Guitar Amplifiers
Fender- Hotrod Deville w/410"
This all tube combo amp happens to be a personal favorite of mine.
It features 60 watts power, four ten inch speakers, 3 channels ("normal", "drive", and "more drive"), "bright" switch,
and reverb. The normal channel gives you that smooth tone of a '59 Bassman and the drive channel gives you that dirty Stevie Ray sound.
The Deville gives you pure Fender American Tone and with lots of power.
Overall Rating [6]
Price- $1000 Canadian.
Vox AC-30
This is a 33 watt two-twelve combo (with Celestion green back speakers) w/ three channels (Brilliant, Normal, and Vib-Trem)with 2 inputs for each channel and NO reverb.
Voxes are notorious for exploding into flames. The newer ones have larger top vents, but a fan behind it still wouldn't be a
bad idea. Being Class A Tube amp, it does burn out tubes rather quickly, but that's the price to pay for great tone.
The Edge of U2 has an immense collection of these amps, a couple of which actually erupted into flames on stage. Go figure.
The amp is a devilishly loud 33 watts and has three handles so it's easier to carry this unwieldy beast.
Overall Rating [9]
Price- $1600 U.S.
Marshall JCM 900
The JCM 900 is probably the most widely used heavy metal guitar amp in the world.
It features a 50w hi-watt head (100w optional) with 2 channels (clean, drive) and 2 speaker
cabinets with four twelve inch Celestion speakers.
Its a great sounding amp but you can only
really get one sound out of it, and thats heavy metal! Great if
your in to bands like Metallica or Slayer (and nothing but that), but you can't really
get any other sound out of it. The drawback to this amp is that the clean channel
isn't really clean and the drive channel is too "overdriven".
Overall Rating [7]
Price- $1500 for the head and about $800 for each cab. Canadian.
Fender Dual Professional
The dual pro features 100 watts rms, 2-12" Celestion Vintage 20 speakers.
Created in the Fender Custom Shop, the Dual-Pro uses classic Fender tone-shaping,
vibrato and reverb circuitry to create a truly wondrous sound, with serious volume.
I have played out of this amp and belive me when I say that there is not a better amp out there.
Overall Rating [10]
Price- $3000 Canadian
Mesa Dual Rectifier Trem-o-Verb
Well, Mesa's done it again! They have once again created an amp that blows all
of the others out of the water. At the infamous Guitar Player Amp Summit of 1994
the magazine's top reviewers tested 28 one hundred watt amps. They were amazed that
the Trem-o-Verb blew away every amp in its field, including amps as diverse as the
Fender Vibro-King and the Vox AC-30, including amps costing up to 4x as much.
Clearly the best amp that money can buy, the T-Verb features everything that you
find in the Dual Rectifier (100w, channel cloning, reverb, etc...) but has been
modified for blues. The T-Verb features tremolo, dual gain channels (vintage/modern),
and more tone than you can find in any other amp. It is availible in head w/412" cab,
head w/212", or 212" combo. All armed with Celestion Vintage 30's.
This is a serious amp for the serious blues player. I strongly suggest that you
check out the Mesa/Boogieweb site.
Overall Rating [10]
Price- $1599 USD for the head and $1799 ($2750 CDN at Steve's Music) USD for the combo.
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