Best sounding SS amp you all have encountered?

[BackwardsBoB]

I've got a little 15 Watt Crate with a little spring reverb and an 8" speaker I bought new for maybe $80. Sounds great with an acoustic or jazz box, and the overdrive channel doesn't make me laugh. Tone is where you find it.

[zdavid]

Polytone

Polytone Taurus II - This is somewhere around 100W, super clean sound with great tone quality. The on-board effects suck but that is typical of any amp - I tend to stay from builtin effects. It also has 2 6" speakers on the sides, good for keeping the drummer tuned in. Only problem is that it has NO air circulation to the power amp and tends to overheat - probably an easy fix if I ever get around to it.

[pushpull]

Electro Harmonix Mike Matthews Dirt Road Special

Hi I am new to this forum and love it already.
The best sounding SS amp ever to me - and I am so glad that I managed to get my hands on one in nice condition is the

Electro Harmonicx Mike Matthews Dirt Road Special.

It has a long name for sure, but is extremely low on controls: Vol, Tone, Bite, that's it fellas. Also features a non footswitchable built in EH Small Stone Phaser.

I have gigged this amp at Sessions, use it only for Blues stuff and it knocks the socks off everyone. Have had other guitarists play it on sessions, they all would not believe it is solid state. It is very dynamic, great punch and bottom end and cuts right through the band. Very harmonic when going into saturation. If you find one of these babys, get one. Luod as hell, funny looking, easy to carry and they scare the living shit out of that guy with the Deluxe Reverb Reissue!
He, he

pushpull

[tomd01]

weighing in on the Peavey Bandit 75

I bought a Bandit 75 1X12 combo back in the early 80's also, and have really enjoyed it's light weight and punchy sounds. I play mostly clean, or with a Boss ME5 multi-effects pedal to get the distortion I need because the overdrive channel does sound a bit like a kazoo, or maybe a piece of waxed paper wrapped around a comb or some such. But it does have killer reverb! And it's loud enough for any room I've ever played in - though sometimes I mic it.

[kurisurokku]

Fender Princeton Chorus for clean

Someone mentioned this earlier, but I'll second the Fender Princeton Chorus for clean sounds. I used to have one before I downsized a bit, and I play jazz and that thing sounded really great. The stereo chorus and reverb were top notch, and it had quite a bit of headroom. I didn't play around much with the distortion channel, but it sounded okay to me. A lot of people online don't seem to like the dirty channel much though.

The guy that bought it from me brought over his lap steel and it sounded just fantastic.

That being said, I'm all tube now ;-)

[Leftymatson]

I had a Rheem Califone amp (Rheem as in air conditioning) that sounded great at the time - 1969 - and I've never seen another. It put out about 15 Watts and broke up nicely. It was very light weight with a single 12.

If we're including bass amps, I really like my Gallien Kruger 800RB. Two amps,300W for lows, 100W for highs with a built-in crossover and a mid--cut feature I didn't think I'd use until I tried it. Sounds good with my Jerry Jones Longhorn bass, a Sunn type cube cabinet with a PV Black Widow 15 and a 2X10 GK cabinet.

I used a Sunn 2000S with a 2X15 folded horn cabinet for years until I had to lug it up some rickety outdoor stairs one time too many. The three piece GK setup is much easier to haul around and fills any room I play.

[Mutato]

Polytone MiniBrute II

I have a 70's era Polytone MiniBrute II, which was my first amp. Velvet covered! I bought it since I needed an amp to go with my first electric. Didn't know anything about amps. But for clean and warm, it still delivers.

One thing I've found is that the EQ (Bass and Treble) have really large sweeps of gain and reduction. Way more than any tube amp. I tend to notice that in SS amps. A lot more EQ range. Any reason why?

The amp is small, yet very powerful. I've kept it for all these years (since 1986) because it's a great second amp. You can plug a bass into it to play at room levels for jamming etc... A little workhorse.

The distortion channel is that usual weird SS distortion, which I NEVER used. But I did use it once recording a song. And you know what? It actually sounded great!

I didn't realize till this year that these Polytones were used by Jazz giants and have a good demand.

[Rick Erickson]

[A lot more EQ range. Any reason why?]

It's because solid state amps often employ active EQ circuits, where the tone controls are in the feedback path of an IC, or transistor gain stage. This gives them an actual boost or cut, often + or - 12db or more. Tube amps usually employ passive EQ circuits which can really only cut frequencies. They give the illusion of boosting highs or lows by cutting everything (insertion loss) and then adding back certain frequency ranges. The overall range of this type of tone circuit (passive) is far less than a circuit which borrows energy from the power supply (active) to provide cut or boost.

RE

[Borg54]

My best SS is an old Peavey BackStage (80-81) 20 watter, came stock with a spring reverb and a ton of mojo!. I've had way to many offers to sell it over the years. Only maintance has been to clean the pots, and beef up the speaker. It's By far the best $10.00 amp I ever scored on for SS. Then there is the pignose ;-}

[billybillybilly]

'road electronics' anyone ?

there was a mid 70s company called 'road electronics' ... i think its what bud ross did after kustom . anyway , all solid state bass amps . the tone is very middle of the road so they also sound good with guitar . i have one , a combo with a 15 , that has no model name or anything identifying (other than 'road' on the front panel and a serial on the back) and i use it for guitar ... and people at the shows are allways asking me about it and saying it sound like tubes , and when i tell em its a 70s all ss bass amp they look at me like im an idiot .
so anyway , im voting for the old 'Road' amps .
i heard that one of their sales tactics was to hold a floor model about chest high , throw it on the ground , then plug it back in to show the customer it still works !
i think their most popular model was the '440 bass' (which i have a schematic for if anyone needs/wants to see it) .
one more thing , if anyone comes across one of those old 'road' amps and doesnt want it , please let me know , im allways on the hunt for the jokers !

[Robert M. Martinelli]

Well, I recently added an "AC30SS" ( a mid '70s design proposed by Vox as a solid state version of the AC30 ) to my collection, and, though it doesn't sound like my 1964 TB ( neither I expected it to do so ) I have been pleasantly surprised by its warmth ( if compared to other SS designs ) and dynamics.

I also opened it to inspect it and do some maintenance ( pots cleaning ), and I found it to be well built. The schematic is printed in black on the amp's chassis.

This model has not been successful, ( it was a game lost from the start, as it's opponent was the "real" AC30 ) but I think this was by no means due to the way it sounded, but rather due by a "strategic" marketing error, because they proposed it as an AC30 while in fact it was not, maybe it could have been more successful under another name.....who knows?

All I can say is it's a very sweet sounding amp, you would not say it's SS, most SS amps sound excessively clean, "dry" or even "harsh", but not this one.

Best regards

Bob

[Steve Conner]

Hello Voxrules,

Any driver or output transformers in there?

[Robert M. Martinelli]

Hi Steve,
nope, no driver or output trannies, the output stage features two 2N3055
driven by a complementary couple of BD537/538, the trem circuit sports a couple of FETs ( 2N3819 ), the preamp uses two RC4136, the schematic can be found here :

http://www.voxamps.com/downloads/circuits/ac30ss.jpg

As you will see it' s not a good scan; if you need a better image I' ll open mine again, take the chassis off and lay it directly on my scanner to get a decent quality scan.

Best regards

Bob

[Steve Conner]

No, it's OK, I've already seen the op-amps and run a mile

[Robert M. Martinelli]

Well, I didn't know op-amps could scare you so much, Steve! Is this because of the way they sound or because they look like little spiders?

I wouldn't be too hard on op-amps, even if we all LOVE tube amps sometimes we stumble upon some good sounding piece of Silicon.....this is one of these times IMHO ( after all, this is what this thread is all about ).

Best regards

Bob