must admit that I have a certain loathing for the modding scene here. The MP-1s are such a limited resource in the first place, and there really isn't anything quite like them. Why use THAT as your foundation to emulate a 5150, which is common as dirt?

 

[Securb]

Can't believe we made it this far without mentioning Sunn. I have a 90s model T 4x12 I paid about $100 to get, and a first-generation model T I paid $300 for. That head sells for more than $4k regularly nowadays.

I recently saw a Beta Lead in a little music store in NH at a decent price. I passed on it even though I was thinking about all the great tones Jon Butcher pulled out of his.

 

[Toe-Knee]

I must admit that I have a certain loathing for the modding scene here. The MP-1s are such a limited resource in the first place, and there really isn't anything quite like them. Why use THAT as your foundation to emulate a 5150, which is common as dirt?

Yup. Irritating. I don't mind some mods. Reducing noise etc but hacking them into a poor facsimile of a commonly available amp really bugs me.

 

[Top-L]

I will have to disagree on this one. I own two MP-1s, and I am having a third one reconstructed. To be fair, the channel switching thing was a bit gimmicky, but I think that their use as a mid-gain unit using the tube clean channel is greatly overlooked (IDK why, people might be fooled by the channel name?), but suffice it to say that they were good enough for AC/DC to adopt them for a while. But yeah, the unit lives on the distortion sound, and it has a certain greasiness to it that I have failed to achieve with any other unit. I can't comment on the Rocktron stuff, but I've owned units like the Peavey RockMaster and all the Marshall units from that era, and ended up selling them all because I preferred the ADA.

I much preferred the RockMaster, in fact any of the Peavy Ultra amps. The Rocktron Piranha is better imo than the MP1, it has three sounds (one with a gain stage removed), and the EQ is much more useful with sweepable mid parametric. And it has hush built in.

It has it's sound and can do a few things. But there is a reason everyone sold them off and you could get them for < $200 for two decades.

I think the MP-1 was the first of its kind, a merger of midi tech into a hot rodded marshall circuit, so at that time it was a very cool thing. In 1987 there weren't many amps that could do the MP-1 thing stock. As far a a useful piece of gear in 2022?? Like I said its distinctive look makes it popular with streamers who want 80s cred.

 

[LLL]

There's no real need to mod the ADA MP-1, except for the coin battery section.

Comes stock with a coin battery soldered to the board itself (which goes dead after ~20 years). Replace with a retrofit coin battery holder, new battery and you're good to go.

I have the 1.38 version, all stock except I did the coin battery holder mod... had it since 1989. Need more gain? Slap a stompbox in front (Nuno used a RAT).

 

[Sirion]

It has it's sound and can do a few things. But there is a reason everyone sold them off and you could get them for < $200 for two decades.

I think the MP-1 was the first of its kind, a merger of midi tech into a hot rodded marshall circuit, so at that time it was a very cool thing. In 1987 there weren't many amps that could do the MP-1 thing stock. As far a a useful piece of gear in 2022?? Like I said its distinctive look makes it popular with streamers who want 80s cred.

I think this is basically the story of a lot of eighties gear, be it MP-1s, Rockman stuff, Kramers and Peavey Vandenbergs: they got heinously unpopular for a while with the in-crowd, accumulated a niche audience of fans and exploded once the eighties nostalgia wave reached them, to the point where they are now approaching their original price and people are looking into making modern recreations of them.

For what it is worth, I'm not familiar with anything today that quite does the MP-1 thing. It has a certain smoothness to it that, for want of a more accurate description, has a very desirable sound for integrating percussive techniques and harmonics (even at lower gain) into your playing. I just haven't found any amp that makes palm muting jump out like that, and for something like Nuno's stuff that is important. Hot-rodded Marshall may be part of its DNA, but my JCM 800 or JVM certainly don't do the trick, nor did the RockMaster that I let go. So you can blame YouTubers all you want, but honestly I think that a lot of the crowd interested in them have been around for almost two decades if not more by now.

 

[Sirion]

There's no real need to mod the ADA MP-1, except for the coin battery section.

Comes stock with a coin battery soldered to the board itself (which goes dead after ~20 years). Replace with a retrofit coin battery holder, new battery and you're good to go.

I have the 1.38 version, all stock except I did the coin battery holder mod... had it since 1989. Need more gain? Slap a stompbox in front (Nuno used a RAT).

Agreed. I have had mine noise modded, but this is a non-intrusive affair that doesn't change the sound of the unit, and mine needed some maintenance anyway. I have a hard time seeing why anybody would need more gain than what is already on tap in them.

 

[Top-L]

I think this is basically the story of a lot of eighties gear, be it MP-1s, Rockman stuff, Kramers and Peavey Vandenbergs: they got heinously unpopular for a while with the in-crowd, accumulated a niche audience of fans and exploded once the eighties nostalgia wave reached them, to the point where they are now approaching their original price and people are looking into making modern recreations of them.

For what it is worth, I'm not familiar with anything today that quite does the MP-1 thing. It has a certain smoothness to it that, for want of a more accurate description, has a very desirable sound for integrating percussive techniques and harmonics (even at lower gain) into your playing. I just haven't found any amp that makes palm muting jump out like that, and for something like Nuno's stuff that is important. Hot-rodded Marshall may be part of its DNA, but my JCM 800 or JVM certainly don't do the trick, nor did the RockMaster that I let go. So you can blame YouTubers all you want, but honestly I think that a lot of the crowd interested in them have been around for almost two decades if not more by now.

If its that important to your sound, I'm certain that someone has duplicated the circuit and is selling a modern incarnation.

My belief about the MP-1 is that it doesnt have as many gain stages, but the ones it has a very hot, so rather than getting super saturated like a Peavy Ultra, it stays open.

 

[Metalman_666]

Back when I was getting serious about guitar and wanted to level up my gear, I had a chance to buy a used Peavey Ultra Plus head with footswitch. Still haven't looked for another or tried one since, but I have always been curious.

Ended up with the Triple XXX instead which was sweet for a few years!

Then a few years ago, I had a buddy working at local music store (Sherwood) give me a tip in advance of their annual Midnight Madness sale that a mint 6505 head was going for $550 CAD. I told him not to put it aside and decided I'd go to check it out that night. By the time I showed it up was gone!

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