Line 6 vetta and spider valve amps?

siraxeman

I know they're a bit old now but what's the verdict on these amps seeing as you can bag em now used for a fraction of what they once was? 

StefB

I've had both and preferred the Vetta over the Spider Valves. I gigged a Vetta combo and (unnecessary) extension cab for quite a while and was fairly happy with it until our singer borrowed my H&K Tube 50 combo for a gig and it blew the Vetta away for tone, projection and cutting through the mix. I've been strictly valve ever since that eye-opening moment. I still have a soft spot for Vettas though and toyed only yesterday with the idea of buying the used Mk1 head & FBX GuitarGuitar have in - a steal at £225 delivered. Old technology by today's standards, but still a hell of a versatile amp for that price. I had two SV Mk2 2x12 combos and quickly flipped them both. Hair trigger master volume, worse even than pre-Mk3 Fender Hot Rods, and not very authentic amp models. I didn't feel the valve preamp or power amp added anything, and I'd take a Vetta over an SV any day of the week. I hope this helps...

EricTheWeary

There's a chap who rehearses the same night as us who brings his Spider Valve with him. Does rock covers, sounds good ( don't know which model but it is loud, I know that). The one week he was complaining how it erased all his presets ( although I don't think they have many?) and he was having to start from scratch again. 

StefB

There is that worry with Line6 stuff, but patches can easily be backed to be on the safe side.

gubble

Had a duoverb for a while - which I believe is vetta based (but with much less bells and whistles)

I really liked it - if I hadn't had to downsize from a stack I'd probably still have it.

ICBM

There's a Spider Valve in the shop just now. It sounds like a Pod going through a clean valve amp, because that's exactly what it is - contrary to what's implied about the preamp valve being in the preamp… it's actually the phase inverter. The preamp is all-digital just like a normal Spider.

At low to medium volume it's actually very good - it sounds fuller, punchier and more open than a normal Spider. But at high volume it does that typical digital-amp thing of going harsh and losing dynamics - oddly, when you play really hard with it cranked, it gets *quieter*. It is a very loud amp though, so it's questionable whether you would need to get it up into that region normally even at a gig.

Spiders losing presets is problem I've come across a couple of times, although they're not too complicated so it shouldn't take too much effort to re-do them. It would be a major hassle if it happened at a gig though.

John_P

I did a dep gig on saturday and the other guitarist had a spider valve   (is that the one that has a bogner badge?)   

I thought it would sound garbage but it was ok.   Not great but it sounded ok,  Usual disappearing in the mix I remember from L6 amps but could have been the way he set it up.

bobblehat

I gigged a Flextone 3+  for quite a few years. Sounded great and very flexible . Biggest problem was projection.Not sure why. 

Benson

Back in the day I gigged a Vetta combo for years. Loved it!!! If you get the foopedal it's hugely versatile. 

hugbot

Spider Valve bad amp. It particularly irritated me how the first gen didn't have anything at JCM800 level of rock gain when you'd assume that comes standard on any modeller. also the knobs were plastic and prone to cracking.

timmysoft

I had a spider valve 40 112 for a bit while my main amp was in to be repaired. Really good sounding amp I thought, quite dark but easy to dial in good tones. 
Preamp is digital but has an input valve and pi valve, so it does sound quite valvey. Doesn't do mid gain at all, it's either high gain or clean, there is no middle ground. 

impmann

A few myths about the Spider Valve...

As @ICBM quite rightly says, there is NO VALVE AT ALL in the preamp section of the amp. However, the modelling has been tweeked to work in conjunction with the output stage to provide a much better feel, especially at volume.

Spider Valve Mk1 combos (or rather the units that don't have "Mk2" on the front panel) suffer flash memory problems and eventually die completely - the display gets "black bars" instead of the usual alphanumerics. This is *not* repairable as there are no chips left (they were pre-programmed by the contract manufacturer and Line6 do not have the equipment to reblow the software) and there are no boards left. I helped clear out the old Line6 repair shop when the UK operation shut down...

The best Spider Valve was the 100w head. Unburstable and fantastic sounding. Also, they have a brilliant cabinet simulated output that is not controlled by the master volume. This is key because the engineer can get a great FOH sound from the amp and leave the player to adjust his own on stage volume.

The knobs - yes they did crack on the early models. They were shocking, tbh. They were upgraded fairly early on and there were metric shed-loads in stock last time I looked.

The biggest shortcoming of the Spider Valves was the ridiculous volume control sweep. It went from nothing to *arrrrrrgggghhhhh* (much like an older HRD) in the first 2% of the volume sweep, then it was progressively louder til it got to 1 o'clock, then got no louder. It was supposed to then drive the output stage for fatter sounds but by this point it was way too loud and the effectiveness of this was... limited. I'd also venture that the sounds are a bit "LA" for me - even the Marshall sounds can be a bit smooth and a little too middly, but I never found that they were lacking in volume... far from it.

In short... the combos were *OK* but the heads were superb.

Vettas...

Jesus where to begin?

Loved by many but having gigged one (it crashed mid gig) I wouldn't say I'm a fan. They are also getting very long in the tooth and parts are REALLY scarce. They also were never very reliable. However, the processing and capabilities for sound creation meant they were in a class of their own - the complexity of them is astonishing. There aren't many amps I can think of that can do what they do... and they were very expensive when new (£1295 IIRC - and that was nearly 15 years ago) so they are a bargain these days, if you can find one that works 100%.

EDIT: I just realised that my profile picture is of a Vetta II in/out board that came in from a shop for "bad out of box".... it turned out the muppet new owner had tried to update the amp by plugging a LAN network cable from his computer into the Variax input (same form factor, very different protocol) and the resulting fire blew both the Vetta and his PC to bits. Twonk.

siraxeman

@timmysoft ; funny you say that it doesn't do crunchy toanz as regular solid state amps can be quite good at the 2 extreme ends of the spectrum....its that middle ground where valves are supposed to excel. I mean, makes you wonder if the valve part of spider valve is just a marketing gimmick ? For fun in the house even the regular spider amps sounded quite fun to me - never owned one but have had students in the past that did so got to try a few of the Spider incarnations. I'd bet the Spider valve would be as much fun in the house as they were. Don't think I'd consider one for gigging when I got 3 good valve monsters. (AC30, DSL50 and Express 5:50). Methinks my amps and pedalboard won't be getting replaced by one of these anytime soon. Maybe one day in the future valves will be extinct/outlawed and we're forced to go all digital. Helix type and some good full range solid state amp then be the bees knees....

fretmeister

Vetta 2 was a great bit of kit.

Can be had for peanuts these days too.

hugbot

They didnt do crunchy tones because it just wasnt an included model for some reason. They added a crunch model in the MKII