J Moose
New member
I tried to tag this on Jonesers thread but I can't find it. Search "spider valve" or even Line 6 and nothing comes up. Whats up with that?
Anyway... I was on my way back from Nyack NY this afternoon & had to stop at Pearl Paints in Paramus NJ... right next to them was Victors House of Music... NOW it's a Guitar Center!??
mg:
I spotted some kid shreddin' away on a 2x12 Spider Valve & the "angry bees tone of doom" and continued snooping around until he had moved onto some other amp...
I had been playing a pretty nice NOS '67 Tele (rosewood board) in the "quiet room" and plugged in the Spider Valve with that & tried to instantly dial away from the angry swarm... lol
First thing I noticed were all the preset names... Meshuggah; Deftones; Maroon 5; Ministy; Vertical Horizon; Lots of "metal bands" fer sure. Can we say "target marketing"? I knew we could! lol
Most all of the presets & their variations were loaded with FX and had the wild volume variations that have been mentioned before. One preset would be a reasonable volume, next one was like that opening scene from "Back to the Future" where Marty gets blasted into the back wall!
Eventually I came across the 'INXS' preset which was fairly stripped back with no delays or BS & started turning knobs & putting it through a good workout...
Theory being to start with a "good" baseline tone before adding junk on top. Same as I do with any other amp.
Besides the '67 Tele I also plugged in a new LP Standard towards the end of the run but I spent the majority of my time with the Tele. It felt great & I love Teles...
Before going further I gotta say, I wanted to like this amp but it's really not THAT much different then any other Lame 6 amp I've played.
There's six "main" models with a high & low gain version of each for a total of 12. I spent a bit of time with each but never tried the super high-gain metal models... not really my bag & I had already heard the youngster with an Ibanez or whatever shreddin' away... Never got it past "crunch" which still had PLENTY of gain! Enough to make the Lesters pickups squeal at a bedroom volume & sitting three-four feet from the amp!
Overall the 'Valve' was fairly unresponsive to changes in picking & dynamics. I felt really "disconnected" from it and there was little give & take like you'd experience with a (ahem) "real" tube amp. On the lower/mid gain models, turning down the guitar volume yeilded a thinner, sharp tone with a weird midrange breaking, almost like a noise gate chatter but only on the high frequencies. Not very playable. Or at least enjoyable to play.
I found that most all of the models had a boomy/muddy bottom end & could get kind of spikey/harsh up top. Big ringing open chords played with any amount of gain were somewhat murky. Never flabby, but wooly. Dialing the low back to about 11 o'clock helped took meat away from single note stuff, so I'd end up turning the presence down... then the treble down & presence back up... lol
It also didn't take well to complex chords, #11's; major 9th diads etc. Came off as "one sound" rather then hearing the separation between the notes. It likes power chords a whole lot!
All of the tone controls were fairly responsive and there was a good, usable range across the board. Build quality also seemed excellent. All the knobs & switches felt pretty solid. Nothing to whine about there. It also didn't break up/fart out when I cranked it up unlike the Flextones which always gave out & had very limited headroom...
It's probably the "best" sounding Lame 6 amp I've ever heard and/or played... but that's not saying much of anything. It's no POD killer. That's for sure.
It also didn't seem all that different then running a POD into the FX return of a good tube head which is something I've done several times.
I dunno. If you dig the Line 6 stuff or just the concept of multiple amps/sounds from one box like an ADA MP1 then you might just love this thing.
For me, there's just nothing there to love.
Peace.
Anyway... I was on my way back from Nyack NY this afternoon & had to stop at Pearl Paints in Paramus NJ... right next to them was Victors House of Music... NOW it's a Guitar Center!??
mg:I spotted some kid shreddin' away on a 2x12 Spider Valve & the "angry bees tone of doom" and continued snooping around until he had moved onto some other amp...
I had been playing a pretty nice NOS '67 Tele (rosewood board) in the "quiet room" and plugged in the Spider Valve with that & tried to instantly dial away from the angry swarm... lol
First thing I noticed were all the preset names... Meshuggah; Deftones; Maroon 5; Ministy; Vertical Horizon; Lots of "metal bands" fer sure. Can we say "target marketing"? I knew we could! lol
Most all of the presets & their variations were loaded with FX and had the wild volume variations that have been mentioned before. One preset would be a reasonable volume, next one was like that opening scene from "Back to the Future" where Marty gets blasted into the back wall!
Eventually I came across the 'INXS' preset which was fairly stripped back with no delays or BS & started turning knobs & putting it through a good workout...
Theory being to start with a "good" baseline tone before adding junk on top. Same as I do with any other amp.
Besides the '67 Tele I also plugged in a new LP Standard towards the end of the run but I spent the majority of my time with the Tele. It felt great & I love Teles...
Before going further I gotta say, I wanted to like this amp but it's really not THAT much different then any other Lame 6 amp I've played.
There's six "main" models with a high & low gain version of each for a total of 12. I spent a bit of time with each but never tried the super high-gain metal models... not really my bag & I had already heard the youngster with an Ibanez or whatever shreddin' away... Never got it past "crunch" which still had PLENTY of gain! Enough to make the Lesters pickups squeal at a bedroom volume & sitting three-four feet from the amp!
Overall the 'Valve' was fairly unresponsive to changes in picking & dynamics. I felt really "disconnected" from it and there was little give & take like you'd experience with a (ahem) "real" tube amp. On the lower/mid gain models, turning down the guitar volume yeilded a thinner, sharp tone with a weird midrange breaking, almost like a noise gate chatter but only on the high frequencies. Not very playable. Or at least enjoyable to play.
I found that most all of the models had a boomy/muddy bottom end & could get kind of spikey/harsh up top. Big ringing open chords played with any amount of gain were somewhat murky. Never flabby, but wooly. Dialing the low back to about 11 o'clock helped took meat away from single note stuff, so I'd end up turning the presence down... then the treble down & presence back up... lol
It also didn't take well to complex chords, #11's; major 9th diads etc. Came off as "one sound" rather then hearing the separation between the notes. It likes power chords a whole lot!
All of the tone controls were fairly responsive and there was a good, usable range across the board. Build quality also seemed excellent. All the knobs & switches felt pretty solid. Nothing to whine about there. It also didn't break up/fart out when I cranked it up unlike the Flextones which always gave out & had very limited headroom...
It's probably the "best" sounding Lame 6 amp I've ever heard and/or played... but that's not saying much of anything. It's no POD killer. That's for sure.
It also didn't seem all that different then running a POD into the FX return of a good tube head which is something I've done several times.
I dunno. If you dig the Line 6 stuff or just the concept of multiple amps/sounds from one box like an ADA MP1 then you might just love this thing.
For me, there's just nothing there to love.
Peace.
Last edited:
good review bro...