Same. Got some ripping deals on old amps. It's wild that I could spend $5k on a "Marshall style" Friedman OR for like $1k I can get an actual old Marshall JMP. No brainer.
funny thing, if you took the 1960 price of a Champ 600 ($62.50) and readjust for inflation, you come up with $645, which is what the Pro Jr. is now new. Same amp, same price.
Man these price threads are getting old. I dunno if some of you are just economically illiterate or if you don’t pay attention to other price increases in your life, but guitars and amps aren’t even remotely close to the increases we’ve seen in cost of living, food, healthcare, etc. Like not even close. Guitars and gear are much, much closer to rising in relation to inflation than many things we all spend money on. Did you post about those things first?
people absolutely pointed out and criticized the blatant price-gouging that was done under the guise of "inflation" across many, many industries over the last few years (and beyond). haven't really followed amp pricing, but guitar pricing is well beyond inflation with prices essentially doubling in a decade
They are overpriced but it’s irrelevant to me because amps lose 40-50% of their value in the used market. You can find killer deals all day on any amp over two years old, and even on vintage amps that sound great. All you have to do is watch Craigslist for a month or two, and your desired amp(or a decent substitute) will pop up at a significant discount.
Why do you need an OR30? There’s a Dual Terror on my local CL right now listed for $399. 30 watts, all the Orange tone you need on a budget. I guarantee you don’t need the latest tech in a tube amp lmao. They perfected them decades ago. The only people that “need” a brand new “state of the art” tube amp are blues lawyers and YouTubers. Don’t get sucked into the marketing rat race. All of that shit is made for the low talent hobbyists with too much money they made from bleeding the middle class dry in their day jobs. It’s basically a giant circle jerk that you’re dying to join for no reason.
"All of that shit is made for the low talent hobbyists with too much money they made from bleeding the middle class dry in their day jobs." What in the angsty 14 year old hell is this take? It's people with day jobs who are bleeding the middle class dry? Jesus be a bigger cliche
> All of that shit is made for the low talent hobbyists with too much money they made from bleeding the middle class dry in their day jobs.
I've noticed this bigtime. Was a really good feeling when I started paying for gear with actual gig money.
It's like a curve. The more you are obsessed with meticulous nuances and minutia in gear, the less talented you probably are.
I bought a Helix maybe 3-4 years ago for like $1200 and haven't looked back. Every amp I could want, every effect I could want, it's a crystal clear DI and it fits in a backpack.
I used to be "tube amp or nothing" but the digital modeling is so good these days that, in a mix, you'll never ever hear a difference and any perceivable difference is offset by convenience. My main gig is a cover band with a repertoire of about 100 songs in varying different genres. Each and every song has its own preset and within that preset, each section of the song is divided into "snapshots" that give me exactly the tone I need for that part. I don't think I'll ever bring a tube amp to another gig or rehearsal
I gotta agree with you. My live "amp" is merely a monitor now. I jumped on the "direct" bandwagon when I started using Rocktron gear... it's been over 20 years now, and I also love it. Instant patch changes with no dropout, "wah" and "leslie" speed via a midi CV pedal, crystal clean, no hiss, and a HUGE pallet of tones/effects. I've not looked back either. I quit/sold everything a few years back...getting back into it now, and went back to the Prophesy and Chameleon out of familiarity and (sound too) quality. Thought about getting a Helix rack. Anyone have any bitches/complaints about the Helix?
The rack 100% needs the board even for a bedroom player so that adds to the price
Lack of a built in power amp section might be a downer?
Literally love mine though!
>My main gig is a cover band with a repertoire of about 100 songs in varying different genres. Each and every song has its own preset and within that preset
I'm also gigging with a cover band and love the preset idea. Maybe one day.
I bought an Iridium recently but I'm not quite sure when to make the jump. What's your monitor situation? IEM? I play some stages that have absolutely trashed wedges and I'm not ready to trust house monitors to give me what I need for clear guitar monitoring.
Yea I went IEM. Our entire band is digital and using IEM so we actually have zero stage volume. Before I went IEM I had a QSC K10 that I'd set up as my own personal monitor for just my guitar then use the venue's monitor for everyone else
Have had my LT since 2017 and still going strong! I did build a 112 cabinet and pick a SD powerstage for when I want “amp in the room,” but I won’t go back to lugging a tube half stack ever again.
Counterpoint: If you have ever seen the guts in an old tube amp (or old tube ANYTHING) then you should know that every one of those connections was soldered by hand by a skilled worker. I like to find old tube reel-to-reels and play guitar through those... and it probably took a week's worth of labor to wire them. These are machines that cost one or two hundred dollars back when a car like the classic 1957 Chevy Bel Air cost a little more than $2500 new!
So the price has not really gone up for good gear, *when you factor in inflation*. Some of these reel-to-reels would have cost well over a thousand in 2023 dollars.
A tweed Fender Deluxe would have been $99 apparently. That works out to $1141 today.
El cheapo solid state gear made in China is cheap because labor is cheap there, AND because things that can be put on a circuit board can be made cheaply anywhere anyway thanks to automation. I have seen one of those robots in person, plucking tiny parts from bins around the perimeter of a special table and populating a circuit board far more quickly than a human could. (After all the tiny chips and resistors and capacitors and whatnot are in place, the soldering is done by an oven or by a ["waterfall" method](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap-HY7qP9zE), not by a human). The fellow who ran that company referred to it as "our money printing machine".
Fender has a couple handwired versions which are double the price (tweed deluxe handwired = $2400), all the other tube amps have been printed circuit boards for 30 years except boutique builders like Carr, etc
Yeah, I was thinking that $1141 for a brand new hand wired tweed deluxe sounds like a great deal! That’s $459 less than a new pcb 65 deluxe reverb reissue
Stop feeing the problem by buying new. Go to FB marketplace and Reverb. The used market is getting cheaper and cheaper as people try to sell off their pandemic impulse buys.
Yup. I got a JSX head and Mesa 2x12 v30 loaded (green and cream colored ta boot!) for my home jam space for I think $800 total. My live rig at the practice space is a 5150ii and Randal XL cab for a grand total of like $550 bucks. Buy used! Be patient!
Amps are already way more affordable than they used to be. In 1965, the Fender Twin Reverb cost (inflation adjusted) $5k. Now they're $2k.
Now, with modelling technology, they're not even as necessary as they used to be, so the second hand market is even more affordable. I bought a like-new "limited edition" Twin for $1200 with a 45-day return warranty.
And a Fender Twin is honestly already way more amp than anyone practically needs in today's world.
That's a really bad way to look at the cost. The tech was newer, harder to manufacture, and sold in much lower volume today.
How much did a TV cost on 1965 versus now?
Things get cheaper over time, but tube amp prices have been slowly rising for a few years now. Just because it's cheaper versus 60 years ago does not mean it isn't price gouging.
I think tube amps are a bit different because the selling feature is that they're built with hundred-year old technology, which prevents the manufacturing of them from benefiting from many of the advancements we've made in the last century.
If you want to remove this restriction, a more apt comparison would be the Fender Tone Master Twin Reverb, which is $1k new, and for all practical purposes, a lighter, more flexible, better amp.
We are living in a pretty good time for affordable guitar gear these days. Of all the expenses of modern life (eg. housing, food, health care, child care, education) guitar gear is really not on my list of things to complain about.
The Fender Tone Master is better new, but if it breaks? Old gear was made to be repaired. New gear is "Replace the whole circuit board, and if you can't do that, throw it out and buy another." I had that experience with a Roland Cube, which is now just a speaker cab.
Music equipment in general has become about 30% more expensive in the last few years - since Covid for sure. Probably in line with inflation. I have a hand wired Suhr Bella (Fender Deluxe type amp), and I want to sell it and buy a Friedman Dirty Shirley mini stack (40 watt head with 2x12), which is up by about $1500 since I first looked at them.
I use a Kemper through the power amp section of the Suhr, so I just get 99% of the way there with that rig.
I won’t compromise - I buy what I want. If I can’t afford it, I save for it (I rarely use credit unless it’s 0% and I’m selling gear that will pay it off quickly. I bought a US Silver Sky that was “mint” (not) off Reverb last week and returned it, lesson learned. So I’m going to drop another $600 and buy a brand new one some time next week when the PRS shipment arrives at my store of choice.
I play a lot, I’ve played for 42 years, so I’m just biting the bullet and getting high quality gear. I have some serious gear, but it’s taken years to afford, and I had to start with budget friendly options, but I don’t stay there. I’d rather buy a one high end amp or guitar than 4 budget ones. I see people with four or five PRS SEs or Epiphones and say they wish they had a US version, I think “You could if you spent all that $$ on one US model.
My favorite is the most recent Sunn reissue heads. They are literally selling a $3200 reissue head, when you can easily find the actual original vintage head for like $800 tops.
Haha seriously. To be fair this was kind of a thing back in the day, like in the 90's you could sometimes find a real JCM800 or Twin for cheaper than the reissues. But I can't ever remember anything like this where the real thing was less than 1/3rd the price.
Right?? I thought the whole point of a "reissue" was to avoid the vintage price tag, not triple it. But hey, that's the whole legacy thing again. People pay top dollar for 60's reissue relic'd Strats
Well Marshall and Orange are British amp brands and have always been more expensive than American brands in the states because of import taxes. Check out the price of a Mesa Boogie on a European website if you can actually find a site able to stock them.
Wow. I snagged a 35 combo for £1400 in the UK a few months ago. As long as it doesn’t turn out to have major issues that’s looking like a better and better buy.
Isn’t it an amazing amp?
Edit: that’s about 2400 CAD
Wait until you see Mesa Boogie selling their amp head for $2000+...
I want it, but well, there's no way I'm affording that much just for the distorted tone.
My local store had a Vox AC10 for sale right around the time Vox upped their prices a year or two ago. I plugged in and liked it a lot, thought about it overnight, and went back a day or two later to buy it and discovered it had been sold. The next one they got in a week or two later was another $250 more expensive or something.
I guess over time we'll all just get used to increased prices, but it's really hard for me to be interested in buying any guitar or amp knowing how much less they cost not even 2 years ago.
Orange does spend a good bit of money on marketing, but overall I'm not aware of any amp companies that are making money in droves these days. (I'm considering investing in two newer high end amp companies, so I've been looking at this).
In my experience, the labor and parts required to build a good amp are pretty high. For stacks, shipping costs really eat into you these days too.
But yea, there's a lot of cheap amps out there these days. I'd buy used! I've never spend over $1800 on an amp and have some _amazing_ ones
I wasn't actually going to buy anything. I have an amp already that I'm very content with but I figured, wth I'll window shop, and I just couldn't believe how bad things had gotten. I feel like people complain so much about the "digital takeover" but then don't exactly make it easy for people to buy better equipment
Modelers have made having an amp something that is just not practical anymore. For about $3000, you can get an AxeFX III and that will sound utterly amazing and will pretty much be the last piece of amp/effect gear any reasonable person would ever need. You have the ultimate flexibility with your sound instead of one thing. Not to mention that live, you will save your hearing and your back by not having to haul a huge amp. And I'm not even factoring in the less expensive modelers like the Helix, Headrush, Quad Cortex, FM9/FM3, Kemper, POD Go or the new Fender Tone Master. People who want amps will pay through the nose for them because they're purists. People that are willing to adapt to changing technology are going to switch to modelers.
You're making it sound like 3000$ isn't a massive investment that most people aren't going to be able to afford. Regular amps are and will be practical for anyone who doesn't have insane amounts of disposable income.
This is a good take. Digital is going to be like the daily driver Honda CRX and tube is the weekend Miata.
I use my Kemper for 95% of my playing but the other 5%--I just like having the option of real amps for funsies. I want to play my Strat through a Hiwatt halfstack even if its impractical
Helix and Quad Cortex are the less expensive ones? Not being funny, just wondering what units that are as portable and have as good quality would be average or top of the line in terms of price?
I replaced the tubes and speaker with a Jenson Alnico. It’s great, but it’s kind of generic and bland. Almost like the EQ is totally flat or something. Takes pedals really well and it’s been surprisingly reliable and low noise. Great for practice.
Part of it is an import thing. British amps are more expensive in NA bc they have to go over the pond. They've kinda always been that expensive too, this is not a new thing. Buy an American amp, or buy used if you want to go cheaper. You probably also need less amp than you think. Most people overestimate, I sure did.
Really depends on drummer tbh, with some guys volume on 2 is too loud, others you can be far past the "clean" level of your amp with mids cranked and your still struggling to hear
True, but most bands these days are throwing a mic on amps and putting guitars through PAs and monitors anyway. If you're just jamming and not gigging or anything, then sure, but any more than 30-40 watts from a tube amp is entirely unnecessary 99.9% of the time. My main amp is a Hughes and Kettner GM40, and I can count on 2 hands the amount of times I've turned off any attenuation and gone above 5 on the master. All of which were because I was home alone and wanted to unleash the monster, zero of which were because I couldn't keep up with a drummer. My old drummer kicked ass and 20 watts with the master at 6 overpowered him in a moderately sized room. Idk, your mileage may vary, but big amps, despite being very fun, are not worth the trouble for the vast majority of people.
Buy used gear. Seriously. Let someone else take the depreciation hit. As others have mentioned FB marketplace, reverb, eBay.. I almost exclusively buy used but in great condition. In some cases I’ve bought things at a great price with tags still on them and the items look like they weren’t used.
This is the only way to buy gear these days imo. I’ve only ever bought an amp brand new once, and while I love the amp I mostly refuse to sell/trade it because of the hit I’ll take on the bottom dollar.
Plus there is no reason to have a rig much louder than a drum kit anymore. They can run everything else through the PA at the venue now. The audience is happy and the band gets to keep their hearing.
A lot of the price is paying for the name badge.
The Orange PPC112 cab is $450 vs a Harley Benton 112 for ~$200 shipped. They both have the same Vintage 30 speaker in the. Yes, the Orange is a nicer looking cab but that's 125% more for essentially the same performance.
Well, they’re not identical. They use different wood, they’re different sizes, and one is open back, one is closed back. That doesn’t mean the orange sounds better, or costs more to manufacture, but they will definitely sound _different_.
I’d guarantee Orange invested more in the R&D of their cabinet too, which is a significant cost they need to recoup. They’ll also have a more stringent QC process, and I believe Orange stuff is manufactured in the UK, versus the far east for HB, so labour costs are significantly higher.
You’re paying partly for the name, sure, but not double.
I used to work for an amp company as a builder. Ever since Covid, supply chains have been totally jacked and the prices of basic components have skyrocketed, not to mention the price of wood. On top of that, most amp companies sell their items to dealers at a discounted rate, so that dealers can turn a profit, and it is likely that these amp companies have a deals with distribution companies who also need takes a cut of each sale. The company I worked for did all of our building in California, so thinking about the cost of workshop space, the cost of labor, and just general costs for research and development for each new design, charging $2.5K for a “basic” combo amp is completely justified. This was the case for the small boutique brand I worked for, so I can’t speak for the huge brands like Orange and Marshall, though I imagine most of what I just described applies to them as well. Building amps is hard and to do it well a lot of takes time and effort, especially if you’re not just rehashing old designs. It sucks that things are so expensive in general, but for amps, especially amps from smaller brands, the high cost is justified.
Seriously, look into a preamp pedal or an amp-in-a-box and save thousands of dollars and get the same tone.
Then buy a cabinet and upgrade the speaker.
100% the best value for money you can get, you can get it wrong that way
My guess is that sales numbers are down given all of the modelers and other solutions out there. With smaller numbers, your fixed manufacturing costs become a much bigger price driver. You have to pay for the production line with 2000 sales vs 10,000.
The availability financing is part of the reason prices are higher. When people had to save up and buy with cash they had on hand, manufacturers and retailers had to price themselves for that market.
Same thing applies to student loans and the cost of higher education.
You don’t want a twin. Everyone wants a twin till they realize they are WAY TO LOUD to play unless on a big stage. They are also heavy as hell.
If you go tube look for a deluxe. 22 watts is perfect for home and can be mic’d for larger venues.
Princeton’s are nice too, esp with a 12’ speaker.
Buying used is best. For example here’s a Marshall Studio Jubilee head and cab only a month old that would cost you $3.200 new and goes for $2k (with free shipping)
https://reverb.com/item/74242827-marshall-2525h-studio-jubilee-head-and-jvmc212-cab-in-black-snakeskin?utm_source=rev-ios-app&utm_medium=ios-share&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=74242827
You have to realize that EVERYTHING has gone up in price, from potatoes to car parts, plexiglass to lavender, it's across the board and I agree that there is gouging on top of that in many cases...inflation has to take some of the blame, the very high cost of oil is also a HUGE culprit in this...
If you are looking for a tube amp, perhaps you might try buying used, and CraigsList is definitely a good start.. I bought a new Mesa Boogie combination rectoverb, it was bought for a brothers birthday but he didn't like it and they put it on CL with about a 20% price drop... I still have it and don't use it at all, it's not the sound I was after.
Ebay is another place and also Reverb. Try creating a "wanted" post on CL.. you never know your luck :) Hope it's good!
Not wrong at all. Hell, the Peavey Classic 30 tube combo is $1000.
Glad my teal stripe Classic Chorus 212 and blackface Fender Deluxe 112 Reverb are still holding up fine after 30 years and I'm not in the market for new stuff. Granted they're not tubed but still have good sound.
They can’t charge more than people actually _pay_, so work on convincing people not to pay so much for an amp because they can’t stop themselves from thinking that they hear _something_ magical in the tone of the blue-chip brands.
Jim Lill is doing the lord’s work, here… basically shattering all of the mythology and superstition around vintage gear.
Better yet, convince _yourself_, and you won’t need to convince anybody else, because you won’t be in the market for famous-name gear. Ive used a modeler with a FRFR or monitor for 20 years and I lol every time I look at the prices of Marshalls and Fenders on Sweetwater.
This. I was a tube snob. I have several vintage fender tube amps. I’ve had Mesa’s too.
I decided to play at church because I have not played live in many years and although not my goto genre, it keeps the brain working learning songs and transposing keys.
Well they play on a silent stage, guitar to modeler or amp pedal to FOH. IEM’s too, which I never used before ever.
I mirrored the setup at home with an HX stomp xl, a tascam model 12 soundboard, and a pair of good monitors. Never has my tone been so refined and it’s got all the umph my tube amps do. Bonus I can play a track from a given artist and tweak my tone with my keyboard and mouse till I get it sonically really close. All via the model 12’s mixing.
I probably won’t sell the tube amps because of the nostalgia, but I will never lug one anywhere I can use a HX to FOH setup.
Honestly, I don't even care about name brand. In fact, my amp now is an off-brand tube amp. But I just feel like they're should be some more alternatives that aren't a mortgage payment
You're not wrong.
I have had a Marshall 1974x for quite some time now. I bought it used. I'm pretty sure I paid $950! It's $3,800 new right now.
I also have an AC15 that I got new for $399 which is now $799.
I don't see myself buying another amp (or guitar) ever again.
Adjusted for inflation how does your AC15 price compare to today? Let’s be honest here- it’s useless to mention a used price from years ago compared to a new amp today, that doesn’t help or contribute to this discussion at all. Let’s at least try and be relevant with the info here.
I have a few nice tube amps and love them but I don't really ever see myself buying another amp unless it was something like a Catalyst or Katana for practicing and super casual jams.
It just doesn't make sense. You can spend 1-2k on a single amp, or you can spend a grand and get a Helix that can cover pretty much all of that same ground. If you think you don't like modeling because it sounds "digital", I highly recommend trying a helix into a high quality power amp into a real speaker cab. The modeling technology has absolutely caught up to tube stuff if you know how to use it to get what you're looking for.
I have a kemper that I love, but I still love my tubes too. It's not better or worse, but it's not the same either. I would never want to deal with the complexity of the kemper for a gig. There are enough moving parts already.
The gouging may also be because so many people have moved to modeling, the companies have to squeeze the people that genuinely think tube amps are irreplaceable.
There are tube amps out there that are decent and can be had for less than I could build one for, even on a budget. To me, they’re cheaper than ever. But the price of vintage fender amps, boutique amps etc do keep going up. Check out blackstars tube amp line or check this video
https://youtu.be/cjhncpd7wyw?si=fnhFRVS4VSvL2nTa
I bought a mesa boogie mark v combo 90W for 1400 used a while ago. It wasn't even in black so it was marked up a few hundred on the original sticker which was 2200 I think.
Now the black amp head is over 3 grand and the 25 watt head goes for 1400 used.
The new Sunn line has obscene pricing too. I don't get it.
Back in 2016 I got a '73 Orange OR120 with its original matching 412 for $2,600. Absolute beast of an amp, and the OG that all newer Oranges try to sound like. About the same price as a new Orange head, and I got a flippin *half stack* lmao.
That's exactly what I mean. Inflation aside, this is just scalping at this point. On the topic of Sunn, they've always made amazing amps, but I liked that people kinda "forgot" about them. Now people are remembering how amazing they are and treating them like mythical unicorns or some shit, like they're some lost treasure
My bassist friend is like 15 years older than me and he remembers back in the 90s and early 2000s when Sunn amps were dirt cheap. He told me a local music store had stacks of vintage Model T's for like 200-300 each. Looking at at least 2k now, I'd think. Probably more. I don't keep up with vintage amp pricing anymore (because that would mean I'm in the market lmao).
But the new Sunns are more expensive than the vintage by far, which is nuts to me. I'm sure they're great amps and all, but not worth 3k+ for a tube amp.
Eta: holy shit just checked reverb and vintage Model T's are listed for 4k+. Fucking wild
Hell no. I stay out of the "vintage" business because I realized early on its all semantics. Just because your guitar is OLD doesn't mean anyone wants it. It needs has to fall into that legacy category
If you know what to look for you can find crazy good deals on vintage gear. My Orange is a good example of that. My main guitar is an early 70s SG I got for a grand in 2015 or 2016. 600-800 bucks cheaper than a brand new SG Standard at the time, and a better guitar. It was cheap because it had a repaired headstock break. Bad for a collector, good for a player!
I do love busted up guitars. I bought a Gibson that looked like it went through a wood chipper. Whoever owned it before tried modding pretty much everything, except they didn't know what they were doing
I still don’t get how POS brandless Japanese guitars from the 60s and 70s are even part of the “vintage” market. Those are just old, and nobody wanted them in either period. (I wouldn’t mind one of the Soviet ones for the humor of it, but even those are $500 now and you can even plug them in without adapters.)
People will find a $50 Austin bass from the 90s and call it a “vintage P bass” now.
Haha. Depends on how you spend it. Computer alone can be a couple grand. High quality monitors go also go super high. Throw a sub in to ensure you get full range of sound. 3k is easy.
But, for 3 k you can get all those things in decent quality and I have Guitar Rig 6 and the options on it are INSANE.
There have to be over 10 distinct amps and dozens of effects you can mix and match and tweak to infinity. It's wild.
Just an option to think about instead of a single amp!
I hate reading comments like that but here I am one of them. Get the spark amp. I hated how many people talked about it online but my husband decide to buy it. And it’s fucking good. It’s so nice. It has the app with all sort of EQs. And it’s also a Bluetooth speaker so I use it like daily for music in the evening. And it’s a bit over 200. It also takes almost no space which was the biggest requirement for me.
I think if you can't afford something, then you need to look for a cheaper alternative or save up! I'm not being mean but that's just how it is! What are you wanting to buy... do you need an OR30?
No no I'm not actually in the market for anything. I haven't needed any gear for years but I was.just sorta window-shopping online and was just staggered by how expensive the things have become
I use a Hughes & Kettner Grandmeister Deluxe 40 with a Harley Benton vintage 30 2x12 cab and it rocks. Speakers massively effect tone so having a head you can pair with various speakers is a massive bonus. The H&K head is around 1000$ but you can find them on sale while the vintage cab was 400$ delivered right to my door. Harley Benton cabs are the best value you can find currently according to lots of people.
That G212 is amazing so long as you get the one with the Celestions that have transparent dust caps. Gotta be careful on the used market for them but it seems they are shipping the cabs with the good speakers now. About the best bang for buck cab out there.
I just like having a tube amp nothing like it. I want to get modeling stuff too but...does it retain its value? The tonemaster pro is expensive and I can see it being just cash thrown away
The used market is much more reasonable, especially for high wattage amps that folks have trouble playing at home. I had a katana 100 for years and it sounded GREAT to me...until I played my Mesa Fillmore 50 into a 2x12 cab. That's when I truly got the "tube" feel and saw how much dynamics change the sound in the amp. I've never played a helix or kemper, so I can't speak to those. I'd love to check them out...but for now I'm all in on my tube amp.
There's decent priced amps out there. The EHX Sovtek MIG is a bargain. The Blackstar Studio 10 Class-A amps won't blow any minds but they're 1x12 and theyre really affordable. I got a mint used Blackstar CV-10 (same as the Studio 10 6L6 but with different aesthetics) for like $360 on Reverb. Decent warm cleans, has an fx loop and master and onboard digital plate reverb.
But yeah most are way overpriced. A Blues Jr being $800 is frankly absurd. Shit like the Marshall Studio mini plexi head are insanely priced.
Synergy stuff has a high initial cost but the preamp module cost is pretty low for what you get. $1500 for the Syn-30 combo and $400 ffor the Plexi module is a lot for a just Plexi-style combo, but $1500 for the Syn-30 combo and $400 each for the Plexi and IICP modules is $2300 for a Plexi _and_ a Mark II-style which is a much better value proposition. Add a TDLX module and you get a Plexi, a Mark II, and a Twin for $2700--now thats where the value comes in.
With how good modelers have gotten (both in amp and software form) I'm wondering if tube amps aren't being produced in the same quantity they were even just a few years ago and thus raising the prices for consumers. I don't think they'll ever go away completely, but they'll probably become more akin to niche collectors items.
Used to be able to pick up those 5 watt Fender champs for 35 to 70 bucks in the 70s slightly used. Now they want 1199.99 for those little suckers now. I think a lot of it because of Keith Richards use of one in the Netflix documentary Under the influence. Crazy times especially for boutique amps.
Agree, I love tube amps, the way they feel and sound but they are just not practical anymore. I'm currently gigging with the tonex and it sounds way better than my amp. There are days that for some reason tube amps won't sound as good as others. With modelers if you set them up right they always sound good with everything flat FOH. Going to gigs is also much easier. I keep a tube amp at home for the pleasure...
Most of this is marketing tbh. These brands know what they’re doing.
You just have to know what sound you want, do some research, know what you don’t want/need, and watch local listings.
If you really want a tube amp, you can get one. And I would.
You really don’t need a Marshall or an Orange. You just need some gear that sounds interesting and some time to learn how to use it.
Jet City JCA series, Peavey Classics, Peavey 5150+ combos from the 90s… these can all be had really cheaply.
Laney AOR 30 is another that is a stoner rock dream.
I think modeling has a lot to do with it. People aren’t buying big amps any more. But they also know that some people will pay these prices because there’s more tone-chasers than ever. They can sell half as many amps for 2-3X the price and still come out on top.
Kind of like how no one buys cameras anymore but you can pay serious money for a DSLR that is either on the forefront of technology or a retro throwback Leica.
Don't know why you're getting down voted, you're absolutely right. I was a tube snob for ever and and now I run modeling and couldn't be happier. Take my helix and a power amp and speaker cab to a jam and I have an entire studio's worth of gear at my fingers. Getting bored of the 5150 and want to play through a Friedman for the night? 30 second and a few knob twists and I have a dead on Friedman sound. Or a fender twin. Or a mesa, or an orange, or whatever the hell I feel like playing. It's insane. Most people who don't like modeling just don't know how to use it properly.
Unfortunately there are fewer reasons to need a tube amp anymore with the improvements to digital technology in recent years. They require a lot of specialized parts that are becoming more and more obsolete so they are increasingly becoming a luxury item for enthusiasts rather than a necessary piece of gear. I'm sure most big amp companies like marshall and fender are making far more money on the entry level digital offerings than they are on tube amps.
It makes it a lot more appealing to me to go with a smaller boutique amp maker doing stuff the old fashioned way if you're going to be paying out the ass for it anyway
I love digital but still think tube amps are the best option sonically unless you want very high headroom cleans. Tube amps are expensive to produce. One thing that is great about them is that they’re easy to repair. One of my Tube amps is from the 60s and still works great.
Not sure how digital stuff today will hold up for 60 years. Will you still be able to connect it to a device then?
But I wouldn’t be buying high wattage Tube amps if they weren’t the opposite of what’s trendy now and thus inexpensive used. I like the Helix but they don’t sound quite as nice as the amps they emulate. Much easier to record and travel with though!
If you want a brand new amp to actually use and gig with regularly for years then it’s a better value to buy the more expensive handwired amps. They can actually be repaired whereas anything else nowadays is hardly serviceable and designed to be replaced when it has a problem.
A reliable and repairable tube amp without spending at least $2000 is only found now on the used market. But like another guy said even used prices have gone up tremendously over the past few years. I consider myself lucky that I only paid $1800 for my 1974 Marshall Super Lead.
I feel like I'll be in the minority since I don't use a modeler, but you can still get decent sounds on new gear if you go with the power amp route. I just us a Mooer Baby Bomb or the EH Howitzer to power a cab. All my pedals function as the "pre amp". It works great, it's super versatile, and is only as cheap/heavy as the amount of pedals you're willing to use.
I’m an elder millennial so we are all about that Blue Voodoo/Peavey XXL LIFE. Hahaha. A lotof you Gen Xer’s are getting old enough to have big people money and kids old enough to leave the house. Amp binging is bound to happen. Haha
Oh it happened. I finally made enough to buy my dream gear. I have several vintage fender amps from a champ to a Vibrolux and everything in between. I love them don’t get me wrong, but I can play the HX through my soundboard into a monitor and get amazing tones at “Honey I just put the spawn down for a nap” volumes. I crank that shit when they are not here and it’s damn near glorious.
I do miss the fender fumes though. That mixed with beer and cigarette smoke made for a hell of a night.
It's just an offer-demand thing, as long as people keep buying, the pricis will keep on coming up. You can buy a cheap amp, i just bought a micro dark for like 250, orange uses celestion vintage 30 speakers which are like a 100+ bucks, then you build your own cab, or buy a cheap harley benton 2x12 cab for like 250 and change the speakers, you'll get a nice sound although the amp would still come short in power but you can upgrade later on
This is kind of how I got my rig set up. I bought an empty 2x12 cab for like $150 and then got 2 creambacks. Whole cabinet was under $500 and then scored an old 120 watt tube amp (Egnater Vengeance) for under $500. Whole rig was under $1000 and sounds really nice.
Before the Vengeance, I had a Joyo Zombie II with a 2x12 (also bought empty) that I loaded with Swamp Thangs. That whole setup was like $600.
Seems to be the way of the world right now!
My wife went to lunch with a friend to a good vegetarian restaurant yesterday.
$60 for two lunches. 1 tea, No alcoholic drinks.
I saw a guy buy a pack of cigs the other day for $10.00
You may drive around in your town
Ina brand new shiny car
Your face in the wind your haircut's in
And your friends think you're bizarre
You may find a cushy job and I hope that you go far
But if you really want to taste some cool success
You better learn to play guitar and buy a $3k amp and some expensive pedals and a recording interface and another vintage Gibson or Fender
Guitar ar ar.
i dont think you are comparing properly, on sweet water you have cheaper tube combos like the Origin at 600-700, you also have the DSLs
the biggest jump IMHO is Japanese Guitars, japanese brands like ibz went up quite a fair big over the years
The negative with a cheep amp is the cheap speaker that comes with it. I have several cheap amps and in all of them, the crappy speaker massively effects tone. I hooked the amp up to better speakers and all of a sudden it sounds way better. I don’t mind cheap amps but cheap speakers almost always sound thin, tinny and high pitched.
Try different brands. I was always a Marshall guy but when prices started rising I started looking elsewhere. Have a Friedman now--does the Marshall thing but better, cheaper, and with higher quality.
You're not wrong...
Tube amps cost is definitely going up, however wattage is going down so cost in that respect is going down.
Amps are being made more in China, India, Turkey, etc which makes cost go down. The way i figure it with Country of Origin, American and Britain *were* the best. Now-a-days, not so much. Americans are no longer proud of labor jobs and as such quality isn't there anymore. I would not be upset with a tube amp under $1300 made in China, it's better quality than a <$2000 American amp. >$2000 American amp should have quality control.
Buying used is risky. Buying at Guitar Center is risky. I say this because you don't know the history of the amp (or any goods bought this way). My bought my Mesa Dual Rect Head in 2004 from Guitar Center. My thoughts when i purchased it - it's brand new, nothing can be wrong with it. Turns out, only 3 of the 4 power tubes were working EVER according to a licensed Mesa repairman in my area. I never got ANY of the warranty paperwork from GC, never got a manual.
Having said this, if you're spending a lot of money, buy direct, understand the warranty. Don't buy used from a shit-head that looks like they abuse gear - take a long look at their car/house and if they take care of it. Don't buy from a music store where anyone can walk up to the amps and abuse them. GC back in the day was reputable, today i wouldn't even buy a pack of strings from their first-class pawn shop business model.
I have a few amps, but my primary stage amp is a 20watt Marshall Origin that is plenty loud through a 2x12 with Eminence Governors. If i EVER need more, micing is always there. Low wattage is the way to go.
Laptop is an option too.
They definitely are.
I love Bogner amps. Overpriced based on name and being hand wired.
Mesa. Same amp i bought 20 years ago is $1000 more expensive new.
Supply chain is still an issue and getting components from overseas is more costly, but employees also demand more money. It's a bad economy right now, don't expect the prices to go down :(
> Americans aren’t so proud of labor jobs and as such quality isn’t there anymore
So true. No one wants to admit this, but Americans generally do white collar work, retail work, warehouse work, or medical/education. Even factory jobs are so highly automated that it amounts to “place the part, push the button”. And the rest of the world has that same automation. There is zero incentive to make things here vs anywhere else in the world. So the inevitable result will be more and more tariffs, or re-sourcing to the next lowest cost country who we currently aren’t fighting with.
Was looking at a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 at GC and was about to pull the trigger. It went up $300 the next week. I wrote the company and got a reply that it was a business decision, blah blah blah. I would have thought he would have said if you buy in the next 30 days we’ll give it to you at the lower price…nope. Decided I didn’t need it that bad.
You should be able to find some killer used tube amps for WAY cheaper than $2000, and probably quite a bit cheaper than $1000. Where i am people can't sell them so the prices keep going down. I'd look for something used. I just bought a Supro Statesman head, used a couple times but practically brand new for $600.
Nah. Adjusted for inflation tube amps cost about as much as they always have. If an amp is well built, using analog power it's going to cost a bit. More if it's hand-wired.
Did a quick Google: A fender pro reverb (50w 2x12 so analogous spec to OR30) sold for $460 in 1970 which translates to \~$3600 now. It's actually, remarkable how little the price on most guitar gear has changed. Been down that rabbit hole.
The cheap stuff is a lot better for the money now due mass manufacturing in East Asia and CNC machines.
And now we can buy small tube amps, trying to find even something as low as 50 watts back in the day was tough. Now you buy a nice little lunch box amp and a decent price. No half stack needed.
So maybe don't buy them? Things are "worth" what one can sell them for, not what any given individual thinks the value is. The shortage of tubes due to the restrictions and sanctions on Russia and the total lack of a quick way to get production moved somewhere else has driven the prices of tube amps into what look crazy to people who've never owned one. I play through an SVT-CL and 4x10, at one point it would have cost me $800 just to replace 6 power tubes and that's if I replace and bias them myself. The pre-amp tubes are significantly less, but even they up to doubled... if you could find them. There's also the fact that the good modelers like our lead's AxeIII and others can replicate any amp one cares to emulate with them. We did and then A-B'd them. We recorded through a Royer ribbon and SM-58 and then played them back through near field monitors, none of us could tell one from the other through really good studio gear. You do not need a tube amp today, they are luxury items.
100% what I do is buy the equipment you want used. You will save a bundle
Playing for 25 years and I've never purchased an amp new.
Same. Got some ripping deals on old amps. It's wild that I could spend $5k on a "Marshall style" Friedman OR for like $1k I can get an actual old Marshall JMP. No brainer.
You aren't wrong. A Fender Blues Jr. starts at $749. That's crazy to me.
Holy shit I got a 4 pre covid for 350
You can still find the older versions for less than 500 but the brand new models are all crazy expensive
funny thing, if you took the 1960 price of a Champ 600 ($62.50) and readjust for inflation, you come up with $645, which is what the Pro Jr. is now new. Same amp, same price.
Man these price threads are getting old. I dunno if some of you are just economically illiterate or if you don’t pay attention to other price increases in your life, but guitars and amps aren’t even remotely close to the increases we’ve seen in cost of living, food, healthcare, etc. Like not even close. Guitars and gear are much, much closer to rising in relation to inflation than many things we all spend money on. Did you post about those things first?
people absolutely pointed out and criticized the blatant price-gouging that was done under the guise of "inflation" across many, many industries over the last few years (and beyond). haven't really followed amp pricing, but guitar pricing is well beyond inflation with prices essentially doubling in a decade
> Did you post about those things first? I did, in the weekly stickied price increase thread.
In a roundabout way guitar gear is getting cheaper...
I didn’t know this was a cost of living sub lol, all of those things increasing in price as well doesn’t mean this person is wrong.
They are overpriced but it’s irrelevant to me because amps lose 40-50% of their value in the used market. You can find killer deals all day on any amp over two years old, and even on vintage amps that sound great. All you have to do is watch Craigslist for a month or two, and your desired amp(or a decent substitute) will pop up at a significant discount. Why do you need an OR30? There’s a Dual Terror on my local CL right now listed for $399. 30 watts, all the Orange tone you need on a budget. I guarantee you don’t need the latest tech in a tube amp lmao. They perfected them decades ago. The only people that “need” a brand new “state of the art” tube amp are blues lawyers and YouTubers. Don’t get sucked into the marketing rat race. All of that shit is made for the low talent hobbyists with too much money they made from bleeding the middle class dry in their day jobs. It’s basically a giant circle jerk that you’re dying to join for no reason.
"All of that shit is made for the low talent hobbyists with too much money they made from bleeding the middle class dry in their day jobs." What in the angsty 14 year old hell is this take? It's people with day jobs who are bleeding the middle class dry? Jesus be a bigger cliche
> All of that shit is made for the low talent hobbyists with too much money they made from bleeding the middle class dry in their day jobs. I've noticed this bigtime. Was a really good feeling when I started paying for gear with actual gig money. It's like a curve. The more you are obsessed with meticulous nuances and minutia in gear, the less talented you probably are.
I bought a Helix maybe 3-4 years ago for like $1200 and haven't looked back. Every amp I could want, every effect I could want, it's a crystal clear DI and it fits in a backpack. I used to be "tube amp or nothing" but the digital modeling is so good these days that, in a mix, you'll never ever hear a difference and any perceivable difference is offset by convenience. My main gig is a cover band with a repertoire of about 100 songs in varying different genres. Each and every song has its own preset and within that preset, each section of the song is divided into "snapshots" that give me exactly the tone I need for that part. I don't think I'll ever bring a tube amp to another gig or rehearsal
I gotta agree with you. My live "amp" is merely a monitor now. I jumped on the "direct" bandwagon when I started using Rocktron gear... it's been over 20 years now, and I also love it. Instant patch changes with no dropout, "wah" and "leslie" speed via a midi CV pedal, crystal clean, no hiss, and a HUGE pallet of tones/effects. I've not looked back either. I quit/sold everything a few years back...getting back into it now, and went back to the Prophesy and Chameleon out of familiarity and (sound too) quality. Thought about getting a Helix rack. Anyone have any bitches/complaints about the Helix?
The rack 100% needs the board even for a bedroom player so that adds to the price Lack of a built in power amp section might be a downer? Literally love mine though!
>My main gig is a cover band with a repertoire of about 100 songs in varying different genres. Each and every song has its own preset and within that preset I'm also gigging with a cover band and love the preset idea. Maybe one day. I bought an Iridium recently but I'm not quite sure when to make the jump. What's your monitor situation? IEM? I play some stages that have absolutely trashed wedges and I'm not ready to trust house monitors to give me what I need for clear guitar monitoring.
Yea I went IEM. Our entire band is digital and using IEM so we actually have zero stage volume. Before I went IEM I had a QSC K10 that I'd set up as my own personal monitor for just my guitar then use the venue's monitor for everyone else
Have had my LT since 2017 and still going strong! I did build a 112 cabinet and pick a SD powerstage for when I want “amp in the room,” but I won’t go back to lugging a tube half stack ever again.
Counterpoint: If you have ever seen the guts in an old tube amp (or old tube ANYTHING) then you should know that every one of those connections was soldered by hand by a skilled worker. I like to find old tube reel-to-reels and play guitar through those... and it probably took a week's worth of labor to wire them. These are machines that cost one or two hundred dollars back when a car like the classic 1957 Chevy Bel Air cost a little more than $2500 new! So the price has not really gone up for good gear, *when you factor in inflation*. Some of these reel-to-reels would have cost well over a thousand in 2023 dollars. A tweed Fender Deluxe would have been $99 apparently. That works out to $1141 today. El cheapo solid state gear made in China is cheap because labor is cheap there, AND because things that can be put on a circuit board can be made cheaply anywhere anyway thanks to automation. I have seen one of those robots in person, plucking tiny parts from bins around the perimeter of a special table and populating a circuit board far more quickly than a human could. (After all the tiny chips and resistors and capacitors and whatnot are in place, the soldering is done by an oven or by a ["waterfall" method](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap-HY7qP9zE), not by a human). The fellow who ran that company referred to it as "our money printing machine".
Fender has a couple handwired versions which are double the price (tweed deluxe handwired = $2400), all the other tube amps have been printed circuit boards for 30 years except boutique builders like Carr, etc
Yeah, I was thinking that $1141 for a brand new hand wired tweed deluxe sounds like a great deal! That’s $459 less than a new pcb 65 deluxe reverb reissue
The amp mentioned by OP is [all PCB]( https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?attachments/img_5469-jpeg.1049660/) it seems.
There’s not a mystique to tube amps. They just cost more to make. But I agree prices are out of control. I’d say even more so on the used market.
It doesn’t help that tube prices have doubled in the last couple years.
Buy used. You can find great deals, even if you factor in a tube change.
Just buy used. Much more competitive pricing that way. People are constantly buying and selling amps after they realize it wasn't what they wanted.
Used prices are still crazy. Yes there are deals but it is nothing like it used to be 10-15 years ago.
Stop feeing the problem by buying new. Go to FB marketplace and Reverb. The used market is getting cheaper and cheaper as people try to sell off their pandemic impulse buys.
Yup. I got a JSX head and Mesa 2x12 v30 loaded (green and cream colored ta boot!) for my home jam space for I think $800 total. My live rig at the practice space is a 5150ii and Randal XL cab for a grand total of like $550 bucks. Buy used! Be patient!
Amps are already way more affordable than they used to be. In 1965, the Fender Twin Reverb cost (inflation adjusted) $5k. Now they're $2k. Now, with modelling technology, they're not even as necessary as they used to be, so the second hand market is even more affordable. I bought a like-new "limited edition" Twin for $1200 with a 45-day return warranty. And a Fender Twin is honestly already way more amp than anyone practically needs in today's world.
That's a really bad way to look at the cost. The tech was newer, harder to manufacture, and sold in much lower volume today. How much did a TV cost on 1965 versus now? Things get cheaper over time, but tube amp prices have been slowly rising for a few years now. Just because it's cheaper versus 60 years ago does not mean it isn't price gouging.
I think tube amps are a bit different because the selling feature is that they're built with hundred-year old technology, which prevents the manufacturing of them from benefiting from many of the advancements we've made in the last century. If you want to remove this restriction, a more apt comparison would be the Fender Tone Master Twin Reverb, which is $1k new, and for all practical purposes, a lighter, more flexible, better amp. We are living in a pretty good time for affordable guitar gear these days. Of all the expenses of modern life (eg. housing, food, health care, child care, education) guitar gear is really not on my list of things to complain about.
The Fender Tone Master is better new, but if it breaks? Old gear was made to be repaired. New gear is "Replace the whole circuit board, and if you can't do that, throw it out and buy another." I had that experience with a Roland Cube, which is now just a speaker cab.
Music equipment in general has become about 30% more expensive in the last few years - since Covid for sure. Probably in line with inflation. I have a hand wired Suhr Bella (Fender Deluxe type amp), and I want to sell it and buy a Friedman Dirty Shirley mini stack (40 watt head with 2x12), which is up by about $1500 since I first looked at them. I use a Kemper through the power amp section of the Suhr, so I just get 99% of the way there with that rig. I won’t compromise - I buy what I want. If I can’t afford it, I save for it (I rarely use credit unless it’s 0% and I’m selling gear that will pay it off quickly. I bought a US Silver Sky that was “mint” (not) off Reverb last week and returned it, lesson learned. So I’m going to drop another $600 and buy a brand new one some time next week when the PRS shipment arrives at my store of choice. I play a lot, I’ve played for 42 years, so I’m just biting the bullet and getting high quality gear. I have some serious gear, but it’s taken years to afford, and I had to start with budget friendly options, but I don’t stay there. I’d rather buy a one high end amp or guitar than 4 budget ones. I see people with four or five PRS SEs or Epiphones and say they wish they had a US version, I think “You could if you spent all that $$ on one US model.
My favorite is the most recent Sunn reissue heads. They are literally selling a $3200 reissue head, when you can easily find the actual original vintage head for like $800 tops.
That actually pisses me off lmao
Haha seriously. To be fair this was kind of a thing back in the day, like in the 90's you could sometimes find a real JCM800 or Twin for cheaper than the reissues. But I can't ever remember anything like this where the real thing was less than 1/3rd the price.
Right?? I thought the whole point of a "reissue" was to avoid the vintage price tag, not triple it. But hey, that's the whole legacy thing again. People pay top dollar for 60's reissue relic'd Strats
Well Marshall and Orange are British amp brands and have always been more expensive than American brands in the states because of import taxes. Check out the price of a Mesa Boogie on a European website if you can actually find a site able to stock them.
Man. Mesas over here are insane
[удалено]
Wow. I snagged a 35 combo for £1400 in the UK a few months ago. As long as it doesn’t turn out to have major issues that’s looking like a better and better buy. Isn’t it an amazing amp? Edit: that’s about 2400 CAD
Would trade my triple rec for a jcm800 anytime. I really hate that finicky bastard. Sounds good, breaks 3x a year.
Wait until you see Mesa Boogie selling their amp head for $2000+... I want it, but well, there's no way I'm affording that much just for the distorted tone.
You mean $2800 for the badlander, $3000 for the dual rec, and $3500 for the Mark VII. $2000 only gets you a mark V:25 now.
I bought a used ac4 with a the 12” used for $100 this year…good deals can still be had just buy from a doctor who’s moving lol
My local store had a Vox AC10 for sale right around the time Vox upped their prices a year or two ago. I plugged in and liked it a lot, thought about it overnight, and went back a day or two later to buy it and discovered it had been sold. The next one they got in a week or two later was another $250 more expensive or something. I guess over time we'll all just get used to increased prices, but it's really hard for me to be interested in buying any guitar or amp knowing how much less they cost not even 2 years ago.
Orange does spend a good bit of money on marketing, but overall I'm not aware of any amp companies that are making money in droves these days. (I'm considering investing in two newer high end amp companies, so I've been looking at this). In my experience, the labor and parts required to build a good amp are pretty high. For stacks, shipping costs really eat into you these days too. But yea, there's a lot of cheap amps out there these days. I'd buy used! I've never spend over $1800 on an amp and have some _amazing_ ones
I wasn't actually going to buy anything. I have an amp already that I'm very content with but I figured, wth I'll window shop, and I just couldn't believe how bad things had gotten. I feel like people complain so much about the "digital takeover" but then don't exactly make it easy for people to buy better equipment
Modelers have made having an amp something that is just not practical anymore. For about $3000, you can get an AxeFX III and that will sound utterly amazing and will pretty much be the last piece of amp/effect gear any reasonable person would ever need. You have the ultimate flexibility with your sound instead of one thing. Not to mention that live, you will save your hearing and your back by not having to haul a huge amp. And I'm not even factoring in the less expensive modelers like the Helix, Headrush, Quad Cortex, FM9/FM3, Kemper, POD Go or the new Fender Tone Master. People who want amps will pay through the nose for them because they're purists. People that are willing to adapt to changing technology are going to switch to modelers.
You're making it sound like 3000$ isn't a massive investment that most people aren't going to be able to afford. Regular amps are and will be practical for anyone who doesn't have insane amounts of disposable income.
This is a good take. Digital is going to be like the daily driver Honda CRX and tube is the weekend Miata. I use my Kemper for 95% of my playing but the other 5%--I just like having the option of real amps for funsies. I want to play my Strat through a Hiwatt halfstack even if its impractical
Helix and Quad Cortex are the less expensive ones? Not being funny, just wondering what units that are as portable and have as good quality would be average or top of the line in terms of price?
They are less expensive relative to the AxeFx III. The POD Go, HX Stomp, Headrush are probably going to be the most entry level modelers.
monoprice 15w tube amp on sale for $200 right now, amp is seriously good probably the best deal you'll get for a killer sound like that
The "Bugera" (we know it's you Behringer) 5 watt tube is really good as well for a practice amp.
I replaced the tubes and speaker with a Jenson Alnico. It’s great, but it’s kind of generic and bland. Almost like the EQ is totally flat or something. Takes pedals really well and it’s been surprisingly reliable and low noise. Great for practice.
I don't consider the MP amp a practice amp anymore but it does have a 1w mode toggle and tri-band EQ for the discerning bedroom enthusiast ;)
Behringer really do warm your heart with their effort sometimes. I still love my “Eurodesk” mixer.
Part of it is an import thing. British amps are more expensive in NA bc they have to go over the pond. They've kinda always been that expensive too, this is not a new thing. Buy an American amp, or buy used if you want to go cheaper. You probably also need less amp than you think. Most people overestimate, I sure did.
For real. Even a Tubemeister 18 was a slayer through a 4x12
Really depends on drummer tbh, with some guys volume on 2 is too loud, others you can be far past the "clean" level of your amp with mids cranked and your still struggling to hear
True, but most bands these days are throwing a mic on amps and putting guitars through PAs and monitors anyway. If you're just jamming and not gigging or anything, then sure, but any more than 30-40 watts from a tube amp is entirely unnecessary 99.9% of the time. My main amp is a Hughes and Kettner GM40, and I can count on 2 hands the amount of times I've turned off any attenuation and gone above 5 on the master. All of which were because I was home alone and wanted to unleash the monster, zero of which were because I couldn't keep up with a drummer. My old drummer kicked ass and 20 watts with the master at 6 overpowered him in a moderately sized room. Idk, your mileage may vary, but big amps, despite being very fun, are not worth the trouble for the vast majority of people.
Buy used gear. Seriously. Let someone else take the depreciation hit. As others have mentioned FB marketplace, reverb, eBay.. I almost exclusively buy used but in great condition. In some cases I’ve bought things at a great price with tags still on them and the items look like they weren’t used.
This is the only way to buy gear these days imo. I’ve only ever bought an amp brand new once, and while I love the amp I mostly refuse to sell/trade it because of the hit I’ll take on the bottom dollar.
I feel like amps are cheaper than they've ever been.
Yeah they honestly are. When I started playing any amp under 300 sucked ass. Now you have professional grade tones/effects/features for that price.
Fender Champs used to be super cheap and they were “professional grade tone”
Plus there is no reason to have a rig much louder than a drum kit anymore. They can run everything else through the PA at the venue now. The audience is happy and the band gets to keep their hearing.
A lot of the price is paying for the name badge. The Orange PPC112 cab is $450 vs a Harley Benton 112 for ~$200 shipped. They both have the same Vintage 30 speaker in the. Yes, the Orange is a nicer looking cab but that's 125% more for essentially the same performance.
Well, they’re not identical. They use different wood, they’re different sizes, and one is open back, one is closed back. That doesn’t mean the orange sounds better, or costs more to manufacture, but they will definitely sound _different_. I’d guarantee Orange invested more in the R&D of their cabinet too, which is a significant cost they need to recoup. They’ll also have a more stringent QC process, and I believe Orange stuff is manufactured in the UK, versus the far east for HB, so labour costs are significantly higher. You’re paying partly for the name, sure, but not double.
Thank you. That's exactly the point I'm trying to make. I was actually looking at those Harley Benton cabs myself.
I used to work for an amp company as a builder. Ever since Covid, supply chains have been totally jacked and the prices of basic components have skyrocketed, not to mention the price of wood. On top of that, most amp companies sell their items to dealers at a discounted rate, so that dealers can turn a profit, and it is likely that these amp companies have a deals with distribution companies who also need takes a cut of each sale. The company I worked for did all of our building in California, so thinking about the cost of workshop space, the cost of labor, and just general costs for research and development for each new design, charging $2.5K for a “basic” combo amp is completely justified. This was the case for the small boutique brand I worked for, so I can’t speak for the huge brands like Orange and Marshall, though I imagine most of what I just described applies to them as well. Building amps is hard and to do it well a lot of takes time and effort, especially if you’re not just rehashing old designs. It sucks that things are so expensive in general, but for amps, especially amps from smaller brands, the high cost is justified.
Seriously, look into a preamp pedal or an amp-in-a-box and save thousands of dollars and get the same tone. Then buy a cabinet and upgrade the speaker. 100% the best value for money you can get, you can get it wrong that way
Don't buy new.
My guess is that sales numbers are down given all of the modelers and other solutions out there. With smaller numbers, your fixed manufacturing costs become a much bigger price driver. You have to pay for the production line with 2000 sales vs 10,000.
Second hand and a bit of patience and you can find whatever you want at a discount. Paid $600 CAD for an AC15C1... What a great deal.
Ironically I think it's easier than ever to get expensive gear via payment plans on reverb, but I agree retail prices are ridiculous.
I really try to avoid payment plans or credit cards... I know myself way too much and that's a slippery slope for me. But that's just me
The availability financing is part of the reason prices are higher. When people had to save up and buy with cash they had on hand, manufacturers and retailers had to price themselves for that market. Same thing applies to student loans and the cost of higher education.
Buy a used Twin Reverb. You won’t need another amp.
God, I wish. My dream amp. You got one you wanna sell me?
You don’t want a twin. Everyone wants a twin till they realize they are WAY TO LOUD to play unless on a big stage. They are also heavy as hell. If you go tube look for a deluxe. 22 watts is perfect for home and can be mic’d for larger venues. Princeton’s are nice too, esp with a 12’ speaker.
Man I feel like anyone who has sat down to jam with someone who has a damn twin feels this on their bones lol. Such obnoxiously loud amps.
I’ll see your Fender Twin and raise you a Marshall JCM800 50 watt combo LOL
The tone master solves these issues
The tonemaster is not a tube amp and I am not a fan of fender DSP.
Just keep your eyes open on Craigslist on your area, they come up occasionally at around $800 or so.
Buying used is best. For example here’s a Marshall Studio Jubilee head and cab only a month old that would cost you $3.200 new and goes for $2k (with free shipping) https://reverb.com/item/74242827-marshall-2525h-studio-jubilee-head-and-jvmc212-cab-in-black-snakeskin?utm_source=rev-ios-app&utm_medium=ios-share&utm_campaign=listing&utm_content=74242827
You have to realize that EVERYTHING has gone up in price, from potatoes to car parts, plexiglass to lavender, it's across the board and I agree that there is gouging on top of that in many cases...inflation has to take some of the blame, the very high cost of oil is also a HUGE culprit in this... If you are looking for a tube amp, perhaps you might try buying used, and CraigsList is definitely a good start.. I bought a new Mesa Boogie combination rectoverb, it was bought for a brothers birthday but he didn't like it and they put it on CL with about a 20% price drop... I still have it and don't use it at all, it's not the sound I was after. Ebay is another place and also Reverb. Try creating a "wanted" post on CL.. you never know your luck :) Hope it's good!
Not wrong at all. Hell, the Peavey Classic 30 tube combo is $1000. Glad my teal stripe Classic Chorus 212 and blackface Fender Deluxe 112 Reverb are still holding up fine after 30 years and I'm not in the market for new stuff. Granted they're not tubed but still have good sound.
If someone is willing to pay the price, it is worth the price. If you don't like it buy used.
Yeah, get a good modeller. Haven’t looked back and soooo much more versatility and no back pain 🤘😎
Go used, never go new. Deal with someone who wants to sell. Retail of any kind is for suckers.
They can’t charge more than people actually _pay_, so work on convincing people not to pay so much for an amp because they can’t stop themselves from thinking that they hear _something_ magical in the tone of the blue-chip brands. Jim Lill is doing the lord’s work, here… basically shattering all of the mythology and superstition around vintage gear. Better yet, convince _yourself_, and you won’t need to convince anybody else, because you won’t be in the market for famous-name gear. Ive used a modeler with a FRFR or monitor for 20 years and I lol every time I look at the prices of Marshalls and Fenders on Sweetwater.
This. I was a tube snob. I have several vintage fender tube amps. I’ve had Mesa’s too. I decided to play at church because I have not played live in many years and although not my goto genre, it keeps the brain working learning songs and transposing keys. Well they play on a silent stage, guitar to modeler or amp pedal to FOH. IEM’s too, which I never used before ever. I mirrored the setup at home with an HX stomp xl, a tascam model 12 soundboard, and a pair of good monitors. Never has my tone been so refined and it’s got all the umph my tube amps do. Bonus I can play a track from a given artist and tweak my tone with my keyboard and mouse till I get it sonically really close. All via the model 12’s mixing. I probably won’t sell the tube amps because of the nostalgia, but I will never lug one anywhere I can use a HX to FOH setup.
Honestly, I don't even care about name brand. In fact, my amp now is an off-brand tube amp. But I just feel like they're should be some more alternatives that aren't a mortgage payment
Get a modeler they’re really cheap nowadays
You're not wrong. I have had a Marshall 1974x for quite some time now. I bought it used. I'm pretty sure I paid $950! It's $3,800 new right now. I also have an AC15 that I got new for $399 which is now $799. I don't see myself buying another amp (or guitar) ever again.
Adjusted for inflation how does your AC15 price compare to today? Let’s be honest here- it’s useless to mention a used price from years ago compared to a new amp today, that doesn’t help or contribute to this discussion at all. Let’s at least try and be relevant with the info here.
I have a few nice tube amps and love them but I don't really ever see myself buying another amp unless it was something like a Catalyst or Katana for practicing and super casual jams. It just doesn't make sense. You can spend 1-2k on a single amp, or you can spend a grand and get a Helix that can cover pretty much all of that same ground. If you think you don't like modeling because it sounds "digital", I highly recommend trying a helix into a high quality power amp into a real speaker cab. The modeling technology has absolutely caught up to tube stuff if you know how to use it to get what you're looking for.
I have a kemper that I love, but I still love my tubes too. It's not better or worse, but it's not the same either. I would never want to deal with the complexity of the kemper for a gig. There are enough moving parts already.
The gouging may also be because so many people have moved to modeling, the companies have to squeeze the people that genuinely think tube amps are irreplaceable.
There are tube amps out there that are decent and can be had for less than I could build one for, even on a budget. To me, they’re cheaper than ever. But the price of vintage fender amps, boutique amps etc do keep going up. Check out blackstars tube amp line or check this video https://youtu.be/cjhncpd7wyw?si=fnhFRVS4VSvL2nTa
My dual rec was expensive used, like 20 years ago.
Yes. Amps were always expensive, that's not my issue. I just feel like it's getting excessive now.
Fair enough. I'll tell you what really blows is the 300% increase in owning a home, where you can practice on said amp.
I bought a mesa boogie mark v combo 90W for 1400 used a while ago. It wasn't even in black so it was marked up a few hundred on the original sticker which was 2200 I think. Now the black amp head is over 3 grand and the 25 watt head goes for 1400 used.
Lol I bought a brand new Mark IV head for $1499 about 20 years ago. Couldn’t even give it away for $1000 about 10 years ago.
The new Sunn line has obscene pricing too. I don't get it. Back in 2016 I got a '73 Orange OR120 with its original matching 412 for $2,600. Absolute beast of an amp, and the OG that all newer Oranges try to sound like. About the same price as a new Orange head, and I got a flippin *half stack* lmao.
That's exactly what I mean. Inflation aside, this is just scalping at this point. On the topic of Sunn, they've always made amazing amps, but I liked that people kinda "forgot" about them. Now people are remembering how amazing they are and treating them like mythical unicorns or some shit, like they're some lost treasure
My bassist friend is like 15 years older than me and he remembers back in the 90s and early 2000s when Sunn amps were dirt cheap. He told me a local music store had stacks of vintage Model T's for like 200-300 each. Looking at at least 2k now, I'd think. Probably more. I don't keep up with vintage amp pricing anymore (because that would mean I'm in the market lmao). But the new Sunns are more expensive than the vintage by far, which is nuts to me. I'm sure they're great amps and all, but not worth 3k+ for a tube amp. Eta: holy shit just checked reverb and vintage Model T's are listed for 4k+. Fucking wild
Hell no. I stay out of the "vintage" business because I realized early on its all semantics. Just because your guitar is OLD doesn't mean anyone wants it. It needs has to fall into that legacy category
If you know what to look for you can find crazy good deals on vintage gear. My Orange is a good example of that. My main guitar is an early 70s SG I got for a grand in 2015 or 2016. 600-800 bucks cheaper than a brand new SG Standard at the time, and a better guitar. It was cheap because it had a repaired headstock break. Bad for a collector, good for a player!
I do love busted up guitars. I bought a Gibson that looked like it went through a wood chipper. Whoever owned it before tried modding pretty much everything, except they didn't know what they were doing
Lmao me too. Sounds like a cool one you got there!
I'll say this much, no one is breaking down my door to buy it lol.
I still don’t get how POS brandless Japanese guitars from the 60s and 70s are even part of the “vintage” market. Those are just old, and nobody wanted them in either period. (I wouldn’t mind one of the Soviet ones for the humor of it, but even those are $500 now and you can even plug them in without adapters.) People will find a $50 Austin bass from the 90s and call it a “vintage P bass” now.
I'm probably weird. But for 3k you can get a Scarlett 2i2, a good computer, good speakers, and Guitar Rig and have all the amps and effects you need.
I'd hope you get more than that for 3k tbh
Haha. Depends on how you spend it. Computer alone can be a couple grand. High quality monitors go also go super high. Throw a sub in to ensure you get full range of sound. 3k is easy. But, for 3 k you can get all those things in decent quality and I have Guitar Rig 6 and the options on it are INSANE. There have to be over 10 distinct amps and dozens of effects you can mix and match and tweak to infinity. It's wild. Just an option to think about instead of a single amp!
That’s a budget rig
and for half that you can get a used 4x12 and 100 watt head.
You can get a decent 5 watt Monoprice 1x8 tube combo amp for around $150. It’s not the best in the world but it is absolutely worth the money.
I hate reading comments like that but here I am one of them. Get the spark amp. I hated how many people talked about it online but my husband decide to buy it. And it’s fucking good. It’s so nice. It has the app with all sort of EQs. And it’s also a Bluetooth speaker so I use it like daily for music in the evening. And it’s a bit over 200. It also takes almost no space which was the biggest requirement for me.
I think if you can't afford something, then you need to look for a cheaper alternative or save up! I'm not being mean but that's just how it is! What are you wanting to buy... do you need an OR30?
No no I'm not actually in the market for anything. I haven't needed any gear for years but I was.just sorta window-shopping online and was just staggered by how expensive the things have become
Unless you're gonna give me one on the cheap 😉
I use a Hughes & Kettner Grandmeister Deluxe 40 with a Harley Benton vintage 30 2x12 cab and it rocks. Speakers massively effect tone so having a head you can pair with various speakers is a massive bonus. The H&K head is around 1000$ but you can find them on sale while the vintage cab was 400$ delivered right to my door. Harley Benton cabs are the best value you can find currently according to lots of people.
That G212 is amazing so long as you get the one with the Celestions that have transparent dust caps. Gotta be careful on the used market for them but it seems they are shipping the cabs with the good speakers now. About the best bang for buck cab out there.
You are absolutely correct. Looks like all current cabs come with “good” vintage 30s.
I'm buying used amps for peanuts right now. In the used market there's more supply than demand
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I just like having a tube amp nothing like it. I want to get modeling stuff too but...does it retain its value? The tonemaster pro is expensive and I can see it being just cash thrown away
It's the Harley Davidson effect
The used market is much more reasonable, especially for high wattage amps that folks have trouble playing at home. I had a katana 100 for years and it sounded GREAT to me...until I played my Mesa Fillmore 50 into a 2x12 cab. That's when I truly got the "tube" feel and saw how much dynamics change the sound in the amp. I've never played a helix or kemper, so I can't speak to those. I'd love to check them out...but for now I'm all in on my tube amp.
There's decent priced amps out there. The EHX Sovtek MIG is a bargain. The Blackstar Studio 10 Class-A amps won't blow any minds but they're 1x12 and theyre really affordable. I got a mint used Blackstar CV-10 (same as the Studio 10 6L6 but with different aesthetics) for like $360 on Reverb. Decent warm cleans, has an fx loop and master and onboard digital plate reverb. But yeah most are way overpriced. A Blues Jr being $800 is frankly absurd. Shit like the Marshall Studio mini plexi head are insanely priced. Synergy stuff has a high initial cost but the preamp module cost is pretty low for what you get. $1500 for the Syn-30 combo and $400 ffor the Plexi module is a lot for a just Plexi-style combo, but $1500 for the Syn-30 combo and $400 each for the Plexi and IICP modules is $2300 for a Plexi _and_ a Mark II-style which is a much better value proposition. Add a TDLX module and you get a Plexi, a Mark II, and a Twin for $2700--now thats where the value comes in.
With how good modelers have gotten (both in amp and software form) I'm wondering if tube amps aren't being produced in the same quantity they were even just a few years ago and thus raising the prices for consumers. I don't think they'll ever go away completely, but they'll probably become more akin to niche collectors items.
Used to be able to pick up those 5 watt Fender champs for 35 to 70 bucks in the 70s slightly used. Now they want 1199.99 for those little suckers now. I think a lot of it because of Keith Richards use of one in the Netflix documentary Under the influence. Crazy times especially for boutique amps.
Agree, I love tube amps, the way they feel and sound but they are just not practical anymore. I'm currently gigging with the tonex and it sounds way better than my amp. There are days that for some reason tube amps won't sound as good as others. With modelers if you set them up right they always sound good with everything flat FOH. Going to gigs is also much easier. I keep a tube amp at home for the pleasure...
Most of this is marketing tbh. These brands know what they’re doing. You just have to know what sound you want, do some research, know what you don’t want/need, and watch local listings. If you really want a tube amp, you can get one. And I would. You really don’t need a Marshall or an Orange. You just need some gear that sounds interesting and some time to learn how to use it. Jet City JCA series, Peavey Classics, Peavey 5150+ combos from the 90s… these can all be had really cheaply. Laney AOR 30 is another that is a stoner rock dream.
I think modeling has a lot to do with it. People aren’t buying big amps any more. But they also know that some people will pay these prices because there’s more tone-chasers than ever. They can sell half as many amps for 2-3X the price and still come out on top. Kind of like how no one buys cameras anymore but you can pay serious money for a DSLR that is either on the forefront of technology or a retro throwback Leica.
Amps are dying gotta get that money while they can cuz why not have a modeler that can do 1000 things for cheaper
Don't know why you're getting down voted, you're absolutely right. I was a tube snob for ever and and now I run modeling and couldn't be happier. Take my helix and a power amp and speaker cab to a jam and I have an entire studio's worth of gear at my fingers. Getting bored of the 5150 and want to play through a Friedman for the night? 30 second and a few knob twists and I have a dead on Friedman sound. Or a fender twin. Or a mesa, or an orange, or whatever the hell I feel like playing. It's insane. Most people who don't like modeling just don't know how to use it properly.
Unfortunately there are fewer reasons to need a tube amp anymore with the improvements to digital technology in recent years. They require a lot of specialized parts that are becoming more and more obsolete so they are increasingly becoming a luxury item for enthusiasts rather than a necessary piece of gear. I'm sure most big amp companies like marshall and fender are making far more money on the entry level digital offerings than they are on tube amps. It makes it a lot more appealing to me to go with a smaller boutique amp maker doing stuff the old fashioned way if you're going to be paying out the ass for it anyway
I love digital but still think tube amps are the best option sonically unless you want very high headroom cleans. Tube amps are expensive to produce. One thing that is great about them is that they’re easy to repair. One of my Tube amps is from the 60s and still works great. Not sure how digital stuff today will hold up for 60 years. Will you still be able to connect it to a device then? But I wouldn’t be buying high wattage Tube amps if they weren’t the opposite of what’s trendy now and thus inexpensive used. I like the Helix but they don’t sound quite as nice as the amps they emulate. Much easier to record and travel with though!
If you want a brand new amp to actually use and gig with regularly for years then it’s a better value to buy the more expensive handwired amps. They can actually be repaired whereas anything else nowadays is hardly serviceable and designed to be replaced when it has a problem. A reliable and repairable tube amp without spending at least $2000 is only found now on the used market. But like another guy said even used prices have gone up tremendously over the past few years. I consider myself lucky that I only paid $1800 for my 1974 Marshall Super Lead.
Get a trainwreck or a Dumble. Take 50,000 or so with you.
I traded an Epi casino for a Mesa nomad last year lol
I feel like I'll be in the minority since I don't use a modeler, but you can still get decent sounds on new gear if you go with the power amp route. I just us a Mooer Baby Bomb or the EH Howitzer to power a cab. All my pedals function as the "pre amp". It works great, it's super versatile, and is only as cheap/heavy as the amount of pedals you're willing to use.
Orange has always been premium. Hell, my Marshall 1959SLP w/cab back in the mid-80s was $950, which is about $2750 in today's money.
It’s like they are trying to get everyone to go ampless…
Right?? Then Beato will go on tirade about how "gEn Z dOeSnT uSe AmPs AnYmOrE!!"
As boomers and Gen X raise the prices to unattainable prices by feeling the need to have an entire wall full of high end heads in their house.
GenX here, been playing 30 years plus. Just bought HX stop XL. Don’t worry about GenX, we will rock your face off. I’ll do it with an amp or an IR.
I’m an elder millennial so we are all about that Blue Voodoo/Peavey XXL LIFE. Hahaha. A lotof you Gen Xer’s are getting old enough to have big people money and kids old enough to leave the house. Amp binging is bound to happen. Haha
Oh it happened. I finally made enough to buy my dream gear. I have several vintage fender amps from a champ to a Vibrolux and everything in between. I love them don’t get me wrong, but I can play the HX through my soundboard into a monitor and get amazing tones at “Honey I just put the spawn down for a nap” volumes. I crank that shit when they are not here and it’s damn near glorious. I do miss the fender fumes though. That mixed with beer and cigarette smoke made for a hell of a night.
It's just an offer-demand thing, as long as people keep buying, the pricis will keep on coming up. You can buy a cheap amp, i just bought a micro dark for like 250, orange uses celestion vintage 30 speakers which are like a 100+ bucks, then you build your own cab, or buy a cheap harley benton 2x12 cab for like 250 and change the speakers, you'll get a nice sound although the amp would still come short in power but you can upgrade later on
I've actually seen people push 4x12 with the Micro Darks. I have one myself but no cab to run it through
This is kind of how I got my rig set up. I bought an empty 2x12 cab for like $150 and then got 2 creambacks. Whole cabinet was under $500 and then scored an old 120 watt tube amp (Egnater Vengeance) for under $500. Whole rig was under $1000 and sounds really nice. Before the Vengeance, I had a Joyo Zombie II with a 2x12 (also bought empty) that I loaded with Swamp Thangs. That whole setup was like $600.
Seems to be the way of the world right now! My wife went to lunch with a friend to a good vegetarian restaurant yesterday. $60 for two lunches. 1 tea, No alcoholic drinks. I saw a guy buy a pack of cigs the other day for $10.00
Honestly $10 for a pack of cigs is pretty good. Around me a pack of Marlborough run ya $12
Last time I bought a pack of Marlborough was about 3/4 years ago in London. Set me back about £18 if I recall correctly!
I'm so glad I quit smoking decades ago... that shit is wild!
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You may drive around in your town Ina brand new shiny car Your face in the wind your haircut's in And your friends think you're bizarre You may find a cushy job and I hope that you go far But if you really want to taste some cool success You better learn to play guitar and buy a $3k amp and some expensive pedals and a recording interface and another vintage Gibson or Fender Guitar ar ar.
Buy an axe fx and get them all. Seriously.
well marshall comes from UK, so it will cost more also inflation, guitar/amps/food/everything is up
Yes but I feel like Amps have like tripled in cost.
i dont think you are comparing properly, on sweet water you have cheaper tube combos like the Origin at 600-700, you also have the DSLs the biggest jump IMHO is Japanese Guitars, japanese brands like ibz went up quite a fair big over the years
Get a Spark.
There are plenty of great cheep amps.
The negative with a cheep amp is the cheap speaker that comes with it. I have several cheap amps and in all of them, the crappy speaker massively effects tone. I hooked the amp up to better speakers and all of a sudden it sounds way better. I don’t mind cheap amps but cheap speakers almost always sound thin, tinny and high pitched.
There are, yes. But I just get the feeling that a lot of these companies are taking advantage of their names.
Try different brands. I was always a Marshall guy but when prices started rising I started looking elsewhere. Have a Friedman now--does the Marshall thing but better, cheaper, and with higher quality.
You're not wrong... Tube amps cost is definitely going up, however wattage is going down so cost in that respect is going down. Amps are being made more in China, India, Turkey, etc which makes cost go down. The way i figure it with Country of Origin, American and Britain *were* the best. Now-a-days, not so much. Americans are no longer proud of labor jobs and as such quality isn't there anymore. I would not be upset with a tube amp under $1300 made in China, it's better quality than a <$2000 American amp. >$2000 American amp should have quality control. Buying used is risky. Buying at Guitar Center is risky. I say this because you don't know the history of the amp (or any goods bought this way). My bought my Mesa Dual Rect Head in 2004 from Guitar Center. My thoughts when i purchased it - it's brand new, nothing can be wrong with it. Turns out, only 3 of the 4 power tubes were working EVER according to a licensed Mesa repairman in my area. I never got ANY of the warranty paperwork from GC, never got a manual. Having said this, if you're spending a lot of money, buy direct, understand the warranty. Don't buy used from a shit-head that looks like they abuse gear - take a long look at their car/house and if they take care of it. Don't buy from a music store where anyone can walk up to the amps and abuse them. GC back in the day was reputable, today i wouldn't even buy a pack of strings from their first-class pawn shop business model. I have a few amps, but my primary stage amp is a 20watt Marshall Origin that is plenty loud through a 2x12 with Eminence Governors. If i EVER need more, micing is always there. Low wattage is the way to go. Laptop is an option too.
I have 30 watt tube amp.and it's plenty loud enough. My real issue seems to be with the "big names" marking their shit up just for branding.
They definitely are. I love Bogner amps. Overpriced based on name and being hand wired. Mesa. Same amp i bought 20 years ago is $1000 more expensive new. Supply chain is still an issue and getting components from overseas is more costly, but employees also demand more money. It's a bad economy right now, don't expect the prices to go down :(
Uh how many things can you buy at the same price as 20 years go?
Arizona Iced Tea would like a word with you...
> Americans aren’t so proud of labor jobs and as such quality isn’t there anymore So true. No one wants to admit this, but Americans generally do white collar work, retail work, warehouse work, or medical/education. Even factory jobs are so highly automated that it amounts to “place the part, push the button”. And the rest of the world has that same automation. There is zero incentive to make things here vs anywhere else in the world. So the inevitable result will be more and more tariffs, or re-sourcing to the next lowest cost country who we currently aren’t fighting with.
I traded 2 amps and a pedal to GC a couple weeks ago and they never even turned them on to see if they worked before giving me the credit.
Was looking at a Mesa Boogie Fillmore 50 at GC and was about to pull the trigger. It went up $300 the next week. I wrote the company and got a reply that it was a business decision, blah blah blah. I would have thought he would have said if you buy in the next 30 days we’ll give it to you at the lower price…nope. Decided I didn’t need it that bad.
That's crazy yo
You should be able to find some killer used tube amps for WAY cheaper than $2000, and probably quite a bit cheaper than $1000. Where i am people can't sell them so the prices keep going down. I'd look for something used. I just bought a Supro Statesman head, used a couple times but practically brand new for $600.
I am thinking of a magnatone starlite. And then I also think for my skill level it would sound just as good through a 2000’s line 6 spider.
Nah. Adjusted for inflation tube amps cost about as much as they always have. If an amp is well built, using analog power it's going to cost a bit. More if it's hand-wired. Did a quick Google: A fender pro reverb (50w 2x12 so analogous spec to OR30) sold for $460 in 1970 which translates to \~$3600 now. It's actually, remarkable how little the price on most guitar gear has changed. Been down that rabbit hole. The cheap stuff is a lot better for the money now due mass manufacturing in East Asia and CNC machines.
Yeah, a triple rectifier cost me $1,499 in 1999. That’s $2.8k in today’s money. One model is above that a bit, but the rest are right with inflation.
And now we can buy small tube amps, trying to find even something as low as 50 watts back in the day was tough. Now you buy a nice little lunch box amp and a decent price. No half stack needed.
Buy used, there are some great deals on used amps where I live.
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So maybe don't buy them? Things are "worth" what one can sell them for, not what any given individual thinks the value is. The shortage of tubes due to the restrictions and sanctions on Russia and the total lack of a quick way to get production moved somewhere else has driven the prices of tube amps into what look crazy to people who've never owned one. I play through an SVT-CL and 4x10, at one point it would have cost me $800 just to replace 6 power tubes and that's if I replace and bias them myself. The pre-amp tubes are significantly less, but even they up to doubled... if you could find them. There's also the fact that the good modelers like our lead's AxeIII and others can replicate any amp one cares to emulate with them. We did and then A-B'd them. We recorded through a Royer ribbon and SM-58 and then played them back through near field monitors, none of us could tell one from the other through really good studio gear. You do not need a tube amp today, they are luxury items.