What's your favourite "Go to" amp?

[H671]

If you have more than one amp, then what is your favourite & why?

[MattH]

Depends. I've got two - a 65 Amps Lil Elvis, which is a superb live machine, and an old silverface Fender Vibro Champ from 1978.

Horses for courses. The Fender is just a recording engineer's dream - bright and spacious, with a tiny bit of breakup when I need it. Rarely have to EQ it and can run it at 10 without decimating my relationship with the neighbours. Just can't seem to get the same recorded tone out of the 65 Amps. I know this is more down to my engineering skills than it is the amp, but the Vibro Champ is really easy on the ear. I use it for both lap steel and electric with at most a volume pedal, a delay and a reverb pedal in front.

Have a listen to my crappy existentialist WIP track:

https://soundcloud.com/mattherrett/life-is-a-bullet

[Mini Forklift]

Usually my Marshall, mainly because this particular one just sounds great and it's set up with my pedalboard.

But I bought a Fender at the weekend and LesPaul (from this forum) is sending me down a Dumble-Drive pedal today... so once that arrives I'll be using the Fender for a good while I'd imagine.

[handsoffmatt]

My Soldano.

The sound and feel of that amp on the "crunch" mode of the normal channel is the sound that's in my head.

[Molly]

Whichever one isn't already packed...

[MattH]

Whichever one isn't already packed...

Ha ha!

[rickenbackerkid]

I loved my THD Univalve. Single ended thing - probably not far away from a Fender Champ sound. Touch senstive, loads of clarity and great, great overdrive. Miss that thing. Damn the robbing fool who stole it!

[The Scarecrow]

Both my Rivera and Splawn are 100w beasts not suited for 'home' volume levels... though former can dampened down using the send & return controls on the effects loop, it's a bit of a hassle to set them up when they're usually stored in the office for quick deployment to band.

I use a remarkably un-cork-sniffery rig at home... Boss ME20 that cost me $50 and a Crate Powerblock.... solid state tones ahoy! Actually, considering I use mostly high gain for riff writing at home, the ME20 is just perfect. I get saturated tones at good levels that don't bother the flatmate and still sound like a minute version of my real rig, more or less. Plus, I can leave it on for hours accidentally and not worry about cooking tubes. Running it through a Mesa 2x12 with V30's does help the tone a lot too.

The one valve amp I do miss for toneful home jams is the Peavey Classy 20 I had about 15 years ago. That little thing just sizzled even at low volumes.

Live, it's always my Splawn. Trumps all other amps I've owned for a clearly definable high-gain sound.

[Molly]

A great all-round amp that sticks in my memory is the Boogie Recto-Verb 25 combo. I think that's as close to a do-all amp as I've ever owned.

I bought a Mini-Rec 25 (same amp but in head form and without reverb) last week but that might have to go if my plans for the weekend proceed as, well, planned...

[HackSaw]

Sadly mine is the "Pleximonster" preset on S-Gear, through head phones. I say sadly, because I'd of course much rather crank the Mesa Boogie till the walls shook, but that just isn't possible when the neighbour's dining room is about 2 metres away. That said though, I genuinely love that preset, to my admittedly amateur ears it sounds fantastic!

[H671]

My workhorse amp lately seems to be my SWR California Blonde for church which at the moment is every weekend (sometimes twice) but at home I always gravitate to my Excelsior. I fitted a JBL speaker to it which had been sitting around for some time & i'm not sure if it has been re-coned or not but it has had the metal voice coil cover replaced with a paper one by the previous owner. I don't know if my ears are shot but it seems to be getting better with time. The Excelsior also loves single coils especially P90's.

[Danger Mouse]

I only have 2 amps, but my main go to is a little H&K solid state practice amp. Can actually do a reasonable clean and brootz, but I mainly use it instead of the monster Greenstone because I like being able to hear.

[Conway]

I mainly use it instead of the monster Greenstone because I like being able to hear.

Seismologists in the top half of the north island are grateful for this.

[GrantB]

Can't choose...if I had a room big enough to have them all ready to go, I would use them all. My Princeton gets a lot of play because it's in the office and the Nightlight Jr is wired in, meaning I can play at low volumes. The Tamerlane is too loud to gig with so that probably gets the least time.

[MattH]

Hmmmm - Princeton... Would love to hear that recorded.