Hi all
I'm a bit of an electric guitar newbie (after playing bass for many years) and after some advice
I'm currently playing a Fender Standard Strat through a Line 6 Spider amp for practising, which sounds ok, but thinking about buying something a bit better for rehearsals and playing live.
I have about £500 to spend on an amp/effects, but I am a bit confused by it all. I used to use a Line 6 Pod and that sounded pretty good, do many people use these to play live? If so, with what sort of amp? Venue-wise, really only going to be playing pubs/weddings so a few hundred people tops. Is the alternative to buy a solid-state/tube amp and build up pedals?
Thanks for any advice
Cheers
Comments
The Pod thing still exists albeit with a million more options these days, the Pod HD series was the last one and now they have Helix as well which from what I can tell is basically a posh improved Pod, but could be massive overkill if all you actually want is a nice crunchy amp and a boost.
For £500 you should be able to find a good set up either as a modeling rig or as a traditional amp with a couple of pedals, so enjoy the ride towards finding what will work for you.
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But if they are too big and heavy then apparently the Boss Katana seems to be popular though not tried one myself. That's a modeling amp so is a lot lighter and has a lot more options but could be overwhelming if you're a "set and forget" kind of guy like me
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The newer Line 6 stuff may be much better but I'd steer clear of the older gear if you intend to play with other people.
If you need a modelling rig for different amp sounds and fx then either a Katana or a small rack with a Digitech gsp1101 and a cheapish power amp. The Harley Benton GPA 400 from Thomann is very good for the money. Add a Harley Benton Vintage cab with V30's and you've got a powerful, good sounding rig. Otherwise, a valve combo and a couple of pedals will do the job.
It just works and sounds great.
Cheap, high-quality modellers are excellent as tools for learning about guitar gear; I think a lot of folk miss that.
In fact, the Katana has pretty much every effect imaginable, modelled after the Boss pedals. So you look at the panel out of the box and you have delay, reverb, chorus, phaser, flanger, tremelo and a T-wah - sweet. But then you load up Tone Studio and you can get a compressor, auto wah, even a humanizer, so you can pretend to be Peter Frampton in that Simpsons episode.
I'm going to try and make a Champagne Supernova patch, so I know what pedals I might need for the TFB jam!
Just set the amp so it's starting to break up then fine tune it with the guitar's volume control. That's all you need to do. You can then bring in a pedal to push the amp more on songs which require that - simples . I was accompanying a pro performing Champagne Supernova last week and he wasn't in the least bit bothered that I wasn't using the "correct" guitar into the "correct" pedal and the "correct" amp.
Unless you can already identify at least what flavour of amp and/or fx you want then something that does a bit of everything is a good call.
Which begs the question - what kind of sounds do you want? (just bands and/or song references would be a good start )
I got an AX8 a year or so ago which is my main gigging setup through a Yamaha DXR10 but that is likely to be out of budget. I also recently picked up a Katana 100 combo as a quick grab and go for rehearsals and would heartily recommend it- especially for the money.
Aside from the AX8, I've struggled to get multi-fx/ amp modellers to cut through at gigs and also to make quick tweaks on the fly in the heat of a gig - a straightforward amp and a few well chosen pedals are much easier to deal with (AX8 excepted)
Looking at this bad boy
https://www.gak.co.uk/en/boss-katana-100-212
Cheers
If getting the 2x12 you may want to consider the head and a cab. The head has a little mini speaker so you can use it on its own for practise and plug in a 2x12 cab for gigs.
I play a huge variety of songs from classic rock through to traditional folk songs using just a couple of JTM45 presets on my Marshall CODE 50.