Best sounding SS amp you all have encountered?

[Slobrain]

Well,
I'll try to see who all wants to get in on this one.
We all have had SS amps before we went to tube amps but I wanted to ask from anyone wanting to participate in this subject what SS amp they really liked for clean and distortion and any other thing they could bring in to this subject? also the most hated SS amp too?

I had lots of amps since 1979 and for the first ten years were mostly Peavey SS amps. Then I went tube.
The worst was athe mid 80's Peavey SS bandit 1x12 combo as it had horrible buzzy distortion and shared the EQ with the clean channel. All around nasty sounding.

The best was maybe a early 80's Peavey Renown 2x12 that I ran thru an old marshall 4x12 cab in the clubs. This amp at the time fit the hard rock style I was playing, Sabbath, Crue, Ozzy, Priest, Scorpions and many others.

Slobrain

[daz]

Best would be an old 70's amp called the crossmix made by pignose. A 75 watt combo. I bought one years ago after hearing a band in a bar with 2 guitar players both using them and getting an awesome tone, especially for ZZ top. Thickest tone i've ever gotten out of any amp. I remember using it for the first time in a bar we played many times and i had replace a boogie MK3 with it and the bartender remarked on how good it sounded. And i never knew her to ever remark about anything concering the band's tone in any respect. Don't remember why i sold it but i wish i had one know if i only had the room. I like those 80's marshall lead 12's a lot too, but they aren't loud enough to gig with. Worse by a million miles was a peavey practive amp who's name i can't even recall. I think from the 70's. It was so bad it was literally unusable. the second worse was my first amp ever.....a 70's peavey pacer. Not as bad as that last one, but pretty horrible.

By the way, this is based on drive tones. I didn't like the cleans much on any of them.

[Steve Conner]

I don't care what anyone says, the Peavey Bandit combo that Slobrain hates sounded great for metal

I have a Fender London Reverb combo kicking around too, that gives some nice clean tones. I don't like the drive sounds on it much, though. It's a 100 watt SS amp with graphic EQ and spring reverb. It looks pretty similar to a blackface Deluxe, so I was thinking of gutting it and building a Deluxe clone in the cabinet.

I also had an old Kay SS practice amp that sounded surprisingly good when cranked and abused with a drive pedal.

The guitarist in our band has one of those Vox AD60VT thingies, and it sounds decent, if a bit dark sometimes. I don't know if they count as solid-state, since they have "A" tube in there somewhere.

I tried to build several SS amps myself, but they all sounded completely like crap. I never got anything I liked till I started using tubes. One day I'd love to try going full circle by building a solid-state or hybrid amp that I can live with. Technically my Toaster project is a hybrid, but it's about 90% tube, so it doesn't really count at all. I like the idea of Albert Kreuzer's JFET bass preamp, where the JFETs are supposed to overdrive in a similar way to tubes, so I think I would start with that concept.

[Enzo]

PV has made about 10 amps with the Bandit name and the current "Transtube" Bandit sounds pretty good to me. But I think my fave SS amp is or was the Fender Princeton Chorus.

The PV transtube approach is simply darlington pairs of small transistors wired up like tubes. No, they don't sound like actual tubes, but they don't sound bad either. A tube guy could look at the schematic and follow it. If you are of a mind to try a JFET preamp, consider trying small signal bipolars in pairs wired darlington as well.

I am not so convinved it is easy to get a great sound out of op amps, but discrete transistors is a different animal.


In my world, having "A" tube does not make you a tube amp. Still firmly in the SS camp for that Vox.

[R.G.]

...
In my world, having "A" tube does not make you a tube amp. Still firmly in the SS camp for that Vox.

Let's hear it for heresy...

I think the Thomas Vox Royal Guardsman and Beatle are actually not bad. They have a low-gain power amp with marginal feedback, driver transformers for the output devices to add transformer mojo, and a secret-sauce limiter ahead of the power amp for verisimilitude.

Yes, you can adjust them to sound terrible, but a well tuned one is about halfway between solid state and tubes.

[drewl]

Definitely the Thomas Vox stuff.
prolly sounds good because of the limiter circuit, but they had MRB (precurser to the wah) plus a great fuzz circuit.
Look at the crazy money the 7120's get (think Revolver and Pepper)
Plus they look so damn cool!

[Steve Conner]

R.G., I read your pages on the Thomas Vox amps and they seem a very interesting design. I always wondered what would happen if you took the output section of a Thomas Vox (or rather a modern clone with high power silicon trannies and maybe even a current limiter :shock: ) and made a new driver transformer with loads more primary turns, so you could drive the transistor output stage off a single 6V6 or whatever? Then you could make the rest of the preamp out of tubes too. I think it would make a fine sounding hybrid. You could probably use two single-ended Champ or table radio OTs, in fact, rather than a custom transformer.

I think the TV output stage will have a rather high output impedance, unlike most SS amps, so I expect it would act like a pentode power amp in terms of speaker damping. That may be good or bad. You could always add feedback from the speaker to the cathode of the driver tube, like in the Fender 300PS.

[Brad1]

I don't know about the best, but Zuzu got a Vox Berkely a few years back that doesn't sound bad. We found it in a pawn shop. I turned on the "E" tuner switch, and then we turned the amp on, and told the guy there was a problem with it, because it had this droning note...and he believed us. I told him I MIGHT be able to fix it, and we would take it if he knocked the price way down. We carried it and the matching cab out for about $150.

I can tell you about the absolute WORST SS amp I ever had. A Kustom 200. YIKES that thing sounded bad. Stick some ice picks in my ears, please! I think I was about 19, tried out for a band with my BF Bandmaster, and the guy told me I needed a 100 watt amp to keep up. I believed him and traded it in. OUCH!! I didn't get in the band, and I don't even remember what happened to the Kustom. Maybe Fogarty has it.
BTW, I did find another BF Bandmaster in a pawn shop a few years ago for $125. So, everything is good.

Brad1

[drewl]

Kustom?
John Fogerty got em to sound good with Creedence....maybe the 200 is just too damn clean, but I've worked on several over the years (a 100 2 weeks ago) and they sound alright.

[drlowlow]

Ampeg G410s are pretty loud

Best overdrive on a SS amp I have owned (and this is quite limited list in general because I haven't owned many SS amps) would have to be the Crate GX20R that I was using out here. Being that it was free helps a bit but the overdrive is fine for jamming for practice and the amps clean is pretty decent too.

Worst overdrive I have had was the overdrive on a Crate C212 (I think that was the model) It was just plain bad. Clean was pretty good.

The Best clean SS amp I own (or have owned) is a 73 Ampeg G410 that is as loud as I have ever heard. I never had it fully loaded with speakers and usually had to play it through the speakers in my crate 212 but it is very clean at any level before I start going into speaker meltdown zone. The Tone stack allows very wide control with the mid control frequency select and ultra high mode. It was great with an Ibanez slam punk infront if it if you wanted to get really dirty and with mid cut and high and low boost. It did what I needed at the time. I have purchased another one as it was cheap thinking that it would just be cool to have that much of air movement potential but I know I will never need that much volume. Now I'm thinking what a tube overdrive pedel infront of it would do? Of course when I bought it the speakers were blown and the 2nd channel preamp was blown but for 40 bucks and the clean channel still working it was a steal (hell The cabinet I think would be worth that). definately something not to pass up if you are looking for something that is loud clean and usually affordable.

worst clean SS amp I had was a Fender sidekick 30 bass amp. To be fair it probally just didn't have enough power and was a cheap amp at a relatively cheap amp price. It would ovdrive if cranked but not in a good way. Just all around mediocre.

eh thats my mindless ramble for the day.

[R.G.]

I always wondered what would happen if you took the output section of a Thomas Vox (or rather a modern clone with high power silicon trannies and maybe even a current limiter :shock: ) and made a new driver transformer with loads more primary turns, so you could drive the transistor output stage off a single 6V6 or whatever? Then you could make the rest of the preamp out of tubes too. I think it would make a fine sounding hybrid. You could probably use two single-ended Champ or table radio OTs, in fact, rather than a custom transformer.

It's an interesting thought. One problem is that you need two output windings, both about 8 ohms. This is because the output is dual NPN, totem pole style, and has to be that way for the existing output stage. It might be possible to redesign the output for a complementary NPN/PNP stage with some tinkering, but I haven't looked into that. A custom transformer with single primary/dual speaker outs would work OK. Maybe.

Another issue in the transformer-driven solid state stages is that the driver transformers were almost always wound multifilar for the tightest possible coupling from primary to secondary. Much tighter than the primary-secondary coupling usually is in tube OTs. It's only an issue if you try to close the feedback loop, of course, but if the coupling is too loose you can't do that.

I think the TV output stage will have a rather high output impedance, unlike most SS amps, so I expect it would act like a pentode power amp in terms of speaker damping. That may be good or bad. You could always add feedback from the speaker to the cathode of the driver tube, like in the Fender 300PS.

The output impedance before feedback will be that of the output transistor used as an emitter follower. Since the gain is low for these devices, maybe 50-75, then the impedance will be high for a transistor amp, but low compared to a pentode. Feedback is what really lowers the output impedance a lot, so you're right, it's going to be much bigger than an equivalent SS amp with high feedback. But less than a pentode output circuit.

It's an interesting place to start.

I must have spent US$200 on old text books before I pieced together the explanation of how that thing works. There was no single place I could find that had an overview of that output stage that was complete and made sense in modern terms.

[R.G.]

To Drewl:
The fuzz circuit in the TV amps is a minor adaptation of the Vox Distortion Booster, which is a silicon version of the Fuzz Face.

[Don Symes]

The Sunn Beta Lead, I thought, was the best sounding and most flexible SS amp I've used - especially with a stereo guitar (separate output per pickup).

Two identical channels, one set a bit cleaner than the other, one for the neck pickup and one for the bridge. A per-channel FX loop, plus a master loop and remote A/B/Both channel switching. I got my ES345 to sound like an organ for 'Easy Living', and generally pretty darned good for other tunes. 100W output

The Sunn Alpha is a single-channel, 50W version with the same preamp.

Schematics and PCB layouts are available in the repair manual, too (hint, hint).

[Arthur B.]

Triode Electronics make an interstage transformer with multiple secondaries. You could use a SE like the Thomas Vox did, or use a PP driver as well as an H bridge poweramp.

[Slobrain]

Best would be an old 70's amp called the crossmix made by pignose. A 75 watt combo. I bought one years ago after hearing a band in a bar with 2 guitar players both using them and getting an awesome tone, especially for ZZ top. Thickest tone i've ever gotten out of any amp. I remember using it for the first time in a bar we played many times and i had replace a boogie MK3 with it and the bartender remarked on how good it sounded. And i never knew her to ever remark about anything concering the band's tone in any respect. Don't remember why i sold it but i wish i had one know if i only had the room. I like those 80's marshall lead 12's a lot too, but they aren't loud enough to gig with. Worse by a million miles was a peavey practive amp who's name i can't even recall. I think from the 70's. It was so bad it was literally unusable. the second worse was my first amp ever.....a 70's peavey pacer. Not as bad as that last one, but pretty horrible.

By the way, this is based on drive tones. I didn't like the cleans much on any of them.

Hey Daz,
I have read that either Lee Jackson or Paul Rivera maybe built this amp for Pignose. Lee worked there when the crossmix was put out in maybe 1978.
The crossmix was supposed to have a distortion circuit similar to a rat pedal for the thick sound it had. Yeah, those 70's pacers were pretty aweful sounding, I had one too

BTW, This thread is turning out nice, many cool posts on old SS maps.


SLO