R/E/P Community

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Pages: [1] 2 3  All   Go Down

Author Topic: cheap guitar amp for clean tones  (Read 16263 times)

Benmrx

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 105
cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« on: August 30, 2005, 06:52:22 PM »

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a decent, yet cheap guitar amp for getting clean tones.  This seems to be the big trouble spot in my studio.  Bands usually bring in amps that can get some decent crunch sounds and the big distortion, but I can never get a good honest clean tone and at this point I'm convinced that the problem is with the amp, and not the guitar, mic or preamp.  It seems this becomes the most problematic when trying to get down a nice picked out section.

I have a Gibson SG, and there is usually a Telecaster around in addition to what the band brings.

Any ideas?.......I would love to keep it under $300.  

anyone used one of these before?

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=guitar/search/detail/b ase_pid/480040/
Logged

bounce

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 80
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2005, 07:30:12 PM »

I think that would be an Excellent choice for clean tones with your guitars depending on what pickups are in them, of course ; ) Tech 21 amps are really punchy and have round snappy clean tones without being harsh in my experience but, of course, that was with my guitars...
Le Paul seemed to like them ; )

mckay
Logged
McKay Garner
Bounce Inventive Audio
Los Angeles

Benmrx

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 105
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2005, 10:08:20 PM »

I've heard nothing but great reviews on their bass DI's, so I figured their guitar amps couldn't be too bad.
Logged

Chad Sims

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 114
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2005, 10:40:59 PM »

Everybody is gonna hate me for saying it but some of the best clean tones I have ever recorded are with a Roland Jazz Chorus. I haven't looked but they can't be that pricey used.
Logged

Jack Schitt

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 648
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2005, 05:41:44 AM »

Peavey Classic 30 or Fender Blues Jr.
Logged

floodstage

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 543
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2005, 06:46:12 AM »

Denny W. wrote on Wed, 31 August 2005 04:41

Peavey Classic 30 or Fender Blues Jr.


Both of those are very useful amps.  

A bit above your budget, but I can't help but gloat somewhere....
I just scored a blackface Princeton Reverb for 400!

[evil scientist laugh on] woo hoo hoo ho ho ho woo hoo hoo ho ho ho! [/evil scientist laugh off]
Logged

kayagum

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 9
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2005, 09:03:49 AM »

Go direct. Either use a good DI box (Avalon, Groove Tubes, Radial, Countryman) with a good preamp, or use an amp simulator- I like the SansAmp and the Hughes&Kettner Tubeman.
Logged

archtop

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 463
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2005, 09:26:39 AM »

For clean tones

I still miss my Peavey Special 130


130 watts > single 12"



I  got mine for $200
Logged
Richard Williams

hargerst

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1458
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2005, 09:47:41 AM »

We use the Sansamp TRI-O.D. box with the Tweed (Fender) setting.
Logged
Harvey "Is that the right note?" Gerst
Indian Trail Recording Studio

josh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 191
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #9 on: August 31, 2005, 02:09:04 PM »

I have a tweed-tolex Classic 30 ...  with the stock speaker the clean tone was nothing great.  With an Eminence Private Jack wired into the ext. speaker jack, in sounds extremely good (voxy, loves my Tele).  Plugged into my other cab with Weber P12R, it's simply heavenly.

I get some pretty good clean tone out of my POD 2.0.  Takes some tweaking.  Some guitarists don't like the feel.

I tried one of those little Vox AD30VT amps the other day, it sounds pretty good clean, certainly good enough for most things.  The 15W sounds alright too but the little speaker is not worth it.  The little 15W Vox VT amp would be great if it had a 12" alnico 20W speaker.

Checked out a Fender Pro Jr...  not great.  Speaker stinks.  Maybe into an external cabinet it'd be ok.  Haven't tried it.

redfro

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 292
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #10 on: August 31, 2005, 07:12:49 PM »

Denny W. wrote on Wed, 31 August 2005 04:41

Peavey Classic 30 or Fender Blues Jr.


As Josh kinda said, the key to these 2 amps is speaker replacement. Put a Weber in either one and you'll not only get great clean tones but also some really gritty tones as well. Well worth the money.

But, YMMV...
Logged
Wes Pitzer
WCS Media

Beezoboy

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 48
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #11 on: August 31, 2005, 08:40:49 PM »

A vox pathfinder and a 57 can be pretty cool. They are only $119 too. They also have a great tremelo sound.

Beez
Logged

cjogo

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 36
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #12 on: August 31, 2005, 09:08:50 PM »

We keep a CRATE GTX 30 around---  'bout $100 used on Ebay....
Logged

brandondrury

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 703
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #13 on: September 01, 2005, 12:46:33 AM »

Weird.  I've found clean guitar to be the easiest instrument to record in the universe.  Maybe you are just pickier than me or something.

Honesty is an interesting word.  To me that means that your clean tone isn't magically sparkly fairy princess sounding like a really bad Digitech pedalboard preset.  

Last week I did quite a bit of clean guitar.  He brought his Crate combo amp in and had a very usable clean tone.  It was a little sterile to me, but not bad at all.  We also used my Rivera Knucklehead and a borrowed late 70s Marshall 50 watter for clean.

All sounded different, but great for their respective parts.

Brandon

josh

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 191
Re: cheap guitar amp for clean tones
« Reply #14 on: September 01, 2005, 08:54:27 AM »

The reason I think a lot of cheap amps get decent OD tone but not good clean tone is because they are relying on tone stack and preamp distortion to get the OD tone, and there's a lot of "shape" in that tone.  Not only that, the heavy overdrive masks a lot of detail and dynamics of the guitar that are bare in a clean tone.  So in those same amps, that rely on the preamp clipping to make "overdrive" tone, there's really nothing there to give any dimension to the clean tone when you turn the gain down.

So the key to an amp with good clean tone is balance throughout the whole thing, all the way to the speaker.

Most of the crap clean tone I hear from guitar amps is due to no real amp compression happening, poor detail (aka masking the guitar's tone), crummy pickups or a guitar that just sounds bad acoustically, and/or the amp is just not turned up loud enough to make this happen.

So like my Princeton Reverb with the Weber P12R will get the most glorious clean tone on earth when you crank it until it gets some crunch, then turn down the volume knob the smallest amount you can turn it...  This really is an overdriven tone but you don't really notice the overdrive.  But it's driving the speaker hard enough to get it to compress and the amp is contributing some 2nd order harmonics to the tone to give it some "richness", but the amp is not clipping heavily enough to mask the shimmer and texture of the guitar tone.  Put a decent LDC or even my ECM8000 in front of it and you can't miss.

My Classic 30 clean tone was like dog breath with the stock speaker, mostly because the stock speaker didn't really have any decent top end and instead of compressing, when you cranked it enough, it just kind of went "splat".  Crank it a little bit too much and it gets buzzy (3rd order distortion).  So you are left turning it down too low to get any compression out of the amp, or any harmonic addition at all... way too clean and sounds sort of like the guitar's plugged into a DI with EQ.  Put in a speaker that'll take some heat and give you a bit of compression and viola.  In my case I wanted a British type of tone from the amp and get it in spades with the Eminence Private Jack.

Crap speaker in the Pro Jr. does that "splat" thing really well, but on top of that, it also has no top end or bottom end.  Just a midrangey mess.  Same for the AD15VT.  It takes a real special 10" speaker to get any useful bottom end, and likewise it takes a special 12" to get shimmery top end.

I second the Weber speakers ...  but for half price, don't overlook Eminence.  Go hit avatarspeakers.com and order a 2x12 cabinet, put an Eminence American-style alnico speaker in one side, and a Private Jack in the other, wire it in stereo and plug clients' amps into whichever side works for the tune (either you want Plexi, or you want Fender).  I bet the fix-it for most tube amps' clean tones is getting a decent speaker in there.

Pages: [1] 2 3  All   Go Up
 

Site Hosted By Ashdown Technologies, Inc.

Page created in 0.063 seconds with 17 queries.