Second Hand Bargain Amps?

RickLucas

Traynor

monquixote

RickLucas said:

Traynor

They are all about the bass.

english_bob

monquixote said:

Fender Twin

Ticks both the OP's "bloody loud" and "heavy" boxes. I had one of the late 70s "ultralinear" ones for a while, and even though they're about the least desirable "vintage" Twins it still sounded great at what it did.

AFAIK, none of the "undesirable" 80s and 90s Twins are actually *bad*, they just don't all look and sound how people want a Twin to. And they weigh a bloody ton.

ICBM

english_bob said:

AFAIK, none of the "undesirable" 80s and 90s Twins are actually *bad*, they just don't all look and sound how people want a Twin to. And they weigh a bloody ton.

The mid-90s 'Twin Amp' (AKA 'Evil Twin') is the best-sounding modern Fender amp I know of. But they do weigh as much as a small planet.

StefB

monquixote said:

RickLucas said:

Traynor

They are all about the bass.

They actually are though. 

I had a used YCS90 2x12 for a while, and it was capable of making even a Tele bridge pickup sound like a double bass.

Awful, awful amp, although I believe the 'Hot Rod Deluxe beating' YCV40 has a far better underground reputation.

StefB

Kittyfrisk said:

StefB said:

Pretty much most Laneys really. 

TT50 & TT100 are wonderful sounding, highly spec’d amps that can be picked up for embarrassingly little money. 

Spot on. I have several TT20's & a TT100 2x12 combo.
Like guitars, most people buy by name, looks or reputation rather than by how they actually sound 

Shout up if you ever fancy parting with the TT100 2x12.  I swear Laney only made about five of the damn things, and I've still yet to see one in the wild...

GavRichList

ICBM said:

english_bob said:

AFAIK, none of the "undesirable" 80s and 90s Twins are actually *bad*, they just don't all look and sound how people want a Twin to. And they weigh a bloody ton.

The mid-90s 'Twin Amp' (AKA 'Evil Twin') is the best-sounding modern Fender amp I know of. But they do weigh as much as a small planet.

own one, can confirm both points. 

gjonesy

There was the Laney AOR/protube era - silly cheap a while back not sure what theyre doing price wise now

Snags

I was going to chip in Laney LC too. Based purely on the fact that it took forever to find a new home for my LC30-II at not-a-lot-of-money pricing. If i'd been gigging I wouldn't have got rid, it was just a bit anti-social for home use.

JayGee

Lacey LCs were crazy value for money new (just flat out great sounding for not a lot of money) so I’d certainly expect them to be a good buy used...

Alexlotl

Not super cheap, but I did notice that the hefty price difference between the current Vox AC15 models with the Celestion Blue vs the Celestion Green (an extra £200 for the AC15C1X with the blue) seems to disappear when they're sold second hand, with both models going for about the same amount, £350-400ish. This makes second hand models with the blues a comparatively better deal (provided you like the sound of them, of course!).

Whitecat

I got a dead mint, as-new Mark V combo for £1500, from an actual shop at that rather than a private sale, back when the retail price was nearly £3500. Not a "bargain" exactly but that's a hell of a depreciation. The price has since come down a bit since the distributor was axed in favour of direct, but that's still just over half the current selling price.

Can confirm is it both loud and heavy.

Modulus_Amps

I bought this Soundcity 50 Plus for £350, it needs a service but for a vintage amp you can not argue on the price, but it is loud clean and works well with the pedals I have tried so far, really good transformers fitted and it came with vintage valves. once done up it is going to be really nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1NVcsfZK0s

Bork

Burmans  are embarrassingly cheap for the quality and they're authentic, not reissues.  Although best to get one that has been recently serviced by someone who knows what they are doing as some can be pretty thrashed.

ICBM

Modulus_Amps said:

I bought this Soundcity 50 Plus for £350, it needs a service but for a vintage amp you can not argue on the price, but it is loud clean and works well with the pedals I have tried so far, really good transformers fitted and it came with vintage valves. once done up it is going to be really nice.

'Done up' as in strip out the circuit entirely and build something good-sounding in it?



eg Hiwatt DR504...

Modulus_Amps

ICBM said:

Modulus_Amps said:

I bought this Soundcity 50 Plus for £350, it needs a service but for a vintage amp you can not argue on the price, but it is loud clean and works well with the pedals I have tried so far, really good transformers fitted and it came with vintage valves. once done up it is going to be really nice.

'Done up' as in strip out the circuit entirely and build something good-sounding in it?



eg Hiwatt DR504...

That was my intention when I bought it, Actually I bought it to reverse engineer the Partridge transformers, but the active eq is quirky, I think I am going to try tweak that a bit first.

relic245

ThePrettyDamned said:

Not as common, but the lh50 is also a bargain frequently. 50 Watts, half size head, toroidal transformer to help with size. Probably built not great but mine never went wrong and sounded really great, like old-school 70s and 80s rock. 

Yep, I bought one for (I think) £75 and sold it on here for the same. It was my backup head for ages. Ugly as anything but sounded great. 

I had an Axe-FX version 1 when they were quite new and sold all of my amps apart from the LH50. One day I plugged it in with a bluesbreaker pedal in front of it and that was is, the axe-fx had to go as my £100 rig (ex cab) pissed all over it in terms of tone. 

jpfamps

I think the Laney GH50 is a lot of amp for the money, as these seem to go for around £250.

Not my sort of amp, but I think they are well-built, and sound pretty respectable.

Cols

ICBM said:

monquixote said:

What's the problem with the LC15?

Everything. It’s literally the worst-built amp I can think of. Failure-prone transformers, crappy thin PCB with the power valves mounted on it so it warps and cracks with the heat, shitty pots (and on the underside of the board so you can’t even clean them without taking it out), flimsy chipboard cabinet with badly-glued vinyl which comes off, and in most of them a crap speaker.

Many other Laneys have one or two of those problems... but the LC15 has *all* of them. To be fair I can think of a lot of other amps that sound worse, but I still don’t think it sounds at all great. Pretty much any amp will sound good through a half-decent 4x12”...

I must be lucky; I’ve had one for about 20 years without incident.  I replaced the speaker with a Jensen (although it mostly runs through a 2x12 cab these days), replaced the occasional valve and converted the FX loop from parallel to series.  Sounds fine to me.

ICBM

Cols said:

I must be lucky; I’ve had one for about 20 years without incident.

There's always one .