The Steel Guitar Forum

I play through a Jazzkat Tomkat with a 10" Emmenince speaker. My amp is miked through a PA most of the time.

I have been using a modified Headstrong princeton clone. I had them beef up the output transformer and put KT88 tubes in it along with an old Fane 12". The thing is a beast ! I just played a gig with a loud rock band and it worked fine. Plus it actually sounds great. No compromises with tone or headroom.

16" X 20" X 9.5" 32 lbs.

http://headstrongamps.com/Index.html

I tried to use the smaller amps, HR Deluxe, Classic 30 and even bought a Frontman 65 from MF, I wanted that one to work but it was so bright and had no control of the mids. I sent it back. For practice at home any amp will do but my favorite small amp for the gig is still the Nashville 400 which is smaller than a Nashville 1000 !

Define small ...

i still use my old pv bandit 112....works great forever at 1/4 the price of a nv 112.

Nashville 112...I used mine at the annual Valentine's Day square dance in Fly,TN last night(in a big barn)...plenty of power and tone...

I use a Roland Cube 60 with (or without) an ext 12" cabinet. Works well for me. I've also used Polytone amps which worked well. If I need to kill, I use my SF Twin Reverb. Anything louder than that, I don't want to be involved in.

My small amp ==> Crate TX15 Taxi Battery-Powered Combo Amp, battery is rechargeable. Frees you from plugging into a wall plug. You can go out in the woods and play for about 8-10 hours before needing a recharge. About twice the size of a Roland Micro Cube. Plenty of power for the small and medium venues.

This thing is tough, has an internal lead acid battery, like in a car.

I have a Peavey Classic 30 guitar amp in which I have installed a Celestion "Vintage 30" speaker. I also installed new tubes - a matched quad of LL EL84's, one ECC81 for V1, one ECC832 for V2, and a balanced high current ECC83S for V3. According to the folks at Eurotubes, this set-up would allow for a nice clean tone with a later break-up, increase the headroom for the clean channel, and reduce gain in the drive channel to give better definition.
I'm very pleased with the results - the amp sounds great for both guitar & steel - it really "sings"! I use it for both a practice amp, and also for smaller venues, and I quite often mike it through the system. I play a Jackson "Blackjack", and I'm running one of Brad Sarno's "Freeloader" units along with a bit of digital delay. I find that I can get a good clean crisp tone and have some flexability in the amount of warmth and/or "twang" with this set-up.
I also have an old Sho~Bud "Christmas Tree" amp with a 15" JBL which I really really like, but when I need a smaller amp, the Classic 30 with this combination of speaker & tubes seems to work great for me.

When I take my psg out in the woods to play with some of my acoustic picking buddies, I use my Roland AC-60. When you are trying to blend a steel with a bunch of acoustic guitars and stuff, it works well. It's nice and clean, very small, and light at 21 lbs., which is great after schlepping an 80+ lb. Blanton out there.

12ax7 tube in pre-amp. Single 12" in closed-back combo cab, 50 watts at 4 Ohms. Overdrive channel has diode clipping and separate EQ. Power stage changes characteristics as the master volume goes up, simulating power tube distortion interaction with speaker dynamics (forerunner to "FDD" feature of newer series Marshall solid state). Reverb. Effects loop. Emulate line out.

For pedal steel with volume pedal, the clean channel can keep up with a quiet drummer with the master at 6 or 7; louder than that it has a nice compression sound starting. Overdrive can be buzzy unless tweaked carefully and that depends on the guitar, too.

Although discontinued, they are plentiful anywhere from $150-250. Nice and light.

NV 112 (5 yr warranty!)

Last week I bought an early 70's Deluxe Reverb, already used it on two acoustic practices and a gig & it sounds awesome. Don't know why I waited so long to buy one.

Nathan, congrats on scoring that amp, they are hard to find. They are sweet. I have a reissue and it's OK, but it isn't the same. Tell John to send my CD!

I prefer overdriven sounds, and before I got the Marshall half stack I was using a Fender Roc Pro 1000 112 combo with an Eminence speaker that sounds like a Celestion. The Roc Pro could do clean sounds very well too, but for clean steel settings it worked much better with the mid shift button on. The mid shift setting takes out the upper middle frequencies and makes the guitar sound less 'twangy'.

Thanks Clyde! I tried a DRRI for a session a while back, it's definitely a different sounding amp than the silverface. The reissue took some tweaking to get a sound I liked, and we ended up using a NV112 in the end. I liked that amp better for guitar. When the silverface came up on Craigslist for a good price it was exactly what I was looking for.

I'll get on John to send you a copy of Here Tomorrow!

For noodling around at home or in practice, I use the same amp(s) I play guitar with live.. Either a 74 SF champ or a Vox Pathfinder 15R.

For recording and playing out it's either a Fender DRRI or an Ampeg JetII (12in speaker).

For serious recording of uber cleans and reverb, I might use my SF MV Twin from the 70s.

I have a small Music Man, 50watt, with a single 12 inch JBL. It has a great sound with a Zum steel.

Robert

I love playing through my '69 Deluxe Reverb. Last week the guitar player showed up without an amp, he played through the non-vibrato channel and I play played through the vibrato channel.

AH200 Evans small in size (5 lbs) 5"H x 13"W x 5.5"D
More power than you'll ever need, plug in to two 15" Evans Speakers and there you have it. Great small Amps.
I'm bringing two of them to Dallas anyone wanting to try one out contact me at bjsbars@frontiernet.net and I'll set it up for you to try out.
Bill
Go to www.evansamps.com and read about them.

I use a Line 6 Spyder III, for bedroom, and small jams. Takes a while to "dial in' the tone, but nice when you get it. 30 watts s/s, 12" celestion.
Well worth the $100, out of the box
Rick

I have a '65 Tremolux amp put into a JD Newell cabinet with a 12" Tone Tubby speaker (basically a non-reverb Vibrolux). The Tone Tubby is a pretty dark sounding speaker which works great with pedal steel. It is about 30 watts, 2-6L6, with more headroom than a Deluxe Reverb and great tone. I use a VanAmps Reverbamate for reverb which inputs to the non-vibrato side so you have volume, tone, depth and dwell reverb controls. About the weight of a Deluxe Reverb.

I certainly prefer to use my NV400 for gigs, but for low volume duets and drummer-less trios, I do like the sound of the DRRI.

The other night, though, I played steel through a Headstrong Lil' King Reverb, (boutique Princeton Reverb clone with a 12) and could not get over how sweet the tone was with my pushpull and just a bit of reverb and delay. We close mic recorded the practice, and even with just a 57 into a live board, the tone was just about the best I have ever had, as good or better than my VHT rig, and (gulp) even the Ken Fox modded NV 400s.

I am revising my opinion on amps for recording steel after that experience, I tell you what. Probably worth mentioning that at on least a few of the tracks from Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Lloyd played through a blackface Deluxe, and he sounded pretty good...

Funny, I played through a Headstrong Princeton clone the other day and was thinking, "I gotta get me one of these!" Great amp!
dz

I just traded for a Yamaha G50-112(it's the one with the full parametric EQ, frequency, bandwidth and level) and couldn't believe how good it sounds with my Williams 12-U. It also sounds great with my Les Paul and Carvin three p/u Tele. The Yamaha G100-212 has to be killer.

'62 Princeton "brown face" (6G2 circuit), restored by Ken Fox, with 10" Jensen.