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Well, I ended up getting one of these:
Kidding. (it is real though. pretty cool. discrete parts, possibly based on VHT?)
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Thanks again for all the feedback. A few replies:
re: Superchamp & Mustang recos
Along this line, Fender has a Champion 40 that may work well for me: 12" speaker, open back cab, Fender reverb, and the same voices on the above amps but w/out the LCD screen or Fuse access. It's supposed to be a SS blackface. Will try to play one soon. Some love it. Others think it's meh. On paper, the specs work.
re: Ultralight
I've heard a few clips and it does sound good, possibly more towards a "jazz amp" type sound though. I wish they were more available to try.
@ Woodysound
Thanks for the noise feedback. My (very little) experience with SS amps has been the same.
@ LittleJay
That amp looks very cool! A bit of a risk and more than I would want to take on ATM. Was slightly confused on the cab. It says build your own, but then there were callouts on the side for a CNC cabinet to buy, but no links to buy. I assume it's a 3rd party they are just promoting. Yes? Can you recommend any clips clean with a hollowbody?
In case anyone hasn't seen this yet, there is a wonderful clip of Rory Ronde playing with the Koch Jupiter. I love the breakup on his tone too.
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01-02-2015 06:34 PM
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Yeah Rory sure makes that Koch sound good!
The Bluesbaby is made by Session as an assembled chassis only: you need to build or buy a cab (it's designed to fit in a Blues Jr), buy a speaker and a reverb tray. Session offers a pre-cyt DIY-cab that's indeed from a third party. But sometimes have ready made amps for sale', you have to check their site for that.
Here's a little clip I played on the Bluesbaby, with a Jensen neo 12-100 speaker:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204857474615795
And here another one:
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10204850829889681
(Hope you can view that on FB)Last edited by Little Jay; 01-02-2015 at 07:25 PM.
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The Fender Jazzmaster Ultralight, in stock form, gets noisy when you turn up the volume. At least mine does. I don't know about the Quilter Aviator, but demoed a MicroPro head a couple of years ago, and it had an idle hiss.
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- Not sure there is a simple solution like a warm SS amp
- Some well informed forumites have observed that Quilter amps seem to be happier driven a bit hard by a single coil and may not be an optimal choice for clean jazz. Good reason to pursue extensive pre-acquisition sampling.
- Have a Henriksen. As Jorge said, there are few amps farther from a DR.
- Given they are great for guitars with acoustic pickups and/or mics, a clean, hifi amp will always be useful (AER, Schertler, et al). To achieve a DR sound some like pedals, modelers, or direct boxes driving one of these amps to achieve a reasonable DR sound. However, there does not seem to be a consensus on what front end would be provide a really satisfying solution.
- A corollary to this are hybrids running tube preamps. Not as flexible but without the constraints of a pedal format would expect more out of them.
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Quilter MicroPro 200 here, with the 8" speaker. So much control over tone. Lightweight. Love the amp.
Bob
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Check out the Epiphone Triggerman 30 (1x10) or 60 (1x12). The clean section on these amps is high volume and high headroom. It's super Fender-y with a great digital reverb and a loose tube-like response. The oversized cab provides loads of bass which sounds amazing with hollowbodies. It also has onboard delay, flanger and chorus which are independent of the reverb section. The back panel has loads of features for studio use. I have the 60 watt 1x12 and it's a killer solid state amp which I would never get rid of and it's conservatively rated power-wise as it's loud enough to keep up with a reincarnated John Bonham. If portability isn't an issue look into the 60. The 30 is a more manageable size and weight.
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I use a Quilter Aviator Twin Ten for archtops and it is superb. Sounds like a tube amp to my ears, loads of headroom and very nice overdrive too. They're very light too.
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Ethos overdrive amp and a cab? Works for me.
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My take on the Fender tube sound in general is that its most striking characteristics are clearly observed when it's set to work with solid body electric guitars. By that, I mean having the treble and bass elevated while lowering the midrange. When playing my arch tops through such tube amps, I usually drop the treble significantly and the bass somewhat in order to achieve a pleasing tone that doesn't feedback at the drop of a hat.
The bottom line is that when my Fenders are set for arch top uses, they sound more like my Evans than the Evans sounds like the Fender. In fact, I've never been able to replicate the Fender's sweet top end using my Evans, but it's never been a problem because that top end has not produced the desired results using my jazz boxes.
If you're looking for solid state amps that will provide solid cleans and fat jazz tones at high volumes with no noise, there are plenty of options for you in today's market. As a matter of fact, I would say that we are living in an amp golden age where the classic tube designs are being reproduced by boutique builders and innovative solid state jazz amps are appearing at a regular clip.
Any of the current crop of high end solid state amps will produce your desired results, leaving you with Henriksen, Evans, Quilter, and the discontinued Fender Jazzmaster Ultralight to choose from. The Acoustic Image Clarus might even be an adequate choice if paired with a guitar specific preamp like the Sansamp Para Driver.
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I'm surprised the Champion 40 hasn't gotten more attention actually. Seemingly blackface modeling with no computer/fuse tinkering, very light weight and inexpensive. Never played one myself, but I wouldn't mind trying one for small jams that I don't feel like brining my tube amp. If you play one I'd be interested to hear what you thought.
Originally Posted by spiral
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Totally agree on all points. The clips I've heard were good. I've not had luck finding them though. Even Guitar Center doesn't have stock in stores (or didn't when I searched the website). If I find one I'll let you know. Originally Posted by hallpass
Likewise, if someone else has a go on one, please post back.
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Nice video, nice amp, great playing! I've not heard of Ronde before, so thanks for posting! Originally Posted by spiral
Unfortunately, I don't see the Jupiter Head available at the Koch site any longer. OOP already?
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NP. I think I'm responsible for half of those YT views. Originally Posted by ooglybong
The Jupiter head may be too new and either hasn't been released, or just hasn't made it to the website. Hopefully they will demo it at NAMM with more details.
[edit: more info!]
Doing a search for "Koch Jupter Head" I found a post on their FB page:
https://www.facebook.com/kochamps/posts/859793400739268
"Testing day at the office!
-Superlead through a Jupiter head ( we'll be released Jan 2015) with new open back KCC212 cabinet.
-Jupiter head with proto 112 cab (Twintone style).
-Superlead through a ATR4502 power amp!
It all sound amazing! No power tubes but still al lot tube tones going on!"
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Be at namm this year I was told. Again, I have the combo and I can't stress enough how f**kin wonderful these amps are... So light, no hassle tone machines...
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I'll be at NAMM, at the Hofner booth. I'll spend some quality time with my pals at the Koch booth and see what they have to say about it.
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Acquired a Joyo American pedal ($30) just to try it out as a cheap experiment. Don't know about fully replicating a BF through my Henriksen, but it does generate a clean tone that I prefer to the stock amp.
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This thread inspired me to get a Sansamp to try with my AI Clarus to warm it up. I had been using an ART TubeMP in the effects loop but it started introducing some noise. The sansamp sounds better in the effects loop than in front of the amp, partly because the effects loop has a blend knob. I' gotten a nice improvement using the tweed setting, clean and off-center mic settings. Interestingly I like it with my archtop but not as much with me Tele. It's not a revolution , more on an enhancement.
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I did the same for my AER Alpha and I think it does a great job taking the sound into BF-territory (which is kinda funny since they claim the pedal emulates a '57 Deluxe!) Originally Posted by Spook410
Next to my Twin I definately get that type of tone!
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I wanted to thank everyone so much for all your input.
I ended up getting a good deal on an Evans RE200 and decided to "risk it" knowing I could get back what I paid if it was a bust. Luckily kittens and rainbows pour out of the speaker when I play it, so I'm very very pleased with it. It's very close to the kind of tone I like from BF Fender amps, or close enough for me. You can get a nice bright and chimey sound if you want, and dial in some preamp burn with the Buff knob. You can also get a very flat / even "jazz"-type tone adding in the Body and Depth controls. The reverb is plenty big, and even though it's a hall type, you can pile lots on and it still sounds good. It doesn't sound out of place like some digital verbs can. I assume it's an FV-1 chip since that has Chorus+Verb and Flange+Verb built in, which the Evans has.
One nice surprise is how the clarity of the RE200 makes layering effects so nice. I can stack a few guitar loops with delays and reverb and still hear everything that is going on. With my Fender amp things could get a little blurry. Maybe not a salient feature for this crowd, but the clarity is of interest, especially if you play solo / practice with layering.
It also hit my criterion of "quiet", so much so that I've left it on all night 2 times, and my office is in the same room. I only knew it was on because I happened to see the pilot light in the corner of my eye.
Lastly customer service is pretty amazing. I submitted a question on the Evans site and Scott called me the next day or day after in the AM. I hadn't expected that. I just had a speaker question but he wanted to sit with me and dial in a sound I wanted. His enthusiasm for what he is building is pretty unprecedented. I've only experienced that with maybe Studio Projects (mic company) before.
So, thanks again for all the input. The RE200 does a lot of great things in a very tiny box.
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PS. The Blues Cube stage still looks very interesting to me as a 2nd amp, and I plan to try one out whenever they come out. The Sessions BluesBaby also continues to be of interest, but that would be a non-returnable risk. That's all for later. Thanks again for the assist.
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Quick update on this as horses have been traded.
Evans
After a few months with the Evans I realized I was always trying to get more high end out of guitars which was just making the mids sound harsh. I think part of the issue was the Delta speaker starts to roll off the high end earlier than a lower wattage guitar speaker. That is the tradeoff using a high wattage bass speaker. For solo work this is probably a non-issue, and probably for most people here it's not a big deal. Ultimately I passed it on to a fellow forumite and he is over the moon about it, so it's not in any way a reflection of the Evans amp ... it's a great amp.
Blues Cube Stage
I tried one of these for a few weeks. It sounded good but just wasn't for me. It seemed really bass heavy with a neck humbucker on an archtop. I suspect they voice it to be "warm" as it seems every single demo is with a Strat and / or on the bridge pickup.
Sportsman
I ended up taking a chance on a used Carr Sportsman and, so far, it's what I've been looking for: compact size, 12" speaker, Fender tone (between a PR & DR), nice spring reverb, and nearly 0 noise at idle. It is unbelievably quiet, even when you crank the reverb, which boggles my mind. It is 19 watts so maybe not great for people who play in a bigger combo but for recording and small groups, this is an incredible amp. I am still waiting for someone to call and say "Just kidding. The Sportsman isn't really that quiet. Did you believe a tube amp could be? HAHAHAH." It's not lightweight nor really affordable new, but as an "only amp", I'm very pleased with it.
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Originally Posted by spiral
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I am disappointed no one suggested this...
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Just to follow up on this, the Koch Jupiter head, combo, and various cabs are very much in the current catalogue, are being made, and are available. In plain English, that means that they should be easy enough to find in Europe, Japan and other markets where Koch has its distribution act together. This does not currently include North America, where new Koch amps are not widely available. Originally Posted by Hammertone
Last edited by Hammertone; 06-03-2015 at 02:45 PM.
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And one's for sale... Originally Posted by SamBooka
I am disappointed no one suggested this...
http://rvrb.io/1969-sr1025-deluxe-r52
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I really don't understand the tube amps are noisy comments. I have a bf super reverb and a redplate tweedyverb, they are both whisper quiet. If your amp is old and noisy, have the caps replaced. It's like driving a car with 30 year old oil...
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