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But when I put a Greenback in one, instantly both channels sounded great with all the tone knobs halfway up, and like the same amp. My guess is that it was prototyped with a Greenback, but then the bean-counters decided that was too expensive so inflicted the tin frisbee on it when the voicing had already been done.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
If the 40 watter does similar, it will also sound fantastic.
I genuinely don’t understand these two popular beliefs, that you need a low-powered amp to play quietly, and that you need to crank up a valve amp to get it to sound good. I’ve always been able to get great very-low-volume sounds from *big* valve amps - they have volume controls, you turn them down. If you want overdriven sounds it’s easier if they have multiple ‘master’ volumes - one for the channel and one for the overall volume, so you can turn both down.
It honestly baffles me that there’s this idea of amps being “too loud” - there are a very few exceptions, where they’re so badly designed that the volume jumps from off to substantial over too small a range to dial it in no matter how careful you are - but pots are not switches. Obviously you won’t get distortion at bedroom volume from a non-MV amp, but just run some sort of preamp/pedal into it...
I used a 200W Marshall Major into a huge bass cabinet in a city flat with thin walls, with a valve preamp in front - it sounded absolutely fantastic at quieter than TV volume.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
That's basically the sound you get from modellers. If that's what you want get a helix or GT 1000 and some monitors.
Of course they sound better turned up loud at a gig! So what? No amp at low volume will ever give you that, because the experience of playing loud is not just about the sound. If a big amp sounds better than a small amp at low volume, then it’s still better.
If you can afford it, physically fit it into your house and carry it when you need to (this might still be a problem, I know) then no amp is too big.
No-one says you can’t buy a Porsche if you’re not going to only drive it at 150mph on a race track...
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I've had numerous valve amps that I've used at home and the two things that make then hard to use are hair trigger volume controls (like the famous HRD one) or having huge amounts of headroom so overdrive pedals can easily blow your ears out if you aren't careful (like a Twin turned down quiet).
Things I've noticed with the many amps I've owned is that amps with small cabinets and speakers always sound weedy at any volume so big amps usually sound better (unless you are going for the tweed champ thing).
Also in the case of the DSL 20 and 40 (and Origin 20 and 50) they both have the same valves and run them a different voltages so the 40 running at 20 watts pretty much is the 20 watt version just with a better cabinet and speaker and more sophisticated preamp.
The Dsl40 is very controllable, I had the old version without the final master volumes, it just had gain and volume, but I thought it sounded great. I only ever used it at home, and I miss it. Didn’t know how good I had it til it was gone. *violins*