I’ve owned several brown, black and silverface amps and they all sounded great, absolutely. About a decade ago I was turned onto teal Peavey Bandits which eventually lead me to my Quilter amps. The Peavey’s sounded good and the Quilters sound great! To me there is no tube vs SS, just what works for you. If it sounds good it is good!
Whether tube or solid state, it's about the circuit design. I've heard amazing solid states, and mediocre tube amps. That said, I'm a metal guy, and I'd love to get a hold of one of those old Crates or Randalls!
I got an RH200SC G2 in mint condition for $100 recently, completely does the Dimebag thing but also prettyer cleans, crunch, and lead. So it is possible to find them in good condition without breaking the bank. Only downside is that Randall made them for 4 ohm on the stereo outputs to get full wattage, allthough it can get loud enough with 2 linket 16 ohm cabs, but to use the chorus it needs to be stereo. But since I mainly use a digital preamp pedal I prefer an Orange Pedal Baby or the clean channel of a Crush 120H.
i bought a jc120 in 1978. still have it. it's a great amp, amazing tone even at living-room volume. it's a man's amp, you need to be able to have control over your instrument, because it will show everything. but in the end this is what you want. it's heavy, unbelievable. and very very bright. if you play hard rock or heavy metal it's probably not your thing, because of that brightness. what else can i say. i came back to this amp after testing some other things, because it's just so great. no problem in band context, it cuts through very easy and still sounds nice. since it's too loud and too heavy i would choose the jc-40 probably instead.
The JC is an absolutely monstrous amp. I spent years ignoring them and eventually had to play through one, and it blew me away.
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The late great Wilko Johnson used a JC120 for a number of years from the late 80s and it was my favourite sound of his. If you were in front of it, it sounded like breaking glass. Absolutely fantastic.
Do you know what effects he ran that amp through to get that sound?
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@@Da_Publick Who, Wilko? He didn’t use pedals. I saw tell an audience at a Q&A, that when asked by journalists about pedals, he’d ask what he needed pedals for. “I’m a guitarist,” he’d say, “not a bloody cyclist.”
I meant in the studio. If he played that amp, the amp's signal was sent into a mixer with advanced EQ, and probably other sound reinforcement. Kudos to him for not using effects, though.
hey guys, i just commented on another video about you not mentioning hearing preotection. so it is nice to see that you did it here right in the beginning :)
My addition to the party ; a Lab Series L5. B B King's s s amp. Not correctly working at this time but my amp guy knows all about them. Another to throw in the basket a Peavey KB60 keyboard amp. Best part of both of these is, I got them free.
Crush + LP was excellent! I waited for that comparison. I have an older version crush, for the clean channel I like to set: Vol Ch. at 11-12 o'clock, Bass at 9 o'clock, Treble at 13 o'clock, Master at 13-14 o'clock and I leave that way. If I want more Volume, I add by Volume on the channel side. You can easily have 2 type of distortion, similar to a tube amp, from the power section or pre-section. With Jazzmaster sounds a little bit strange, but at home with single and humbucker much more pleasant.
Another greaaaat video... Thank you. I liked the JC the most. I now hesitate JC40 or JC22 to play at home... mmhhh I prefer to get 10" speakers but on the other hand the JC22 volume is more adequate 😅 for such purpose.
Nice! I gigged some with pedals into a JC120 as backline. It preferred it to a Marshall head and 4x12 cab because it was consistent and easy to set up quickly. I knew what I was starting with. It’s a good amp.
Everybody loves another sound. For me, the verry best I ever heared, is the cranked clean channel at the orange rocker 15. Only one Knob, I turn it rigt to the end, and Ohg my God 🙂 The MK Ultra from Orange goes the same way, but its not affordable to me. Howdy from Bavaria 🙂
Dimebag Darrell used Randall SS heads. With the parametric EQ. Obviously, this sound is not for everyone, but a lot of people love it and it worked for him.
@@marianocolombatti4942 :D Yes! I was loving it combined with the classic 30 but I needed a stereo volume pedal or something to calm down the solid state volume jump compared to the c30
You should have turned the amp volume of the Katana all the way up! The amp volume behaves like the master volume of a tube amp, it sounds like a sweating tube amp when dimed! Would be nice to see the overall breakup.
Great demo ... - the Orange super Crush is a great modern amp - Katana ... YUP - JC ... amazing "stage authority" - still after all those years The JC-120 came to Germany when i was like 19 ... mid 70s and i was impressed : even liked the distortion and the chorus was just amazing! So i acquired a - more flat compatible - JC-22 when it came out ... still toooo loud but i love it
Do a review on the JC40, I play it just as much as my tube amps, it sounds great. Takes time though to dial it in with effects to try to make it more tube like.😮Why aren’t there more stereo combo’s??? An affordable good sounding stereo tube combo would be a bestseller.
Katana not up to snuff, but most affordable and most features, and a few passable sounds in there. JC-120 sounds great, but if I’m getting an SS amp it’s to lose weight, not add weight, so it’s a no go. Of the three I’d take the Orange Crush. For recording all 3 sounded best w close and room mics blended. The Quilter Aviator Mach 3- 200 watts plus attenuation and like 25 lbs would have been a good add to the demo.
My amp of choice is a Roland Blues Cube Hot EL84 modified and im getting praise for the sound even too an extent , who needs a tube amp when u have this altough i own one and only use it outside my apartment
That’s an awesome amp I had three of them Roland amps running at once one of each version is was awesome. Any solid state amplifier will benefit from some sort of tube preamp pedal some pedals better than others for this but it’s the main component of circuit before pre amp section which most tube amps use solid state power sections. The fender cyber twin is an example of this trying to have a tube in front of the power section yet mainly solid state circuits. I’m convinced the right tube preamp pedal with solid state amp just as good if not better than an all tube amp.
I loved the Orange for its crunch but darn doesn’t the JC-120 clean so well? And you get that far away clean sound at the tip of your finger and volume !
The Orange can clean up well on the gain channel too. With other speakers it can go into more treble and high mids as well, got to keep in mind that the VotW they come with is into the direction of V30.
Oh Guys, I have some Marshal Micro Amps and one Mini Tonemaster by Fender and the Speakers are not desinged for the fully cranked sound. But, who am i to stop you from having fun with these. So Rock on and keep up the Volume ;-)
What's true of tube amps is also true of ss...the low watt amps sound much better through a large ext cab...but the low watt ss amps in particular are generally designed to be cheap practice amps so people don't expect much of them, but a vox pathfinder 15r through a good 12" speaker sounds killer
If you get one of them universal 500ma power supply units that allows for selective voltage and has the post negative or positive switch run your micro amp at 3 volts you will be amazed at the difference in tone. I did this to my Evh micro amp and added the external speaker switch mod. 3-4.5 volts turns the amp into a naturally fuzz driven tone with superb clean up on volume knob. I ran the stock 9v battery down till it was dead and kept track of which voltage sounded best. The power supply keeps it at a steady 3 volts and is very Hendrix like tone. Hope this helps someone.
Interesting facts ; Metallica used the JC 120 , John Fogerty (CCR) used a Solid state Kustom K200A-4 amp LIVE , Billy Gibbons - ZZTop also used a solid state Marshall Valvestate 8008 live ! BB KING always used a solid state Lab Series L 5 combo etc .😅👍
“These all go to 11.” So many stories of studios hiding the Marshall stack in another room, or in the basement because cranking it up was just so loud it was painful even WITH ear protection. (Or stories of the “original” metal band (up for debate) Blue Cheer out of San Francisco, whose live shows made the audience retreat because being too close to the LOUD amps was simply too painful, AND it made them almost impossible to record in a studio because the microphones would just blow up.)
May have missed it, but I didn't see the Orange drive channel cranked (w/o pedals). Also, the Orange with pedals using the LP. Anyone has timestamps for these?
TBH I’m a little dumbfounded with the superiority of the JC120 compared to the others, especially the Katana, which frankly sounded v bad in comparison!😮
Hey, we were using two different mics. A close mic right in front of the amp and a room mic (the plastic head with mics built in). Both of these were plugged into our audio interface and that goes into the computer to record the tone. I hope that answers your question. Cheers //Kris
There's nothing 'cork sniffer' about it. Tube amps usually do sound better at high gain, period. A lot of the people claiming to love solid state amp's high gain sounds so much are really just being cheap, or they're romanticising over celebrities' gear.
Yeah that's a great point. Still, if you plug in a solid state drive pedal into a tube amp, you still have the pre- and power amp tubes working. So that's more of a hybrid thing. That being said, I actually prefer overdrive pedals over tube amp overdrive so I guess I have a sweet spot for solid state technology after all, haha! //Kris
Room mics never seem to sound what I recall hearing when actually standing in a room, room mics always sound really boxy mid-range only and do not represent at all how the human ear hears. I honestly think my iphone mic does a better job when mic'ing a room than what I hear from youtube studio mics. Close mic'ing of course never sounds like what it sounds like to be standing in the room - but at least it's a good sound. Maybe youtubers are using the wrong kind of mic for room mic'ing?
Katana most sold? I tought more Valvestates where sold, remember those to be close to everywhere back in the 90’s Besides that while you are comparing combos with their own speakers result will be different when comparing them connected to the same speaker/speakers, dunno if that would work with the Katana though since it uses a full range speaker, so would require that the speaker simulation or IR can be disabled.
@@SanDimas234 Ah, I must have confused it with another amp, thought it had a line in for playback of music, in which case FSR would be best. So IR or cab sim only on line out, headphones and usb makes sense.
@@JoeBaermann I'm kind of a reluctant Katana owner😅. Spent months trying various mini valve heads but ended up having to admit to myself that in my current situation even with attenuation I wouldn't really be able to crank them enough. Tried a Katana under duress and was impressed. Did end up with the artist version though😄
Aw gee sus, this isn't music ! This is just a bloody awful racket, I'd have to walk out of a venue and pretty damn quick if I was bombarded with a racket like that !
If you're listening on a phone speaker through you tube compression it's impossible to make a judgement on anything. Comparisons within the same video hold some water because they are on level footing, but saying tube amps sound better than this is completely unfair without playing both in the same space yourself.
I didn’t love any of these in this context, but IMO it’s not what they’re for. I love open-back combos for airy, edge of breakup tones. I wouldn’t run a Super Reverb or a 5E3 dimed either- that’s what a closed-back head/cab setup is for.
