Valve Amps vs Amp Farms
Guitar Tab
TONE AND THE ‘CURSE’ OF THE BOUTIQUE VALVE AMP BY CHRIS WATSON-TONE ADDICT AND (PROUD) POD USER!
A recent ad on a site I hang out at went along the lines of, ‘Splawn Modded Marshall For Sale…full mod done on this 1978 Marshall’. I was gonna add a punch line of ‘It sounds just like a Marshall…only more so!’ when somebody beat me to it with this bit of diatribe:
“Forgive my ignorance, but, new control panels, circuit, valves, transformers, covers, etc - yet this is a Marshall? I recall the janitor's tail. "This broom's never let me down, it’s still all original. It's only had two new handles and three new heads."
The reply came zooming back:
”When I bought it, it was a 1978 2203. For the most part, it was gutted and rebuilt as a Splawn Pro Mod. Some of the electronics are the same, the chassis is the same, the Marshall logo, don't remember what else. The board, transformers, and filter caps are all new, plus the mod. It’s not the same amp that it used to be. I mean, it’s a SPLAWN MODDED Marshall, not an original Marshall.”
Now I have no wish to be rude about the people who are DEVOTED to valve amps; we all have hobbies, beliefs, too much money etc! BUT, it’s when the tone crones get all uppity about the less than true fact that shelling out ridiculous amounts of money for an amp that resembles and supposedly sounds like something made 20-odd years ago that I get really mad. We are under the belief that because George Lynch recorded his old Dokken stuff thru a Marshall borrowed off a friend who ‘wouldn’t part with it for any amount of money’, we’re in the same boat and bemoaning the latest digital modellers as being ‘too clean, too sterile, nothing like…’ Well, nothing like what? It was George Lynch who was playing the bloody amp…did ya think it would sound lousy?!?!?!?!
"Tone is, sadly, in the fingers and there’s not much that you can do about that." As Ted Nugent found out back in the day when, after chasing down the ‘new hotness’ that was Eddie Van Halen to try his gear out, commented after plugging into Ed’s setup at a sound check somewhere in middle America that it sounded ‘nothing like Ed’ to which Ed replied, ‘Well who were you expecting?’
Plugging into our heroes gear will not make us sound like our hero. I should know-I was cursed with valves from the first moment I laid eyes on them. My first Marshall was bought in 1976 for £60 (about $100). I phoned the guy up and he said it was a ‘Mushell’…I said I’d be round in 3 minutes with the money! It was a 100w Superlead head (don’t ask me the chassis number or who made the resistors or what gauge springs were used to house the grommet on top of the axle-welt…I didn’t know where to plug the mains lead in!). I plugged it in to my homemade 4 x 12 expecting it to make ‘By-Tor And The Snowdog’ noises immediately. Sadly, it sounded very normal and I was very depressed. ‘Try putting a patch lead between the two channels-it’s what Blackmore does’. Maybe he did…but I still sounded crap! ‘It’s the speaker cab then’…so a Marshall 4 x 12 slant front was purchased…still crap! Buying a fuzz pedal made the world of difference…now I sounded like crap whilst frying bacon!
And so it went on…buying amp after amp to find the missing link that wasn’t there-I was just a crap guitarist. Like a dreadful driver, giving me a Ferrari wasn’t going to address the problem of not being able to reverse round a corner!
My first taste of ‘amp snobbery’ came when I bought a Park Stack consisting of a 100w Master Volume amp head and two 4 x 12’s…one slant front and one straight.
I did a gig and a guy who had a Marshall stack of the same spec tried to ridicule me because I’d bought a Marshall copy. Not prepared to stand down, we took his and mine apart to find all of the major components to be the same…and Jim Marshall’s name on both amps. Seems Jim had a touch of the Leo Fender vs CBS heebeejeebies cos these things were identical in all but name….Your Honour!
So I went thru the process of buying amps over the next 10 years to make me feel better about being inadequate. Marshall 2 x 12 Jubilee combo, then a Gallien Kreuger 250ml. A Hughes and Kettner combo followed by a Mesa Boogie Tri-Axis and a ADA Pre-amp. I also bought a Sansamp (can’t remember model), which sounded superb for rhythm but crap for lead when I was recording. I also tried a Zoom 9002, which sounded great for lead but crap for rhythm when recording. Money flew out of my wallet like fireflies. I kept businesses afloat and sent sales guys in music stores on expensive holidays but still my sound sucked. Or so I thought. Speaking to friends and fellow muso’s drew a blank because as many loved it as didn’t think it was up to much.
Finally, in 2001, I was in a music store and was looking at the amp section. I’d pretty much given up the guitar and was left with a 30w Fender amp, which was amazing for a tranny; sustain wherever I wanted it no problem. A guy was trying out a Line6 Flextone II XL 2 x 12 combo. I watched as he went thru the entire range of sounds and effects…from a very convincing Fender Twin/Bassman for a SRV tone right the way to a Soldano SL for a more smoking sound. THIS was what I was looking for! No more having to use loads of effect pedals and cart them around, changing batteries and getting awful sounds depending on where, when, the time of the month, where Mars was in line with the Sun etc…I BOUGHT IT! I started recording into my PC almost immediately and found that people asked me about ‘what Marshall I was using’ and ‘how did I get that Satriani tone’? Well it was an eye-opener to me because here I was, pretty much being able to mimic everybody from Gary Moore, Angus Young, SRV…all with one amp! Of course, my tube fanatic friends were NOT happy. But stuff them…a man and his tone know NO compromise!
Since then I bought a PODxt (and also had a Peavey 5150 stack for a VH project-far too fizzy for an Ed sound…I have a friend I’ll call strat78 who gets the closest Ed sound from Van Halen 1 that you’ve ever heard…all with an xt)) and I pretty much get whatever sound I want. Tone starts in my fingers and the xt helps it along. I feel a connection I couldn’t get with a valve amp (where it seemed even the weather had a factor how good it would sound!) and it convinces most people but NEVER all. In a recent ‘Spot The Valve Amp’ quiz on a website I frequent, 5 clips were posted and people were asked to guess which was the valve amp. 80% got it wrong; it says a lot to me.
Let me finish by saying I’m not asking people to say that these things are better than valve amps, sound more convincing or anything…just use your EARS and not your credit card, stop worrying about what your muso buddies will think and BUY WHAT YOU THINK IS BEST ONCE YOU’VE HEARD THEM.
As a final parting shot… I had a friend in the late ‘80’s who used to trawl the Home Counties around London for Marshall amps going cheap…usually from guys who pronounced them ‘Mushell’! For every amp they sent to the US, they received a shiny new Jackson Soloist in return…this was when they were EXPENSIVE! He was getting the amps for around £50 ($80) and shipping them over and receiving a £1200 guitar in exchange. Madness. His name was Bill Gates…hargh, hargh…no, that’s not true. "Let the flaming begin…the guys who swear the screws and the vinyl make a difference to the sound can go first!"
About the Author Who is Chris Watson? I’m a UK guitarist who has been playing for 30+ years. I'm the lead guitarist in NWOBHM band BLACK ROSE. We did a couple of albums, a handful of singles and played every bar, dive, toilet as well as some decent venues (like The Marquee in Wardour Street, London, The Dynamo Club in Eindhoven, Holland and Newcastle City Hall; a boyhood dream for a Northerner like me!) in both the UK and Europe. Now we're BACK and hoping to get a new album released early next year. Chris Watson.com
Line 6 Flextone III XL 2x12 Stereo Combo
Updated: 2/19/07 |
