Solid state home amps

longshins

Hi there, I need a couple of reliable decent sounding amps to teach with at home, 2 footswitchable channels and reverb would suffice. I'm thinking Peavey... Any other recommendations? No digital modelling stuff though please, sick to death of it! I've even convinced myself I can hear the latency with it...

Flink_Poyd

Personally I'd go for Roland Cubes, something like a 30X. It's what I do my lessons on and used to have one at home, regret selling it to be honest. They have a decent clean, built in reverb etc with a few different modes like metal on a different "channel" and a built in tuner. 

Sassafras

Tech 21 Trademark combos. Not sure about the footswitchable channels though. I think the 60 has that facility but not the 10 or 30.

I've got the 10 and it's a great little home amp although, sadly, discontinued.
Can be had on ebay for under a £100.
Peaveys are usually a lot cheaper.

kreggs

An orange crush 20RT might be worth considering  

Neil

Marshall Valvestate?  Cheap as chips and excellent.

Apart from the smallest 10w they all have footswitchable channels and reverb.

ThePrettyDamned

I like the old peavey ones. You can pick up USA made bandits and studio pros for less than 50 quid, and often in very good condition. 

And they sound good. Yeah, the distortion is.... Very 80s, I guess, and not in a jcm800 way. But it's responsive and sounds good, and the clean is lovely. 

ICBM

The smaller Peavey Transtube models are well worth looking out for - they were never very common compared to the Bandit, but if you can find one they will be very cheap, and sound great. There was Rage in the shop recently - which was really good-sounding, but no reverb and only very limited 'channel' switching.

Wazmeister

Blues Cube Blues Cube Blues Cube...

bingefeller

What about some one of the Marshall CD range?  

I know you said no modelling but, again, I would suggested Roland Cube.  

impmann

Peavey or a valvestate

longshins

Are there any under the radar brands to look out for? I might just have to take the transtube to bandit town otherwise.

ICBM

longshins said:

Are there any under the radar brands to look out for? I might just have to take the transtube to bandit town otherwise.

Kustom and Vox both did decent-sounding all-analogue solid-state amps with onboard overdrive and reverb (and tremolo on some of the Voxes). Not that common but not expensive if you can find one. Laney Tube Fusions are OK too - the older Linebacker and World Series *can* sound good, but are an exercise in learning how to very finely dial in a difficult amp .

There are a few other off-the-wall brands that did typically 15W, 1x8" solid-state amps with a switchable overdrive mode (hard to call it a 'channel') and a few with reverb - I always take great joy in making them sound half-decent when they come through the shop for sale… the key is to keep the gain down .

bingefeller

ICBM said:

longshins said:

Are there any under the radar brands to look out for? I might just have to take the transtube to bandit town otherwise.

Kustom and Vox both did decent-sounding all-analogue solid-state amps with onboard overdrive and reverb (and tremolo on some of the Voxes). Not that common but not expensive if you can find one. Laney Tube Fusions are OK too - the older Linebacker and World Series *can* sound good, but are an exercise in learning how to very finely dial in a difficult amp .

There are a few other off-the-wall brands that did typically 15W, 1x8" solid-state amps with a switchable overdrive mode (hard to call it a 'channel') and a few with reverb - I always take great joy in making them sound half-decent when they come through the shop for sale… the key is to keep the gain down .

What brands?  Like Stagg or Belcat?

ICBM

bingefeller said:

What brands?  Like Stagg or Belcat?

Yep .

Solex, Tiger and LEEM would be another three off the top of my head.

None of them sound great really, but all have usable clean sounds and - just - usable overdrive tones if you dial them in to sound "good" rather than "how you might want in a perfect world"… if you see what I mean .

I can usually make any of them sound at least tolerable!

Actually there are a couple of smaller Fender and Squier models that aren't bad either - although they have better clean sounds and reverb at the expensive of worse (very fizzy) overdrive, usually.

EricTheWeary

Gear4Music have imported amps under a few different names . They had some Hartke branded hybrid amps and I have a fond memory of playing through one. They've also had White Horse and now Belcat. More valve and DSP but the hybrids ( valve pre amp like a Valvestate) worth looking at. 
There's a YouTube clip somewhere of Rob Chapman talking about Bandits. Wherever he studied ( MIT?) apparently they were everywhere.
I won't attempt to summon him but we have a forum member who gigs a lot with a Laney Tube Fusion. Hugely over bright ( the amp, not him  ) you have to dial them in rather than everything at 12.
Must be a lot of Carlsbro's out there for small money, like the GLX range which would tick all your boxes. Although how they'd sound I don't know...

thermionic

EricTheWeary said:

There's a YouTube clip somewhere of Rob Chapman talking about Bandits. Wherever he studied ( MIT?) a

If Rob Chapman studied at MIT, I'm cleverer than Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox combined.

Slimbert

Carlsbro GLX combo's always sounded better to me than valvestates and Peavey stuff....you can pick them up for peanuts too!

EricTheWeary

thermionic said:

EricTheWeary said:

There's a YouTube clip somewhere of Rob Chapman talking about Bandits. Wherever he studied ( MIT?) a

If Rob Chapman studied at MIT, I'm cleverer than Stephen Hawking and Brian Cox combined.

ICMP apparently. Just all alphabetty spaghetti to me really. 

PFAllen2

You should check out the Fender Mustang amps, seriously good for the money. At £95/£135 for the I and II models, it's mostly about the speaker size and its effect on the tone. 

Neil

PFAllen2 said:

You should check out the Fender Mustang amps, seriously good for the money. At £95/£135 for the I and II models, it's mostly about the speaker size and its effect on the tone. 

OP specifically asked for no modellers.

HAL9000

Might be a bit bigger than you need but how about the Orange Crush CR60C?

 Analogue two-channel amp with (digital) reverb. Footswitchable channel and reverb. No effets, no USB connections, no tuner. Just a straightforward easy to use amp. Oh, and contains plenty of loud should you ever want to gig it.