Opinions on the best SS Amps?

bugileman

I have a couple of good valve amps, but I keep coming back to a solid states from time to time and still surprise me how good they can be....

Would be interested to hear which solid state amps are worth a look, old and new.

maltingsaudio

Bluguitar Amp1 awesome, not all solid state as has a nanotube but my favourite amp at the moment .

Sporky

JC120, obvs. 

HAL9000

Of ones ive actually heard...

Orange Crush Pro - Sounds like an Orange. Looks to be well built.

Yamaha THR100 - Lots of decent tones. Hard to make it sound bad.

Roland Blues Cube Stage - Lovely cleans. Sweet bluesy lead tones.

Fuengi

Played a Session Amp in the summer. Absolutely lovely. 

vasselmeyer

The recent Session amps are really excellent.

I use a DV Mark 50W micro head. Less than 2kg and has a lovely responsive clean channel which I use as a pedal  platform. They were big in the bass world and have moved into guitar amplification.

digitalscream

Rocktron Velocity 120.

OK, so it's just a power amp, but it behaves - to the ears - astonishingly like a valve power amp, and with my X88R clone in front it sounds...like a great valve amp, if I'm honest.

More than worth the £30 I paid for it

KKJale

Well under the radar: early '80s Yamaha G-100 and G-50 combos.

Ideally the 1x12 (the 2x12 is proper heavy) and also series 2, not series 3 (which had coloured knobs).

simonk

Quilter. The little 101r head is a cracking little amp.

Grunfeld

Orange CR 120 head -- a game changer for me.  Been gigging weekly with it for a couple of years.  If it dies I'd get another.

And as of today a little Quilter micro block -- which is only a back up amp but in rehearsal tonight I was impressed -- it's perfect for the job.  I'd love to try the "proper" Quilter amps.

timhulio

I just got this guy. One of the coolest amps I've seen in a while, plus it has two separate preamps so two band members can share it! Has a nice 1x12 speaker with non-standard fixing, made in Leipzig. Pretty loud, nice and clean most of the way up.

frown

Yamaha SR50 112 are great clean amps. Proper spring reverb too.

sweepy

The old Sessionette 75 is a cracking amp also don’t rule out old Pevey Bandits etc as a pedal platform 

Babones

Quilter 101 Mini Reverb.

TheBigDipper

maltingsaudio said:

Bluguitar Amp1 awesome, not all solid state as has a nanotube but my favourite amp at the moment .

Mine too. Great live players platform that cuts through the mix. 

ICBM

sweepy said:

The old Sessionette 75 is a cracking amp also don’t rule out old Pevey Bandits etc as a pedal platform 

I'm not a big fan of the Sessionette overdrive sound, but they're also a good pedal platform.

There are actually a very large number of older solid-state amps that fit the bill if you're going to get the overdrive sounds from pedals or an outboard modeller - most are reliable, have a fairly full clean sound with powerful enough EQ to dial it in, loud enough (above about 50W anyway) and extremely cheap to buy now.

I saw a chap using an old Laney Linebacker like that not long ago - sounded fine, and you won't need to pay even £100 for one.

That Vermona looks very cool . They're the same company that made some of the Sound City and Londoner badged amps in the later 70s and early 80s.

digitalscream

ICBM said:

I saw a chap using an old Laney Linebacker like that not long ago - sounded fine, and you won't need to pay even £100 for one.

A Laney Linebacker 30 combo (with a 10" speaker, I think) was my first ever guitar amp back in the 80s. It sounded absolutely awful with just about anything...except the Boss DS-1 my parents got me for my birthday that year. Coincidentally, it's also the only amp I ever thought made the DS-1 sound good.

timmysoft

My favourites would be:

Trace Elliot Super Tramp - i toured with these in the early 2000's, they were always a huge sounding amp. 

Marshall VS100r - it does have a valve in it, but i don't think it does very much. Quality amps though!

Peavey Supreme XL - The head version of a Bandit with a few up market features thrown in. Incredible for gains!

Line 6 Duoverb - a commercial failure but probably the best Line 6 product before Helix.

ragingben

AMT Stonehead is great, covers a wide range of sounds really well, and is a very small but robust head.

ICBM

timmysoft said

Trace Elliot Super Tramp - i toured with these in the early 2000's, they were always a huge sounding amp.

They do sound great, but you must have been one of the few people who didn't have trouble with them. A rehearsal studio I work for bought half a dozen of them at the time - every one died within a few months. Once they were out of warranty I modded the surviving ones to make them a bit more reliable.

timmysoft said:

Marshall VS100r - it does have a valve in it, but i don't think it does very much. Quality amps though!

The valve does make a difference - the distortion is done with diodes and LEDs, but the valve drives the tone stack on the dirty channels and acts as a sort of post-preamp enhancer on the clean. They're not bad quality and do sound great, but also have a couple of design faults - fairly easily fixed though, and still common in practice rooms.

timmysoft

ICBM said:

timmysoft said

Trace Elliot Super Tramp - i toured with these in the early 2000's, they were always a huge sounding amp.

They do sound great, but you must have been one of the few people who didn't have trouble with them. A rehearsal studio I work for bought half a dozen of them at the time - every one died within a few months. Once they were out of warranty I modded the surviving ones to make them a bit more reliable.

timmysoft said:

Marshall VS100r - it does have a valve in it, but i don't think it does very much. Quality amps though!

The valve does make a difference - the distortion is done with diodes and LEDs, but the valve drives the tone stack on the dirty channels and acts as a sort of post-preamp enhancer on the clean. They're not bad quality and do sound great, but also have a couple of design faults - fairly easily fixed though, and still common in practice rooms.

I had three super tramp heads, never had a problem with any of them!