Quality amps

[Pilgrim]

I used some truck bed liner-type stuff from a rattle can on one homemade cab.  The result felt like I had covered the cab in 00 sandpaper.  Carrying the d**n thing was like rubbing your jeans on a giant hacksaw blade.

[Granny Gremlin]

The pro stuff that comes in 5gal buckets for use in spray rigs is much better than that.  Used the aerosol stuff myself on my first DIY pedalboard (w lid) something like 10 years ago and it wasn't that bad - local store brand.

Some Peavey stuff is even worse - coarser than 50 grit.

[bobyoung]

I was gonna say- it's surprising they don't make reliced amps, but then I remember seeing some Fender stuff with fake beer bottle rings in the top, cigarette burns, etc...    Funny.

The problem with the GKs isn't the metal corners themselves, but more the coating that they use in place of tolex.  It's some sort of spray on, hard shell - like a giant M&M.  When there's an impact, that stuff starts to fracture and crack away.  No biggie to me (you should see my SVT cab  ), but I can understand how stores might end up with some "blems" because of this.

I ripped what was left of the tolex off my SVT cabs years ago and painted them black.

[Spiritbass]

I actually purchased a new amplifier which was made in Ohio last year - a Reeves Custom 225. It was NOT cheap, but should last for the rest of the time I am here on earth.

[saltymonkey]

I bought the new Mesa Bass Prodigy all tube head a few months ago. It sounds fantastic, lots of nice clean tube headroom. It's the fourth Mesa amp I have owned. I still have a WalkAbout as well. I had a problem with a used M6 I owned and the Mesa CS was fantastic. They walked me through some diagnostic tests on the phone and sent out a new preamp tube at no charge even though I was not the original owner. I do think it was still under warranty. I would love to own a Reeves 225 or a Hightone.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

There's just not much out there anymore from 'the big boys' (Peavey included) that is NOT made to be disposable.  The guitar amp world has a plethora of boutique amp and pedal builders who focus on quality first, but they all seem afraid of dropping an octave. You can probably count the number of custom bass amp builders out there on one hand.  And that's going to be the only way you're going to find something new that you know will be able to be serviced and isn't going to be built around an output transistor board that is discontinued before the amp even gets to market (cough Markbass).

Mesa is probably the only major manufacturer still doing old-style serviceable amps, and I'll bet their QC is much better now that they dropped Guitar Center, but I gotta say, I've never been overly impressed with their quality. They have lots of problems in areas where they shouldn't, BUT the huge caveat about that is that most of the ones I saw were during their heaviest GC-ordering era over a decade ago. I bought a used Bass 400+ about five years ago and have never had to do a thing to it and it's running fine.

Traynor has great support, but their QC has REALLY dropped in recent years as they've had to cut costs to compete. I'd trust their warranty though.

Surface mount stuff also brings another factor into play: schematic values may say one thing, but in the Asian factories where this stuff is made, it means next to nothing and the parts themselves, even when they DO match a circuit diagram, have such tight tolerances that literally unless you find one of the same components out of the same batch of any components from which the amp was originally made, replacing a single defective part is impossible because the entire board was "tuned" to work in the factory that built it and without knowing where the variations in the actual values occurred (tolerance) the stuff will NEVER work right.

At the TV station where I used to work, we had to TOSS a multi-thousand dollar power supply for the satellite truck uplink literally because of a .001 cent SMT resistor bank that could NOT be repaired. We tried, and these are guys that deal in this stuff every day, not just me, the vintage snob. It pissed all of us off and we all took turns troubleshooting and tracing the circuit. We FOUND the problem and the bad parts, but because of the tolerances in the rest of the other boards, replacing the defective parts with ones of the same value only caused other problems elsewhere. I have what's left of it in my garage where I cannibalize it.

[copacetic]

It's even hard to get some things even fixed. I have an SWR Baby Blue II that I love but a couple years ago it just went dead like a dying light bulb and SwR sent me to various techs who could not fix it. So it just sits. Now  for the most part you just have to get something at a good price and when it goes just let it go.  The other day I was looking at a few basses and plugged into something and it did not sound half bad ( yes the bass itself was good and I knew the sound capabilities) so looking over at what it was plugged into...a Fender Bronco 40 watt combo. $240.   Actually emerysound in the East Bay ( SF Bay area) is putting out some superb stuff and will back it up. Not cheap, but leaves MarkBass etc. stuff wanting and not for much more.

[Tim Brosnan]

it's really too bad about Traynor-I have a Yorkville XM50C from 2006 and it has been a fine amp. I have the bigger brother once, the XM200C. Nice amp, just a bit heavy and bulky for what it was.

So I guess the way to look at it is-get something that sounds good, and if and when it gives up the ghost, move on. Or, find something older used. I'll have to think about that one.

[drbassman]

I bought the new Mesa Bass Prodigy all tube head a few months ago. It sounds fantastic, lots of nice clean tube headroom. It's the fourth Mesa amp I have owned. I still have a WalkAbout as well. I had a problem with a used M6 I owned and the Mesa CS was fantastic. They walked me through some diagnostic tests on the phone and sent out a new preamp tube at no charge even though I was not the original owner. I do think it was still under warranty. I would love to own a Reeves 225 or a Hightone.

Had my Mesa Prodigy for a couple months too and I love it.  The more I play it, the more I like it and understand how to use it.  I really seems to get batter every time I turn it on and mess with the controls.  Got the 4 button pedal for it and it really is nice to have.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

I'm glad Mesa is doing well with the Prodigy and I hope the new Strategy (they used to make a slave tube power amp under that name) is equally successful. It's nice to see that Mesa survived Guitar Center. That chain is almost singlehandedly responsible for the entire shift in the MI industry to disposability. They demand such low wholesale prices that manufacturers end up cutting every corner they can just to get them the product without it bankrupting them, and even then GC likes to withhold payment on already delivered merchandise to leverage better prices on the next batch. They killed Mackie, SWR, and all the companies Gibson ate while bringing junk like Behringer to prominence and ruining once great names like Fender, Marshall, Crown, and Ampeg.

[Tim Brosnan]

I was just talking to the guy who works on my basses yesterday about this. Yes, guitar center stores get truckloads of guitars every week, then the stores turn around and say if you don't keep shipping product, we go under and you don't get paid, so you lose. Then, the stores get rid of anybody who knows how to work on a guitar, and just have the clueless kid salespeople go back and "work" on the guitars, when they have nothing to do.

As for amps, he was in agreement-find the older stuff, and somebody who knows how to work on them. I thought about this; maybe they make them disposable because there just aren't any people out there anymore who know how to work on this stuff. Same reason there are PLEK machines-allowing unskilled people to do a luthier's job, while charging more money.

[Hörnisse]

I love my old Peavey Alphabass head.  They are worth seeking out and still fairly cheap for a tube bass amp.  I think I paid $200 for this several years ago.



I take all of my equipment to Nick at South Austin Music.  He is not only a smoking bass player but he can repair just about anything.  I've taken older SWR, Ashly, Caver and even a Seymour Duncan bass head to him and he does outstanding work.  

[Psycho Bass Guy]

I thought about this; maybe they make them disposable because there just aren't any people out there anymore who know how to work on this stuff.

Nah. The people who knew how to do anything have either died, retired or had sense enough to stop doing repairs; there's no money in it and you certainly can't support yourself from musicians who aren't getting paid themselves. Disposable amps are made that way for one reason: money. SMT, SMPS amps made in contract production facilities in Asia (or "assembled" and claimed to made elsewhere) cost on the order of $25-50 each TOPS to produce, including labor costs. Everything else in the price is shipping (gotta get 'em to the market) and profit.

MI margins are 10 TIMES what they were pre-2007 because overall sales have dropped off so much. They have to because the market has already imploded. Yes, the stuff is generally junk, but where you'd sell ten amp that ran 30 years without a hitch in 2001, companies must now make the same amount of profit on a single amp that MIGHT last ten years. There will always be exceptions, but the longevity of the design is built into it. Old amps were literally made to run forever when properly maintained. New amps are made to die so that companies will have repeat business. The "trick" is to make people like the products so much that they don't notice that their new ultra-light class D 3000 watt amps only put out the same amount of volume as an old class A/B 300 watt amp and the company gets you to buy their product again if you liked the tone and it dies.

Even IF the economy recovers (which it never will until some other MAJOR changes take place) greedy investors are not going to tolerate companies suddenly making better, less profitable products; they're just going to demand higher sales AND better margins. The ONLY way to stop the trend is to "vote with your wallet" and not buy junk. Companies DO take notice when a product doesn't sell and when the marketing guys start saying the same things the design engineers are, the managers (because very few know how any of the stuff ACTUALLY works) will push for better overall products as a matter of survival.

BTW, the Alphabass is a VERY nice amp, Peavey's copy of the Fender Studio Bass with a graphic EQ, sort of a-low rent Mesa Bass 400.

[Granny Gremlin]

maybe they make them disposable because there just aren't any people out there anymore who know how to work on this stuff. Same reason there are PLEK machines-allowing unskilled people to do a luthier's job, while charging more money.

Except that any major city has plenty of people qualified to fix amps.  Maybe not 'guitar amp' techs per se, but the guy at the local used hifi sales/service place will do just as well.

I know 1 guy who supports his family (and has for years) with gear repairs (tube, point to point and solid state/pcb stuff).  He works out of his house and he's the best guy in town (nice dude too).  I think he also takes in all serious repairs from one used shop accross town (that their horrible tech can't handle) and works one day a week as the 12th fret's in house guy.  His prices are insanely good (when you got to him direct) because he's lightening fast (just really knows his stuff) so the hours are low. I was very pleasantly surprised at the cost for him to go through my 16:8:2 console, and I always take my tube amps to him.

Then there's the local vintage Hifi guy (almost as good, but more expensive... and a little weird) and at least 4 stores (one a multi-location chain) that will repair stuff, but I have no idea  about their quality of work and pricing (except one which I refuse to name or go to anymore since their tech put a Traynor Super Custom Special on the floor with an under-rated fuse, so that when I rented it it died before I hit a note... and then when I called he told me to just go get the right fuse at the hardware store like what he'd done was no biggie - what if I first fired it up at a show, after stores had closed?).  Then there's all the pro audio/studio support guys some of whom  also take amps and other things (but would likely not be cheap), a guy who designs/builds pedals and is known to do repairs, my recone guy (who also does amps, mostly PA stuff, but is too far away for me to use vs the other local awesome dude) and places like Teletech - I don't know what they'll work on, but I assume more pro audio stuff (too far for me to go there for repair). 

That said, some of the disposable stuff might not be worth working on and techs might reject it,  but I don't have anything with SMDs (aside from a pair of passive stepped attenuators made by hand by some dude in Asia that I couldn't resist due to price - actually good; SMDs make sense herebut I have no idea how the dude does it - with a loupe and very carefully) but some techs have mentioned that caveat when I brought them things (not about SMD specifically, but just, in general - other problems could be proprietary chips or sealed modules; think Standel's epoxy-potted stuff etc.)

Anyway, the reason is profit, not lack of techs.  But it is a bit self-perpetuating maybe in that techs might not work on the stuff.

[amptech]

I guess I have to agree with both Granny and PBG...

It´s basically timebombs put out on the market these days, as you said, crap..

But there is no point in having such a dark view on techs, things change - as long as musicians will be able to have an interest in sound, people will grow up that gets interested in finding out how things work. Lots of really good books from the ´40´s to the ´60´s that still can wake interest and educate.

That said, I must confess that almost 50% of my customers find me because their last tech/repairman quit working because of age.