Do truly good amps exist?

Beexter

I'm looking at options for a new valve amp but the more I read and research,  the more it seems that so many valve amps have build or design issues that affect their reliability and repairabilty. Clearly,  valves are "consumables" and will require replacement,  that comes with the territory,  but valves have been around for a while so surely someone has perfected a way of making a reliable amp with them? 

There was a thread on here recently talking about amps that were a nightmare to service and here's another similar article to illustrate the point http://www.londonpower.com/pcb-or-hand-wire#intro
 I'm not too concerned about PCB vs Handwired but want something that is built solidly, with good components that aren't pushed beyond their limits, that follows solid design principles which makes any future maintenance and servicing straightforward for an amp tech.

Do any manufacturers get it right or should I just give up and go solid state? Whilst SS amps don't get the glowing praise for tone / playing feel bestowed on valve amps, they seem to be better on the reliability front, but, should they go wrong, seems like they're disposable. 

Who consistently gets it right? 

Lebarque

ICBM will be along shortly.

Sassafras

I've mostly owned Fender amps and they've all been trouble free.

richardhomer

Reliability is generally good with most brands in my experience - if you're gigging you should carry spare valves just in case.

In terms of 'do truly good amps exist?' - to me that's about tonal/dynamic characteristics - and how they interact with your playing. As a general observation, I'm unconvinced that channel switching amps ever deliver equally great cleans and drive sounds - though for reasons of convenience I own one.

uncledick

I bought my Boogie s/h about 18 years ago. Changed the (original) valves about 2 years ago but more out of curiosity than anything else.  Never had the slightest hint of trouble.  

erky32

Its an interesting question, I think the answer is Yes, but the trouble today is there are sooooo many choices , we are absolutely spoilt. My first evr amp was a "Bird" valve amp ....gawd knows who made it, but it worked well with my Rosetti "strat", then I bought a Watkins Joker 30w valve amp with a built in mic stand & copycat, sounded bril with my Hofner "strat"like guitar....covered all the Shadows stuff. No problems so far. But over the years I've had, as most of you guys have, numerous SS & valve amps, and they all work great. For a long time I gigged with a Marshall 8080 and it did everything I needed. But later there's always something not quite right, and it gets changed out for another feature, and so on ....and you seem to go into a vicious circle never finding whatever it is you're trying to find in one box. I think also the problem is the scope available that can sometimes unrest us. Sometimes I find it unsettling that a SS amp will possibly have a perfect sound in there - but I feel uncomfortable because I've bought into a 100 other voices & a zillion effects which I never use. I'm currently learning to live with a Bassbreaker 18/30 which is totally stripped down uncluttered heaven ( apart from the 18w channel which is pants, and I find that uncomfy to live alongside ) but the simple 4 x el84s , non-master which gives clean with headroom, drives into sat'n on at gig  volume & gives a good satisfaction. I think theres a lot of good amps, but we are spoilt in search of perfection.  Sorry to ramble on, a nice bottle of wine and Irish coffee can be blamed!!

RMJ

Yes they do. I can recommend the Tone King Falcon

Lew

Bit of an odd question! My advice would be stop reading and researching and start playing as many amps as ya can ;-)

sweepy

As with many things, set a budget and start your search

digitalscream

Beexter said:

 I'm not too concerned about PCB vs Handwired but want something that is built solidly, with good components that aren't pushed beyond their limits, that follows solid design principles which makes any future maintenance and servicing straightforward for an amp tech.

The whole point of valve amps - for the majority of guitarists - is the sound you get when the components are pushed beyond their limits. Specifically, the valves. That's how you get overdrive and distortion.

That aside...I've come across many good amps, but never one that was truly brilliantly-designed. The ones that sound great inevitably have usability issues (lack of switching/ineffective shared EQ/poorly-designed loop etc), and the ones with all the right options always sound a bit "meh".

fretmeister

I gigged an original 2 channel Dual Rec for years and only changed the valves once.

And I caned it. It was all good.

dindude

Odd question. If money is no object then we live in golden times for valve amps built with top end components, to a very high standard, with absolute care.  And history tells us (I.e. Old Fenders, Vox, Marshalls etc) that a good valve amp could outlive you.

zepp76

JTM45 gets my vote, best amp purchase I ever made.

kjdowd

dindude said:

Odd question. If money is no object then we live in golden times for valve amps built with top end components, to a very high standard, with absolute care.  And history tells us (I.e. Old Fenders, Vox, Marshalls etc) that a good valve amp could outlive you.

Agreed. Many truly good amps exist. Guitarists who know how to look after them and maintain them properly - slightly more rare. To be clear, i
am not one of those rare beasts!

Drew_TNBD

Just don't buy one of the first batch of Bugera amps and you'll be fine!

Diezel, Bogner, Friedman, Fender, Orange, Mesa Boogie... depends what you want, but any of those manufacturers will have good build quality and reliable products.

I'd avoid Marshall personally, but that's based on having a perfectly fine JVMJS for nearly a year and then something futzed up with it and even after a completely fresh mainboard, I never got the tones from it that I liked again. Maybe their other products are better.

Beexter

Lew said:

Bit of an odd question! My advice would be stop reading and researching and start playing as many amps as ya can ;-)

I'm not sure it is odd - if I'm gonna spend good money on an amp, I don't want a good sounding amp that is unreliable. You have to be able to trust your equipment if you want to perform at your best - you see plenty of stories of people that sold amps because of unreliability,  despite them sounding great. 
I get that pushing the valves is what creates the overdrive sounds we enjoy but some amps have a reputation for almost eating valves (Dr Z Maz for example) so there are limits and it's not necessarily the valves I'm talking about. There's another thread that's just popped up on here pointing out some of the issues with the Blues Junior - that's the sort of stuff I'm on about  I wouldn't care if it was the greatest sounding amp in the world,  I wouldn't want to take the risk thank you.  There's so much of this sort of negativity - Marshall are criticised for quality all the time yet back in the day, they were THE rock amp.

I currently have 2 amps,  a Mesa Express 5 25+ Head and an Orange Rocker 30 Head, neither of which have given me any trouble and to be fair,  I haven't seen many negative reports on either. However, I fancy a smallish 15 - 30w combo to replace the pair of them if possible. I've got used to the convenience of using an AX8 and DXR10, hence a small combo would fit the bill to give me an "analogue" alternative. 
I have tried a few including Morgan, Louis Electric,  Bad Cat, Carr etc but none of them are exactly cheap and to be honest,  I prefer the sounds of my 2 existing amps and haven't found the combination of features and sounds and reputation for reliability I'm looking for. The Carr Sportsman has come the closest so far and does seem to get positive feedback for build and reliability. 

The original Fender amp circuits seem to have stood the test of time as well.

With so much choice available,  I don't think it is odd at all to want to narrow down the potential play list by eliminating poorly designed unreliable dogs.

Lew

Then it looks like you have enough experience and knowledge to answer your own question really :-) I doubt you'll find many modern amps more reliable than a Boogie. 

Beexter

I guess the gist of my original post is that there are a number of threads focusing on badly designed amps, but it would be nice to have one on well-designed ones!

dindude

Here's my take on it. The cost of a decent amp isn't cheap - I'd say anything from £1500 up allows the builder / company to "do things right". These amps (not all but a lot of them) would likely stand up against their vintage counterparts for durability, notwithstanding that something like a Boogie is much more complex. Anything less than this and compromises have to be made to hit a price point. Valves mounted on pcbs instead of chassis for example, or poorer quality components etc. And in Fenders case, poor design decisions that really shouldn't be at any price point (I'm an ex Supersonic 22 owner) So in short blame our wanting desire for all things on the cheap. 

Incidently, I've had my Carr Sportsman for 5 years and it feels absolutely bomb proof. Love that I don't need to re-bias when changing valves too, makes ownership so simple. 

ICBM

It's perfectly possible to build a valve amp which never fails for any reason other than a blown valve. All it needs is to be engineered well enough - and with proper fusing - so that no component will burn out before the fuse blows even if a valve shorts.

It's actually easy to do this, and doesn't even necessarily cost that much, especially for simpler amps. But there is always a huge temptation for mass-manufacturers to reduce costs, so they try *not* to over-engineer them.

A good example of a simple, fairly over-engineered amp which is almost perfectly reliable is a Marshall JCM800 2203 or 2204. It's still a PCB amp, but no heavy or high-power-dissipation components are mounted on the board (there are a couple of higher-power resistors, but they're properly spaced away from the board, and over-spec anyway), the chassis is built like a tank, and even the transformer mountings are reinforced. They almost never fail, other than blowing valves.

Then at the opposite end of the scale you have something like the Marshall DSL/TSL100, which is a nightmare - it's over-complicated, badly designed, poorly engineered and unsurprisingly is quite well-known to blow up. Some the faults are down to bad PCB layout, with high voltages separated by small distances, so they tend to arc. Others are because the multiple PCBs are joined by push-connectors which can make a poor contact... or because really stupid design mistakes were made, like running the speaker current through a jack contact, which is a well-known potential failure point. How stuff like this gets through R&D, I don't know.

Excessive complexity and mixing high-voltage valve circuits with low-voltage control circuits can be a problem even in well-made amps. Fancy 'valve protection' circuits seem to cause more trouble than they prevent. Another reason vintage-style hand-wired amps tend to be reliable is because they avoid this sort of thing... but keep it simple, build it well and it won't break, even with a PCB.

Even some of the modern high-quality amps (eg Mesa) are too complex for their own good and use PCB jumper connectors and too much switching. I would be much more worried about things like this than whether valves - especially preamp valves - are mounted on a PCB, which seems to be a popular (but wrong) 'test' for whether an amp is well-made.

The devil is in the detail... chassis-mounted valve sockets are good - unless they're poor quality or not soldered well (eg Laney), when they're a cause of failures. PCB-mounted sockets are fine, if the track layout around them is correct and the amp is designed well enough that the heat from the valve doesn't all go straight into the board.

etc...

A bit of a ramble I know, but hopefully some of that helps .

57Deluxe

Blimey - if anybody got it 'right' - they'd have clean up yonks ago! It is exactly the Q that you have posed that is what makes us all keep searching... The search is YOUR journey - enjoy it!