Good cheap solid state amps

Calum13

Hello, I’m looking for a new amp and was previously looking for a valve amp but I’ve decided to go the solid state route because they’re cheaper. I’d be buying from the Facebook Marketplace and currently near me there is a Hiwatt Maxwatt G50 for £80, a Vox AD50VT for £100 others. Are any of these any good for putting pedals into and do they have useable OD tones? There’s also an orange CR35 and a CR60.

HAL9000

CR60 does the Orange sound well but not much else. Also, at 44lbs it’s pretty heavy to lug about. Only CR35 I’ve ever tried was really raspy on the gain channel.  Of what you’ve listed I’d probably go for the Vox.

JD50

I'm not up to date with current solid state amps but.... my friends and I gigged Marshall Valvestate's & Peavey Bandits for years back in the 90's without issue. Always enjoyed the Valvestate overdrive.

digitalscream

The Vox Valvetronix range have always been the kings of the low-budget digital world for me - at 50W+ they're actually giggable and still sound good.

There's also the Vox MV50 amps, which are apparently great for pedals - you just need to make sure you've got a cabinet capable of handling the full 50W (ie a 4 ohm cab).

ICBM

The Hiwatt Maxwatt is surprisingly good given that it was a totally budget range - not as versatile as the Vox and no modelling, but possibly a better basic tone and projection. I don't remember ever having seen a dead one either. If you're going to gig with it that would probably be my choice.

While the Voxes sound very good I don't find them particularly punchy at higher volumes - they have a slightly odd 'hollow' sound - I've owned a couple of them (AD15 and AD30), but sold them both because in the end I prefer my Peavey Transtube, which is all-analogue solid-state. But for a home amp I would still pick one.

The Orange Crushes are also good - although I've found that I prefer pedals into the overdrive channel with the gain low enough that it's clean, rather than into the proper clean channel - the clean channel can sound fizzy with pedals. There's a big difference between the CR35 and the CR60.

Calum13

I think I may go for the hiwatt. I think it’s a 4 ohm amp and I have an old 4 ohm Celestion kicking about so that could maybe improve the sound. There’s also a G100R for £15 more but I’m not sure if my speaker would match it.

EvanEvanNorth

The Blackstar ID TVP amps have been going for silly prices lately, very underrated and very good esp if you can get the 4 way footswitch too. I love my ID15TVP .

zepp76

ICBM said:

The Hiwatt Maxwatt is surprisingly good given that it was a totally budget range - not as versatile as the Vox and no modelling, but possibly a better basic tone and projection. I don't remember ever having seen a dead one either. If you're going to gig with it that would probably be my choice.

While the Voxes sound very good I don't find them particularly punchy at higher volumes - they have a slightly odd 'hollow' sound - I've owned a couple of them (AD15 and AD30), but sold them both because in the end I prefer my Peavey Transtube, which is all-analogue solid-state. But for a home amp I would still pick one.

The Orange Crushes are also good - although I've found that I prefer pedals into the overdrive channel with the gain low enough that it's clean, rather than into the proper clean channel - the clean channel can sound fizzy with pedals. There's a big difference between the CR35 and the CR60.

Certain amps in the Orange Crush range are very good the CR60 being one of them, stick a couple of your favourite pedals in front and you’ve got a great rig. I have the CR120 head and cab and absolutely love it. Check out Dave Simpson’s channel on YouTube for a pretty good review of the Orange crush amps.

RustySpanner

I've just sold an AD50VT for £80.
Lovely, lovely sounds but too heavy for me.  Bought new when they first came out and no reliability issues.
Quite nice built in effects as well.
The newer versions sound very good too, but I just fancied a change. 

I replaced it with an Orange 35RT. I compared the Orange directly, side by side with the 60 watt version at PMT in Salford, which is a huge space. 
At all volumes they sounded pretty much identical to me.  It's  loud. 

I use an SD1 and Big Muff through the clean channel and the dirty channel on it's own. 
Really enjoying it, tbh. 
Nowhere near as versatile as the Vox but I just fell for the sound. 
Compared to the Katana, Fender Champs, newer Voxs and a DSL20 the tones, to me, were just streets ahead.
More complex and less sterile, if that means anything.

I was all set to buy the Crush 60 after listening to it first before comparing it to the 35, but for what I use it for the 35 was just the better amp. I didn't  feel the tone was compromised much at all, even with the smaller speaker.  

You get a headphone output and aux in with the 35.
The two separate sets of eq on the 60 might swing it the other way for you. 

There's a big difference between the CR35 and the CR60.

I might just have been blinded by the light!

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on the differences. It might prove expensive though... 

Would buy a CR60 head in an instant if they did such a thing. With a 1×12 cab, it would be the perfect amp for me. 

I think the CR120 head necessitates a 2×12 because of the increased power, which is a shame.

vasselmeyer

If you're looking for something lightweight then check out the DV Mark Micro amps and the Quilter amps. They need a cab, but I've paired mine with a 2x12 with neodymium speakers. Even together, they weigh 60% less than my previous 2x12 valve combo.

ICBM

RustySpanner said:

Would buy a CR60 head in an instant if they did such a thing. With a 1×12 cab, it would be the perfect amp for me. 

I think the CR120 head necessitates a 2×12 because of the increased power, which is a shame.

You could use something like a Celestion Redback, which is a 150W speaker, or a Copperback which is 250W and is neodymium so weighs very little as well.

Or run it at 16 ohms, which will reduce the power to about 70-80W I think.

Calum13

What’s people’s thoughts on the Peavey Bandit compared to the Roland JC amps and the Hiwatt G100R? 

joetele

Calum13 said:

What’s people’s thoughts on the Peavey Bandit compared to the Roland JC amps and the Hiwatt G100R? 

Roland JC provide stellar clean tones and great for pedals. Bandits are great all rounders - and good pedal platforms, but the clean on those isn't quite as nice as the Roland JCs. My Bandit was fairly heavy, though. 

ICBM

It depends what Bandit... there are at least half a dozen versions. As they get more modern they become more flexible, better-sounding but marginally less well built. But it’s probably accurate that all of them are better than the Hiwatt and not as good for clean sounds as the Roland.

gearaddict

My first gigging amp was an AD50VT and I really like it. You can only store and select 4 presets (I think) and it can run out of steam if you have a loud drummer...but otherwise, it's a good choice.

The Peavey Bandit is a classic choice - loud and sounds really good.

Calum13

Does anyone know how the CR35 with the 10” speaker compares to the CR60?

ICBM

Calum13 said:

Does anyone know how the CR35 with the 10” speaker compares to the CR60?

I thought the CR35 was far inferior, although I know RustySpanner didn't think so! To me the 35 is much fizzier and boxier-sounding as well as having shared EQ between the clean and overdrive modes so it's harder to set up a good sound on both at the same time. It does have a some extra features (headphone out, aux in, tuner) which you would generally find more on a 'home' amp, and for me it does seem like a large practice amp, whereas the 60 is a small 'gig' amp - it is in fact exactly the same amp as the CR120, but with a smaller transformer and only one power IC instead of two. The quality of the speaker in the 35 might be part of the problem, I'm not sure.

Matt_McG

The red knob late 80s Fenders — Studio 85, Deluxe 85, etc sound pretty good.

i had a Bandit and the Fender 85, and preferred the latter. Maybe slightly scoopier and less throaty drive sound (been years, though) but nicer cleans. A friend of mine, who had a couple of nice valve amps, bought if off me for home recording and rehearsals, as he liked the gain so much.

prowla

Bass-wise, Trace Elliot kit can be had cheap these days.

Beexter

The old Fender Performer 1000 (latterly rebranded as the Roc Pro) had a very nice clean channel. I wasn't mad on the dirt channel even though there was a preamp valve in it somewhere. Should be fairly affordable if you can find one.

ICBM

Beexter said:

The old Fender Performer 1000 (latterly rebranded as the Roc Pro) had a very nice clean channel. I wasn't mad on the dirt channel even though there was a preamp valve in it somewhere. Should be fairly affordable if you can find one.

There's a funny thing about those... the valve is configured as a back-to-back parallel reverse clipping unit, like a pair of diodes. So the twist is that it's a solid-state amp with valve diode clipping, as opposed to the more usual valve amp with solid-state diode clipping .

In fact, if you take the valve out, the amp still works perfectly but the distortion channel is louder and cleaner - and it has a time-delay circuit when you turn it on so the valve has time to warm up and disguise that!

That said, I do like the sound of them. Be careful if you buy one though, they have long-term reliability problems caused by high-power resistors and Zener diodes burning out the PCB. I've been fighting a long battle to keep a couple of them owned by a local rehearsal studio going, and had to finally give up on one of them... it's probably repairable, just too much work to be economical.