Going retro, that’s been a trend in guitar amps for a few years. Small, all-tube amps that capture the vintage mojo. For example, take a look at the new Peavey Valveking Royal 8…
The thing is though, you got to sell retro to the kids and that requires some slick wordsmithing…
Perfect for rehearsing, the Royal 8 combo amp features the simple interface of a single tone control, dual inputs, and master volume and gain controls that can be adjusted for either class A “breakup” power amp tones achieved by reducing the gain and increasing the master volume, or preamp distortion, which you can access by reducing the master volume and cranking the gain.
“simple interface”… now, that tickles me!
Take a look at the “interface” on this old Gibson…
VintageGuitars.org has a neat gallery of vintage ads.
Jimi Hendrix and Marshall amps…raw, British, valve power…that’s what got Jimi’s mojo flowing right?
A 1968 Sunn Amps ad…
Sunn Amps; vintage solid state tink. The story I heard was that it was a deal put together by management and Jimi actually did play through these things for a gig or two before he went ballistic and returned to the Marshalls.
A 1974 Gibson ad…
Is that Cheech Marin?
Hey gear geeks…I’ve got a particular amp set-up I’ve been tinkering with lately.
Tele>Boss Digital Delay
—Direct out>30 watt tube amp (Crate VC30)
—Delay out>15 watt solid state amp (Johnson Reptone 15)
I channel switch on the Crate and run it with no reverb at a normal stage volume.
I run the little practice amp on the clean channel with flat EQ at a much lower volume.
I set a short delay time. So, it’s a stereo set-up but the two channels aren’t equally balanced. The smaller amp is just a ghost note. You hardly even hear it but it adds ambiance.
So, I tried this the other night with a rhythm section for the first time. It worked really well. I was able to keep my level low but still really “feel” the sound. I was really impressed by how it worked with the clean sound. Normally, I will use a compressor some on the clean side for lead stuff but, I didn’t use it all with this set-up and didn’t miss it.
The Johnson amp is real small (6 1/2 inch speaker) and easy to tote around so, no extra hassles really.
I’m going to mess with it some more in gig situations but, so far, I’m really digging it. Here’s the cool part; both of these amps can be acquired pretty cheap. You could find this pair or, something similar, for well under four bills. I’ll let you know more as i go along…
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