I am overwhelmed with amps now! It's amazing how different they all are.
Here are the amps I've played over
many hours these past two weeks (4 separate trips to the Guitar Center!), and my thoughts (based on how my guitars sound through them):
Epiphone Valve Special - cute little tube amp with a retro vibe. Limited functionality, and really only sounds good at higher volumes. Not what I need. But worth a look if you need a simple 5w tube-driven box.
Line 6 Spider II 112 - I was excited about the "blues" modeling amp, but was very disappointed with the 12" speaker's ability to handle overdriven bass notes. A simple blues shuffle in E totally kicked the speaker's butt. Wimpy!
Line 6 Spider II 212 (used) - I was even more disappointed that TWO 12" speakers couldn't handle overdriven bass notes. What do they make the cones from, tissue paper?
Marshall MG50DFX (used) - Another 1x12", but handled bass notes much better than the Line 6 amps. Good distortions and surprisingly nice clean channel, but not much of a crunchy blues amp. Used price was very good though - I'd recommend it to someone looking for a Marshall sound at a good price.
Crate Palomino V8 - sweet little all-tube combo, but no other functionality that I need.
Crate RFX30 - an excellent clean channel, but very harsh "solo" channel. Hated the effects.
Crate RFX65 - bigger brother to the RFX30. The larger speaker worked much better with the overdrive channel. But no line out or headphone jack? Only a speaker out? What were they thinking?
Fender Princeton Chorus (very used) - oh, man! What a great, classic clean sound from the twin 10" speakers. It struggled just a bit with my beefy strings, but a little EQing would take that away. The chorus and reverb effects were phenomenal. And the gain channel wasn't as bad as I've heard. I nearly bought it ... but the jack pack (line out, effects loop, phones) was DOA. Darn! I could probably get it fixed or replaced, but the price for the amp was already pushing my limit.
Fender Rumble 60 (Bass amp) - just for fun, I plugged my guitar into a Bad Monkey OD pedal and ran it through a bass amp. I don't know why. It wasn't half bad. The salesman was quite impressed. I mentioned how the '59 Bassman was a classic
guitar amp, and he was shocked. Then he tried to sell me one. Get real!
Fender Frontman 25R - wimpy!
Fender Champion 300 - not bad, but the 10" speaker couldn't handle my beefy strings. What's up with these wimpy small amps?
Fender Deluxe 900 - Nice 12" speaker, good digital effects. Good crisp cleans - not like the Princeton, but very pleasant. Terrible distortions, but I could use an overdrive pedal through the clean channel ... well, that's too expensive. It was a clearance sale, but they wouldn't budge past their listed price. No line out or headphone out, either.
Vox VR30 Valve Reactor - YUCK.
Tech 21 Trademark 30 - Well I had to BUY IT to hear it, as it's not available locally. So it's in my basement now. The clean channel is excellent - somewhat compressed but really chimes at volume. Sounds GREAT through headphones. I actually had to take the phones off to make sure the sound wasn't coming throught the speaker. The distortion channels are very good. Definitely better than what I got from the Vox AD30VT. Now here's the kicker: I set the amp model to "tweed", the mod to "high gain" and the speaker to "US" (mesa/boogie), set the drive knob between 10:00 and 12:00, and I get a very sweet bluesy crunch. Exactly what I'm looking for. I had to shave off some of the bass with my EQ pedal, but the 10" Eminence speaker holds up fairly well. It has a real 3-spring reverb that sounds fabulous - I'd say it's as good as the Fender Princeton's but it get a little too sensitive after the 12:00 setting. I really wish this amp had a 12" speaker, as the bigger TM60 is too pricey for me. Still, to my ears it's the best overall.
Behringer GMX110 - attempts to be an exact clone of the Trademark 30, with added DSP effects. It didn't work. The salesman said, in a hushed voice, "we actually get a lot of Behringers returned for quality problems."
Behringer GMX210 - a 2x10" version of the GMX110. It was on clearance at Guitar Center for $120US. Okay, let's think about that: 2 x 10" Jensen speakers, a low-priced variant of the Sansamp (including the same switches) modeling unit, DSP effects, a beefy jack pack with phones, line out, XLR out, effects loop, footswitch, etc.. And a built-in chromatic tuner. For $120. It was just too cheap to pass up. So I bought it and brought it home to compare directly to the Tech21. Sad to say, you get what you pay for. This amp is certainly feature rich, but there is an unbearable hiss on all of the channels, even at low volume with gain turned down. (It's in the master volume control, not the gain.) Also the pots have a static sound when turned. The store demo didn't seem to have either problem ... but now I have to think Behringer's quality is dubious. The only way to cut out the hiss is to activate the noise gate, but that's one of the DSP "effects", and you can't run any other effects (like reverb) if you're running the noise gate!!! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Sounds muddy through phones, too.
I will be returning the Behringer and keeping the Tech 21.
Hurrah!
Now I want a good compressor/sustainer pedal, and maybe a chorus and a delay pedal. Then I'll be set!