In our new ‘Shop Talk’ blog series, we’re going to focus on questions our customers regularly ask us in our stores, starting with a subject that comes up an awful lot: what's the best guitar amp under £500?
We’ll be putting the questions to selected team members who’ll tell you what they like and why they like it, bringing together a range of disparate and unique perspectives.
Bear in mind, this is not a comprehensive roundup, nor is it an objective look at comparisons or respective features: this is us asking our team about their favourite gear, subject to simple parameters. In this case, the only parameters are the price and the focus on electric guitar amps, so there will be no acoustic or bass combos in this blog. Another time!
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So, read on to hear a little more from Steve McBride, Dean Jones, Ross Brodie, Iain Montgomery and myself, Ray McClelland, about what makes us tick in terms of amps!
First up, team member Steve McBride has singled out the Blackstar HT-5R Mk II combo as his sub £500 choice. This popular 1x12 valve combo is packed with features and has bags of gain, something that will appeal to those looking for classic and contemporary dirt tones. Says Steve himself: “I recently bought one for myself! There’s a sweet attenuator to bring the power to half a watt, a voice switch for more gain and a USB direct output for when I’m recording.”
Steve is a big Punk and Hard Rock fan, so his kind of amp has to offer quality high-gain valve sounds with a sizeable thump. Not an easy task for a small combo with only a single 12-inch speaker, but this Blackstar HT-5R MkII Combo excels at it!
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The USB connectivity that Steve mentioned has an inbuilt amp simulator to accurately capture the colour and tone of the HT-5 without having to resort to micing up the speaker when recording. The ultimate house ampfor Hard Rockers? It’s definitely a contender.
This downsized brother to the famous JC-120 is the top pick of staff member Dean Jones. The full-size Jazz Chorus is an enduring classic, appealing to players as disparate as Andy Summers, James Hetfield and Adrian Belew. The focus is on pristine clean tones, achieved in stereo and with liberal coatings of on-board Chorus added for seasoning.
This smaller JC-22 model keeps the unique styling of the original, plus the two speakers (6.5” versions this time out) and, naturally, the famous Chorus circuit. Fans of jangle-some Pop style playing from the likes of Johnny Marr will adore the sounds on offer here: it is not an amp for Rockers by any means but then it was hardly designed that way.
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So why does Dean like it? “It’s got a perfect clean sound, loads of Chorus, it’s great at taking pedals, brilliant for micing up at gigs and is the perfect practice amp”. Thanks Dean, that pretty much sums it up!
Marshall are of course the most widely recognised amplifier brand in the world, with a legacy that spans well over half a century. They’ve shown up on stage with almost every Rock legend there ever was but how do things fare at the more affordable end of the spectrum? Can Marshall’s smaller and more humble models still deliver?
Of course they can, says Glasgow team member Iain Montgomery. His choice in the sub-£500 category is the all-valve DSL20CR. This is a dual-channel, 20 watt combo with an attenuator for reducing the power by half. So why did Iain pick this one?
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“My influences range from Pop-Punk bands like Jawbreaker and Blink 182 to stuff like the Stone Roses and the Cribs. I play a Tele and a Mustang and want a classic valve crunch that can serve me well over no matter what I play. What’s more classic than Marshall? I like distortion and drive but I’m not keen on high-gain, Metal sounds. This DSL20CR nails the middle ground for me and sounds classic.”
‘I love any amp bold enough to call one of their channels ‘Brown’, after Eddie Van Halen’s famous tone! That aside, I really enjoy how flexible and capable this amp is for using with a number of different guitars and styles. The FX are BOSS quality, the attenuator is super handy and it records direct really well too. What else do you need?’
The BOSS Katana 50 MKII features upgraded sounds and additional FX. There’s even a channel designed specifically for plugging electro-acoustic guitars into. Whilst certainly comprehensive, none of these features would matter much if the amp itself didn’t sound good. Thankfully, the sounds available are very impressive, not to mention reactive and detailed. For a one stop shop for your home tone needs, this is a very good choice indeed.
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I love how this amp looks, I love how light it is and, as I hinted earlier, it sounds wonderful with a smattering of your favourite stomp boxes! I love artists like Tom Waits and Nick Cave and, to me, this amp gets me into those kind of headspaces in ways that other amps maybe don’t.
So, there you have it. Our passions, our opinions. Were we to lift the price parameter somewhat, you’d no doubt be reading about five entirely different amps but then that’s the whole fun of it! These limitations are often more illuminating than having an entirely open forum. It’s good to discuss and celebrate equipment at all price levels, not just the beginner’s gear and then the very top of the range! We love it all here and we want to spread that love.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our team members’ insights into affordable amps. There will be much more of this in the future so keep an eye out for future blogs!What if there was a way to get the classic Deluxe Reverb experience without the various practical drawbacks of a valve amp? That’s what the boffins at Fender managed to achieve with its most ambitious digital modelling offering yet. Coupling the latest in cutting-edge modelling tech with a hefty solid-state power stage, the Tone Master comes in a lightweight but resonant pine cabinet housing an equally back-friendly Jensen N-12K speaker, and there’s no faffing with presets or menus here. Simply turn it on, plug in and be greeted with a sound that captures the authentic tone and feel of the original at both stage and home-friendly volume levels. It sounds too good to be true. But that’s the point.
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While it might look like an everyday stompbox, it’s helpful to think of the Iridium as an amp itself, sitting at the end of your signal chain the way one of the three vintage amplifiers it simulates – dubbed ‘Round’, ‘Chime’ and ‘Punch’ – might. ‘Chime’ is modelled after the Brilliant channel of a Vox AC30TB, the ‘Round’ voicing is based on the Normal channel of a Deluxe Reverb, and ‘Punch’ is based on a 100-watt Plexi with additional gain on tap after two o’clock on the drive control. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg here.
This collaboration between Blackstar Amplification and blues-rock force of nature Jared James Nichols is a 1×12 combo version of his EL84-powered signature amplifier. While ostensibly a twin channel amp, the JJN-20R MkII features two distinct voicings for both clean and overdrive channels, offering the player four footswitchable voices to explore, with accents from both sides of the Atlantic.
The amplifier. The basic specs suggest this device isn’t so much a Swiss Army knife as a Red Army tank regiment, with the power and range to cover most players’ needs both live and in the studio. And it’s programmable – with 128 editable presets – but it’s analogue, with H&K’s proprietary Spirit technology claiming to recreate the tone and feel of valve-based circuitry. The core amp sounds are remarkably good – it’s all very ‘valvey’ and makes this just about the most versatile non-digital amp we’ve ever used.
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Though the original Matchless models were influenced by classic British designs, the new Laurel Canyon has been inspired by sounds and circuit designs that are much closer to home for the Californian amp company. But the Laurel Canyon is still every inch a Matchless, with stellar point-to-point wiring, a steel chassis, a heavy Baltic birch plywood cabinet and a custom-voiced UK-made Celestion Heritage G12H30.
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