Re: Tell me more about SWART amps.
I just picked up an AST Pro w/ Celestion Gold speaker.
The price I paid was almost double that, so if that's legitimate you'd be a fool to not buy that on the spot. I've seen STRs and the smaller stuff like the 6V6SE sell for significantly less, but the ASTs hold their value pretty well and the AST Pro is a refined AST - bigger cab to fit larger profile speakers, bigger tone, easy connections on the back for attenuator or external speaker hookups. Heck, when I was amp hunting, I was hoping I could stumble upon a regular one for about $1200, never mind the upgraded model for less than that.
I wanted a modern amp that could hang with the vibe of vintage Fenders without needing to be serviced or tweaked and I wanted it to get pretty loud and still be portable and have a wide variety of useful tone settings (vintage Fenders are pretty finicky with settings, especially bass). It needed to have a beautiful clean tone and still get some grind. I've read reviews that describe the sound akin to a brown Fender. I haven't tried a brown-era Fender so I can't say one way or the other. What I can tell you is that the tone control is more like a treble cut (which makes me think of Vox) and the mids and bass are present without being overwhelming (thankfully, since they aren't adjustable). There is a high and low input to cater to the amount of gain from your electric guitar. What I imagine a brown Fender to be is somewhere between tweed and blackface profiles and this seems to be a good blend of the two. I like that the controls allow a lot of flexibility without causing me to endlessly tweak with it.
There's a lot I like about it. It's truly one of the best clean tones I've ever heard and takes pedals well. Even with the reverb engaged, the signal and fundamental frequencies of the notes remain very present. The trem is very sweet and warm. I enjoy the breakup, but with the stock tubes it happens at pretty loud volumes (some of this may be due to the efficiency of the Gold, as well). My amp happened to come with the Night Light attenuator and I find that makes the breakup occur at more tolerable levels (although the open high end compresses with it engaged so it's not perfect). When you push it, it can get some tweedish grind, but instead of being a flubby mess, it retains its clarity and tight low end and it sounds infinitely sweeter than the previous tweed-ish amp I owned - a Tungsten Crema Wheat. If I changed the rectifier tube, I'm sure it'd break up sooner, but I don't want to lose those cleans because they almost tie my Vibrolux and that's not an easy thing to find.
About six months ago, I played one at a party and it was good enough of an amp to cause me to buy one without having to play it again. Nothing impresses me that much with guitar gear, but there is a feel and a tonality about the AST Pro that exceeded my expectations. These amps have been around for years. You don't hear of a lot of them for sale and some high profile players like Trey Anastasio from Phish are pretty enthusiastic about using them.
