Well I have two. First is my reliable Fender '65 Twin Reverb reissue. 85 watts of classic warm clean. And it sounds great for blues when it gets cranked really hard. With no master volume that's pretty freakin' LOUD. Don't get to do that a lot, Then I have my "new" rig. Just got all the stuff from Ebay. A Carvin Quad-X preamp with nine, count 'em 9 tubes and four channels: Two different clean channels plus crunch plus another with an insane amount of gain. Each channel has the usual controls, plus there is a graphic equalizer that can be punched into any channel if you need to change the sound more. Has a built in noise gate which comes in handy with the high gain channels. The preamp is in a rack with a Carvin 100 watt tube power amp. Add four more tubes. DID YOU NOTICE I GOT 13 TUBES?? For effects I have an old Digitech DSP128 (for delay, chorus and flange) AND an Alesis nanoverb (for reverb) in the rack. The Quad-X foot controller turns the effects units on and off. It's all run through a Carvin 2X12 cabinet. It is no harder to run than using several pedals, and it's a tone chameleon. Absolute clean to insane rippin' distortion, and it fits in a 6 space rack bag, not much bigger than a Marshall head, but with lots of effects to boot, and none of it modeled. Only from Ebay, since Carvin quit making the preamp a long time back, Racks are outta date, but I DON'T CARE!!
I have a 1960 fender concert, 1965 fender bandmaster with 2 jbl, a reissue fender 1980's Vibroverb, a 1969 fender bassman, with these I use the bassman
My main set up is a '66 Fender Bassman through a Marshall 4x12 with Celestion Vintage 30s. I have other amps & cabinets but that's the winning combination.
A Gallien Kruger 250 ML guitar amp I bought in a Phoenix pawn shop 15 years ago...I hooked it up and thought,,,this thing is too small - hit a chord - the little speakers literally shot dust out on me in a clear, powerful tone..! Great little amp, built like a tank, can power 2- 4x12's in stereo or just gank it around for practices.
I use a modded Peavey Valveking head and an old Peavey 4x12 cab from the early 1990's. It actually a damn good amp, just replace all the tubes, the stocks are ok, but a set of Tung-Sol preamps and new power tubes will really make a big difference. Very smooth sound.
Once in a while I use a '61 brownface Fender Super, but usually these days it is mostly Valco amps. A 3-watt Supro 1633 plugged into a '65 Fender Showman and a 2x12 cab when I need Valco tone at huge volume, or a pair of Supro Thunderbolts in stereo for Valco tone at moderate volume, or a Harmony H415 for low-volume Valco tone! The Thunderbolt pair gets gigged the most.
Great discussion. I get so much useful information on this one thread. Back in the day when I was touring the southland I carried mesa 1-12" combo and a carvin 1-12" combo. A fender princeton by Riviera for back up or smaller clubs. some times I just used the princeton and miked it through the house system when playing clubs. Otherwise, the main act usually would supply the system through whoever was the contractor, or project manager.carvin was for clean and the mesa handled the distotion. I used a junction box A/B and both. mostly used the volume knobs to settle it down. It was to much for most of the small clubs we played like big daddy flannigans, flannnigans and that whole chain of clubs generally three stories dance floor on the floor and the band on the second floor. Used a 1970 Les Paul St. and a '67 strat that I modified had to replace the neck several times. Worked that baby hard. The les paul didn't have those skinny little baby frets and later switched from maple on the fender to ebony with jumbo frets Kept all the original parts though. Maybe my kids will put them on ebay. But not till I'm dead. I racked all of these with different equiptment over the years but always thesame config. 3 delays one that I could manually mix the wet and dry over a stereo field. and two for slap back and med dealys400ms and 500ms approx.Para eq's Chorus, flang, and all the other crap which I replaced with the coming of the Boss guitar synth. Still used the three delay config though. Thanks for keeping me up to date on all the new gear. I was already on the road when transistors came out but I like some of them for a really clean sound especially for the synth.
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