Opinions on a Shiva 20th

[Thundermtn]

It's time to start amp hunting and I haven't seriously checked out amps in a decade. Have my first gig in eight years coming up and want something with a solid but open distortion channel but also with a killer vintage-esque clean tone. I keep ending up at a Shiva 20th.

Does anyone have one and is it a keeper or will it be a flavor of the month? It's a several hour drive to even test play one.

What else should I be checking out? Under $3k please. I'll be running through my 4x12 recto slant. Thanks

 

[VinceT]

Re: Opinions on a Shiva 20th

It's time to start amp hunting and I haven't seriously checked out amps in a decade. Have my first gig in eight years coming up and want something with a solid but open distortion channel but also with a killer vintage-esque clean tone. I keep ending up at a Shiva 20th.

Does anyone have one and is it a keeper or will it be a flavor of the month? It's a several hour drive to even test play one.

What else should I be checking out? Under $3k please. I'll be running through my 4x12 recto slant. Thanks

What music do you play (reference tones)?


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[Thundermtn]

Re: Opinions on a Shiva 20th

Along the lines of.... Mastodon, The Sword, Black Sabbath. Big and doomy guitar work, needs to track pretty fast though b/c that's one of the things that bugs me about my rectifier. Pedaling the amp a little to get heavier on the lead channel is worth it to me for a killer clean channel.

 

[Thundermtn]

Re: Opinions on a Shiva 20th

Thanks! They've come a long way on their cleans, from the videos I could find it's about 90% of the way to where I'm wanting to be. It'll go to the short list b/c the crunch sound is really nice and the high gain is really really good.

 

[allbutromeo]

Re: Opinions on a Shiva 20th

Have you taken a look at the Mesa/Boogie MkV? It does a lot of things very well and the clean channel is beautiful.
Shivas are great too though, I've never heard anything bad about them

 

[Thundermtn]

Re: Opinions on a Shiva 20th

From what I've heard the Mark V' s are hard to get perfect tone out of on the fly. Now their new Triple Crown 100 is looking and sounding pretty sweet, hopefully they hit shelves pretty soon and I can run one. My Mesa dealer is only a 30 min. drive.

 

[Cynical]

Re: Opinions on a Shiva 20th

The Shiva 20A is far from the worst choice you could make for this, but staying within Bogner's line, the Helios or the Ecstasy blue channel are probably both more natural choices (although I'm not sure about the Helios's cleans) -- the Shiva 20A is probably a bit more modern/compressed than what you're after. For a cheaper option, the 5153 (red channel won't be your bag, but good cleans and the blue channel will work well for this) or the Laney Ironheart (the Iommi sig doesn't have a true clean channel) are also worth looking into.