The Scream And Fly Member Guitar Thread 2018!

[CDave]

It depends how fussy you are. To a trained ear/seasoned guitarist there is no comparison. I have a strategy 500 mesa/tri axis rig, and a tweaked dual recto/ a few years ago I bought a a Blackstar 2/12 combo and push it with a tube screamer. The fake stuff is nice and very close with reliability but there is nothing like the real deal when you wind that **** up and it moves your chromosomes around.

I agree a tube amp is sweetness. In that video I could tell the difference in the Fender amp and the Kemper but got it backwards on the Victory amp and the Kemper. This Kemper isn't like a Line 6 Spyder from what I'm hearing.

I love tube amps and I own a Fender Blues Jr.III, Marshall JTM45 RI head, a 1980 Marshall JMP 2004 head, Marshall Mercury combo, Marshall 9005 and 9001 rack mount amp/pre-amp, Orange Tiny Terror head and installed the Merc Magnetics Holy Terror kit, a 1975 Fender VibroChamp and a Crate Vintage Club 30 combo. The Crate was the first tube amp I bought. I bought everything used and below the average selling price on eBay.

I bought the Marshall JTM RI, JMP, Mercury and the Fender VibroChamp as investments that I could enjoy using while I hoped they gained value. And hope if they don't gain value I can break even and I will if prices at least hold steady. I didn't think the economy was going to take so long to turn around and thought I would have had them sold, at a small profit, years ago. That's the way it goes when you buy stuff for an investment.

After playing all of them I fell in love with the VibroChamp and won't sell it; it is incredible sounding. I bought the Marshall 9005 and 9001 rack amp/pre-amp because they were a huge value, IMO. The 9005 was 300.00 and the 9001 was 150.00 off eBay. The 9005 is a dual 50watt EL34 amp. So for 300.00 bucks I got TWO, built in England, 50watt Marshall amps. The 9001 is the tube pre-amp that goes with the 9005. They sound similar to the JMP. Tony Iommi used the Marshall 9005/9001 amp/pre-amp combo back in the early 90's on one of Sabbath's tours before he switched to Laney amps.



The Kemper isn't just a modeling amp. With the Kemper you can mic any amp/cab or combo you own or a friend owns and make a profile of it in the amp. Then tweak the profile until you get it sounding like the real thing.
Check it out.https://www.kemper-amps.com/profiler...ew#a-profiling
I understand tube amps will be king in the studio for a long time. IMO for the average/casual player these Kemper's are going to be the way to go. I really believe they will only get better as the years go by. If you gig, the majority of the crowd will never know the difference between the Kemper and a tube amp and it gives you the ability to change amps on the fly.


nitro_rat, this isn't like the standard solid state amp. You can adjust so much when profiling an amp or adjusting an existing amp that it's leagues above a typical SS amp. These amps actually respond like a tube amp does to your attack when playing your guitar.

Go listen to some of the demo's of amp profiles, you can use in the Kemper, at the Amp Factory's site. http://www.theampfactory.com/downloa...s/amps_pack_1/

[nitro_rat]

I’m familiar with modeling amps, fender actually made a really good one that was ignored - the cyber twin Ii. It has a silver surround on the display. If you can find one with the big pedal board it’s a great setup. They just don’t have SOUL, but most guys won’t be able to tell the difference...

[Scream And Fly]

I have this little love affair with classic guitar rack and floor preamps from the late-80s/1990s. That was the heyday of the explosion of digital guitar effects and rack preamps. Back in college I remember wanting a Digitech 2120 Valve Guitar System so badly, but no way could I afford it, even if I sold a kidney.

I have a few modelers and they're no doubt far more versatile, but back before the modeling processors were out with digital preamps, I feel that the analog preamps from 20 years ago or so had their own character. They generally were not modeling any sort of sound, but making their own, and I still find some of them can produce such incredible sounds. I think their unique tones can at least partially be the result of the limited processing power from the old DSPs they used back then, such as the Z80.

My prized unit is my Digitech GSP 2101 with its matching Control One MIDI floor controller. It's fully upgraded with the PPC-210 parallel processing chip and the "Artist" firmware. It also has the 20MHz DSP upgrade (up from 10MHz). How's that for fast?
That unit sounds just spectacular, and it still surprises me at its abilities, especially considering that it was made in 1994!

Last week I was able to pick up this ART SGX2000 preamp/processor very cheap, complete with 'clown vomit' graphics and all. I remember these things were popular in the 1990s, but I neve owned one. It has a single 12AX7 tube and who knows if that's running at full plate voltage, but this unit definitely has a very characteristic 80s-type of overprocessed tone. My unit was made in 1991 in the USA, and appears to be all original. It looks extremely well made - the capacitors are all perfect, and the unit is not very noisy at all.

[CDave]

That pre-amp/processor looks brand new. There is a lot of gear out there that can make some cool sounds, new and old. Good thing about a lot of the old stuff that isn't popular anymore is it's cheap these days.

It amazes me how inexpensive the Marshall 9000 series tube pre-amps and amps are. Sure the amp weighs a ton but it's two amps in a single enclosure, of course it's gonna be heavy. But people will pay 1000+ bucks for a JMP head when they can get the 9005/9001 set for around 500-600 bucks and have the classic Marshall sound. Plus the 9005 has a 1/2 power switch.

Also you have the option of setting up one side of the amp with different power tubes. You can change a few pieces in the amp, if necessary, and run one side with 6550 or 5881 tubes to get a different tone. Now you have two amps with different Marshall tones in one package for half the price of a Marshall head or combo amp.

The Marshall 9000 series sounds damn good to me.
Here's a vid of the 9001/9005.


Here is a vid of the 9005 amp with the solidstate 9004 pre. This is real close to how the 9001/9005 I have sounds. Fast forward to 5:00 to get to the heavy stuff.

[XstreamVking]

Gave my old Fender and Peavey amp to my son many years ago. Get good stuff and it will last forever. They're on the second generation of guitar player wannna-be's. I was never what I would call good, and he seems to be following my lead. He is not very talented either. But good or bad, the chicks dig it if you have a guitar and amp in the living room...

[nitro_rat]

the chicks dig it if you have a guitar and amp in the living room...

I’m not much of a player myself either but my Dad and his brothers all play. I’m pretty handy with the gear and repairs though!

[oldschoolltv]

I am having to google some of these terms so I can speak intelligently with my son on this, I am sure he will pick them up fairly quick, he was face timing one of his “girl, friends” and she made a comment that the chicks dig it so he knows I was not lying when I told him if you enjoy it stick with it and come high school and college he will be glad he did.

[Scream And Fly]

When I was like 8 years old my older brother was watching music videos, and a Def Leppard video came on. And I remember sitting there and watching it, and I drew the obvious conclusion: learning guitar makes you cool! And that's when I knew I had to learn to play. LOL!!

[Capt.Insane-o]

[CDave]

Capt. Insane-o, if ya like that you might like this.

[frogII]

this is all way over my head
BUT
my youngest is pretty good
whats a decent set up for Base Guitar and a Base Ukulele

[oldschoolltv]

He is getting better.

[Will hedrick]

55 chet Adkins diamond gretch from my grandfather, I like to play ocassionally

[LakeFever]

Talyor 210 acoustic, no electronics

[oldschoolltv]

Not quite a year, he has 3 guitars and getting better.