• Need electric guitar amp advice
    29 replies, posted
I need some advice on what amp I should get. My budget is around £150 (not a lot, I know) but it's not like I'm going to crank it up high. One that I saw was the Vox VT30, it looks good but does anyone know if it's decent. Any advice?
I'd recommend a Peavey Vypyr 30, although i'm not sure if they sell for £150.. Take a look.
Peavey Vypyr. If you aren't willing to shell out for either a Bugera combo amp, a decent half stack, or a really powerful (read: 120 watt) Crate solid-state amp, then the Vypyr is really your best bet for variety. Of course if you want absolutely no part of metal/hard rock whatsoever, the Vypyr will not be good to you. Its cleans aren't bad, but they get sharp and crackly if you up the volume too much. If clean tone is more your thing, rather than moderate-to-high levels of gain, then a Vox is more your thing. Though I wouldn't know which one to recommend, as I don't really like Vox.
I'd recommend a Line6, not sure if its in your price range or not.
[QUOTE=Sporkfire;26880916]I'd recommend a Line6, not sure if its in your price range or not.[/QUOTE] Line6 Spiders and Marshall MGs are arguably the worst of the budget ranges. Roland Cube, Peavey Vypyr or Vox VTs are all pretty decent, or you could hold out for a Jet City. Would require a fair bit more saving, but it's more of an investment
What kind of style are you gonna be playing, and what do you want your tone to sound like? Chances are a Peavey Vypyr 30 would be best, since pretty much anything with just a bit of distortion will sound good through it, cleans aren't as good but they're certainly not the worst. Not to mention the endless hours of fun you can have just messing around with it and trying different settings & effects. Mine was £150.
I made some samples from my Roland Cube, no outside effects or equalizations, just guitar in - amp out - audacity. Clean: [url=http://tindeck.com/listen/qrzq][img]http://tindeck.com/image/qrzq/stats.png[/img][/url] Distortion for lead guitars: [url=http://tindeck.com/listen/oxkd][img]http://tindeck.com/image/oxkd/stats.png[/img][/url] Distortion for rhythm guitars: [url=http://tindeck.com/listen/nblv][img]http://tindeck.com/image/nblv/stats.png[/img][/url] "Acoustic" mode: [url=http://tindeck.com/listen/zltc][img]http://tindeck.com/image/zltc/stats.png[/img][/url] Overall I would say it's a quite nice amp for it's price, you can do a lot more if you don't limit yourself with just the amp, if you apply some corrections after recording you can get pretty decent results.
A guy I know has a Vox VT50, and he says it's great. If you're wanting a Vox-style amp, the VT30 would be a good choice. If you're wanting alternate suggestions, you'll have to tell us what you play and what sort of sound you want. [editline]23rd December 2010[/editline] Also, as it's a modelling amp, you'll get loads of different sounds out of the VT30.
I also have a Vox VT50, and I'm pretty happy with it. I'm not really an expert though.
Depends what you're playing. I'm going to go with the crowd here and say either a Vypyr or a Vox VT50, depending on what you play.
spend £25 and you could get a vox ac4tv which is a small 4 watt combo all tube amp [url]http://www.dv247.com/guitars/vox-ac4tv-tube-practice-guitar-amplifier-combo--61544[/url] while its only four watts it will sound infinatly better than a modeling amp.
[url]http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1029524-Guitar-Discussion-Thread-V6/page33[/url] But on the helpful note, get a Roland Cube. Marvelous amp it is.
i still think you should aim for an all tube amp. once you go tube you wont want anything else, trust me.
Guitar Center sells 30 watt vypers for 200 I would honestly shell out the extra 50 for it.
[QUOTE=Dopey Trout;26881476]Line6 Spiders and Marshall MGs are arguably the worst of the budget ranges. Roland Cube, Peavey Vypyr or Vox VTs are all pretty decent, or you could hold out for a Jet City. Would require a fair bit more saving, but it's more of an investment[/QUOTE] you sure dude? my friend works at guitar center and he says Line6s are the best cheap amps.
it's a bad idea to listen to sporkfire just saying
you're not listening to me, you're listening to my friend who works at guitarcenter.
I own a line six and it sucks. Sure it has hundreds of different sounds but they all suck. Vox is cool. depends on what kind of music you want to play really.
that makes it even worse the stories i hear about guitar center workers are not the best
Line6 is not as bad as people say but for the same price there are tons of better alternatives. I would say, get a Vox for the clean tones, a Vypyr for the distortion or the Roland Cube for the middle term.
No. Line6 is worse than people say. You don't hear it when you're just starting out. Then I got a tube amplifier and things changed very quickly. I vomit when I have to play through my line6.
Ha, the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the title was Peavey Vypyr 30 and it has already been mentioned here a lot. I got one a couple of months ago and it is very fun, you can do pretty much anything with it. If you get it, just make sure you read the manual first... Mine was between £130 and £170 I think but it comes with 2 year warranty, 5 years if you register it on the peavey site if I remember correctly Marshall's are good too
I have a Line 6 at the minute, and I haven't got a job, so I'm stuck with it for the time being. However, having played through a variety of tube amps, I would recommend Fender, Marshall and Vox, in that order.
[QUOTE=Charybdis;26915456]Ha, the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the title was Peavey Vypyr 30 and it has already been mentioned here a lot. I got one a couple of months ago and it is very fun, you can do pretty much anything with it. If you get it, just make sure you read the manual first... Mine was between £130 and £170 I think but it comes with 2 year warranty, 5 years if you register it on the peavey site if I remember correctly Marshall's are good too[/QUOTE] No, the Marshall MG series is pretty terrible. But yeah the Vypyr as mentioned countless times is a good option.
[QUOTE=Meteor;26877573]I need some advice on what amp I should get. My budget is around £150 (not a lot, I know) but it's not like I'm going to crank it up high. One that I saw was the Vox VT30, it looks good but does anyone know if it's decent. Any advice?[/QUOTE] My friend owns that amp and it is by far the best modeling amp around. And don't let people fool you into thinking modeling amps are garbage. They don't have that signature tube vibe to them, but neither do digital amps. Modeling amps are as close as you will get to a tube sound. The Vox is great for anything from Indie to Classic Rock.. but avoid metal for it. If you're going to attempt metal, you will want to pick up an effects pedal or go for a Roland Cube instead.
If anything happens to a Roland amp, you're pretty much fucked. There's no documentation whatsoever on how to fix it/get it fixed at Roland's site...
A good amp tech should have no problem with most amplifiers. If it has modelling stuff on it though you are boned if the fault is with the DSP circuitry itself, they can be full of proprietary ICs.
usually anything with DSP circuitry is bound to not be very good in the sound department i have a small marshall combo amp (smaller than a fender twin-reverb) and it has no DSP and even uses tubes. the loudness of this thing hurts my ears at a volume of 5 and it can get louder than a solid state amp my friend has which is like twice the size
[QUOTE=thisispain;26940066]usually anything with DSP circuitry is bound to not be very good in the sound department i have a small marshall combo amp (smaller than a fender twin-reverb) and it has no DSP and even uses tubes. the loudness of this thing hurts my ears at a volume of 5 and it can get louder than a solid state amp my friend has which is like twice the size[/QUOTE] Tubes get pretty loud. DSP's are good practice amps if you play a multitude of styles because they're affordable and (most of them) work decently well. That doesn't mean that Peavey's "Recto" amp model actually sounds like a Mesa Rectifier, but it's about as close as you can get for 1/25th of the price.
A Peavey Vyper, I shall check this out. Sorry I've neglected this thread or facepunch in general actually and I'm quite drunk right now. Thank you so much for this advice, so it's either a Vox VT30 which I've seen a demo vid of and it's absolutely gorgeous or a Peavey Vypyr thingymagic. Well, I don't really havea preference since I'm still a newbie at guitar but I like somethin with distortion if you know what I mean. I shall check this Peavey out. Thanks all. much love and merry christmas.
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