Searching For My dream amp.

[dynamite_style]

Hello, I am new to this forum. I have been in a lot of forums before and I think your forum is an interesting one. I hope I enjoy my time here and hope you do too!

I am pretty sure that I am going for a blackstar series one combo. The key features are the wattage option and the isf control. What are your thoughts?


Price: Sub 1500 dollars. (the less the better)


Features: Um, at least two channels, a killer clean isn't a must but a really bright crunchy eddie van halen up too metallica rythm and solo kind of sound is welcome.

Sound: My biggest influences are: SLASH, EVH, Metallica the rest come after. As I said before I like my amp to be bright and pack a lot of punch.

Note: I already have a boss me-70 if any of the amps you mention need a distortion boost!

Amps that I am considering: Blackstar Series one combo used this i like the most because of the isf control and wattage control as I said before, bugera 333xl, egnater renegade.

Thanks for your time and effort. My existing amp is a line 6 spiderjam.

[chipaudette]

Hi,

You may not get too many replies here...high gain amps tend not to be the focus of the folks on this board.

For a $1500 budget, you've really opened up the possibilities to a lot of amps. Be sure to consider used amps, especially older ones from the 80s. You did list influences like EVH and Slash. They both used Marshall's. You should look at JCM800s (if you can find one), JCM900s (unjustly maligned), and Marshal JCM900 SLX (more gain).

If you can find one of the old Peavey VTM (all tube! 80s?), you'll have yourself a killer Marshall knock-off with tons of internal switches to achieve a wide-range of high-gain marshall-esque tones. They're usually much cheaper than a JCM800 and way more flexible.

At this price, you can also find used Mesa Dual Rectifiers, which are much more of a 90s sound.

For newer amps, there are the new Marshall tube offerings (with the usual caveat that, whatever is the "new" Marshall, people say it sounds worse or is built worse than any "old" Marshall). There are also amps like the Peavey JSX. Oh, and there are the bigger Line6 models that a lot of people like (though not usually on this board).

If you're currently playing one of the small Line6 amps, you may want to not jump straight to the $1000+ amps. They are a completely different type of beast. First of all they're usually HEAVY...I'm mean heavy to lug around, often employing a second (and still heavy) cabinet for the speakers. Second, they tend to only sound good when turned up to bit kinda loud. Your Line6 doesn't really behave this way. Finally, these "real" amps often expose one's poor playing technique (I'm not trying to flame you...just letting you know that it's a risk).

You may want to step to an intermediate-sized amp first. Maybe consider one of the bigger Line6 amps or something. I'm not familiar with the sound of the blackstar or bugera amps, but considering their price, they may me the kind of intermediate amp that I'm talking about.

Chip

[dynamite_style]

Hi,

You may not get too many replies here...high gain amps tend not to be the focus of the folks on this board.

For a $1500 budget, you've really opened up the possibilities to a lot of amps. Be sure to consider used amps, especially older ones from the 80s. You did list influences like EVH and Slash. They both used Marshall's. You should look at JCM800s (if you can find one), JCM900s (unjustly maligned), and Marshal JCM900 SLX (more gain).

If you can find one of the old Peavey VTM (all tube! 80s?), you'll have yourself a killer Marshall knock-off with tons of internal switches to achieve a wide-range of high-gain marshall-esque tones. They're usually much cheaper than a JCM800 and way more flexible.

At this price, you can also find used Mesa Dual Rectifiers, which are much more of a 90s sound.

For newer amps, there are the new Marshall tube offerings (with the usual caveat that, whatever is the "new" Marshall, people say it sounds worse or is built worse than any "old" Marshall). There are also amps like the Peavey JSX. Oh, and there are the bigger Line6 models that a lot of people like (though not usually on this board).

If you're currently playing one of the small Line6 amps, you may want to not jump straight to the $1000+ amps. They are a completely different type of beast. First of all they're usually HEAVY...I'm mean heavy to lug around, often employing a second (and still heavy) cabinet for the speakers. Second, they tend to only sound good when turned up to bit kinda loud. Your Line6 doesn't really behave this way. Finally, these "real" amps often expose one's poor playing technique (I'm not trying to flame you...just letting you know that it's a risk).

You may want to step to an intermediate-sized amp first. Maybe consider one of the bigger Line6 amps or something. I'm not familiar with the sound of the blackstar or bugera amps, but considering their price, they may me the kind of intermediate amp that I'm talking about.

Chip

Thanks for your kind reply.

You maybe right, I am aware of what you have said, that's why I chose the blackstar, the wattage control varies between 45 watts all the way to 5. As you push it to lower and lower wattage it pushes the valves more and more till you can get the tubes running at the perfect level were they break up. Although I have cheap gear, I know quite a lot of stuff about them. I am trying to find a shop that sells this amps, so i can confirm that this is the amp, but unfortunately I live in Cyprus, here there aren't a lot of guitar shops, and the shops only are dealers of 3-4 different brands only.