Tiny Tube amps (on a budget!) ? What’s my options

Crazyblue1779

So. Having just bought a lovely Les Paul Traditional, I promised myself that I’d not spend any money on guitar related purchases. 

However, amps aren’t guitars….

I'm currently using a Spark and while it’s certainly a powerful tool, sometimes I feel that I spend more time fiddling with the settings and tones than I do playing. 

I like the idea of a tiny little (desktop sized) tube amp with minimal controls and fuss where I could just plug in and play when the  bluesy notion took me.  

I don’t have a huge budget (mostly blown on the Les Paul!) but I could stretch to £300ish. 

I’ve been looking at the Blackstar HT1R, Bugera V5 etc. 

Aesthetically I’d love a head and a tiny 8” cab, but combos are also an option. 

I should add though that 90% of my playing is done through headphones so a decent headphone out is important too. 

The only requirement is that it has overdrive and reverb. 

Anyone care to throw any suggestions my way?

impmann

Good choices - I'd also suggest the Hughes and Kettner Tubemeister 5. Absolutely amazing amps, beloved of Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) and genuinely one of my fave purchases ever.

bertie

personally,   if you want "tiny /desktop"  stick with the Spark /  "modelling" type hardware.

If you want to try  vavleygoodness     -  by all means go "low" powered, but for my t'penneth - keep the speaker/cab size  good ,  1 x12 ,   1 x 10 at least.................... maybe even an attenuator.................. 

ArchtopDave

Stretch the budget, and get a Milkman either 50, or the 100 which I have. 

markj

I played through a Blackstar HT1R and thought it was terrible.
What type of music do you play?

Crazyblue1779

markj said:

I played through a Blackstar HT1R and thought it was terrible.
What type of music do you play?

This would be for blues I guess. I’ll keep the Spark for anything heavier. 

markj

Having had a lot experience and had a lot of amps over the years and because of your budget I would go with a low watt Laney.

Pabcrane

I am watching with interest as i am considering a Bugera T5 head.

ICBM

Crazyblue1779 said:

Aesthetically I’d love a head and a tiny 8” cab, but combos are also an option. 

I should add though that 90% of my playing is done through headphones so a decent headphone out is important too. 

The only requirement is that it has overdrive and reverb. 

Anyone care to throw any suggestions my way?

I would avoid an 8" speaker if it's a 'guitar type' one, including the combo version of the HT-1R - they're generally quite boxy and raspy sounding with little deep bass, and while that sound does have validity for old-school blues, it's really the only thing it's actually good - as opposed to tolerable at a push - for. Even a 10" cab will be a huge improvement, and sounds much more like a 'proper' guitar sound - the difference it makes to the HT-1R is huge.

(One of the very few exceptions is the Fender Champ/Vibro Champ - it seems to work much better because the amp itself is quite scooped in the mids, and the cabinet is quite large for an 8" practice amp - but they're way out of your budget.)

The headphone output requirement is really going to limit you though - very few valve amps have them, and most that do sound poor because they have no proper speaker emulation, if any at all. The Blackstars are one of the very few exceptions. The Marshall Class 5 is a good example of one without proper emulation, for what it's worth - the headphone sound is terrible.

MentalSharps

For valve breakup and headphone out maybe a valve preamp pedal would be better?

Something like the Two Notes valve preamps which are in the 200-300 range I believe, and have headphone out with cab-sim or IR functionality.

Bonus of also being able to use it as a pedal with another amp if you go that route some other time.

I play with headphones at my desk but use a head with a loadbox.

HRTF with stereo-IR's (ideally for each ear) and head tracking is the next frontier for headphone playing, it's amazing with home cinema, but with guitar it seems early days and a bit of faff so not really plug and play!

bertie

ICBM said:

Crazyblue1779 said:

I should add though that 90% of my playing is done through headphones so a decent headphone out is important too. 

The headphone output requirement is really going to limit you though - very few valve amps have them, and most that do sound poor because they have no proper speaker emulation, if any at all. The Blackstars are one of the very few exceptions. The Marshall Class 5 is a good example of one without proper emulation, for what it's worth - the headphone sound is terrible.

I completely missed that bit..............................personally (and Id welcome comment from peeps that have done/tried it)  I dont think its worth it  - you'd be hard pressed to tell/appreciate the difference between a good "modeller" and a valve amp through headphones. ??   You'd "miss" all that was/ is good   -   

I used to use a pocket pod,  and through headphones it sounded MASSIVE through the lineout/amp/speaker it was dire

If you really want to go down that route,  Id maintain  - a decent valve amp/combo and an attenuator with headphone with emulated speaker capability

Dave_Mc

First thing is that some of those small amps aren't actually all-tube (like the Blackstars and (I think) the H&K). You might not care, but it's worth pointing out in case you do. (To be clear- I haven't tried them, so I'm not saying not to get them. I'm just pointing it out so you know and can make your own mind up.)

The second thing is that some of those smaller amps use "funny" tubes in the power amp, usually in a push-pull configuration (they're often dual valves in one valve, like a 12BH7 or ecc82 or something like that). That arguably makes them closer to a big amp, but it also means you probably have to bias them when changing power tubes, which is a lot more bother (and expense, if you can't do it yourself). The single-ended amps (usually amps with a single EL84 or 6V6 power valve) don't usually need to be biased, so valve swaps are usually straightforward and you can usually do those yourself.

EDIT: Also I agree with @bertie and @ICBM about getting a decent-sized speaker.

hollywoodrox

What about one of the new solid state boutique mini heads and an HB cab 
  The Friedman BE Mini ,Bogner Ecstacy mini and soldano SLO mini all sound amazing 

hollywoodrox

https://youtu.be/s4seG2REm14

CaseOfAce

What'd I'd be looking for would be a combo amp with only a 12AX7 preamp tube with a 10" speaker...
Does such a thing even exist?

Crazyblue1779

hollywoodrox said:

What about one of the new solid state boutique mini heads and an HB cab 
  The Friedman BE Mini ,Bogner Ecstacy mini and soldano SLO mini all sound amazing 

To be honest I’ve not heard of these. I suppose I was so fixated on the idea of having to have tubes that these have done under my radar. 

But having read some of the issues with headphone output ( which I wasn’t aware would be such an issue with tube amps) maybe this is something to consider. 

I suppose what I’m really after is something small and simple!

markj

CaseOfAce said:

What'd I'd be looking for would be a combo amp with only a 12AX7 preamp tube with a 10" speaker...
Does such a thing even exist?

I would avoid the 10” speaker.

markj

Read the earlier threads for what he is after an amp for Blues, a lot of these recommendations are for rock oriented amps.

ICBM

CaseOfAce said:

What'd I'd be looking for would be a combo amp with only a 12AX7 preamp tube with a 10" speaker...
Does such a thing even exist?

Yes. An example would be a Marshall Valvestate VS30R, and there are several others, especially from that era (1990s) before modellers took over the small low-to-medium budget amp market.

They’re actually a good little amp, although can benefit from a better speaker - but the headphone output isn’t good, I forget if it has basic emulation on it not, but it sounds buzzy and crap either way!

Dodge

For your application, I'd stick with the modeller.

'Proper' valve amps tend not to have headphone out, and if they did they'd likely sound worst than a modeller through headphones anyway.

I've been chasing a low wattage amp that actually sounds half decent and even with really good low wattage amps like Cornell etc., I've always got better results with higher wattage amps turned down.

My solution is a decent sounding higher wattage amp through a loadbox and into a DAW hosting impulse responses.  Authentic valve tone at any volume you like.

MentalSharps

bertie said:

ICBM said:

Crazyblue1779 said:

I should add though that 90% of my playing is done through headphones so a decent headphone out is important too. 

The headphone output requirement is really going to limit you though - very few valve amps have them, and most that do sound poor because they have no proper speaker emulation, if any at all. The Blackstars are one of the very few exceptions. The Marshall Class 5 is a good example of one without proper emulation, for what it's worth - the headphone sound is terrible.

I completely missed that bit..............................personally (and Id welcome comment from peeps that have done/tried it)  I dont think its worth it  - you'd be hard pressed to tell/appreciate the difference between a good "modeller" and a valve amp through headphones. ??   You'd "miss" all that was/ is good   -   

I used to use a pocket pod,  and through headphones it sounded MASSIVE through the lineout/amp/speaker it was dire

If you really want to go down that route,  Id maintain  - a decent valve amp/combo and an attenuator with headphone with emulated speaker capability

I've tried quite a lot of plugins and compared to a Jet City 100w with Torpedo Captor into DAW playing through headphones, I felt a difference in how the amp responds.

To be transparent I wasn't using an expensive DI into my interface so perhaps getting a higher quality one would make some difference, and I also didn't test the Neural DSP plugins which people seem to rate the highest.

But I did compare to Helix Native, Nembrini plugins, S-Gear, Joey Sturgis Tones. Unexpectedly it was S-Gear that felt the closest to my amp in the way it responded and 'felt', but I'm not the best player to say the least so it's an opinion not worth a huge amount. 

But there was a characteristic with all the plugins that I struggled to dial out where they would be boomy or muddy if I tried to dial them in to match the low mid punch of the Jet City, and I noticed in general fizziness on the gain often had me tweaking endlessly trying to dial in the sounds without even realising and then running out of time. Whereas with the Jet City amp it's really hard to get a bad sound and it's pretty much just plug and play.

Again, the Neural plugins are meant to be amazing and some people make Helix sound very very good (and perhaps the hardware is different from software), so maybe if you have an interface already, for £300 you could get a Rupert Neve RNDI for £250 and the Neural DSP Toneking plugin for £50 when it's next on sale and it could be exactly what you need. 

Or you could get a fender style combo for £200-300 like some on the classifieds recently, and add a loadbox when budget allows.