What's the worst tube amp you've ever heard?

[PRNDL]

I thought, just to be fair, that it might be fun to have a list of the worst tube amps, especially since the general concensus is that they are great.

[PlayItAll]

Just about any "hybrid" amp...

Although there are exceptions, most of the hybrid tube/ss amps seem a little lacking to me. I think the manufacturers are just slapping a tube in there somewhere to make the amp "legitimate" to the tube crowd...

It's hard to think of a tube amp I've had I didn't like somethng about, but I did have a Mesa Nomad 55 that was a bit of a let down. I feel that some of those Mesa's are trying to do too many things. The amps I love the most these days have fewer controls.

Of course, I still wish I'd kept just about every amp I ever had! :-)

[PRNDL]

For me, a tube preamp (I think it was a Digitech TwinTube) was a great disappointment.
There were plenty of knobs for distortion and effects, plus a midi footswitch.
I got tired of programming it, and switched back to the set and forget Fender Deluxe.

[Euthymia]

Sounds Sh*tty

Gotta say that I'm no fan of most models of Sound City.

Also, those Fender HotRodBluesDeLuxeDeVille things do not excite me much and are flimsy. I do know how to tune them to get them to sound good to the folks who like them.

[PRNDL]

The Tube Cruncher by Gorilla stands out as a horrible amp. It was, however, solid state.

Does anyone convert cheap used solid state amps into tube amps -- or is that a lost cause?

[bob p]

i have a Mesa Mk IV, whic is a good amp for what it is. Once when I was guitar shopping for an LP, I plugged into a Mk IV that was sitting in the shop, thinking that it would make sense to play the guitar through the same amp that I have at home.

What a mistake! Although I like my own Mk IV, the one in the store had to be the worst sounding POS I have ever heard. I don't know what was wrong with it, but the amp sounded totally dull and lifeless. Needless to say, it had been taking up space in the shop for quite a while...

[Steve Conner]

Well, the thing about tube amps is, even if you get one that sucks, it often only takes a few swipes of the soldering iron to make it into something that you like. Many people on this board could take a Sound City and turn it into a screamer in about an afternoon. So I think these off brands like Sound City and Selmer are excellent as mod fodder.

In a ha-ha-only-serious gesture I would nominate the 100 watt plexi fronted Marshall as one of the worst tube amps of all time. It's unreliable, eats tubes, and only has one good tone that needs ear-bleeding volume to access. And you can't even mod it without ruining its resale value! :-o

Or maybe the Peavey Mace or something.

[Brad1]

I picked up Teisco Checkmate for $5 at a yard sale a long time ago.
What a nauseating little thing! Probably could have done SOMEthing with it, but didn't even want to try.

I sold it to Zuzu along with a bunch of other "projects" that I got tired of having piled up.

Brad1

[Rob Mercure]

Well I have to totally agree with Steve about the Marshall - got one on the bench right now in fact - but I'd like to make it a class and call 'em "one trick ponies" and nominate the 5150 and most Mesa products. Good for the one tone that they do well but useless unless you're only into one sound or willing to haul numerous other amps with you.

But Brad's Checkmate is a great example of Steve's other point and as long as the amp was in good electrical condition Brad may have been suprised at how good it sounded simply with a better speaker - I've got several of these or similar in my pile and most make nice little screamers though a good speaker and really shine though a 15".

I think that I've found something to like in every tube amp I've ever messed with as long as I could get some stage to clip - the only ones I've been not liked are some super clean bass and Hifi amps, usually with 6550s, that needed either a pedal or some other input level boost to "crank" em.

Rob

[bob p]

Rob, I know you hate Mesa amps, but I'm gonna check you on the statement that all Mesas are one trick ponies. While that may be true of many of the Mesa amps, I tend to think of the Mk IV as a 3-trick pony:

The Yellow channel does a decent job at Fender cleans.
The Orange channel does a pretty good crunch. Lots of people describe it as feeling "Marshally"
The Red channel is good for that Santana/Boogie thing (admittedly, its not much good for anything else)

To really get the most out of the amp, you need to run it through a clean speaker, and let the circuit give you most of the tone. I think that's where most people make a critical error with Mesa amps. If you team them up with the garden variety Celestion guitar speaker, you really limit their sonic capabilities. I think that the Mk IV (3 channels + EQ) is pretty flexible when teamed-up with a really clean speaker like an EVM-12L or -15L. That kind of setup can cover a lot of ground, and it beats having to cart 2 or 3 amps around to accomplish the same task.

Now if it were just easier to set all of those friggin' controls to get the tone you want...

[Rob Mercure]

Hey Bob,

What's not to like about Messy Boogers - they're only overpriced, cheaply made, a serviceman's nightmare and built by a guy who claims to have invented - and tried to patent - everything including the weak nuclear force! But please notice the "most" that I placed before referring to them. After all, there is the one that you have and perhaps another one or two out there <grin>.

Rob

[bob p]

I don't know about other Mesa amps, but based on my experience with the Mk IV, I think you're giving Mesa a bad rap. Here are porn shots of the inside of my Mk IV:

Mk IV Porn

The board is very tight, and it is indeed a serviceman's nightmare. Don't even ask how hard it is to change the simulclass bias setup so that the amp has two, independently adjustable bias circuits...

If you take a close look you'll find that the amp uses premium Mallory TC series 'lytics, Orange Drops, Carling switches, etc. Every piece in the amp is comprised of premium components. Looking inside this amp, I can't agree that its cheaply made. The fit and finish, both inside and on the outside, are as good as anything else that's mass produced on a PCB, and much better than many.

It wasn't all that expensive either at the time I bought it.

Now if we switch over to the subject of "Randall Smith is a jackass", I'm in 100% agreement with you!

[Steve Conner]

Well, I agree with Bob. I would happily use a Mesa, especially one of the old ones with the graphic EQ. They were the amps I lusted after when I was starting out. In fact I got into amp building in the first place because I wanted that real nasty high-gain sound but couldn't afford a Mesa...

My background is in metal and 90s "Alternative" music, and most of my favourite guitarists from back then used them. I heard that Kurt Cobain's guitars on Nevermind were done with a Studio .22, which was a big surprise because I had him down as a Fender Twin and stompbox kind of guy.

I actually like having an amp that gives the option to generate massive distortion in the preamp tubes while running the power amp at whatever volume you want. It might not have as much mojo as a cranked power amp, but it sure is more practical and versatile. You can use it at home for practice or crank it at a gig, but saying that, whenever I've used a master volume amp at gigs, the sound guy has asked me to run it with the MV pretty low.

And yes, I'm pretty sure Randall Smith is crazy.

[Rob Mercure]

Well Gentlemen,

I'm throughly chastened - Bob, how many Hail Mary's do I have to say? <grin> But in my defense I'm not a "real" engineer like you guys only a poor schmuck who make part of his living fixing these durn thangs and has at times made all of his living doing so. Perhaps I should qualify "cheap" - using great components and not spending the engineering time to create a good machine is still "cheap" in my book. Mesa's are notorius for "ghost" symptoms, unintended coupling between adjacent circuit paths and potentiometers that shed their viscera when whacked in a certain, but common, manner - no other brand seems to have this problem as frequently. And there are the couple of Mesas that spewed their preamp stage cathode bias caps - resistors checked (changed anyway) and the tubes checked out (changed anyway) but not a symptom I've noticed elsewhere. But again, there are some nice sounding models - the "most" I referred to above.

But I think that Bob just proves my point about servicability

I dunno, I did Saint Louis Music - Crate - warranty for years and I generally found them more reliable and easier to work on (we won't talk about sound here) so for the price I still say the engineering is "cheap."

Steve, I also like multiple distortion pathways in amps but I guess I'd sway more toward Neil Young's cranked Deluxe. Somehow Mesa's sound a tad "solid state" to me but then again I hate ketchup and chocolate but eat saurkraut for breakfast at times <grin>.

Rob

[Steve Conner]

Hmm, I guess from looking at Bob's chassis pictures I can see why people call them "Mess O'Boogers" ;-) However, remember I am the guy who perpetrated this....

http://www.scopeboy.com/AA027.JPG

and I work on those weenie surface mount ICs for a day job

As regards the cranked Deluxe thing, I am still quite young and naive as guitarists go. I think of Metallica the same way you guys probably think of Elvis. But I'm determined to give the non-MV thing a try, the amp build I'm working on just now is a traditional non-MV design that's intended to be cranked. I can't get that kind of Boogie uber distortion from it at all, unless I use a distortion pedal.

Another amp for the hall of shame, the Ampeg SVT for the same reasons as the plexi ;-) plus its extreme size and weight