Whats your favourite amp era

Doulin

Turns out i'm old fashioned. I play voxes, and I love a twin reverb. I EQ amps brighter than my band mates because i prefer the sound to be less restrained and more open.
I have friends (really!) that dig the EVH brown sound, FET inputs and tight sounding Mesas. They sound fantastic playing them, when i play their set up i find myself lacking inspiration. Sorry to say i'd rather play a synth at that point. So i'm curious to know what I'm missing. 

I love early 60s amps and to me, my ears and fingers, 1963 the perfect amp designs existed. But that's me and not you. So when were amps perfected in your view and why? 

stickyfiddle

Right now, honestly. 

What I want is old 60s sorts of sounds - Deluxe Reverbs, AC30s, early Marshall’s etc, - but I also want small combos and low enough volumes to not get screamed at by family, neighbours, band members and sound guys. 

And that means stuff with extremely good master volumes and/attenuators like the Matchless Laurel Canyon, Fender Tonemaster series and basically everything Carr does is amazing. 

Doulin

stickyfiddle said:

Right now, honestly. 

What I want is old 60s sorts of sounds - Deluxe Reverbs, AC30s, early Marshall’s etc, - but I also want small combos and low enough volumes to not get screamed at by family, neighbours, singers and sound guys. 

FIFY
Same wave length completely. I can't get enough of the kind of hit you in the chest spank these style amps give.

ElectricXII

I don’t like high gain amps, so 60s spec Vox and Marshall amps are what I play. 

flying_pie

80s - modded JCM in particular for me +/- a TS in front 

Hetfield on the Ride The Lightning album, 80s Maiden, Alice In Chains Dirt and RATM are the tones I most love to play with

Don't get me wrong, the late 60s EVH more than has it's place and I like that too but the thump of the 800 feels right to me. 

26.2

The 60’s combo sound of AC30s, Twins, actually most Fenders. Never liked Marshalls much. 

Neilybob

I own quite a few different amps of different era's (Marshall, OTS, Evil Robot (and bad monkey), Peavey Classic & Tweed) but I always come back to the Tweed era of amps like the 5e3 and 5f11 Tweeds of the 50's but pushed with boost pedal into glorious overdrive.  Also a good rat distortion too. 

Doulin

flying_pie said:

80s - modded JCM in particular for me +/- a TS in front 

Hetfield on the Ride The Lightning album, 80s Maiden, Alice In Chains Dirt and RATM are the tones I most love to play with

Don't get me wrong, the late 60s EVH more than has it's place and I like that too but the thump of the 800 feels right to me. 

@flying_pie help my untrained ears here/school the unitiated, what exactly in that tone is that you dig? Like whats high gain bad vs high gain nice? 

flying_pie

Doulin said:

flying_pie said:

80s - modded JCM in particular for me +/- a TS in front 

Hetfield on the Ride The Lightning album, 80s Maiden, Alice In Chains Dirt and RATM are the tones I most love to play with

Don't get me wrong, the late 60s EVH more than has it's place and I like that too but the thump of the 800 feels right to me. 

@flying_pie help my untrained ears here/school the unitiated, what exactly in that tone is that you dig? Like whats high gain bad vs high gain nice? 

@Doulin it's the sound I grew up listening to most. It just feels right. Notice I've used the word feel in both my posts.

I think that is all down to emotional response along with familiarity with the sound which I listened to most as my brain was developing in puberty. If I was older then it might be EVH, or Angus, or Jimmy, or Jimi.

If you give me any amp then that's the type of tone I'd instinctively try to dial in. And my go to riffs for testing the tone would be 2 Minutes To Midnight, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Bark At The Moon, etc with a high output bridge pickup, and something like Know Your Enemy or Bombtrack for the neck pickup.

There's not really high gain nice or bad. It's really down to what you instinctively play and I'm guessing you wouldn't go to the same stuff as me.

Don't get me wrong. Playing Queen riffs through a treble boosted Vox is the next best thing, followed by the Brown Sound, but in my case most of my favourite stuff to play is based around the 800 or boosted/mod version of it.

Fast forward to the 90s I didn't know or care what gear was used on my favourite stuff - Alice in Chains, Pixies, RATM, early Pearl Jam. Can you guess what amp features with all these bands? I'm sure that's no coincidence 

I believe iall comes down to the sound that your brain has been hardwired to love and recognises above all the other awesome tones out there.

Revolutions

flying_pie said:

Don't get me wrong, the late 60s EVH more than has it's place and I like that too but the thump of the 800 feels right to me. 

Hot take: the best plexi sound ever put on a record is either Dookie or Ten.

Stratavarious

70s… JMP

Jimbro66

Early sixties brownface Fenders. The perfect balance between tweed and blackface.

Early/mid sixties Marshalls. Fabulous sound when cooking.

Stevepage

90s/early 2000s for me. All my favourites are from that era

Mesa Mark IV
Laney VH100R
Engl SE
Marshall JVM
Peavey JSX

rze99

70s JMP too

DrJazzTap

I'm a simpleton so I like simple amps. Either tweed sounding or blackface.

guitars4you

For reliability and 'day to day' use straight from the box, then I'd say now

The issue with 'gigging' many older valve amps is checking they are safe and have been serviced - Such costs can be expensive and find there are less and less good engineers now who actually repair such amps

I like an early 60's Deluxe Reverb - About 10/15 years ago I acquired one - Almost permanently faulty and went to 2/3 techs to solve the issue and no one ever really conquered the issue - In the end I sold it as I was fed up of the maintenance issue - So I still favour such an amp, but prefer a good replica, be it Fender or via the various boutique builders and would hope to find no maintenance issues, at least for now

mo6020

Plexis and blonde Fenders, so '60s for me. 

ICBM

70s solid state.




I’m only partly joking - yes, they usually have fairly major reliability issues because both the circuit designs and the output transistors weren’t capable of withstanding the abuse musicians would give them - most were designed by proper electronic engineers who didn’t expect them to be pushed into distortion or accidentally shorted, which tends to kill them very quickly.

But many of them sound wonderful clean, take pedals - overdrive or distortion pedals used to create those sounds, not used as boosts to thrash the amp harder - or modern multi-FX really well, and sometimes even sound great in a distinctively non-valve way when overdriven, if they survive.

I’d even include the much-derided FAL amps in that, and certainly the slightly odd-looking ‘flat’ Marshalls.

By the 80s, the designers were learning how to make them more robust, and create more conventional (ie roughly valve-like) overdrive sounds, but in many ways this took away some of the charm of the older ones in my opinion - and they still didn’t sound that valve-like, so pleased no-one really.

But it is an endless source of frustration for me that so many guitarists won’t even look at a solid-state amp, even though many sound really good.

impmann

I don't restrict myself to liking 'eras' - I just don't like multi-channel, high gain, dynamically challenged modern stuff.

Doulin

guitars4you said:

For reliability and 'day to day' use straight from the box, then I'd say now

The issue with 'gigging' many older valve amps is checking they are safe and have been serviced - Such costs can be expensive and find there are less and less good engineers now who actually repair such amps

I like an early 60's Deluxe Reverb - About 10/15 years ago I acquired one - Almost permanently faulty and went to 2/3 techs to solve the issue and no one ever really conquered the issue - In the end I sold it as I was fed up of the maintenance issue - So I still favour such an amp, but prefer a good replica, be it Fender or via the various boutique builders and would hope to find no maintenance issues, at least for now

Thats very true but its kinda interesting in a way a lot of the things we really like a reliable things designed in the 50s/60s. I think theres a lot to read into this too.
like digital modelling is good and far more convenient but still hasn't killed off 70 year old designs and peoples love for them. So with that in mind you could argue the 60s designs were revolutionary and the digital is not (i havent been flooded with kemper lovers so far...)

downbytheriver

Silverface Fender. Preferably earlier ones - it’s what I wanted when I was growing up, it still is. Never been disappointed by one. I even like the 68 reissue ones.