Tone nirvana is elusive and ultimately a compromise. A small amp will drive at reasonable volumes and is great especially for home or in the studio. However, a small amp doesn't cut it live or open air venues. The converse is true of a large amp, plus you get to lug the bastard round. Then what tone do you want? Fender clean or Marshall drive? Can you get both? I've tried a number of options to get drive
1. Emulation with Marshall 15 watt
My first amp in a while, really just to practice on. Fine for that but solid state and small sound. Wouldn't be heard over drums.
2. Behringer V-Amp 2
Behringer and other modellers like Line-6, BOSS COSM, emulate popular amp sounds and allow drive at reasonable volume. I have a couple of problems with emulators:
- Sound: I've not heard an emulator that comes close to a real valve amp
- Complex: I spent more time fiddling with the technology than playing
- Unreliable: I single failure and you lose everything.
- Delicate: Not robust enough for live work.
My first valve amp in a long time. Great Fender clean and reverb sounds. Loud but also heavy to carry around. I really didn't understand how to use the drive channel until just before I sold the the amp. The trick is to dial in low levels of drive 3-5 rather than everything on full.
4. Boss SD-1 -> Boss DS-2 -> Fender 2x12 Hot Rod DeVille
I didn't understand how to get a good drive sound and had given up on modellers, so why not add pedals. Cheap in the states to. Used both pedals to get two stage drive.
5. Fender Twin-Amp (with Gain Stage)
The Fender Twin is a legend and I thought this amp, with Gain stage and Tremelo would take me back to Guitar -> lead -> amp.
Clean, Reverb and Tremelo sounds fantastic. Also Very loud. However Gain Stage, is tres ordinaire, not as good as drive on the Hot Rod. Unfortunately, the moderm Twin is very heavy, 85 lbs. Using, the Boss SD-1 -> Boss DS-2 -> gave better sound than gain stage but I never perfected the sound levels and it only work well with my Fender guitars and Gibson Les Paul. Hotter pickups, Flying V and PRS custom, sound bad.
6. Boss SD-1 -> Fender Re-Issue Bassman
Fender Twin was just too heavy to lug around. The Bassman is easy to carry. Famous clean changing to compressed sound with volume. The original Marshall amp was based on the Bassman! This must be the sound.
BOSS DS-2 sounded really brittle, so I took it out of the loop, SD-1 sounds OK but noisy on high drive levels.
As with the Fender Twin hotter pickups sound poor.
7. Fulltone OCD -> Fender Re-Issue Bassman
Marshall, DOD, Digitech, Boss etc. duke out it out at the $100 pedal level and they give good but not brilliant performance.
I really wanted a pedal that will allow all my guitars to shine. The criteria is:
- Brilliant drive sound
- Variable to suit all guitars and wide range of tone drive sounds
- Well made and reliable
- Well regarded by average (me) and professional guitarists
- Not much space on the pedal board, so small pedal required
The other guitarist already has a tube screamer, so I don't want to add to that sound.One pedal has the review and the sound. The Fulltone OCD.
Great drive sound that can be controlled on the guitar by the volume and tone pots. Really great drive guitar sound ala Pete Townshend and Angus Young. Great contrast with tubescreamer.
If I only had one effect, it would be this one!
