Stuff on amps no one wants

Haych

crunchman said:

5 pages and nobody seems to have mentioned those health & safety metal grilles which mean you can't change valves quickly.  If you are playing out somewhere, and you start getting sputtering frying pan noises from your amp, you want to be able to change valves quickly.  You don't want to be locating a screwdriver and unscrewing multiple screws just to change a preamp valve.

I figured they were more to protect the valves than anything else. I’d rather have them than not have them. 

My very first valve amp didn’t have them (Peavey C30) and I was loading it into the boot of my car one day and the tips of the EL84s snagged on a soft case of something. Unfortunately by the time I’d noticed there was too much downward momentum and gravity for me to stop it and three out of the four valves snapped and shattered. 

Rehearsal was cancelled that day at quite short notice. 

De_Batz

My personal gripe with a lot of amps is the amount of gain in the drive channel. The issue for me is that too much gain means you need to lose the bass to keep it all together, so at the amount of gain that I use (that is, not a great deal), everything ends up sounding thin. 

It's why I use the low gain (Lust) mode of my Heartbreaker for drive - the bass shape really growls, rather than screaming. It's not better in and of itself, just different. But most modern amps with a dedicated drive channel have enough gain to have this problem of needing a substantial bass roll-off in order to stop it sounding muddy or flabby. 

Taste in amp aesthetic is very personal. Some of the things that people post (on TGP) as good-looking amps are horrific. I love a skirted pointer knob (as on the HB), Davies 1555 or 1550. 

crunchman

Haych said:

crunchman said:

5 pages and nobody seems to have mentioned those health & safety metal grilles which mean you can't change valves quickly.  If you are playing out somewhere, and you start getting sputtering frying pan noises from your amp, you want to be able to change valves quickly.  You don't want to be locating a screwdriver and unscrewing multiple screws just to change a preamp valve.

I figured they were more to protect the valves than anything else. I’d rather have them than not have them. 

My very first valve amp didn’t have them (Peavey C30) and I was loading it into the boot of my car one day and the tips of the EL84s snagged on a soft case of something. Unfortunately by the time I’d noticed there was too much downward momentum and gravity for me to stop it and three out of the four valves snapped and shattered. 

Rehearsal was cancelled that day at quite short notice. 

I had a C30 for a while.  I screwed a metal bar across the back to protect the valves.  I could still change a preamp valve easily though with that.  There were times when I'd get frying pan sputtering noises in a sound check from a valve going bad, and it was very easy to change them. 

I've seen more recent amps (including later C30s) with a metal grille covering the valves, which makes it impossible to change valves quickly.  If you are out playing live, then you don't want that.

[For anyone considering buying a C30.  Don't.  It is an abominably designed amp.  It has a horrible 3 sided circuit board inside.  If you ever need to take it to a tech, expect an extra £50 on your bill, due to how difficult it is to work on.  Unlike a lot of EL84 amps you will see, it is not cathode biased.  It is fixed bias, but there is no way to adjust the bias when you change the valves.  This shortens the life of the valves.  I used to get through power valves at quite a rate, and the C30 uses four of them.  Get a Hot Rod Deluxe instead.  It's far better built.  The 6L6 valves are far more robust, you only need two of them, and you can set the bias properly.  In my experience, having owned both, the power valves in a HRD will last 5 times as long (at least) as the EL84s in the C30.  It will be a lot cheaper to run in the long term, and it will be a lot easier and cheaper for a tech to sort if anything goes wrong with it.]

Haych

crunchman said:

Haych said:

crunchman said:

5 pages and nobody seems to have mentioned those health & safety metal grilles which mean you can't change valves quickly.  If you are playing out somewhere, and you start getting sputtering frying pan noises from your amp, you want to be able to change valves quickly.  You don't want to be locating a screwdriver and unscrewing multiple screws just to change a preamp valve.

I figured they were more to protect the valves than anything else. I’d rather have them than not have them. 

My very first valve amp didn’t have them (Peavey C30) and I was loading it into the boot of my car one day and the tips of the EL84s snagged on a soft case of something. Unfortunately by the time I’d noticed there was too much downward momentum and gravity for me to stop it and three out of the four valves snapped and shattered. 

Rehearsal was cancelled that day at quite short notice. 

I had a C30 for a while.  I screwed a metal bar across the back to protect the valves.  I could still change a preamp valve easily though with that.  There were times when I'd get frying pan sputtering noises in a sound check from a valve going bad, and it was very easy to change them. 

I've seen more recent amps (including later C30s) with a metal grille covering the valves, which makes it impossible to change valves quickly.  If you are out playing live, then you don't want that.

[For anyone considering buying a C30.  Don't.  It is an abominably designed amp.  It has a horrible 3 sided circuit board inside.  If you ever need to take it to a tech, expect an extra £50 on your bill, due to how difficult it is to work on.  Unlike a lot of EL84 amps you will see, it is not cathode biased.  It is fixed bias, but there is no way to adjust the bias when you change the valves.  This shortens the life of the valves.  I used to get through power valves at quite a rate, and the C30 uses four of them.  Get a Hot Rod Deluxe instead.  It's far better built.  The 6L6 valves are far more robust, you only need two of them, and you can set the bias properly.  In my experience, having owned both, the power valves in a HRD will last 5 times as long (at least) as the EL84s in the C30.  It will be a lot cheaper to run in the long term, and it will be a lot easier and cheaper for a tech to sort if anything goes wrong with it.]

Wiz’d. The C30 is an appallingly designed amplifier. Clean channel sounds ok but the dirty channel is horrible with no discernible presence at all at lower volumes. 

I’ve also owned a HRD too (my current amp in fact) and can concur they are much better designed and far, far easier to work on. They also sound much better IMHO. 

ICBM

The valve guards are now a legal requirement due to the burn risk from hot valves, they’re not actually to protect the valves - hence why Fender Hotrods have them over the power valves but not the preamps, which don’t get hot enough to be a hazard. You can usually remove them if you want quicker access to the valves. The most annoying ones are on things like the new Voxes where you have to remove the entire back panel to change valves, but removing the grille from the panel then leaves them too exposed.

The C30 is just a piece of crap for many reasons though - and I say that given that I generally like Peaveys.

Litterick

Chilewich: woven vinyl, normally used for placemats and floor mats, but applied to seventy-five '65 Deluxe Reverbs. I suppose it is an attempt to make an amp that looks acceptable in the corner of the lounge to the wife.

And don't knock those hardwoods. My Princeton Reverb II Super Pro is clad in oak, and sounds exquisite.