The Steel Guitar Forum

Best amp I have owned Fender Twin 1967
Worst amp I ever owned was a Fender Twin
Best pre Amp Revelation

The best:an LTD I got from Weldon...the power transformer finally blew and when it was repaired it never sounded the same...it ended up with Big Jim Webb...

worst:probably a 500...heavy and boxy sounding...didn't keep it long.

My best amps: Session 400 (have had two of them), Session 500 (have had three of them), Nashville 400 (have had four of them). Seeing how many people have had some bad experiences with the Session 400 and 500 amps, I must have been very fortunate with mine ... I never had an issue with any of them and was always able to get the very tone and overall sound I wanted through them. I loved my Session 500 amps (ran them stereo left, stereo right and center dry) ... but I will admit that the weight factor made hauling three of them around a little cumbersome.

My worst amps:
(1) Evans FET500. The amp itself was very well made and the guy I sold it to had great luck with it, but when I had it I could never get control over the mids no matter what I did or how I adjusted or tweaked it. It was technically a good amp, just not the sound I was after.
(2) My absolute worst amp was a VHT (can't remember the model number). Our lead player talked me into buying one after he got his (his guitar sounded so good through it I decided to buy one and try it out on steel). Best way to describe it for my steel was VHT = Very Harsh Tone.

I do a lot of gigs where I double duty steel and Tele.My favorite for this is my 68 Daul Showman Reverb in a"MoJo" cab with 2/12 Celestions. If its just a steel gig I prefer my Fender SteelKing.
..just guitar..I prefer my Blues Deluxe or Twin.
I also find that the Showman and Twin can be a little bright for steel. So I switched back to a pot pedal and was happy with the results. When I use the SteelKing its usually my Hilton pedal. anyone else switch pedals depending which amp they are useing?.....worst amp I ever owned..EMC 2/12 anyone remember them?

No mention of Walter Woods heads?

Hi. Best Amp for Steel, I really like my '70 Twin Reverb that I modified to be very similar to a Dumble Steel String Singer. Frankly, the distorted tones are not that convincing (not that they're needed for steel), but it has a rich, boomy bass/mid that sounds great with the steel. Too heavy though to tote to gigs, but sounds great. Best Amp for Tele Guitar: Bad Cat (brand) Hot Cat 30 (model). I get many compliments on tone, and I have to say, I agree. Worst amps: Carvin & Trace Elliot (poor reliability). All amps I've ever owned were "acceptably fine" but not perfect. I always found things I didn't like - except for the Bad Cat, which I consider to be a truly great amp for 6-string electric guitar.

Best amp I ever owned was a '69 Marshall "Small Box" 50 watt with a 4x12 Marshall bottom. Had to let it go in 1980
I currently use a Marshall Bluesbreaker twin twelve that has a great clean sound and loves pedals
I am new to pedal steel and going to try a NV 112

I thought the S500 was the best PV amp, but just to heavy. I used the N400 for years, have gone to the Walker Stereo Steel with 2 BW 1501's, is working great for me until I can afford a Fox.

The Webb was good but I heard distortion I did not like.

The FSK was not to my liking, I am being nice here.

The N112 with the Fox upgrade and a 1503 BW was great but still went to yet another Walker system.

Larry Behm

Webb amps do not distort, Larry. I once attached a dummy load and ran a sine wave through it into an oscilloscope. Pushed it to volumes no speaker could handle and the wave remained pristine.

I think that maybe the Webb you tried had a defective component or maybe a damaged speaker.

Larry Lorows wrote:My best- Stereo steel

My worst- maybe a Nashville 1000 I didn't keep that one very long.

Nuff said, Stereo Steel. The worst Rickenbacker amp I had when first started out. Just not enough power to play live.

Tommy Shown
SMFTBL

Best - Webb 614E

Worst- Peavey 1000

Best, 62 Standel Hybrid Transistorized, '74 Session 400 and '70s Fender Deluxe Reverb. However, I played thru a USA Fender Hot Rod Deluxe tonight that really sounded great to me. Extra special great!
Worse, early Session 500 caused the beginning of my back problems with one night use. I don't remember how it sounded. I also borrowed a Fender Steel King when they first came out and it agravated my back problems and I could not set it to suit me.
Jerry

worse amp was LTD I dont know why these amps
sell for so much ill never have another one
the one I had was pure junk.....

best amp steel king great amp so far anyway

My worst amp was and remains a Fender Champion 110. It does not tolerate low frequencies without distorting so it is a guitar-only amp. It is light weight and will not completely quit working (darn it) and these are its only redeeming attributes.

I replaced the Champion 110 with a Gibson EH-185 which I like a lot. This amp is pretty lightweight and has a head unit which stores in the speaker cabinet and which lifts easily out of the cabinet so I can place the speaker wherever I want within a limited proximity to the head. But this amp lacks the power to play the low notes on a Bass guitar without running out of headroom.

Henry Matthews wrote:Best would be my Peavey LTD that Ken Fox moded and has the NeoLite Speaker. Chrystal clear tone and highs and warm lows.

Worst would be Randall, 75 lbs of noise to my ears. Never could get it to sound right so sold it. The guy I bought it from sounded great playing thru it.

I've played thru about every amp there is for steel guitar and some that weren't for steel. Here are just my thoughts of some of them.

Session 500----bad overtones drove me nuts
Nashville 112---good but highs aren't zingy enough
Evans amps-----highs not clear and not enough mids
Nashville 400--ok but can get to twangy
Nashville 1000----honk, honk
Dalton Pony-----no highs
Fender Twin ---harsh highs that hurt my teeth
Roland Cube 80-way to mid rangy, great effects
Randall Steel man---absolutly aweful sound and weighs a ton
Walker stereo steel--it really amounts to what effects you use. Great preamp but just too much trouble to hookup
Session 400---twangy, harsh and terrible reverb
The older Peavy 400--Sounds a lot like the LTD but bigger cabinet gives little more lows. Great amp
Show Bud amp-- it's missing something.
Webb---too many buttons and was never able to get sound I like
Vegas 400---great amp for playing two instruments and not bad for steel, just not good enough

These are just my personal findings of some of the amps I've owned. I've heard every amp I've mentioned sound good with somebody else playing them.

Since I posted this, I have tried 2 more Webb amps and also the Fender Steel King. Neither one sounded good to my ears. I thought I would wear out the knobs on one of the Webbs trying to get a sound out of it that I liked and never did. I heard Jody Cameron and also Fred Justice playing thru a Steel King at Dallas one year and it sounded great so I tried one. Never could get sound I liked from it neither. Just way to transistery and hard sounding. Still, the worst is the Randall Steel King with the Nashville 1000 not far behind. It looks as if this whole amp preference boils down to personal taste to me.

My best amp is hard to choose because of all of the variables which come to mind.

I had a Session 500 Peavey which for 12 years WAS probably my favorite amp ever (my recently acquired 500 sounds as good). This fondness ended someime in 2002. I liked it from 1990 to 2002 when it lost its good tone and started distorting and/or clipping on the low frequencies.

My Fender Twin ("a 59 or 60" I was told) sounded great with my guitar and lap steel but it lacked reverb. It also constantly shed little bits of tweed wherever it was. I think it had tweed cancer because the bits of tweed it shed seemed to exceed the missing tweed by a substantial amount. It is long gone and I had it until I sold it to buy my first PSG. So I had it before I got in to PSG and Bass guitar so I can not comment on how I would feel about its versatility and performance on other insruments at this point in my life. In spite of its chronic tweed flaking and lack of reverb this is still my favorite amp ever for guitar.

I had a Session 400 Limited (which came modded) which I only played with a Sierra D8. They sounded great together while they lasted. They were what I kept at my dads house and they were lost in the Fourmile Fire September 6 2010.

I have read a lot of comments about the lack of reliability of the Session 500's in this thread. IMO when they are good they are superb. But like kids: when they are bad they are very annoying.

I recently purchased another Session 500 (which has some Mods) and I have so far been really thrilled with it.

The best amps I have never played through are Brad Sarno's Revelation pre and anything from Ken Fox.

Until such time, my experiences with a pair of Randall Steel Man 500's when loaded with 4-ohm JBL E130's have been superb, although it did take me some time with its graphic EQ and an RTA unit before I found what to me was a musical sound. The reverb, with two bands of EQ on it as well, is about the best spring setup anyone has put into a combo amp yet, and the effects patching is clean and stable.

However, I'm admittedly partial, as once I got my first one set up it sounded so great that I got another as soon as I could find it. Yes, it's 75 lbs. of bigtime power that can keep up with just about anything else on stage and it is also 75 lbs. ON WHEELS that can support the entire rest of my rig as I roll it down the street from my car and up to the stage If I had two more I could sell them easily to a couple of other members of this fine forum who shamelessly and openly covet mine...

My other best amp ever is my little Fender BDR stack with a few simple pedal steel-friendly mods, i.e. a long-decay Accutronics reverb tank, a pair of JBL K120's (one in an extension cab) and a 12AT7 in the first slot to pad it back a bit. Heaven in the studio and on a well-mic'ed stage, with Brad's Black Box and a Push-Pull Emmons I'm all the way home baby!

...and since you asked, I have played through too many amps to remember, most of them managed to do the job for the night. I can only think I have actually tried that one or two that could be labelled "bad," he worst amp for pedal steel I ever played through was a Vox AC30, and I didn't mess around with it long. No doubt it would sound great for an appropriate application, but with all that intermodulation distortion messing up the chordal detail it didn't suit my style.

I still like to dig up old relevant threads.
Now this one about amps.
I like the Fender twin but it is heavy.

Please enlighten me about British amps ( I think). A lot of them for sale here in South Africa, Marshall and Vox.
Opinions?

We also have Peaveys available but not the 112, and I have never seen or heard either a Webb or Milkman.

What do you guys prefer and why?

Let the games begin.

my fave was a 73 twin, 2x12- an ebay score that seemed to be lacking output. i had it checked out-it had been modded for studio use, and after the full output was restored it never sounded the same-sad. now im loving an early session 400 with a jbl. miss those fender highs sometimes...
my worst was a stock nv112- toured for a year with it, tried 3 different pickups, all forum advised settings, and never liked the tone. not crazy about the exposed control knobs and the vent open to the top, but people love 'em.
all the above is intended for clean psg of course. for 'hairier' tone, i really like a bandmaster reverb. or anything with an earth drive in front of it-

Haven't owned too many amps for pedal steel. Like the tone but not the weight of my Peavey Session 500. Really like my Evans AH 200 through a JBL K 130.

Wanted to like a Fender Twin... But it didn't really bowl me over.

I use a Peavey Nashville 1000 out at gigs for the power it delivers. I really don't mind the tone of the amp, although I do NOT like the reverb. I use a Boss RV3 for reverb and it sounds fine to me. Not sure why there are so many haters on this amp. Haven't had the good fortune to hear a Webb or Little Walter or Milkman.

Best: 1973 Fender Deluxe Reverb international version(owned since almost new)
2nd- Peavey Special 112 bought for $100. from antique shop in Arcadia Florida
Worst: Evans FET 500 (just could not adjust the controls for a sound I like)

Best are my FYD steel amp and a heavily modded silverface twin reverb. Most recently though, my favorite amp is a McIntosh MC50 with just a black box, a boost, and a reverb pedal in front. No preamp! The eq is perfect without it.

Worst was a vht 2:90:2. It sounded awesome but kept blowing up. Filter caps leaking... What a mess!

Have only been playing psg 7 yrs. I have a Session 400 and a Nashville 112 I like both but keep the 400 in church (easier on my back). I like both using a DD3. I had a new Steel King never could get it to sound like I wanted besides it took two roadies to carry it. For my 6 string, lap and dobro I think the 112 does well.

Brett Lanier wrote:
Worst was a vht 2:90:2. It sounded awesome but kept blowing up. Filter caps leaking... What a mess!

Wouldn't that be an easy fix? (new caps)

Best Nashville 1000 Vegas 400
Worst Session 400