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Here's a "Jac" inspired question...
Are there any solid state guitar amps that you guys use and admire? Not digital emulators of tube amps like the Line 6 stuff, but the "real deal" solid state attempts at sounding tube-like that actually came reasonably close.

I have a Lab Series L-5 combo (designed by Moog) that sounds fantastic for certain things. I hear the Roland JC120 has a huge following, and Jac tells me that he has an old SS Crate that's incredible. Anyone ever get into the old padded Kustom amps or Tom Scholz's "Rock Module" system"??

Joe G

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Some assembly required,
Brain sold separately...

I dont, but I did build some MOSFET [V-FET] amps that were particularily smooth sounding on my home stereo!

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

The Roland JC-120 is a pretty good SS amp, very blackface like cleans.

The Roland JC series are pretty nice clean amps. The clean isn't as sterile as most SS amps - at least to my ears. Then again, it's not quite as "alive" & interactive as an old Fender either. Some players like that though, depending on the style.

A buddy of mine has an old Crate G260XL that isn't too bad. Sounds like dog-poo running next to all the tube gear in the house. He also has a newer Crate that sounds like dog-poo in any scenario (IMO).

I had an older Peavey Transtube (might have been a Studio Pro, but I can't recall for sure). For heavy distortion it sounded fine. Clean was OK but lifeless. Didn't like it at all for mid-gain crunchy stuff or bluesy OD. This was about 10 years ago and they've changed them since then (do they still even make the TT line? No idea).

My BiL has a SS Fender that is a higher grade tonally than the Crate's I've heard, but not by a whole lot.

I have to admit I'm becomming spoiled by nice gear. My opinions have become far less objective in the last couple of years. I thought my Flextone sounded awesome when I first got it. Now that 1x12 combo is on the "let's turn this little thing into something nice" list as it's pretty much worthless on the used market.

I have a Fender Ultimate Chorus that's amazing if it's used for the right thing... I've used it to double a tube amp lead part that was harmonized and it gave just the right amount of "LA slick" to the sound... it's my goto when people bring in those "semi-acoustic" guitars, especially 12-strings (both with and without chorus it's great), and I discovered a while back that the absolutely best keyboard amp if you're playing synth in a rock band is either the Fender Ultimate Chorus, or even better a Fender Power Chorus...

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Brent Bodrug
Producer-Engineer/Songwriter

www.slyfichapel.com

I bought into the Transistor hype around reliability and ease of maintenance, of SS amps in the early 90's and bought a Marshall Valvestate 8240 amp with the single tube in the preamp section for the insane gain channel. It has onboard reverb, chorus and stereo, and with higher and lower gain push buttons in both the clean and gain channels, lots of variety in tone/gain. (I still like it - a lot!)

Being a big Metallica fan at the time, I found this amp was so good at the clean, intro's of songs like Fade to Black and Sanitarium, and then balls out distortion as the songs progressed, to such a degree that I sold all my effects units, except my Morley Wah, and have yet to buy any, finding my TC-15 quite suitable for anything clean up to rock and roll crunch on it's own.

Again, I've never been much of a subtle person, and am only recently slowing down to listen to the nuance of all tube warmth and dynamics provided by an all tube signal path.

I recently bought my wife one of those acoustic/electrics, which sounds wonderful through both my Marshall's clean channel with a bit of reverb and chorus, and straight into the Bass, Treble channel of my TC-15.

J

There are a lot of great solid state amps out there. The Roland JC amps are still made and still popular 30-ish years on for a reason. The only amp I've parted with and regretted was a Roland JC-77. I often wish I still had it.

Jazz guys tend to like clean headroom....Acoustic Image, JazzKat, Polytone all meet that need. The JazzKat is good enough to be the main amp of Bucky and John Pizarelli, and yet small and light enough to fit in the overhead bin on an airplane.

I despise the sound of modelling through a guitar amp. Modelling, (Line 6, Vox ToneLab, and their ilk), always sound better to me through a clean, highpowered, full range system. The PA, or even a pair of powered cabinets like the Mackie SRM 450 series sound soooo much better than running a Pod 2.0 into a small Marshall combo.

I have never played through one, so I have no opinion, but many friends on another board are quite pleased with the Tech21 Trademark amps.

I have an old Ampeg VH140C 2/12 combo that is an incredible sounding solid state amp. Factory loaded with Celestions. It really gets that Michael Shenker, UFO sound, the sustain lasts for days. It can really cover up some sloppy playing. And the clean channel with the chorus is beautiful. But it's old and has issues... Sometimes cutting out while playing. You can switch it off, give the cabinet a good bump, and hear a transistor thump from the speakers. Then it'll fire back up and sound great until it cuts out again. Could be 5 minutes, could be an hour, could be a week. You never know.

If there are I havnt tried one yet.

My "biggest" amp was a Traynor BLOC100GT I had gotten as a gift from my parents for Christmas when I was in grade 11.

I had that amp for about 10 years.... I NEVER was able to get a decent sound/tone I was happy with. I think I wore out the pots trying though! I still get a nervous twitch when I see one up for sale..

I will go to my grave with my Trinity amps. I could live with the Triwatt and TC15 and never want anything else I am 100% sure of it.

I was once tempted to try one of those Roland cube amps with all the effects. But I couldnt bring myself to try one.

AJC

I had an 80's amp that was given to me called a gorilla that was mean as hell. I blew it dimed one day; think it's the tranny (the thing would pop when tapped..) still have it, don't have a schematic though and I don't know enough to fix the damn thing. The gorilla 125w lol. (remember it's SS so 125w in a 1x12 combo wasn't much louder than an 18w 2x12)

It was a great amp, it rocked so hard. Before it died on me i never even looked into tube amps, it was all i needed. Probably next to my sIII it wouldn't hang, but who knows, it was sweet.

Somehow it would even behave like a tube amp, distorting more as the volume went up. But you could also keep it clean as hell if you wanted.

Past that I really can groove on fender's solid state stuff. I think it's good enough for gigging... If i was someone who played lots of small gigs I wouldn't be embarrassed to rock one of them at all. Especially if the gigs needed a wide range of sound. Those things can typically go from crystal clear to marshall grind no problemo. Fit one with a neo speaker and you can gig with a guitar in one hand amp in the other. Plus you don't have to worry about tubes dying, heat, vibration, whatever.

When a SS amp is done well it can sound great. But it will never be like a tube amp IMO because you can't play an SS amp like a tube amp. A tube amp is like an instrument. It took me as long to learn the subtleties of my amp as it did to learn the subtleties of my guitar, hell I'm still finding them. I'm the type of player that plays with the volume/tone controls on the guitar and amp between songs and during them, the guitar and the amp are equal instruments imo, and you need to learn how to play them both.

So to sum up this long ass post, I feel like you can get great sound from SS amps, I just don't feel like you can "play" an SS amp; thus you'll never get that ultimate tone you dream of.

I can top that dead gorilla story....T'was a Gorilla practice amp, not a lot of watts, 8 inch speaker. It sounded best in the bathroom. All that hard tile surface added a great room reverb. One day, a friend was playing it with it propped on the edge of the tub. Yup, it fell in.

The tub was full. This was at a University Residence building, and it blew out the power for most of the floor when it went.

The answer to the question "Can Gorilla's swim?" is a resounding "No!"

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Peace,

Paul

Haha you are the first one i have ever met that has even heard of it!

Personally, I LOVE the Tech21 Trademark series. I have two of them for playing in stereo and it is pretty darn awesome. Nice clean and very clear shimmering distortion. They are great folks to chat with as well - awesome customer service.

I had an old Roland cube amp from 20 years ago that sounded great. Don't forget the Musicman amps with tube preamp only. I also have a Echollette amp that has tube preamp that sounds quite good.

ss preamp and tube power amp

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http://www.burningheart.com/_lib/util/s ... =2517&s=hi

Oops. Yeah that. The Echolette is definitely tube preamp though.

Had a Tech 21 trademark 10 that I regret selling,was a great little practice amp,nice tones for solid state