It's safe to say that my tone quest is over, at least for the time being. My better half bought me a Blackstar HT-5RH for the holidays (which to my ears is the perfect amp for the tone i want and my needs) which made me fall in love all over again. Not only with my lovely lady, but it's safe to say Blackstar has won my heart on amps. I have quite a few great (IMO) amps as it stands. Orange micro terror, modded Kustom Defender 5H, Marshall MG15CDR practice combo (converted to an 8 ohm head), Squier Sidekick (now named Squier SP-10, also converted to an 8 ohm head), modded Roland micro cube, and a bada** little first act practice amp i have heavily modded (with zero out of pocket cost too!) and use when i travel. However, the GAS is unrelenting.

I don't have an amp that could perform medium to large gigs with (we're talking no mic'd cabs), and that's the next thing on my hit list. I figure if I'm gonna get a higher watt amp, I may as well go big. My requirements are as listed.

-50 watts, head only. I've got too many great cabs and a non-infinite amount of space to justify buying a combo.
-2 channels, preferably with an included footswitch
-gobs-o-gain, I highly dislike using pedals for my dirt sounds, and at least a decent clean.

I've narrowed it down to 2 personal favorites. The Blackstar HT Club 50 head, and the Jet City JCA50H Soldano head. The Blackstar packs 2 x EL34's and 2 x ECC83's, while the Jet City is loaded with 5 x 12AX7's and 2 x 6L6's. As mentioned earlier, Blackstar has my heart for amps. However I've always been partial to the sound of 6L6's over EL34's. Long story short, I've played both amps and they have what I want. What I'm wondering is if anyone else has had any experience with either of these amps? I'm leaning more towards the Jet City for the 6L6's, and simply because I have yet to own a JCA. Plus there's the small fact that it's 250 bills cheaper then the Blackstar. Anywho, any feedback on these amps would be appreciated. How reliable are they (i'm aware tube amps, rather, the tubes in them, are only reliable to an extent)? Any major QC issues with either company? Thanks guys!

So apparently there was a new amp maker at namm that took the best amp title. A solid state amp, with a heck of a price, that claimed to sound like a tube amp. Don't they all? Anywho, it has a plastic cab, which I've never even seen. They're rated 5 watts through a ten inch speaker, and weigh next to nothing. They come in three different finishes and each look menacingly like darth vaders guitar amp. Anyone have any experience with one? At that price, i don't think I'll be able to resist with the holidays coming up. reliability? sound? someone please give me the lowdown before i die of GAS!!!

Hey all. i have a number of heads (some tube, some ss, some hybrid) and cabs, which is great for experimenting with different speaker combinations and such, and looking sweet (as stacks do lol). but i've been looking into a small 5 watt combo amp, as nothing beats the convenience of just grabbing a combo to take out into the living room or on the front porch. i'm looking for a small 5 watter combo, preferably tube (but open to hybrid as well). i love one knob wonders, but really i'm open to anything (within the constraints of my budget, which is 3 hundy or lower). just to put it out there (so nobody suggests these amps) as far as tube amps go i already have an orange micro terror (yes ik, hybrid), a heavily modded (courtesy of gabe from gabespedals.com) kustom defender 5h, a blackstar ht-5rh (ik, also hybrid..ish), and a revenge lil rock 5 (based on fender Princeton 5f circuit). I'm looking for a sweet bluesy tube overdrive at lower volume levels, so a triode-pentode type switch would be a big plus. Obviously, the lower in price the better (I catch enough hell from the misses for my gear habit as is lol). Any suggestions would be welcome.

sorry for the super long post and thanks all!

Hey guys. so i've got a kustom defender 5h amp head. i've had it now for about 3 months and with some mods and tube swaps, i've got it sounding perfect (for me and my ears). So far i've (not me, a guy i sent my amp to who did all mods i'm about to list) put a Classic Tone OT in there, recapped with sprague orange drop, added a standby switch, and added a tone and gain control. i'm completely satisfied with how the amp sounds. but.. honestly it's just kinda boring to look at.

I was prowling youtube about a half hour ago and found a vid of a guy who also modded his defender 5h. along with adding different controls to his amp, he had blue LEDs inside the amp. IMO, it looked awesome. just seeing the blue light oozing out of the amp immediately made me want to do the same. not just that, but it also matched the light for the on/off switch, which is awesome for my OCD. problem is, the guy was speaking some sort of middle eastern language. and browsing through the comments, i saw that he never responded to anyone who asked for a how-to (with english subtitles lol). and that brings me here to this fountain of knowledge.

I've found a place to get the LEDs. i'm going to buy them in strips, 5cm each strip, 3 LEDs per strip. i'm going to buy two strips and stick them on the left and right inside of the amp with the 3m adhesive backing (peel and stick). the product description states that resistors are built in, so all you have to do is add 12v of power and a ground. my question is...

Is there any way to tap into the amp itself for the 12v? so that when i turn my amp on and the on/off switch lights up, so does the inside of the amp. a detailed description of what exactly i'll need to do (and additional parts/supplies, if needed) would be amazing (as i'm a bit slow when it comes to electronics lol), but any advice would be apreciated.

Also, i'm aware of the potentially lethal voltage that lurks in tube amps, and i know how to safely discharge them. so please don't discourage me from this mod.. if it can even be classified as such haha. please and thanks!

Hey people.

So a couple years ago i was at a pawn shop, and was looking for a cheap marshall amp (i was in a "marshalls are the best, period!" phase, which i very quickly grew out of). i looked around and spotted the MG15CDR. i plugged up, played a couple of riffs, and dropped sixty bones for it (they wanted 70 but i pointed out the loose vol. knob and a small tear in the tolex) i took it home, tightened the vol. knob, and played the amp for about a week until i got sick of the way it sounded.

Fast forward to now. well, two weeks ago actually. i had chopped a squier sidekick (now named the SP-10, i believe) up and turned it into an 8 ohm head out of boredom. realising most of the not so musical sounds that were coming from that amp were the fault of the dinky, no-name 6" speaker, i decided to also convert my Marshall practice amp combo to an 8 ohm head. so i did, and the process went just as smoothly as the sidekick did. about one week ago i plugged into the marshall which was plugged into my 12" extension cab, and switched to the OD channel (something i had not done since the combo to head conversion. i had only played it clean). i first turned the volume on the OD channel up, and noticed a slight hum. on a side note, i was using a guitar with humbuckers, and the volume on the guitar was all the way down. also, the guitar i was playing with has never had any humming problems with any of my other amps. anywho.. i turned the gain up to about half way, and the hum got pretty intense. i tried cranking the gain all the way up to see how bad it would get and it got to the point of being unbearable. mind you, the volume for this channel was only on 2 of 10. if i turned it up anymore then that it started to feedback terribly. i was standing a few feet from my ext. cab so i thought that might be it. i backed away to the other side of my practice area. the feedback stopped, but the loud hum persisted. also, i use high quality cables running from my guitar to amp, and from amp to cab, so i've ruled that out. playing this amp on the clean channel sounds good (IMO) as it always has. it's just the OD channel that hums and gives me feedback

I've spent a fair bit of time with this amp, not to mention the time and effort of converting it from combo to head. so please don't advise me to get another amp. i have superior sounding amps. but this amp also has sentimental value for the time i've spent on modding it. i mainly use it for the CD/AUX input to play music on my phone, but i also run my guitar through it on occasion.

Does anyone have a diagnosis, or any tips to help me figure out what the problem is? i have decent electronics knowledge, and i'm okay with a soldering iron, so please don't advise me to take it to a tech. please, someone help me out. i can't stand to see one of my amps in such pain... haha. seriously though, any help would be greatly appreciated because, i'm stumped 

Well i have very recently joined this forum. recently as in, a couple minutes ago. i've tried a couple other forums (which will remain nameless) in which the people were very nasty. made (or tried to) make me feel stupid for using incorrect termanology, even when they knew exactly what i was talking about. i have been searching the net for an amp related forum with friendly, knowledgeable people, who will attempt to help me. not attempt to make me feel little. so, i found this forum, and read through some posts that interested me, and this forum (and the people) seem to fit the bill. now, to the amp in question.

The amp in question is a Crate GX-60 that was given to me by my next door neighbor. it had been his rig for quite some time and (i believe) was manufactured and purchased in the mid 90's. i was told that in the last couple of years the amp had started dying on him. upon further investigation (google is your friend, haha) i found numerous people saying Crates GX series was prone to reliability issues. my neighbor's complaints were that the amp just stopped working, period (he never went into detail, but i believe what happened to him is happening to me now). and he had stopped even trying to play through it for the last 6 months.

With everything he said in mind, i carried the amp home and began dissecting it. i pulled the amp loaded chassis from the cab and used compressed air to get everything that was calling the inside of the cabinet home, out. i inspected the amp itself, looking for bad caps, blown fuses, etc. everything looked to be in working order, so i reassembled and took it inside to see if it worked. i fired it up and put a G chord through the clean channel. it worked, and pretty darn fine too. the only thing i found that could be slightly percieved as "stopped working" in my hour or so of playing through it, was that on both channels the volume would sporadically increase and decrease on its own. either a slight increase, or a nearly complete decrease, where the amp could barely be heard. any advice on a fix for this?

Anywho, fast forward a couple of months. i turned the amp on and began to play. everything was fine, until out of nowhere it started squealing (i mean really squealing, enough for a temporary loss of hearing) like a stuck pig. immediately i unplugged it and the head scratching began. i pulled the chassis and inspected it for bad caps, blown fuses, etc. and again, everything looked fine.

so here i am today, asking for advice. how do i get this amp back in working order? i have since pulled the amp loaded chassis from the amp, turned the speaker cab into an 8 ohm extention cab for my amp heads (i don't own a 12" speaker cab at the moment, and the "Crate Special Design" speaker sounds good IMHO), and given up on the amp. but the amp had a good clean channel, NICE spring reverb, and took pedals like a BOSS (pun intended haha). i love fixing things, it's a passion of mine to take things apart, figure out how they work, and when i can, make them better then what they were. how do i get this bad boy back in working order? my goals are to get it to quit squealing, and fix the issue of self fluxuating volume. PLEASE HELP!

p.s. please don't advise me to buy another amp, scrap it for parts, or anything like that. i have other amps, better sounding ones (IMO). FIXING things is what i love. with that said, i hope everyone here is friendly and helpfull. and i hope to have a good time recieving and giving knowledge and advice to those in need.