Amp surprise.

I tend to shy away from amps with built in effects, not that there's anything inherantly wrong with them, I just don't like having to run back to the amp every time I want to change an effect.

just got this amp less than two weeks ago. It's my first amp, so I don't really have anything to compare it to, but I like it. The effects give me lots to play around with, and I don't have to go buy a bunch of pedals or anything. I'm nowhere near good enough to play in public, so the "running back to the amp" thing isn't a problem for me, even though I understand where it could be. And the price was great for a first amp.

Ive tried the amp before, the distortion seemed alright. I checked out all the effetcs they had, and it was quite a few. I was msot interested in the wah and the rotary effect. I dont have a wah(yet, jus wait till saturday) but Ive heard it alot, and to me, it seemed kinda laughable. I dont exactly remeber it, but it sounded sorta ridicilous. And for the rotary effectr, i personally didnt hear much of a difference. The other effects are alright though.

drewsdad

You sound like you are the type that prefers the vintage clean tone of guitar over distortions. :D

Try turning the gain way down on the distortion channel until you get just a very slight overdrive. You will be playin' the Blues! Crank it up and play Baby!

You will probably go for Reverb and Tremelo.

Thanks, everyone for the feedback so far. Wes, I appreciate your assessment and I'll try to use your suggestions later tonight. I had actually had my eye on an Epiphone Valve Junior since I already have a Digitech RP50, but you know the treacherous ground you walk on when you think about returning or trading a gift (at least in my house :D ).
Not that the FXT30 sounds bad, it's actually pretty decent, it's just hard to get that warm, flowing tube crunch with digital.

:oops:

Tell your family there is something wrong with it (gain control is scratchy and is effecting the sound :roll: ), take it back and say, "Hey, this one looks cool too.(Epiphone Valve Junior or what ever else you like)." :oops:

:oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:

Not bad Tracker, not bad at all. Now I just have to work on my pokerface.

Man, if you aren't convincing you are REALLY gonna have a reason to sing the Blues! :cry:

I guess that I should look at this as a "win-win" situation. If I'm convincing, great, if not,
I'll be able to "suffer for my music". Seriously though, it's just for a 49 year old "wannabe" to
practice on and not worth hurting my family's feelings over. I'll take a few days to see what I can do with it before I even consider the "R" word.

The ONLY reason I said that was because, you seem to know what sound you are looking for. With that said, why have your family sit back and say, “Why aren't you playing the amp we bought for you?”

Find out if you like it or not. If not, you only have so much time before you can take it back. I'm sure your family will understand if you don't like the amp. Explain to them that there are a lot of different amps out there that will give you different types of sounds.

Musical instruments are funny like that. You never know what you have until you play it for awhile.

That amp will work fine. it will allow you lots of possibilities, Set the pre-amp gain on about 8 and master volume somewhere between 0 to 2 1/2 to get some overdrive, use the PR-50 for the drums you won't want to put your guitar down. Only Quark with some crate amps is the companies choice of speakers. They could be a little better quality, then again I'm harder on equipment than most. The amp should have an ext speaker it will drive a 2x12 or 4x12 cabinet just fine.

Joe

I really appreciate the advice and words of encouragement here, and not that I'm trying to rationalize a decision already, but in the few short hours I've had the amp on - it has started to develop a background "tick" just like a clock and an almost cricket-like chirp even without anything plugged into it. Since there really isn't anything else in the room that would be generating a noise or a signal that it would pick up, I'm pretty sure it's in the amp. I almost laughed when my wife told me that the salesman at GC had told her that Fender amps were over-rated and that Crate was a better deal (at least for them). But to be fair, my son's $99 Crate amp works fine, it's a little noisy, but it doesn't tick or chirp.

Another option would be to spend about $50 on a digitech Bad Monkey or about $79 on an ibenez tube screamer