Can I have a 'proper' amp at home, please?

Snags

Just because noone else ever says it,  don't forget the Laney Lionheart in 5w version.

Fine for home, and you can even gig it with a drummer for a small venue and the right kind of music. 

Lesgrandepotato

Lots of options. 

I have three valve amps at home. Hrdlx with a lion tamer in it. (Makes the volume less touchy)
Blackstar ht5 mini stack. 

Cornford Harly mk1.

All of these are great at home. Go out get some stuff bought then see if you get mojo from it. 

FWIW you can probably get all of them for £750 with a bit of effort.
I paid £300 for the harly, £275 for the mini stack, plenty of hrdlx about at 300 or so.

use man maths and get yourself an A/b pedal :-) 

downbytheriver

Almost any valve Princeton. Don’t reject the Blues Junior out of hand either - It’s important that they have a decent speaker but I’ve enjoyed the sound very much. 

z4driver

Once again, I can't thank you all enough for taking the time to give me advice. I'm really enjoying reading your suggestions and following them up.

Lee

NelsonP

Adding some Marshalls to the list:
SC20
2525
DSL

Rocker 15 a good shout

MtB

Get yourself over to Modulus amps and buy a kit that you like the look of. You can download the layout drawings, and there are plenty of on line build references if you need them - and a good few amp gurus on this forum who I'm sure would be able to assist in problem solving, if needs be.

Alternatively get over to Ampmaker and buy one of their kits - they come with full build instructions.    

For the ultimate retirement present why don't you treat yourself to an amp building course at Rift https://www.riftamps.com/courses-2020

For taming the beast that you've just build there's a myriad if attenuators available, from a £20 "L-pad" to a £350 Toneking Iron Man 2 (which is outstanding)   

Jalapeno

For great noises at family and neighbour volume a THR is hard to beat.

Small Fender choice for me is a Pro Junior, totally different from Blues Junior, and small venue giggable IMHO - also it's the house amp of Ain't Nothing But The Blues in London.

If you're flush - a Princeton re-issue

RustySpanner

I absolutely love my Orange Rocker 15. 
The headroom/bedroom swich just works perfectly. 

Does eveything - lovely clean sound and all the filth you need, even at night time volumes 

Very compact, nice and light. 

Voxman

Snags said:

Just because noone else ever says it,  don't forget the Laney Lionheart in 5w version.

Fine for home, and you can even gig it with a drummer for a small venue and the right kind of music. 

Nice amps, but most importantly, youll need the right type of drummer...a quiet, sensitive, gentle, rhythmic, non-maniacal one...good luck with that one!

YellowLedBetterMan

Voxman said:

Laney Super Cub 12R.   

This is a great suggestion. Use some of the remaining budget for a speaker swap (mine had a Celestion V30 in it).

If I'd had the space for two amps, I would've kept mine. I always maintain that my Laney Cub, Boss BD-2 and SD-1 gave me the best bunch of gain sounds I ever had, AND it was all done quietly enough to not piss anybody off.

I think if I could justify it and make space for it, I'd hunt down and buy my old one back.

SPECTRUM001

YellowLedBetterMan said:

Voxman said:

Laney Super Cub 12R.   

This is a great suggestion. Use some of the remaining budget for a speaker swap (mine had a Celestion V30 in it).

If I'd had the space for two amps, I would've kept mine. I always maintain that my Laney Cub, Boss BD-2 and SD-1 gave me the best bunch of gain sounds I ever had, AND it was all done quietly enough to not piss anybody off.

I think if I could justify it and make space for it, I'd hunt down and buy my old one back.

I just had a listen to some online demos of the Cub 12R.

Really interesting - I need to hear one for real. My goal has been a home use tube amp, preferably Silverface oriented with a gain and volume. Not saying the Cub is thus, but it does sound like it may offer some chime (whereas the Orange 15 appears to be a heavier in style) ?

@YellowLedBetterMan - without wishing to put you on the spot, does the Cub jangle with an edge of break up (pleasingly it has on board reverb) ?

Thanks !

RickLucas

Have you not got a Princeton yet?

SPECTRUM001

I had the impression it is way more power than I would need at home ?

Once we are allowed, and hoping there is stock available, I need to get out and demo a few models.

Would happily compare a Princeton, Vibro Champ 5w and Cub 12R. 

YellowLedBetterMan

SPECTRUM001 said:

YellowLedBetterMan said:

Voxman said:

Laney Super Cub 12R.   

This is a great suggestion. Use some of the remaining budget for a speaker swap (mine had a Celestion V30 in it).

If I'd had the space for two amps, I would've kept mine. I always maintain that my Laney Cub, Boss BD-2 and SD-1 gave me the best bunch of gain sounds I ever had, AND it was all done quietly enough to not piss anybody off.

I think if I could justify it and make space for it, I'd hunt down and buy my old one back.

I just had a listen to some online demos of the Cub 12R.

Really interesting - I need to hear one for real. My goal has been a home use tube amp, preferably Silverface oriented with a gain and volume. Not saying the Cub is thus, but it does sound like it may offer some chime (whereas the Orange 15 appears to be a heavier in style) ?

@YellowLedBetterMan - without wishing to put you on the spot, does the Cub jangle with an edge of break up (pleasingly it has on board reverb) ?

Thanks !

I found mine did quite a good job of it on the 1w setting with the gain about half way. That being said, anything more than that at 1w I thought sounded strange, like it was being choked or something. At 15w, I never had that same issue.

ICBM

YellowLedBetterMan said:

I found mine did quite a good job of it on the 1w setting with the gain about half way. That being said, anything more than that at 1w I thought sounded strange, like it was being choked or something. At 15w, I never had that same issue.

That's because it is.

As with several of these amps which have a very low power setting - the Orange Rocker 15 Terror is another - the low/'bedroom' power setting is actually done by using a fixed post-phase-inverter master volume. So if you drive the preamp very hard with it engaged, you're getting phase inverter distortion not true power stage overdrive.

Not that this is inherently a bad way of doing it - in fact I think it sounds more natural than actually reducing the power that far by lowering the voltage to the power section, which tends to sound odd much beyond the amount needed to get down to about half power - but it does have some slightly different characteristics.

Yoggie

I bought one of the vyse practice amps from Barry last year. Wanted it for the living room and works fine as such. Only problem is it has an 8” speaker. Sounds so much better when I use a 2x12” cab. However it then stops being living room friendly, not because of the volume but the cab size.

It was ready built so I can’t comment on his kits. Having said that I chatted a few times to Barry and he was always helpful and seems to know his stuff.

As others have said provided you have a decent volume control a high watt tube amp can be played just a quietly as a low watt one.

Voxman

SPECTRUM001 said:

YellowLedBetterMan said:

Voxman said:

Laney Super Cub 12R.   

This is a great suggestion. Use some of the remaining budget for a speaker swap (mine had a Celestion V30 in it).

If I'd had the space for two amps, I would've kept mine. I always maintain that my Laney Cub, Boss BD-2 and SD-1 gave me the best bunch of gain sounds I ever had, AND it was all done quietly enough to not piss anybody off.

I think if I could justify it and make space for it, I'd hunt down and buy my old one back.

I just had a listen to some online demos of the Cub 12R.

Really interesting - I need to hear one for real. My goal has been a home use tube amp, preferably Silverface oriented with a gain and volume. Not saying the Cub is thus, but it does sound like it may offer some chime (whereas the Orange 15 appears to be a heavier in style) ?

@YellowLedBetterMan - without wishing to put you on the spot, does the Cub jangle with an edge of break up (pleasingly it has on board reverb) ?

Thanks !

Definitely. I put a couple of demos up on youtube when I first got my Cub12R, with a LP Custom and  a USA Standard Strat.( see below...no external fx, all Cub). 

The only reason I changed the speaker and swapped it for a Celestion Vintage 30 is that originally Laney used a budget Rocket 50 that didn't do anything for the Cub.  The new Super Cubs have much better HH speakers and if mine had one of those I wouldn't have changed it.

Les Paul and Cub 12R ( starts with gain, goes to crunch and cleans)



Strat and Cub 12R ( starts with cleans and goes to crunch and gain)

SPECTRUM001

Many thanks for Super Cub thoughts and steering - much appreciated.

@Voxman - your Strat demo is very interesting (and great playing !) especially when you give it the first crank on the gain and volume. I am only on my phone, so not getting much low end, but it is certainly going into the direction I am after.

Looking forward to trying one out.

rlw

Voxman - thanks for the demos.  I have a question - listening through headphones, the amp sounds good and it sounds loud too (if that makes sense) but how loud was it in the room in dB terms?

I experimented last week with a noise app on my phone and found that none of my amps sounded great at low/comfortable levels - peaking at 80dB - and all improved when turned up to give peak readings around 100dB.

But those peak readings were giving a timed average reading of around 85dB which was simply too loud both for my ears and, probably, for the neighbours.

And this must be a significant question on this thread - what is a sensible home/bedroom volume?  I don't know.

ETA. I also have some hearing loss and tinnitus too, just for the record.

Voxman

rlw said:

Voxman - thanks for the demos.  I have a question - listening through headphones, the amp sounds good and it sounds loud too (if that makes sense) but how loud was it in the room in dB terms?

I experimented last week with a noise app on my phone and found that none of my amps sounded great at low/comfortable levels - peaking at 80dB - and all improved when turned up to give peak readings around 100dB.

But those peak readings were giving a timed average reading of around 85dB which was simply too loud both for my ears and, probably, for the neighbours.

And this must be a significant question on this thread - what is a sensible home/bedroom volume?  I don't know.

ETA. I also have some hearing loss and tinnitus too, just for the record.

It was loud enough to record but in no way loud. I was giving the amp settings as I went along that were intended to be helpful, and I made a point of saying I kept it down for my small den. You can also judge compared to the level of my normal talking voice.    

The great thing about the Cub is you can comfortably play it at low volume even via the 15 watt input, but it can be  loud enough for rehearsals and smaller club gigs without having to be miced up. The external speaker out (which cuts off the internal speaker) is great because you can put it through a 2x12 or 4x12 for more volume and a bigger sound. Through a 4x12 it's just frightening when you consider it's only a 15w amp!! I played through a 4x12 Marshall cab with V30s, with a heavy drummer, and volume was on about 6 ...and I had to turn it down!!.