Best valve amp around £500

alexmitchell17

Hi looking at getting a valve amp as I'm returning to gigging it's gonna be micced (miced? cant spell lol!) so volume doesn't matter too much just a good sound. I've got pedals so I don't really need a drive channel. I was thinking a Fender blues jr but was wandering if the couple of cheaper amps I found would do the job as well (or better!). I found a peavey valve king ii on offer for £339 and a blackstar HT club 40 deluxe for £449 so was just wandering if anyone has had any experience with these amps or had any other suggestions around the £500 mark as unfortunately I can't stretch my budget much further. Wedding band music so need to be fair versitile but pedals will cover most stuff

simonk

I wouldn't get a Blues Jr. The HRD is a popular choice and should be attainable second hand within budget. What about a Jet City rig?

I've been gigging this rig recently and it's superb:

https://m.thomann.de/gb/jet_city_amplification_jca20hv_bundle_2.htm?o=17&search=1495964989

Plenty of change in your budget to uograde the speaker too. I put a Jensen Neo in mine.

sw67

I wouldn't rule out solid state. I use a 18w valve amp but also have a Roland JC that is fantastic. Bandmate uses a blues cube and it sounds good as well. 

ICBM

Avoid the Blues Junior and the Peavey Valve King for a start…

Some people do like the Blues Junior, but most don't. It's also not particularly well-made and is one of the less reliable Fender amps, and is hugely overpriced for what it is. The Peavey is reasonably well-made but I've never come across anyone who really likes the sound of it.

Blackstars are a bit 'Marmite' too, but a better bet than either of those.

If you want a Fender, get a second hand Hotrod Deluxe, you can easily find them in perfect condition for well under £500, and they're in a totally different league from the Blues Junior for tone, versatility and reliability. The only slight disadvantage is that they're a bit bigger and heavier, but still quite manageable.

nick79

The HT40 isn't a bad amp but as ICBM says it has that unmistakable Blackstar sound to it which tends to divide opinion. 
What about a used Mesa Rectoverb 50 combo? Very versatile, very loud if you need it to be. They usually go for around £600ish but if you look around you may find one for less.

ThePrettyDamned

You could get a nice jet city, but it depends on how portable you want. 

A jet city custom 22 is really cool, cleans and high gains covered. There is a bigger one but can't remember the name if you want more headroom. Nice small head. 

@ICBM ;won't like this suggestion but I had a Laney Lh50 for a while. It was a medium size head so nice and portable, a wonderful clean channel, excellent classic rock dirt channel, good eq, bright switch, global tone control (probably a presence control, but very useful). 

It has a smaller style of transformer to the norm, a toroidal one, so it's quite a bit lighter and smaller than a normal 50 watt head. Mine was reliable, just needed new valves once and was played most days and weekly at high volume. Brilliant amp, available used very cheaply and probably around £500 new. 

leerocker

hot rod deluxe , peavey classic 30 both great amps and well within your budget used

Danny1969

Wedding band and pedals = Hotrod Deluxe .... plenty loud enough, reliable, easily transportable. Certainly my favorite amp for wedding band covers even though I use Marshalls and BS amps for classic rock gigs 

ICBM

leerocker said:

hot rod deluxe , peavey classic 30 both great amps and well within your budget used

The Peavey Classic 30 also has build quality and reliability issues. I can't understand why it's quite so popular either...

This does come across as me hating Peavey - nothing could be further from the truth! I'm a big fan of their products in general - they're mostly well-built, well-priced, reliable and sound good. But the Valve Kings and the Classic 30 are among their worst amps, in my opinion. The C30 runs too hot, rattles, eats power valves, and if it does go wrong it's a pig to work on. The Valve King doesn't have those faults but sounds lifeless and quite 'solid-state' - ironically, more so than many of their actual solid state amps, most of which are really good. (The Classic 50 is also very different from the C30, in the same way as a Hotrod is much better than a Blues Junior.)

ThePrettyDamned said:

@ICBM ;won't like this suggestion but I had a Laney Lh50 for a while. It was a medium size head so nice and portable, a wonderful clean channel, excellent classic rock dirt channel, good eq, bright switch, global tone control (probably a presence control, but very useful). 

It has a smaller style of transformer to the norm, a toroidal one, so it's quite a bit lighter and smaller than a normal 50 watt head. Mine was reliable, just needed new valves once and was played most days and weekly at high volume. Brilliant amp, available used very cheaply and probably around £500 new.

They aren't bad, it's true. As you know I'm not a big fan of Laney due to their 'just good enough to get by' build quality, and a few really daft bits of design, like the worst FX loop on any modern amp… but they're OK really. I've never been inspired by the sound, I have to admit.

timmysoft

The newer valvekings are a real step up from the first version, there's a lot of good tones to be had out of those.

riscado

You don't really go into a lot of details regarding the type of amp you're looking for, but I'd probably look at the ampeg j20 handwired for sale on this forum at 400£ from @jmaster ;

ThePrettyDamned

ICBM said:

leerocker said:

hot rod deluxe , peavey classic 30 both great amps and well within your budget used

The Peavey Classic 30 also has build quality and reliability issues. I can't understand why it's quite so popular either...

This does come across as me hating Peavey - nothing could be further from the truth! I'm a big fan of their products in general - they're mostly well-built, well-priced, reliable and sound good. But the Valve Kings and the Classic 30 are among their worst amps, in my opinion. The C30 runs too hot, rattles, eats power valves, and if it does go wrong it's a pig to work on. The Valve King doesn't have those faults but sounds lifeless and quite 'solid-state' - ironically, more so than many of their actual solid state amps, most of which are really good. (The Classic 50 is also very different from the C30, in the same way as a Hotrod is much better than a Blues Junior.)

ThePrettyDamned said:

@ICBM won't like this suggestion but I had a Laney Lh50 for a while. It was a medium size head so nice and portable, a wonderful clean channel, excellent classic rock dirt channel, good eq, bright switch, global tone control (probably a presence control, but very useful). 

It has a smaller style of transformer to the norm, a toroidal one, so it's quite a bit lighter and smaller than a normal 50 watt head. Mine was reliable, just needed new valves once and was played most days and weekly at high volume. Brilliant amp, available used very cheaply and probably around £500 new.

They aren't bad, it's true. As you know I'm not a big fan of Laney due to their 'just good enough to get by' build quality, and a few really daft bits of design, like the worst FX loop on any modern amp… but they're OK really. I've never been inspired by the sound, I have to admit.

The lh50 is a brilliant sounding amp, especially the cleans. The crunch is... Sort of like an average of classic 70s and 80s crunch sounds, bit of a jack of all trades. 

Can't comment on build as I never had a problem, but I really liked it. The effects loop on this one was, iirc, switchable from series or parallel and you could pad it - 10db too. Could be wrong... I'll look for a pic. 

Edit: it's an "insert" loop, not sure what that means... It can be hard bypassed, 0db or - 10db.

So not the worst in the world, but if it's parallel someone needs sacking. 

EricTheWeary

Used HRD would be the way to go.
You could get a used Laney Lionheart within £500 (despite IC's reservations  ) which would probably be a better choice if you wanted (non metal) drive from the amp itself. There were UK and Chinese made versions (I think HRDs were US then Mexican made? Peavey production also went primarily to China)and the UK version had a slightly better speaker and proper spring reverb although, I think, the fx loop problem was fixed by the Chinese. 
£500 is reasonably bottom dollar for a valve amp although that Jet City set up that @simonk posted a link to seems to be the exception. If you only want to buy new that must be the best deal going. 
If volume isn't much of an issue a Fender Pro Jr is just over £500 new and seems to be better regarded than the Blues Jr(Jeff Beck for his rockabilly stuff for example) or the Yerasov GTA15 which is based on the Pro, somewhat cheaper and gets a lot of love ( although you'd have to buy sight unseen and resale value might, I'm guessing, be a bit dodgy). 
I've only once, IIRC, played through a Blackstar Club. I thought it looked nice but seemed to have a truly terrible clean sound - the classic Joe Bonamassa blanket over the speaker tone. But YMMV. 
At the risk of listing every amp on the market - wild card would be the bigger Orange Crush amps. Under £400 for the 60 watt combo. 

Boromedic

I will admit I'm biased as I have a 2x12 version of this. However it is an insanely good amp in it's own right and very flexible in the range of tones it has, but also makes a great pedal platform. Constructed as well as any Mesa I've seen, mil spec PCB and custom high end transformers, footswitchable boost, this is a top drawer amp and for the money he is asking it will serve you better than any of the ones mentioned above. Completely under appreciated and utterly gorgeous amps, worth a look if you ask me.

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/97544/fs-genz-benz-black-pearl-30-1x12-combo#latest

Voxman

I think there are two amp makes that are the most under-rated amps around, sound great, offer very good value, and have long warranties - Laney (5 years if registered on line) & Bugera (3 years).  I have two Laney's and they are very good amps - a VC30-210, and a Cub 12R (upgraded with JJ tubes and a Vintage 30).  The Bugera amps offer tremendous bang for back with lots of modern features, the amps are hand assembled and Bugera makes all the components - including its own speakers that are very good.  Bugera has a wide range of amps to suit different styles, and their quality and customer service puts some of the 'big names' like Fender to shame.

Bellycaster

*Cough*

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/91407/fs-mesa-express-5-50-1-x-12-mark-i-600#latest

*Whistle*

Stevepage

We hired a band to play at our wedding in 2012. They sounded great on their recordings and sounded great on the night too. 

The amazing thing was that they didn't use amps, they used Line 6 Pods into their PA and only had a few pedals on the floor. 

So I'll throw out a weird suggestion and say, maybe a Line6 HD Live floor unit into the PA. 

Telejester

Id run a mile from a blues jr and peavey c30, for 500 quid the hrd is the go to.

TTBZ

Fwiw my Laney has been mostly perfect on terms of reliability. Just a couple of scratchy pots over about 10 years isn't bad going I'd say.

Jetfire

Another potential area to consider is a second hand grandmiester. Attenuation, spanky fender cleans with good solid drive and lead channels, emulated di out, 128 channels with built fx, midi and it lights up blue. Im gigging one for my covers band and its great for a country twang for Love Machine, rock for Back In Black and 80s cheese for You Give Love A Bad Name..

What more do you need?

TheMarlin

If you just want a good clean sound from an amp that takes pedals well, HR Deluxe.  You'll get one for £350 easy. 

I'm a big fan of the Kustom Coup 36 (and 72).  Great cleans, excellent drive channel, fab reverb, and can be had as cheap as chips.  I've had two, paid under £200 both times. 

Smaller and lighter than a HRD.  Just as powerful, built in boost for lead, excellent build quality.  Looks great too!  Upgrade the speaker to a Cannabis Rex, deep joy. 

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/amplifiers-effects/kustom-36-coupe-guitar-combo-amp