The Steel Guitar Forum

FYI, here's stuff about the Nutube "tube" in the VOX amp...
https://diyaudiostore.com/products/korg-nutube
KORG NUTUBE 6P1 DUAL TRIODE

Epilogue on this...

Bought a 1990s Fender Custom Vibrasonic...100 watts, similar to a Twin with a steel and a guitar channel. Designed by Bruce Zinke, so I've read.

Sure it's a lot more power than I'm likely to ever need, but compared to the amps I've been playing, with it dialed up nice and bassy, it sounds really, really nice. Answer being I suppose, yes, I did end up wanting a 15" speaker...

It also weighs 71lbs but since I'm still in my late 30s I can pay my dues a bit...

Here's a photo of me and a buddy loading in to a gig last week. I use this speaker with my lap steel and it sounds GREAT! Unfortunately the cabinet wouldn't fit in the door and I had to disassemble the cabinet and then reassemble it inside.

Great topic for this newbie...hit me right between the Blackheart 3/5 watt EL84 12" combo. And a Trace Elliot GP 250 bass head w Hartke 15 in. And\or David Eden
Twin 10's.
The trace elliot is a great tone machine with either/or speaker selections. I have a gold tone ls6 c6. And am re building a c6 console..
The bass amp is by far my favorite ... but I just dont have the room to set up my bass rig in the house...unless I could use the David Eden as a love seat. Hence the Blackheart tube 12" combo. I was going to sell my bass rig because I dont use it anymore..but I think I'm going to keep the Trace head because I got the best tone of all with it by far. I was afraid folks would think I was crazy using a bass head for LS. Thanks for the great info.

I haven’t seen any mention of the Fender Excelsior amp here. 15”, tremolo, three inputs, 12 watt tube amp.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... -combo-amp

Any experience?

Allan Revich wrote:I haven’t seen any mention of the Fender Excelsior amp here. 15”, tremolo, three inputs, 12 watt tube amp.
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... -combo-amp

Any experience?

Funnily enough my rhythm guitarist has that one, I've used it a few times. It's a neat looking amp, for one. He'd have probably sold it to me, but it had a few limitations...negligible tonal control (just a 2 position bright and dark switch), no reverb...I didn't need the tremolo at all. Might be the right amp for somebody but I use the three band EQ on my Vibrasonic to warm up and deepen the tone out of my guitars. And I've learned not to bathe too heavily in reverb but I do like having the option for a touch of it (especially if I'm doing more of the Santo and Johnny 1960s stuff).

Bob Hoffnar wrote:In my opinion you do not need a 15” speaker. The speaker size doesn’t have much to do frequency range anymore. Try some different amps out that are in your budget and buy the one that makes you happy when you play through it. Don’t worry about it being a steel amp or bass amp or any of that.

Totally agree. Maybe the more important variable is whether you need enough watts to play out unmiked. Regardless, it needs to sound clean. My favorite amp is a 10” Magnatone.