Buyers' Guide. Good Solid State Amp for USD500/MYR2000 Part I.

Of course eventually you'll need a proper amp to go with the new guitar. Buying a guitar before an amp is wiser as opposed to the opposite because with that guitar one could still conduct such practices. If one is so wanting to plug in, they could always bother a friend who has an amp or rent a studio. In my experience, I have not met anyone who bought an amp prior to the purchase of a guitar then stare at the former for days, weeks, or months or years before acquiring the latter.

Wait, Yus! What!? Okay, okay... I know this entry is rather sudden. In case you’re confused, I am picking up from the ‘’Buyers’ Guide Good Rocker Guitar For USD500/MYR2000’’ entry.

My recent chat/consultation didn’t cover just guitars. My friend did ask about amplifiers and pedals too. I will elaborate on each accordingly as we get to them. What I'm trying to do now is split what had transpired into three buyers’ guide and rant entries. Guitars, amps and everything in between. Bear in mind what I had suggested for my friend may not apply to your needs. If it does, then great. I'm not an expert on all the amps jargon. What I'm recommending has many similar features to what I am using now which is a Solid State amp. Furthermore, my friend does not have a clue about amplifier tech and spec. It sure feels like I'm speaking to a mirror in other words trying to sell something to myself but then again who else knows yourself other than yourself? Peanuts this will be.

Let's say I want to buy a solid state amp. What do I look for and why? Firstly, we need to look at the internal block diagram of an amp to know where things fall in line. I'll be explaining from left to right i.e. from the input circuit to the speaker driver.

PRE-AMP:-

This is the first and most important section of the circuit. It's where the tonal trademarks of any and all companies lie. It must have at least two channels, but three is good too. Four or more and I’m compelled to suspect it's an AKM chip or DSP chip simulator amp. If so, sorry No and No. I'm not fussy about whether a Solid State amp uses transistors or Opamp (Integrated Circuit) design in the front end. Hybrid pre-amp are fine too but those are rare nowadays. I'm fine with shared or discrete equalizer for each channel. Bass, Mid and Treble are a must. The overdrive/distortion channel can tell a lot about the design engineers behind it. A ludicrous gain tells you the whole design team are deaf. A high gain tells you half the design team are deaf. A mild gain tells you half the team are deaf. Too light of a gain tells you the whole team are deaf. No gain means the whole team are long dead or nearing death. As for the clean channel… It's clean. No issue.

Loop Junction :- FX LOOP, SEND/RETURN, PRE OUT/POWER IN, LINE OUT/LINE IN:

Yes. Trust me. You/I need this so it's compulsory. Some sort of knob for mix level is appreciate so that I don’t get startled by incoming signals from an external device(s). If there’s none of such knob. It’s fine.

REVERB:-

I prefer real spring reverb technology. Some solid state amps of today may not be able to avoid the use of the FV1 digital reverb by Spinsemi or similar forms. They claim it could replicate the spring reverb. The absence of Reverb is not a major disadvantage. The effects Loop welcomes any external reverb and more.

POWER AMP:-

I prefer transistors as they are discrete and able to disperse heat well. Power IC for large watts are impractical, I believe. They may be obsolete sooner than expected. Anyway this is where the output capacity is calculated by engineers. Measured by what is known as ‘’watt’’ in RMS. It basically tells you the power output and is not to be confused with those crazy over hype PMPO wattage on boom boxes and Midi HiFi sets you've seen in supermarkets. No, RMS is not the amps’ power consumption either. It's not related. I'm happy to tell you almost all guitar/bass amp manufacturers have come clean about their amps’ projection, and wattage. Almost always the RMS Wattage is shown in the model number. E.g. Marshall VS80 is 80watts, Crate GX15 is 15 watts, Carlsbro GLX40 is 40 watts, Hughes & Kettner Attax 80 is 80 watts, Peavey Bandit 112 is 100 watts… Hmmm. Peavey Rage 158 is 15 watts… Huh? Laney LV100 is 65 watts… Huh? What!?  Well, I did say almost. Anything above 40 watts is fine.

LOUDSPEAKER SIZE:-

Of course all of the above would be redundant if the amplifier has the wrong inappropriate speaker size. This may not be important to some but 12 inch speaker driver is my preferred choice. I believe the guitar tone is better heard on this diaphragm size. For us men of metal who may be having difficulty comprehending all this, let’s put it in terms of a woman’s hindquarters. Personally, 1x12 is just nice. It’s satisfactory. Not too big, not too small. Perky, sweet buns. 2x12 is getting on the bustier side of things. Some of you like a little extra. More to love. Thicker tone… and then there’s the ‘’monster booty’’ of the lot, 4x12. These are for the big guns and will surely turn heads regardless of venue. With that said, I leave the face on sitting to your imagination.

Foot note. Please correct me if this is wrong.

When the reverb is placed after the loop, then it’s call a FX Loop or Send/Return.

When the reverb is placed before the loop, then its call a Line In/Out, Pre Out/Power In.

Next post, we/I will be looking at some of today's solid state guitar amplifiers.

Solid State Convert.

yustech