A little ode to my Line 6 Flextone III

moogmusic

A couple of years ago, I moved to London for work and left behind my (huge but awesome) Marshall JMP-1 based stack. Needing an amp, I picked up a Flextone IIIXL for about £50 and played it at home and thought nothing much of it. I'm starting to gig a bit more in London and am going back to rack so I can have a separate head/cab system (and also racks are awesome) but I ended up doing a gig with the Flextone the other weekend and that thing is so awesome. Really cut through at gig volumes, sounded great and even got some nice words from one of the other guitarists who was humping round a massive Orange stack.

Needless to say, I'm now a little sad to be letting it go - for the money these days, that is an excellent bit of gear.

Cirrus

I had one 2003-2008, and yeah.... I quite liked it, too.

timmysoft

They're great amps, i've had a couple of the little 112 versions of the flextone 3, never let me down!

ICBM

One thing that surprised me when I had to (slightly sadly, but they're worth so little they're effectively unrepairable, at least economically) scrap one recently, is that the cabinet was ply and not MDF/particle-board. You may think this is cork-sniffing, but I've always found that ply cabinets project much better on stage - they resonate better, and that somehow makes them more lively-sounding and 'present'. Ply is also lighter than the other two for a given strength, so it was not a particularly heavy amp for its size, even though the power transformer is a very weighty lump.

Unfortunately it wasn't working at all so I had no way of seeing if it still sounded like I remember them doing...

Funkfingers

ICBM said:

ply and not MDF/particle-board. ... ply cabinets project much better on stage - they resonate better, and that somehow makes them more lively-sounding and 'present'. 

This what spoiled the Marshall BassState amplifiers - more than the cheap electronic components or the loudspeaker.

John_A

Fond memories of the Jubilee model, 'plexi silver' I think it was called, sounded great that one!  When mine died I saved the cabinet for a DIY valve build, nice looking amp.

Cirrus

ICBM said:

Unfortunately it wasn't working at all so I had no way of seeing if it still sounded like I remember them doing...

I think the only thing they struggled with was that, being an open back cab, and I really do mean wide open (there's barely any back panel at all other than a small lip) physics prevented them from being able to get anywhere near the low end response or tightness of the higher gain amp/ cab combinations being emulated, though they were designed on the basis that the Celestion custom speakers were very flat. So if you wanted an open back kind of sound, it worked great, if you chose a JCM or rectifier model it wouldn't have much punch, unless you were at bedroom volume or using the speaker-modeled direct outs. In much the same way, I guess, that plugging a real Rectifier into an open backed 2x12 would be a bit gutless. And I say that knowing your history with Tremoverbs - but look at how much bigger the rear panel was on those. It does make a difference!

PhilM

I had one, enjoyed it but sold it a couple of years ago to a guy from London for about £50. I'm sat here wondering if that might have been you @moogmusic ;

impmann

ICBM said:

One thing that surprised me when I had to (slightly sadly, but they're worth so little they're effectively unrepairable, at least economically) scrap one recently, is that the cabinet was ply and not MDF/particle-board. You may think this is cork-sniffing, but I've always found that ply cabinets project much better on stage - they resonate better, and that somehow makes them more lively-sounding and 'present'. Ply is also lighter than the other two for a given strength, so it was not a particularly heavy amp for its size, even though the power transformer is a very weighty lump.

Unfortunately it wasn't working at all so I had no way of seeing if it still sounded like I remember them doing...

I think you are confusing it with a cheap amp - the Flextone *WAS NOT* a cheap amp. It was well made, very reliable and actually really simple, for a Line6 design. Aside from the digital side (which only ever really suffered from clock crystals going west), the rest was a fairly simple SS back end.

Line 6 only used partical board/mdf on the Spiders.

ICBM

impmann said:

I think you are confusing it with a cheap amp - the Flextone *WAS NOT* a cheap amp. It was well made, very reliable and actually really simple, for a Line6 design. Aside from the digital side (which only ever really suffered from clock crystals going west), the rest was a fairly simple SS back end.

Line 6 only used partical board/mdf on the Spiders.

I never said it was cheap . I actually assumed it would be MDF because it's neutral-sounding - which is why it's the preferred material for hi-fi and monitor speakers... hence perhaps a good choice for a modeller where you may not want the sound coloured by cabinet resonance.

That seems to have been the justification behind the awful Celestion 'Custom' G12P-80, anyway! Unless that was to save money . Like ply cabs, I think modelling amps would be better with proper premium speakers too, even if they're not quite as 'neutral'.

I was vaguely interested in why this one died - it's the only dead one I've ever seen. It wasn't the power section, it was something in the preamp - just completely dead, and nothing obvious. I did briefly consider keeping it as a powered cab, but it was actually very tatty so sadly it got stripped and recycled.

impmann

ICBM said:

impmann said:

I think you are confusing it with a cheap amp - the Flextone *WAS NOT* a cheap amp. It was well made, very reliable and actually really simple, for a Line6 design. Aside from the digital side (which only ever really suffered from clock crystals going west), the rest was a fairly simple SS back end.

Line 6 only used partical board/mdf on the Spiders.

I never said it was cheap . I actually assumed it would be MDF because it's neutral-sounding - which is why it's the preferred material for hi-fi and monitor speakers... hence perhaps a good choice for a modeller where you may not want the sound coloured by cabinet resonance.

That seems to have been the justification behind the awful Celestion 'Custom' G12P-80, anyway! Unless that was to save money . Like ply cabs, I think modelling amps would be better with proper premium speakers too, even if they're not quite as 'neutral'.

I was vaguely interested in why this one died - it's the only dead one I've ever seen. It wasn't the power section, it was something in the preamp - just completely dead, and nothing obvious. I did briefly consider keeping it as a powered cab, but it was actually very tatty so sadly it got stripped and recycled.

If it was the preamp, it’s likely to have been the clock. I forget the frequency now, but you can get the crystal from Farnell/CPC iirc. It’s been a while though!!

ICBM

impmann said:

If it was the preamp, it’s likely to have been the clock. I forget the frequency now, but you can get the crystal from Farnell/CPC iirc. It’s been a while though!!

Way too late for that .

It was pretty tatty and grubby, and the owner didn't want to even spend the minimum estimate of £75 to get it fixed, once I'd eliminated simple causes. Even the grille cloth was ripped, or I'd have kept that - it's quite nice.

So in my parts collection I now have a fully-functioning Flextone power section, power transformer, a nice handle, and a few other bits and bobs. The speaker is long gone - I used that for something fairly quickly, which made stripping it down worthwhile.

I did feel bad for chucking the cabinet, but it was just too rough to be of any value even as a project.

moogmusic

PhilM said:

I had one, enjoyed it but sold it a couple of years ago to a guy from London for about £50. I'm sat here wondering if that might have been you @moogmusic ;

Could have been @PhilM - I popped out on the train to get it and met the seller at the station?

PhilM

If it was Swindon station then yeah, that was me!

moogmusic

@PhilM fitted with castors?

PhilM

Yup!

moogmusic

Nice - thanks, it's been a great buy.