My GAS for YesterToday

And forget the Fender Twin, get this instead:

http://www.victoriaamp.com/model50212.htm

Pacomc79 wrote:

yeah yeah. Victoria kicks ass.

while we're talking about fender clones we should probably mention the Dr Z Z28 and Kendrick amps as well.

Dr Z for sure, never heard the Kendrick. They look like a tweed.
Clark is still the best.
2950 for a Belmont with an attenuator. 40 Watt 6L6 dead on Super Reverb, its a clone of his best past work.
There are so many boutique amps now, its almost silly to buy a fender or marshall. There are some great buys out there to.Belmont
™
Thirty five watt, two ten combo, "electric era" circuitry. Single channel with volume, bass, middle, treble, reverb, speed, and depth controls. Tube compliment is one current manufacture 5AR4, two 6L6 TAD, 12AX7's LPS, and 12AT7's eh. Features two Eminence custom C10N style 10" ceramic magnet speakers. This amp is set up with front control panel. Includes dual foot-switch for Reverb and Vibrato. Cabinet cosmetics black tolex with oxblood grill cloth.

mccreadyisgod wrote:

Assuming you have the cash...

I'll agree that Bogner does Marshall better than Marshall, and Victoria does Fender better than Fender, but we can't all afford $2500 amps. A silverface Bassman still goes for around $300, sounds good, and is built like a tank.

Also, the NEW '59 Bassman reissue and the '57 Twin reissue are damned nice amps, built very well, and certainly worth the money.

Thats the first thing I thought when reading the original post. A used Silverface for $300 (sometimes they go for less too!) on top of a used 4-12 or 2-12 (prefferable a 4-12 Marshall) is a way better way, and you save some bucks. You might have enought saved from that to go buy a used spring reverb unit.

Then there is always an old Twin with a master volume, get those for under a grand. There is one sitting at my friends studio that is just killer, slap a tube screamer in front of it for a little extra "ooh".

Of course a little Gibson Minute Man sounds like a million bucks too and you can find those for $200. But thats in another league.

mccreadyisgod wrote:

Assuming you have the cash...

I'll agree that Bogner does Marshall better than Marshall, and Victoria does Fender better than Fender, but we can't all afford $2500 amps. A silverface Bassman still goes for around $300, sounds good, and is built like a tank.

Also, the NEW '59 Bassman reissue and the '57 Twin reissue are damned nice amps, built very well, and certainly worth the money.

Not every boutice amp is over 1K, Reverend Kingsnake is under 700 and does nice Fender cleans, plus the used market on boutique amps always has nice buys.
I agree a 70's silverface is a great buy with awesome potential. Old Supro's, Ampegs as well.
I just wouldn't buy a Marshall RI for 1800 bones or a Fender RI when you can get better tone for the same money.

JofZ wrote:

Clark is probably the best out there, 10 year transferable warranty, beat that!
Any option under the sun, and dead on SRV, to the point that people are posting warnings about how dead on the tone is to SRV.

I agree 2600 is a ton of dough, but any high end amp is in the same dollar range. The Fargen is probably the best bargin out there IMO.

Fargen seems to have nailed the Plexi sound in the mini and mighty plex's.

I'd like to spend an hour or so infront of a Germino but yeah, that's in the 2.5K range too.

Hey at least we aren't shopping Dumble Overdrive Specials.

JofZ wrote:

No one mentioned Bogner yet either, drool!
I think we need to set up a tour box of amps To be serious, if a dealer had them all in stock and would allow me in without an appointment, they would have a sale LOL, its hit or miss.
There is a dumble thread on another forum that is getting very heated, its got more info then I have ever read. A couple Dumble owners are saying that no 2 are even close to having the same tone, people buy them purley for a collection. Others are saying its the biggest rip off on the market, that its just a fender circuit and to get over it. What do you think?

me personally, I think 10 to 15 thousand+ for an amp is an absolute ripoff unless you can find some other person with a load of cash to spend that will give you more for it. Dumbles in my opinion are like unicorns. Rare and beautiful but of no real worth to us normal people. It dosen't even look all that cool to me. It's more legendary than anything else. That circuit has been copied to death anyway.

I think there are plenty of people that have built incredible amps and I could never pick just one to call the best ever, but in my years researching I know what I like and I can look at a set of specs and go, shit, that's going to have a great chance of sounding good.

It's all subjective anyway. Hell I don't even have half of the skill required to coax the extra potential out of most of them anyway.

Just like guitars, you find some that are relatively inexpensive that just sing out to you, and then some more finely crafted ones that are just so amazing they seem to play themsleves.

It's almost more impressive to me to hear a great engineer coax an amazing tone onto a record. I mean, yeah Robben Ford and SRV used dumbles, but Robert Johnson just had an old acoustic, look at the dirt and grime on Kieth Richards tele's going into old 57 tweed twins.

If it's rich and full and it sings to you it's a good tone in my mind. It's tougher to find the right tone out of high gain stuff but when you hear it you know.