Dear Solid State Amp Gurus,
The other day I played my Strat through a little solid-state Marshall MG15DFX. I was amazed at the direct response and clear tone. This is not an ad for the amp, but just a reflection: I really heard the guitar in a way that I wanted to hear it: clear, direct, intact, and without intermediary. This is something that I have *not* come to expect from my tube amp, especially as I navigate the black-art of tube upgrades and replacements. Each tube makes my amp sound different and the experiment is leading me to want to find a solid-state amp that is fairly hi-fi and not necessarily only a reflection of a tube "sound".
My first amp was a Peavey 30 watt something or other circa 1980. It was rough and a little noisy, but I think it made an impression on me. When I played in my first gigging band, the 30 watts didn't put out enough to get over the drummer and from there I was told "ya' gotta have tubes to cut through the band", so I got a Fender combo that was a hybrid tube/ss of sorts. After playing many Fender and Fender-ish tube amps, I'm coming back to a point where I want to look into a serious solid state amp.
Here are some of the things I am noticing as I "look around":
1. Solid state amps are all trying to "emulate" something (this may be good--I'm on the fence here)
2. Clean Sounds alone don't seem to satisfy the buying public, so there need to be lots of DSP features (quality can suffer when feature-creep is present)
3. No guitar industry people seem to seriously review these amps (the BlackCat's TopHat's and their Matchless cousins seem to get all the raves--not knocking them at all--just that this discussion is about ss amps).
Some things that have caught my interest lately:
Traynor DynaGain Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traynor
Peavey Vyper Series http://www.peavey.com/products/vypyr/index.cfm
Tech21 SansAmp Series http://www.tech21nyc.com/character_series.html
Any comments greatly appreciated. I am not circuit expert--as many of you on this forum seem to be--but just a guitar player with a good ear for music and sound looking for better (more reliable, more consistent, high fidelity) options for amplification. I do appreciate "vintage" sounds on recordings, however, with all the technology that we have, it seems plausible that we can get great sound using analog techniques in solid state.
The other day I played my Strat through a little solid-state Marshall MG15DFX. I was amazed at the direct response and clear tone. This is not an ad for the amp, but just a reflection: I really heard the guitar in a way that I wanted to hear it: clear, direct, intact, and without intermediary. This is something that I have *not* come to expect from my tube amp, especially as I navigate the black-art of tube upgrades and replacements. Each tube makes my amp sound different and the experiment is leading me to want to find a solid-state amp that is fairly hi-fi and not necessarily only a reflection of a tube "sound".
My first amp was a Peavey 30 watt something or other circa 1980. It was rough and a little noisy, but I think it made an impression on me. When I played in my first gigging band, the 30 watts didn't put out enough to get over the drummer and from there I was told "ya' gotta have tubes to cut through the band", so I got a Fender combo that was a hybrid tube/ss of sorts. After playing many Fender and Fender-ish tube amps, I'm coming back to a point where I want to look into a serious solid state amp.
Here are some of the things I am noticing as I "look around":
1. Solid state amps are all trying to "emulate" something (this may be good--I'm on the fence here)
2. Clean Sounds alone don't seem to satisfy the buying public, so there need to be lots of DSP features (quality can suffer when feature-creep is present)
3. No guitar industry people seem to seriously review these amps (the BlackCat's TopHat's and their Matchless cousins seem to get all the raves--not knocking them at all--just that this discussion is about ss amps).
Some things that have caught my interest lately:
Traynor DynaGain Series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traynor
Peavey Vyper Series http://www.peavey.com/products/vypyr/index.cfm
Tech21 SansAmp Series http://www.tech21nyc.com/character_series.html
Any comments greatly appreciated. I am not circuit expert--as many of you on this forum seem to be--but just a guitar player with a good ear for music and sound looking for better (more reliable, more consistent, high fidelity) options for amplification. I do appreciate "vintage" sounds on recordings, however, with all the technology that we have, it seems plausible that we can get great sound using analog techniques in solid state.