Looking for a SUPER high headroom clean amp.

[Rick Vizzi]

Try a Quilter Steelaire too. With 15" speaker. You can also plug in another 15".
I recently bought one. It has very admirable tone with power and pretty light and small. It still doesn't sound as good as my Twin Reverb Custom 15 but kinda close. Different animals. The Twin just has a sweetness that is hard to describe.the tubes generate harmonics that the Quilter just doesn't. But in a gig with crowd noise it doesn't matter. I didn't like the Quilter when i first got it but the more i messed with it the more i have appreciated it. I had to tweak the tone setting of my Hilton too. I finally after a lot of different settings found it back almost exactly where it was set at the factory!

[Rob Segal]

I will suggest the power amp I am selling--a VHT/Fryette 2/90/2. It is all tube, with 4 KT88s, providing two discrete separate channels, 90watts each; clean as can be and extremely powerful. You could use any preamp to drive it; I would suggest one of Brad Sarno's tub pre's----the V8 or SMS Classic or Revelation; also could do a great job with Gerry Walker's Stereo Steel preamp.

See this link:

http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=322892

Rob

[Mark Straub]

Hello Friends!

Thanks for the continued replies. Sorry I haven't been back but I was happy with my bass rig until yesterday. We just moved into a new place and perhaps it's the room, or perhaps my ears have changed but it's not sounding as lovely as it was in my old house.

Anyway I've come across quite a rare find in my area. There is a fellow selling a 2015 Twin Custom 15 for a reasonable price, not amazing, nor is he willing to negotiate. Now I tried the Twin 212 a few years back but I found the top end to be a bit harsh. I was also able to push it into distortion pretty quickly only after realising the new pickup my tech installed had a 21K output! yes 21K! It sounded horrible on all my amps, it quickly got swapped out. Should I go check out this amp? I've read in a few spoots that the newer models are designed for earlier breakup/warmer tone.

Regarding the looper, the RANGIII has been the best I've used so far. Been through the Infinity, X2, and X4. The RANG wins on signal to noise, as well as clarity. I've got an expression pedal hooked up to the master loop volume, so once I start to layer a few loops I just lower the volume a touch. Seems to be working fine. As someone else stated, amps are designed to breakup once you start pushing the preamp, so I do really think this is an amp selection issue for me and not the looper pedal. Just trying to find a clean clean clean preamp.

Regarding live I totally agree with micing. This amp will be for writing at home and unmiced rehearsals. I'm getting pretty close to just plugging direct into the PA and calling it a day

[Jim Kennedy]

I read somewhere that Jerry Garcia's stage rig in the mid 70's was a couple of Fender Twins fed into a couple of McIntosh high end stereo amplifiers. He was after two things: loud and clean.

[Eric Philippsen]

Here’s my 2-cents worth after playing steel for almost 35 years.

You really can’t go wrong with a Nashville 400. I haven’t been to a steel show for a looong time but there was a reason you used to see a lot of them lined up at the St. Louis conventions. Clean (x2), and designed for steel. Thank you Hartley.

Over the years I’ve had, and still have, a lot of steel rigs. Yes, I still use ‘em. Sure. But I still find myself throwing an NV400 (with caster wheels!) in my car for a lot of gigs. It always performs and sounds great.

[Brad Sarno]

I read somewhere that Jerry Garcia's stage rig in the mid 70's was a couple of Fender Twins fed into a couple of McIntosh high end stereo amplifiers. He was after two things: loud and clean.

Yes, Jerry used the preamp stage of a Fender Twin. It was slightly modded with better capacitors and resistors for road-reliability and lower noise, but generally a pretty straightforward Twin preamp. Then that mono signal was routed to a small variety of McIntosh power amplifiers, mostly into 1 channel of the Mc2300 giving him about 340 watts of power into a stack of JBL K120's. By the early 80s he moved over to the higher power E120's.

That hybrid setup with a very clean tube preamp into high-headroom solid state power is still the magic formula for pedal steelers. There are a number of ways to go about it.


Brad