Looking for advice on first valve amp!

shuikit

I'm a happy VHT Special 6 Ultra owner, for practices etc I often just take this and a couple of pedals and I'm happy. The controls are unconventional though.  I have the head but I believe you can get a combo version.  

Not sure where you can get these amps these days, Dawsons used to have them but I've not seen them in a long time.  I would guess that Thomann would still do them

Beexter

ElectricNoodle said:

   Can I ask though, how much difference does not having an FX loop make? I've never actually owned an amp with one, but it seems to be mentioned as a fairly important feature a lot of the time! 

For the type of use you are looking for, the Laney Cub 12r combo would be a really good choice. If you're mainly looking at overdrive sounds, the Laney should be just about loud enough to gig with but as it has a switch to reduce the power down to <1 watt, it works well for home use too. Having said that, the <1 watt setting is still surprisingly loud. I had the Cub head, which has the same features as the combo but with the head, it had to be plugged into an external speaker cab. I used my CUB with a Digitech RP500 too and it worked really well.

Regarding the effects loop, a key advantage with your current set up is that you can plug the "output" from your RP500 straight into the "return" socket of the amp which bypasses all of the amps pre-amp section. This means that the amp is just "amplifying" what is coming out of the RP500 and not adding any extra tone or volume modification from it's internal tone section. In this scenario, you don't plug anything into the "input" socket on the amp.

The other advantage of an effects loop is that if you get your overdrive/ distortion sounds from the amp (not pedals/ RP500) an effects loop allows you to run delay and reverb effects AFTER the overdrive sound coming from the amp. This sounds better to many people than running delay or reverb BEFORE distortion. Without an effects loop, you would generally put your delay or reverb pedals last in your effects chain and then run a cable into the input of the amp. As said above, it doesn't usually sound as nice. If an amp has reverb built in, it is not as essential unless you intend to run delay/ modulation effects.

Alnico

Based purely on my ownership and experience in the last few years,

Marshall JTM 30 - sounds awesome on the clean channel, not too bad on the drive channel, easily loud enough for any gig but not a great design due to the valves being placed horizontally, directly under the PCB and causing lack of cooling / overheating / melting issues - c.£200 used

Fender Vibro Champ XD - Not a bad amp. 5W which makes it slightly restricted in use but again if you mic it up, it's capable of anything. The DSP is ok but difficult to use live. The voice control has some useable settings but you need to adjust EQ for each so again, pick a sound and stick with it if you're using it live. I found running a separate 1 x 12 speaker cab worked well and sounded better than the Internal 8" speaker. For home use it's a fine amp, it has a clear and reasonable quality tone. c. £100 used

Vox AC4 C1 - Ok if you like the one boxy little sound it makes, rubbish for anything else - c.£150 used

Blackstar HT-20 - Dark, muddy, bad speaker (Rocket 50), the ISF feature just goes from wrong to awful with a kind-of-ok-spot in the middle. Turn it up full, play with the controls for an hour and you might get one acceptable sound out of it. I'm told a new speaker makes a difference but i never got that far and sold it. c.£200 used

Epiphone Valve Junior - Brilliant Amp. No tone stack but with a simple addition of a pedal that has 3 band EQ, it comes alive. I used a Joyo AC Tone (£29.99) and it worked great. Leave the pedal on and use the EQ to get the sound you want. Set the level and drive for your boosted sound and then turn your guitar volume down. When you want grunt, turn the guitar volume back up. Brilliant.

Not loud enough for a big stage but Mic it up on volume 4 or 5 and it's easily capable and a great tone set up as above.

Perfect for home as you can use the pedal in a different way to get drive at low volume, which it does very clearly and it's great for rehearsal studio and small gigs.  If you do use it straight without anything in front of it, it sounds it's best at volume 7. Very natural, raunchy blues sound. c.£100 - 130 for head and cab used. 

Combo's don't sound as full as it's a smaller speaker but can still be a very useable little amp and be had for c.£80 used.

ThePrettyDamned

For your first valve amp, you could do much, much worse than a Jet City or a used Laney LC15/VC15 or the 30 watt versions.  They go silly cheap and sound great. 

The Jet City are probably the better built amps, though. 

BigMonka

I've heard good things about the subzero tube amps from gear4music, although I've yet to get down there and try them. Very cheap for what they are too.

Voxman

ThePrettyDamned;435134" said:

For your first valve amp, you could do much, much noworse than a Jet City or a used Laney LC15/VC15 or the 30 watt versions.  They go silly cheap and sound great. 

The Jet City are probably the better built amps, though. 

I'm not familiar with the JetCity amps but I have a Laney VC30-210 and its a lovely amp...probably my favourite of the amps I have.

Alnico

Voxman said:

ThePrettyDamned;435134" said:

For your first valve amp, you could do much, much noworse than a Jet City or a used Laney LC15/VC15 or the 30 watt versions.  They go silly cheap and sound great. 

The Jet City are probably the better built amps, though. 

I'm not familiar with the JetCity amps but I have a Laney VC30-210 and its a lovely amp...probably my favourite of the amps I have.

If i remember Correctly, @photek uses a VC30 and quite likes it ???