My First Amp Advice

Thanks, but see a few minutes is no good, because I love to pick then guitar up, turn up the volume a play out a few riffs.

From GAK, info about Vox AD15VT:
Vox's patented Valve Reactor technology provides genuine tube tone with the stability of solid-state sound

What about this? do i need to replace the valves on this?
What about warming up?

Tyhanks, this website has been great so far :)

I honestly don't know much about the replacing tubes and whatnot, but I own a AD30VT...

For it to warm up it takes around... 5 seconds tops? :? It really won't bother you much

Also for replacing the tube, I've had it for like... 10 months now, and it's holding up fine

AND you can get a WHOLE lot of cool effects on it 8)

Thanks for reassuring me.
I'm VERY glad it only takes 5 seconds, plugging in my guitar takes that long anyway.

I think I may get the vox.
Does it have a good clean tone?

Everybody says tube amps are a lot of trouble, my personal experience is just the opposite. I have owned many tube amps and never had one go bad on me, not even once. I have a 1958 Premier Twin 8 that is all original including the tubes and it plays great. Next year it will be 50 years old!

I have had several solid state amps blow on me, once at a gig. They just quit. And there really is no fixing a solid state (I guess you could), but tube amps are easy to service (though expensive).

But the difference is tone. Play your guitar clean through a good tube amp and you will think you are in heaven. They sound so full and warm. Solid state amps always sound harsh to my ear, and many others agree. But crank them up and you really hear the difference. When a tube amp is pushed into saturation or distortion it is a soft clipping. It is pleasing to the ears, and this is why 90% of the pros use tube amps. They sound awesome pushed. A solid state just gets more harsh. Now, that is not necessarily bad, many players (Metal especially) prefer ther harder, edgy distortion of a solid state.

But I'm getting off the point. Tube amps are easy to maintain. If you play it hard you might have to replace tubes in maybe 3-5 years, but that is simple... pull the old one out and stick the new one in. Takes 15 minutes max.

Just my 2 cents (means nothing), but if you like effects go with the Vox. They really do have outstanding tone for a solid state. Line 6 is alright in my opinion, but they sound very artificial to me. But that is only my opinion and many thousands of players love their Line 6 amps.

Effects can kinda be a crutch. They sound all cute and all, but if you really want to improve as a player you have to play clean. Effects and hyper distortion cover up bad playing. Playing with less distortion or clean you have to really play well. You will never hear how you really play with all those effects and distortion.

Wow, brilliant response Wes. I know distortion and effects leave a sound that can be unrecognisable as a guitar, (precisely why I want an amp with a good undistorted tone as well) but I'd like to get different sounds and experiment a little to find a sound I really like, I'm sure you can empathise.

This is great guys!

Didn't mean to come down on effects, I like them myself, although I barely use them. Too much effects and all you are listening to is the effect. When the effect is that obvious, then it is too much effect.

But they do cover bad playing. Now this will sound like blasphemy, but take The Edge from U2. Now that guy is probably the MASTER of effects. But take away those effects and his playing is unbelieveably simple. I mean, really simple.
Hit a chord and let it repeat 100 times. Sorry to be mean, but that is what he is doing. But still, he is awesome, he is the Master of Effects.

Effects are like a toy. You play with them, they are entertaining. But you want to learn to really play your guitar. Always spend time playing clean to know how you are really playing, that is the way to really improve. And distortion is the same, turn off that distortion and many players sound terrible clean. Because they really do not play that well.

Just my opinion. :D

You're right about The Edge, Wes. I honestly don't like a lot of U2, and he's probably the reason why.

Maybe it's because I "listen through" the effect at times and hear what's playing.

Anyways, a tube will give you a better tone, and a better clean.

As for the Roland 15X Cube. I have. I mean, it's good. But the more I hear tubes (Fender Blues Jr)...the more I want it. And I've grown to get more and more tired of the clean channel of the Cube. I don't even use the distortion on the amp. I used to. But after buying a $25 effects pedal (Digitech Hot Head Distortion), I realized how faaaaar better the distortion pedal is.

And I can't imagine how much better the distortion pedal would sound on a pretty tube amp.

Good luck on your search. Go for a Fender Blues Junior.

Not putting The Edge down, it takes years of practice to master effects like he has, he is a true artist. But it has kind of become his thing, if anybody else did it they would be accused of copying him.

Nothing wrong with folks who love effects, variety is the spice of life. :D

I have heard the Cube amps and they really sound great for a solid state. But tube amps just have more warmth, that is what I like. But to each his (or her) own.

This might be a generalization, but generally I think it is true, the longer you play, the less effects you use.

Not putting The Edge down, it takes years of practice to master effects like he has, he is a true artist. But it has kind of become his thing, if anybody else did it they would be accused of copying him.
Oh yea. I'm not either. there's just plenty of guys I prefer over him.

More great advice from Wes. :)

Hi,

Reasons that I like my Vox amp (an AD30VT)

1. It's a solid unit with a range of good sounds.

2. I don't have to fiddle around with software programs in some crappy pedal menu. I just set some convenient knobs on top of the amp.

3. I don't have to worry about either batteries or an additional power supply (and apparently some cheaper power supplies can cause unwanted line noise).

4. When I've finished mucking around with dozens of noises I can forget most of them and settle on a couple of good settings – program them in for convenience – and then get on with the real business of playing.

As a beginner I was probably confused about what effects really do. I hoped that I could just dial in a number and I'd sound great after that. Not really true though. It now seems to me that effects are just something that you add right at the end of the chain. The first step is to have some decent skills and ‘tone' built into your fingers. You simply cannot replace that with anything electronic. After that it's having a decent guitar with good pickups, and a good amp to reproduce it all. All the elements – player, guitar and amp – need to be in sympathy with each other and working towards the same ultimate tone or sound. Then right at the end of the chain is some additional effects (chorus, reverb, delay, wah or whatever). They certainly can make an effect on the noise, but the other factors are a lot more important to what I'd call the ‘musical' or ‘aesthetic' quality of the result. That's how it seems to me anyway. :)

Good luck. It's all fun. 8)

Later -

One more thing.... :roll:

In common with every newb that I've ever seen testing out pedals or effects, when I first tried them I cycled through all the different possibilities just playing a handful of notes, or maybe a chord or two. This is fun to do, and they pretty much all sound OK when you do that.

If your musical ambitions only run to playing short riffs in the bedroom, or the odd chord, then that's great. But once you try and play a whole song then the picture can change quite dramatically. Overdone effects can cause sounds to pile up on each other in a most unpleasant way, and the whole thing can quickly degenerate into a nasty racket. This seems true of many of the presets in the cheaper pedals - designed to sound flashy for a few seconds, but too overloaded for regular use, particularly by beginners. Effects are not all automatically easy to use and can demand that you develop more skills and techniques before you can use them properly. In other words they can make the job harder not easier.

Others might disagree, but I found that what worked for me was to learn how to play through a pretty straight and standard setting first. Then add the effects in small doses while I worked out what they can do for a given song, and how to handle them properly. Otherwise they tended to sound good for some bars and bad for others, depending on what the song was doing.... :?

I absolutely agree with putting a decent amp first on the list. But I reckon that my Vox gives me some of the best of both worlds. A pretty reasonable and flexible amp that I can slowly and easily learn how things like EQ, reverb, chorus etc work to add extra dimensions to the sound. Of course, for many players, there's always the next amp, once you really know what tone, sound and style you're most comfortable with.... :wink:

Cheers,

Chris

I was in a similar position to you a while back, although I had narrowed it down between the Vox and the Cube (both 30's). I got a guy at the store to play an electric and an acoustic through both and I ended up going with the Cube. When I went in I was convinced I was going to buy the Vox. I did get him to play through a Line6 too but both the others seemed better to my ears.

I guess I am recommending that you listen to both back to back and then choose. If you aren't confident enough to play yourself, ask them to play a guitar like yours and a song you're likely to play - for some reason I think the guy said that the Line6 was a better 'metal' amp (?) and thats not the sound I was after at all.

Of course, based on other comments on this thread it seems that you could pick any of the 3 and end up happy, so maybe you should just buy the one you can get the best deal on!

Enjoy your shopping.

I agree with Wes - too many effects detract from the overall sound of a good amp (whether SS or tube) - it's like they're being used for the sake of using them.
I have a Pandora PX4, which offers a whole raft of effects - basically the only one that I use is one that I created myself and sounds similar to a VOX AC30 with some 60s reverb added. The 50 presets and the few custom patches never (OK, rarely) get a look in.

In music it' all about the effect, and if the final sound that goes into the mixerboard is the right one you did well. That can be with a tube amp and no effects, or completely digital over over-processed, as long as you get the sound you need. Electric guitars can sound practically anyway you want them to and it can be easy to lose perspective and add too much. Anyway, do NOT go for the Vox if you are in it for the effects because it is really very limited in that department. The Vox is really aimed for bluesy/rock tones and you can select no less then one effect, usually reverb. If you want to go hi-gain crazy Boss/Line6 is your solution with the GT8/Flextone etc.

As for tube vs solidstate: ignore what is harder to fix/maintain/whatever. Go for sound first. Right now I'm doing everything with amplitube, sounds better then my digital V-amp, hybrid Vox AD, analogue modeling GMX212 and tube Epi VJH. But that's just taste. Don't look at the label, listen to them.
Anyways, a tube will give you a better tone, and a better clean.

It's music, not NASCAR-racing. A car can be faster then another, an amp cannot be better then another. That's the glorious thing about music, and arts in general. By making such mental shortcuts you're shooting yourself in the foot, probably. Ever thought about why those jazzers love their solidstate JC120s so much? It's not because the clean is so bad...
Effects are like a toy. You play with them, they are entertaining.

Take any of your favourite guitarists and check the effects. Don't forget that even the 'straight into the amp' guys use plenty of effects: just because it's the sound engineer doing that post-recording don't mean they aren't there! The weird thing is that effects don't seem to mature in guitar-land that much. When was the last time you saw someone use expression pedals for delay times, flanger depths or reverb roll-offs? All I see is people turning effects on or off, but hardly anyone (Muse is an exception eg) learns to actually play the effects in a musical way. Strange, because so much better stuff is being done in the synthesizer-land, where people can play melodic solos just by changing parameters to multiple effects on the fly.

Effects are more then a toy, if you treat them as more then a toy. We have to quit thinking a flanger is a 'reptitive woosh-woosh' sound, it's the unnatural and static use of effects that make them sound so lame.

This is really good :D

From my shop of choice:
Roland Cube 15X: £79
Vox AD15VT: £109
Line 6 Spider 3 15 (Not so keen on this now): £99 OUT (unless some can convince me otherwise.

I haven't tried the Vox yet, but I'll definitely try to at the weekend.
Out of the Cube and Spider 3, I like the cube most so spider 3 is out.

That leaves Vox and Cube, but there is a £30 difference (60 dollars!) which will affect my decision, but if I love the Vox, then I'll go for it for sure.

So anyone who has played both these amps, can you give me your verdict?

Keep the good advice coming!