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Amplifier for live gigs

I`m curious as to what folks are using in their live sessions. I don`t mean CBG amps - as good as they are, rather I`m more interested in traditional guitar amps. I`ve looked at Fender, Marshall etc, but there`s too many choices to have a good idea of what works well. I`m looking for something that has a decent clean tone, and can be cranked to overdrive when needed; although I do have some pedals that can perform the later function.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff 'Bones' Reilly on April 15, 2018 at 9:25am

I love my Vox amp but a lot of guys use a Roland cube I guess it up to your pocket depths

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Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on April 15, 2018 at 10:12am

Noting with tubes. They can be a real pain. A 12 inch speaker is going to give you the best over all guitar sound. As deep or tinny as you want to go. As far as wattage goes anything can be micked. The more wattage the more weight. And yes, pedals are always a better choice than what an amp can give. As far as sound goes this is something your going to have to find for yourself. We all have a different idea of what we want to sound like. Don't buy an amp off of Ebay unless you've already played through one. There are amps out there that sound bad no matter what you do....line 6;;;.....

I have a marshal valvstate 1x12. Tone on channel one all at 12 o'clock. Let my pedals handle the tone. Channel two has no distortion set. It's tone is set at bass, 7 o'clock Mid all the way up, treble at 12 o'clock. If needed I have a seven band EQ that helps shape a tone as well. I play with humbuckers. Usually Seymour Duncan SH-1 or PG1's so I start with a great sound.

The small I really dig is my Yamaha G4-10. A great no frills amp for jamming at lower volumes with friends. Could even get you by on a small gig. But remember to bring a good dirt box. The distortion on this thing is not so good.

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Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on April 15, 2018 at 8:46pm

Pretty much any amp from the Roland Cube series will cover you. They are light, robust, offer a very wide range of tines, they've got some good easy to use built-in simple effects (reverb, trem, chorus, simple to dial-in your preferred sound and they are not too expensive. It looks like they've re-vamped their range since I was more familiar with the product - the old 30watt was a great all-rounder with enough punch for live work. Going up to an amp with 12 inch speaker (rather than 10 inch) will give you a bit more fullness and bass.

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Permalink Reply by Taffy Evans on April 17, 2018 at 9:05am

Hi Michael. I used my Laney 35watt 2x 12 Class Ä" valve amp for 8 years in our blues band. At gigs it was set up for stage volume with the rest of the band then miked to front of house via the PA, along with the rest of the band.

Main pedal was, and still is Ibanez Tube Screamer, also used a Boss '59 Bassman pedal.

Cheers Taff

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 21, 2018 at 8:19am

Boss Katana 50 have been going like hot cakes for $250 or less. It has 5 different sound settings to emulate other amps and has 2 or 3 built in effects.

A great deal for the money.

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Permalink Reply by George Jones on April 21, 2018 at 5:24pm

I would recommend looking at a Fender Acoustasonic 40 watt amp . . . it has 2 XLR / 1/4" jack inputs/channels on the front + adjustable tone/reverb and it also can be used as a mixer to feed the "clubhouse" speaker system via the XLR output jack located in the rear of the speaker . . . It's a $200 amp - but it's a dual speaker solid state system, and is quite flexible for CBG + mic performances . . . Here's a youtube demo from Fender showing the capabilities of that amp.

https://youtu.be/fjie4D4jcGQ

By the way, I have one of these amps here - and it more than meet our needs ...