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I'm looking for a guitar amp that's good for recording mostly a Fender Strat Plus with Lace Sensors and a Gibson Les Paul with PAF's. Music style is mostly pop-rock, rock, and blues. Good clean tone is more preferable than good distortion since I can get good distortion with pedals. Although, good of both is ideal. My budget is up to $600. I'm considering ADA Rocket A20R (a rare amp--I have a chance to snag one), Peavey Classic 30, Fender Pro Jr., and Fender Blues Jr. Which one do you recommend? I heard the ADA is very good. Is it way better than the others mentioned? Any others worth considering?

Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Michael L.

Comments

KurtFoster Sat, 07/23/2005 - 15:22

No one can say ... this is a thing you must decide for yourself. Everyone plays differently and what might sound wonderful with you playing might really suck when I pick up the guitar.

My opinion;

... the ADA is outdated / obsolete. A lot of players have reported these amps are very noisy.

Peavey's guitar amps suck for the most part.

The Fenders you mention are tube and I've heard them sound very good with some players. Just be sure not to bang them around too hard. These amps employ large circuit boards with the tube sockets attached to them. One good physical jolt can crack a trace or even the board itself ... which in turn may cause complete failure or even worse an intermittent problem you may neve be able to find or repair. I advise anyone who uses these newer Fender amps to get a good road case for transport and to be very careful to avoid banging them around when moving.

CoyoteTrax Sat, 07/23/2005 - 18:15

The Pro Jr. absolutely rocks and is one of my faves for recording.

The Blues Jr. is just as sweet.

inLoco is right about the Hot Rod Deluxe too. It's a great sounding amp with beautiful tone but make sure it's not too loud for your studio. 40W of all tube power is really FN loud man.

Kurt's right about deciding for yourself. This is a realtively easy decision though. 2 main questions:

1) How many watts do you really need?

and

2) Do you prefer the tone from 10" or 12" speakers?

Piece of cake.

You're going in the right direction though. You need something to warm up those Lace Sensors and push that signal a bit. All tubes...small watts...the only way to go, IMO. Don Lace pup's do sparkle so nice in the high's and they're great pup's for strat's when your focus is "clean" work.

moonbaby Sun, 07/24/2005 - 07:28

I have a room full of amps, and I have had sooo many problems with the "newer" Fender "Jr" and "Hot Rod" amps, I have dumped them all. Kurt has a good point about them. They are very poorly built. They develop some very annoying rattles and microphonic noises due to the close proximity of the speaker to the tubes. The Hotrod never seemed to footswitch like it was supposed to.
I now have a 68 Fender Bandmaster Reverb. Did a "VibraVerb" mod. Am in love. You can find these on e-bay in your price range.
I used to sell Peavey amps. They have lousy parts, poor QC, and the buzziest overdrive in the biz. Southern-fried crappola.
ADA gear is cheap on the internet because it is cheap gear.
I also have a Musicman HD65. Good clean tone. Whimpy reverb compared to the Fender. I put a 12" JBL D120F in it. Southern-fried chicken-pickin' to the max!
You might check out a good used Sunn, like a 100s or Solarus or Sceptre. All tube, great clean sound, built like a tank. Ditto with the Traynor MkIII...a Twin on steroids!

anonymous Sun, 07/24/2005 - 09:27

The only amp I know that sounds great with Fenders and Gibsons is a Fender Bassman. You can find reproductions of them in boutique shops. I have a Holland Gibb Droll, and it's fantastic.

I know that's probably not in your price range, but it helps to have an idea of what the best amp is, and work down from there.

~id

anonymous Mon, 07/25/2005 - 07:10

I played a Peavey Triple X head and now I play a Peavey JSX Head. By far the best amp I have ever played. Beats the crap out of my Mesa Dual Rectifier and my Marshall JCM800 (and I loved my Marshall). The only amp I have played that I can get a better tone out of is the new Hughes and Kettner Triamp MkII but those are like 3,000 bucks. Too much for me.

anonymous Mon, 07/25/2005 - 11:09

For recording, more power is useless. However, an amp with a 8" speaker will sound harsh IMHO. For me, nothing beats a 12" speaker for guitar, so I'd limit my list to strictly 1X12 or 2X12 combos. Might want to throw Traynor in the mix though (a YCV50 Blue or a YCV20 are interesting flavors). But it's really up to you to decide what sounds the best to you. I can attest that the Traynors are very reliable (having used 2 YCV80 on the road for a couple years).

BTW Kurt: yes newer amps are cheapily built, but they're not that fragile: my Marshall JCM2000 DSL50 use PCB too and gets banged around quite often (we gig every weekend and carry our stuff in a trailer) and recently was sent flying through the air from the top of the cab, landed a good 10-12 ft further and was left exposed to heavy rain for a few minutes. It still works and sounds awesome!

I wouldn't advise a Marshall combo though (at least not the newer ones), to me they sounds like pure shit (really different than the stacks) and some have overheating issues. God intended Marshalls to be used in stacks.

frob Mon, 07/25/2005 - 12:28

a good amp with a lot of tones is the crate v12 (you have to get one off ebay) if take one of thies and put you flavor tubes in it and switch out that little reverb spring its got, then you got a great little recording amp.

i know for the most part crate amps arnt that good but this one blew me away.

anonymous Mon, 07/25/2005 - 13:08

I just think a lot of people don't necessarily know how to capture the sound of a 4x12. You can't stick the mic right up on the grill and expect to get the same sound you hear when you are in the room playing. 4x12 cabs are designed to PROJECT sound and therefor you have to place the mic further away to get the full spectrum coming out that cab. I have recorded my amp playing through a small 1x12 as an extension speaker and recorded it with an sm57 and recorded my 4x12 with an sm57 and the results are night and day. It's very hard to fake or coax the sound of a good tube head and half stack out of a 1x12 unless you layer and double the hell out of it. Adding those lower resonant frequencies later in the DAW just isn't the same. But hey, that's just my opinion.

anonymous Wed, 08/03/2005 - 17:35

I just bought a Boogie mite from Torres engineering. It is a 3 watt amp that you can crank and get a great tone and it is not shaking the room. We have been micing it with a royer 121 and are getting some excellent tones through it.

He is supposed to be coming out with a 3 watt marshall that I will be all over. Laugh if you must but you don't have to crank the amp to get a good recording

My buddy has a Carr Mercury which is a stellar recording amp for all.

anonymous Wed, 08/03/2005 - 17:42

I use a modded Crate GFX-212 loaded with 12" Eminence Cannibis Rex speakers (hemp cones, if you couldn't tell from the name). The only effect I use on it's the chorus, but both of its overdrive channels sound good. You have to get to know the controls though, because they tend to make big jumps where one place might be more of a turn to "fine tune" the setting while another place is "barely even pet it".

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