Practice Amp

Rick Winfield · From: Pickin' beneath the Palmettos

What would you gentlemen consider a good "practice amp", with a good tone, for use in the parlour ?
My current amp, session 400 LTD, require too much volume to get "the tone" in such small quarters.
thanks
Rick

Danny James · From: Summerfield Florida USA

You won't believe what a little Roland Micro Cube amp will do until you try one. It can run on a power supply or 6 AAA batteries which last forever.

Ths amp is about the size of a small car battery. It has reverb, delay, distortion, tremolo, Gain, tone, mic. jack, etc.

It takes some experimenting but I really like mine. I know several people who use them. Some of the Hawaiian steel guitar players use them. I have seen them mic them through a PA and use them on stage.

Bobby Ingano who is one of Hawaii's finest uses one a lot.

Michael Dulin · From: Indiana, USA

I use an older Peavey Studio Pro... I've also found an older Fender Princeton to work well. It's good to have a headphone jack and a small mixer box that you can run tracks or DVD's thru at the same time. MD

Rick Winfield · From: Pickin' beneath the Palmettos

thanks guys, I shall look into those suggestions.
rick

Brick Spieth · From: San Jose, California, USA

A Princeton would work very well. I have a Music Master Bass amp (12 watts) with a nice alnico speaker that will give you that silverface Fender tone, but my favorite right now is a little tweed Champ clone I built through my 2x12 cab. I can have the little champ turned up high enough to be in the sweet spot range and still be neighbor friendly, something not possible with my larger Fender 6L6 amps.

Brett Day · From: Pickens, SC

The Peavey Rage 108 is a great little practice amp-It's the amp I first used. You can plug it into any instrument, including steel.

Brett

Les Anderson · From: The Great White North

I use my old Fender Princeton Reverb. It's not a power house but for a small practice room or for parlour work it's more than enough and saves the back.

Jim Eaton · From: Santa Susana, Ca

I have a Peavey Envoy 110 that is a great little amp for small rooms and they can be found for next to nonthing $ wise.
JE:-)>

Bill Dobkins · From: Rolla Missouri, USA

Vox 15 valvetronic.
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Honor our Vet's.
Now pass the gravy.

Al Marcus · From: Cedar Springs,MI USA (deceased)

Rick-I got a Fender frontman 15G with a closed back 38W, it was in Musicians friend for $79.00. It is a great little light amp, but still plenty of Power and tone for its size. With the overdirve switch on , it is too loud for me.You might check one out. I recorded a song with it and it was , surprising to me, very clean and good tone. My son got it for me a year ago for my birthday....al. Smile

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Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

I think a lot depends on just how loud and clean you can get away with in your "parlour", how much bass response you prefer, and so on. Of course, the Princeton Reverb is wonderful, but not exactly cheap these days, to say the least. Or an old Champ or Vibro-Champ. I recently put in a higher-headroom 8", 8-ohm speaker in mine, and run a parallel 12" speaker cab to give it the correct 4-ohm impedance. That doubled the apparent volume and clean headroom, improved the bass response, and of course it has that great single-ended 6V6 tone. These are great if you like the Fender sound.

I also use a Peavey Backstage Plus quite a bit, which I picked up for about $75 - I think that's not far from the going rate for these. The original speaker was OK, but I put in a 10" Eminence Ragin' Cajun and that really opened it up with quite a bit more clean headroom - they're pretty reasonable. In fact, I use this amp a lot now for low-volume clean-tone situations - let's say playing clean PSG with bluegrass or folk players who are running through a small PA in a small room with no drums. There are other smaller Peaveys with 10" or 12" speakers which also work pretty well.

Not exactly small, but the older Peavey Bandit 65 is a good all-around mid size amp for clean guitar or steel. I think the stock speaker is great for guitar, but I've always wanted to see what a higher-headroom speaker like a 12" Black Widow or EV SRO or 12L would sound like for steel.

There are lots of small-to-mid-size amps that will do the trick, depending on exactly what you want tonally. If you like the Peavey sound at higher volumes, I'd look into their smaller amps and maybe consider a speaker upgrade. Definitely try some things out though - we all have a different idea about what constitutes "good tone".

Michael Pierce · From: Madison, CT

Rick, another one to consider is the Fender Blues Junior. I bought a nearly new one off of e-bay a couple of months ago to use for practice, and have been really happy with it. Nice warm tube sound, lightweight, 15 watts but enough clean volume to get me yelled at if I turn it above 3. The stock Fender speaker is fine, but I sometimes unplug it and use a Peavey BW 1203-8 in a 1x12 cabinet, which sounds great. If you're into mods, there's a whole bunch you can apparently do to this amp for hours of fun. See attached link.

http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/bluesjunior.htm

Jan Dunn · From: Union, NJ USA

Songworks Super 50. 50 watts 8X8X8 under 10 lbs. yet will drive 4 12" cab. Built in 6 1/2 speaker is pretty good though I put in a 6 1/2 Eminance. Decent headroom and gorgeous to look at.

only down side is no built in reverb and 6 1/2" speaker isn't going to give you big c-6 chord bottom end.

Can play well at low volumes and you can use earphones through one of the 2 outputs (one turns off the built in speaker and the other doesn't).

Really good if you want to add some dirt to your tone too.

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