For a price I can take my pic of marshalls, fenders, peaveys , laneys, egnaters etc which are obviously built down to a price point and not the last word in reliability, repairability, durability, gig worthiness, longevity and general road worthiness.
For the pricepoint in my head you get amps with:
valves bases circuit board mounted, pre and power
a high chance of cold solder joints
cheap capacitors
connectors which look like they were from a currys pc joining pcbs together
no name transformers
cheap ass valves
particle board construction
if a combo, a good chance of vibration noise at certain resonant frequencies
a general knock em together and shove em out the door ethos
pretty lacklustre or non existent customer care
appalling cheap speakers
a carry handle destined to fall to bits quickly
beyond a certain price threshold a lot of the horrors listed above start falling away and you get an amp somebody has taken a pride in building and which will give years of satisfaction, unlike a thrown together amp which will probably fall to bits quickly and wont be worth fixing.
At what price point do you think that threshold is at ?
Comments
IMHO it depends heavily on a company ethos really, the one thing that all the manufacturers you list have in common is that they are unit shifting operations; build down to a price point and shift large numbers.
However the Egnaters that you list are made by the same people (Boutique amp distribution, CA) that make Friedman and Morgan – so it’s about pricing the amp for consumption – not who is actually making the amp.
Now take someone like Mesa/Boogie who, no matter the price point of the amp (granted in the UK they no longer make any low price amps, but that is more to do with Westside) strive to make an indestructible quality product – amps like the DC and Nomad series are testament to that – most are still going strong and are double digit years old.
The fail factors you list are something that manufacturers of the top flight amps (Diezel, Soldano, Fryette, Mesa, Rivera etc.) would consider a complete no-no, but unit shifters with a much more consumer vision don’t really care about, in effect they produce amps as white goods, if it breaks get another they are cheap.
Ultimately it comes down to what you are a consumer will accept and can afford - I know what one I prefer!
It would be very easy for Peavey as an example to build an amp that addresses all of the items in your list of supposed shortcomings but they would be unlikely to sell many at the price they would need to be in their area of the market.
Everything is designed and built to a price point applicable to the market
Modern jet city amps are very well built and affordable.
Brand ethos has more to do with it than cost.
I'm not sure there is one cut off.
Using amps I've got experience of, a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe is a much better built amp than a Peavey Classic 30. Given how the Classic 30 churns through EL84s the HRD will be a lot cheaper to run long term as well. Having said that, my Lazy J is a step up again.
The HRD is built to a price, but it doesn't have the horrible compromises that the C30 has. Lumping everything in together that isn't at the very high end of the market is over-simplistic.
For reliability and cheapness I have to mention Blackstars little HT5 .... over the last 5 years I have done hundreds of gigs on one and it's been faultless despite the fact I'm running it close to the max available power. Mines always lived in the van uncased as well so it's not like I took extra special care of it
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
+1 This USED to be the case in the R&TV trade. Companies were very interested in service dept feedback so that they could nip 'stock faults' in the bud and give advice to dealers.
Just a few minutes ago I read ICBM commenting on a Fender that had a burned out cathode resistor? It does not take an electronics genius to fit a resistor with more capacity than the HT fuse! Maybe the amp HAS no fuse in which case I would consider that penny pinching gone mad. Bit odd that dealer don't complain more because for THAT fault the valve could easily have failed inside the warranty period and that is the profit on that sale gone.
We desperately need far more robust legislation about serviceability, company responsibility and long term service support.
Dave.
Although one of them was the cathode resistor which shouldn't really have failed, it's actually quite hard to protect a screen supply resistor with a fuse - because they're a fairly large value the power dissipation goes off the clock with even a fairly small excess current. eg a 1K resistor will dissipate 62W with only 250mA going through it, which it easily will if a valve shorts to the screen - and that's less than the typical HT fuse value.
Of course this is one reason why a proper choke is best!
In my family we've had *three* Sony products which died not long after the warranty expired. A 3-year one in one case, to be fair - but even so I don't think I'll buy another Sony product.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Do you know IC I never had a 2W 1k G2 resistor burn out in any Artisan? Even when some twerps ran an A100 OC and destroyed the EL34s and the fuse popped! Not sure I understand about the choke? The 3 Artisans had one but still had G2 Rs.
Even when we had a shit batch of KT88s suffering Purple Death (took out ALL the fuses!) the G2 Rs remained intact. On one occasion one of the grid stoppers, 10k was cooked but was actually still in value. Good stuff MF resistors!
Dave.
That said, chokes aren't totally unknown to burn out under that sort of abuse either.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I think they are unlikely to sell you a 2nd one if the first one only lasted 13 months or so. Brand loyalty is very important and the reason Apple is worth more than any other company.
I think emerging tech drives the TV sales and brand loyalty leads to sales ... plus little things like cutting off Youtube support for older sets
That said, as I've mentioned in a loads of what laptop threads the name on the case doesn't mean that's who made it. In the nineties I did design work for Goodmans who had a piece of kit made by an unknown Chinese OEM which eventually hit the stores under the Alba brand. (Yes it was awful and I apologise but the finished product with my mods was better than the first prototype they showed me )
And we're all getting old so things just don't last as long as they did, even if they actually do . Ten years is a lot less time now than it was when we were 20 .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein