Thinking about starting afresh - Amp for my 8 string...

[Riffmagus]

I have had my Pod X3 for around 2 years now. It's served me well - but never given me a distortion tone I have been happy to settle on.

For one or two sessions, it sounds great - then I come back to it and my ears have changed.

In short, I'm thinking of starting afresh. Nothing big, as I only record and play at home at the moment. My main axe is an Agile Intrepid Pro 8 with the dual cepheus pups.

Amp wise, I'm leaning towards a small tube head, such as the Blackstar HT5 with a 2x12 from Orange or Marshall. I'd run my Maxon od808 in the front end to tighten the bass, and then use the X3's extra eq and tone shaping to build on the sound laid out by the Blackstar.

Music wise, it's classic Doom and Stoner all the way. I love djent, but it's never clicked with my play style - so I'm sticking to what I know and makes me bang my head and pick up my axe with a big feckin' grin.

Does anyone else have any small amp contenders? I'm thinking a max of 20watt to reduce noise and hiss - plus I don't have much £££ at the moment.

Certainly appreciate any advice or info.

 

[maccayoung]

There are a ton of 'lunchbox' amps out there right now. So you're spoilt for choice.

Here's the ones that I remember:
Blackstar ht-5/20
Orange tiny/dual terror
Egnator rebel 20/30
vox night train
marshall haze
mesa transatlantic 15
Engl is even bringing one out but I can't remember what it's called
jet city jca-20h/pico-valve

The only one's I've had experience with are the dual terror (which I owned for a short period of time) and the HT-20 (which I own now) and the Transatlantic (which I played briefly instore).

For me it was essential that there were two channels. So that took a lot of the amps out of the equation.

The dual terror has a fantastic rock sound but can't get totally into the high gain area without a boost. Some people think that the distortion is a bit loose, which I can confirm but your 808 should tighten things up. That looseness would lend itself well to doom and stoner rock however. There are quite a few youtube demos on the tiny terror so I'd take a look at them. I feel they're a fair representation of what the amp sounds like.

The transatlantic had it all over the dual terror in the clean to mid gain department but I felt it couldn't do a decent high gain at all. Keep in mind, this is at low volume in the music store so there probably is a huge difference when you crank it up. The transatlantic was also really expensive, priced close to a full sized head here in New Zealand.

The one I ended up going with was the HT-20. The overdrive channel can get super saturated gain without any pedals needed, It has a pretty decent clean, and an effects loop which few of the others do. One thing to note is that the overdrive channel is voiced fairly dark so I find myself using the treble dial more than I used to. No biggie, and the more you crank it the more it opens up.