Best sounding SS amp you all have encountered?

[Slobrain]

Hey Rob,
A buddy of mine has one of those old solo series specials with the auto tranny. Its a 1x12 and actually sounds pretty good too. When he got the amp the speaker was blown so I installed a celestion 80 in the amp and its got a nice rock sound to it. Maybe I should try to snag it from him at a cheap price

BTW, I see those old bandit 65's going fro a pretty good price on Ebay, I guess they are becoming collectors items? I had about 4 or 5 versions of the bandit over the 80's even into the early 90's as they made good practice amps. Seems the distortion on the 65 was real buzzy but I bet some one out there could figure a way to get a better distortion by somehow modding these. Or a good trick would be to gut the B 65 and build a tube amp in it, that would throw allot of musicians in the clubs when hearing that amp huh...

The reviews at harmony central say that the Bandit 65 were favored by the Nashville studio players because they had a great clean sound with reverb and if you wanted to add dirt, just use a pedal. Hhmmmmm...

SLO

[ampcession]

Call me a dinosaur, but I'm not much of fan of ss amps. That said, I once had a Gibson Lab Series L-5. Aside from the typical solid state deficiencies, such as artificial sounding and all the usual complaints, this amp was a useful and versatile tool for making very loud sounds with a band. It came with very poor quality speakers, but I put a pair of JBL E-120s in it and it actually sounded pretty good for clean sounds within the context of a loud band. The distortion was, well, solid state.

[hasserl]

I've got a solid state 2 x 10" combo amp from Mitchell out of Riverside CA, circa '77 - '78, called a Sand Amp 100. I believe the Sand Amp reference was not so much for the silicon used in the amplification, as for the material used in the cabinet. The cab is double walled and the space between the walls is filled with sand. It has a closed back with a large front open port. The amp sounds great, as good as most any tube amp I"ve played, though not real high gain. It was my practice and gig amp for years back in the day, and I still have it out in the garage underneath a stack of more recent finds. I dug it out awhile ago and plugged it in and was reminded of what a good amp it is. I could still use it today. I still have the old Ibanez Tube Screamer I use to use to get more grind out of it when I needed it.

Another real nice SS amp is one of my newer purchases, a Crate Powerblock. If you haven't tried one of these yet do yourself a favor and go try one. I picked mine up cheap, brand new and in the box for about $79.00. This is now my backup amp I take along with me to gigs. It's so small and light it's incredible, but it packs a lot of power and sounds very good.

[MKB]

Hey Fellas,
cool thread, gets me inspired just reading this stuff

Well I got the Peavey Renown in today from an Ebay auction and boy I had to clean it up, looks like a rat was living in the back. LOL

well it fired up ok and one problem I found was the scorpion speakers had come unglued from the base of the speaker basket so I'm hoping Enzo can help with ideas of how to glue these back.

I plugged in this 26 year old amp into my 2x12 cab with celestions and tweaked it for a while and bam... It sounded like I remember from the mid 80s club days playing heavy rock. It was considered heavy metal then but I guess it grandad rock now.

Any way I was talking to a buddy that had a GK ML250 from 1985 and he was saying how he really thought that amp was so killer sounding but then it blew up
I still remember him playing this amp thru a Marshall 4x12 and thinking how damn good it sounded back in the day. he was playing the song (In my dreams) by Dokken and seem to nail the tone.

Anyone remember the GK ML250, little stereo amp?

Slobrain

Yeh, I remember those, used to have one. I recall hearing it in the music store and how awesome it sounded with a Strat. When I got one it didn't sound as good for some reason. Indeed those G+K's like to blow up...

[Steve Conner]

I've heard a few people raving about how good the Crate Powerblock is. Apparently it has a switching power supply AND a Class-D digital power stage, so according to you guys it should suck :-O I once messed with one and it seems very light for a 150(?) watt amp.

[hasserl]

I've heard a few people raving about how good the Crate Powerblock is. Apparently it has a switching power supply AND a Class-D digital power stage, so according to you guys it should suck :-O I once messed with one and it seems very light for a 150(?) watt amp.

Makes a great backup amp. I used to haul two amps to a gig. Now I just throw the Powerblock in it's carry bag into the back of the car along with the main amp for the night. I haven't had to use it yet, but it's comforting knowing it's there, it's ready to go, and it doesn't sound half bad. It won't be replacing any of my main amps, but I could easily do a gig with it if needed.

[Euthymia]

I think it is funny that the old SS amps from the 60ies and 70ies that earned the bad reputation of SS amps, now are said to be the best sounding ones.

That may be the perception today, but in my observations, time tends to weed out the really nasty stuff.

There was good stuff back then, and bad stuff. The bad stuff wound up in dumpsters.

You don't hear anyone singing the praises of Estey amps, for instance, and stuff like the Baldwins now has weirdo funky chic appeal but is not something most players would choose to gig with (yes, I know about the one Neil Young used to use as a stage monitor).

Acoustic got it right, and so did Sunn. I never mind seeing those come into my repair shop because I know they're serviceable and sound good when I'm done fixing them.

I think one of the big hits on the reputation of SS was when the undisputed industry leader in musical instrument amplification, Fender, issued two botched lines of SS amps. First were the amps that carried the same names as some of the tube line, then the Zodiacs.

One Fender fell on its face, SS would have a hard time gaining acceptance.

Another problem is that (partially as a result of the aforementioned Fender stumble), SS became the territory of low-end amps. Since SS is cheaper to build, it can go into cheaper amps where people are really strapped for money.

So most of our first exposures to SS amps were the best Peavey practice amps we could afford. We weren't exposed to higher-end stuff because when people get some money, they usually head straight to the tube amps.

Anyway, I like the aforementioned early Acoustics and Sunns, as well as some of the Peavey pro stuff like the 400 series (the amps to have for Nashville steelers).

Marshall Valvestates have awful build quality but put out a pretty good distortion tone for going "chunkita-chunkita-chunkita." Fender's version also surprised me with its tone quality.

One personal Hell for me would be to have no amplification to use but a Roland JC-120. I've worked on a few of them and detest the tone. The construction is pretty bad, too, with controls mounted on phenolic PCB's, etc.

My only experience with modeling technology was a Fender Cyber-Twin that someone brought me to fix, and it reminded me of a particularly ugly transvestite.

[Slobrain]

man, so many posts, this is real interesting.

Today after bringing home my daughter from a docs app. I decided to make a quick stop at a local pawn and found a used PV studio pro 110 that wasn't working. Its a 1993-or 94 model, two channels, reverb and a 10" speaker.

I snagged it for $43.00 walk out, and I'm thinking cool, I just got my daughter a nice little practice amp that I can fix. It had a bad input jack. I actually took the jack apart re-straightened the tip connector and resoldered the jack back and amp now works, easy fix.

Then after listening to the amp, I though my gosh, this is a crappy sounding amp. Yuck, good for a beginner though. not that great of a deal after all. I should have bought the mid 80's Schecter strat hanging on the wall for $99.00
It was butchered on the body and the neck had a hack job done on the locking nut install. too bad. maybe the pickups might be worth something though???

SLO

[Rob Mercure]

Been thinking about this - didn't strain anything as best I know - and I wonder if I just like amps with tranformers. RG favorites use driver trannies - and having recently serviced one I agree with the sound - very "60s" and a bit psychodelic. The autotranny PVs aren't as fun, funky, and individualistic but the have a smooth distortion that lacks that "piece of paper tearing" distortion I associate with transistor amps. Now I've never hears an OTL tube amps -although I've considered building the Stevens circiut a few times - but I wonder if I'd like it or music amplification.

Too bad I'm not into SS R&D cuz it would be interesting to work with some different output topologies using either/or driver/PI trannies and OTs.

Recent Bogen PA offerings have a common SS ouput circuit that is coupled to an line driver tranny to match 70V and 100V lines - I believe that it also has a 16 ohm tap. If anyone has one of these it make for a quick test.

Rob

[DanJ]

I recall an older 2x12 combo that was made by Baldwin. Couldn't say what the model was, but it had this really cool pushbutton switchbank for selecting trem, reverb and channels. Seems like most of the colors of the rainbow were used on it. Looked like it was purchased from the Partridge Family. But it is probably the coolist sounding clean SS amp I've heard. The Polytone mini-brute was pretty nice too.

As for dirty sounds, can't say that it was really good sounding, but the
Fender M-80 pretty much ruled the local scene (for ss players) in my area with it's ultimate 80's cheese tone distortion channel. Pretty much made everyone sound like ... (insert hair band guitarist here).

[Steve Conner]

Well, I went and bought a Class-D digital power amp to experiment with I got the BP4078 from ColdAmp and the SPS30 switching power supply that goes with it. Both modules together take up less space than the 300W bass output transformer, and weigh a hell of a lot less too.

I'm testing it right now with some classical music and a hi-fi speaker, and it sounds great, just completely clean with no unwanted noise or distortion. It probably has more THD than a linear power amp would, but it's impossible to tell. And at 400W it has enough headroom that you fear the speakers might explode into matchwood on the loud passages.

So I guess my mission is to inject some Motown bass mojo into this perfect and completely soulless amp module My plan is to build a whole mini tube amp ahead of it, complete with a tiny output transformer and dummy load. If I fail, I can always get another one and use them for my stereo.

[fletchyalereverb]

Hi all, love the forum. anyhow I must mention my 1982 Fender Yale Reverb - ss and has a beautiful clean sound, but turn up the gain and it can rock out

[Steve Conner]

Oh, that's cool, I just fixed an old London Reverb 1x12" combo last week. I think it's similar to the Yale Reverb, maybe a tad bigger with more knobs. It sounded pretty good, IMO. Even the dirty channel was pretty good for a solid state amp. If all my tube amps somehow broke, I'd gig with it.

[tubetonez]

In the late 70's Randall had a SS amp called the "Sustainor" that sounded a lot like a cranked stack, that was the only sound it would do but it was a good one.

[PlayItAll]

I have to chime in with a vote for the Peavey Bandit. I had an early one that I loved.

I also owned a Yamaha DG80 that was tolerable...

I currently own and really like the Crate Power Block. Cheap - versatile - portable - and pretty darn good sounding!

Ed