1.) TOAN. It delivers the goods. It does the edge-of-breakup thing I love, Ms. V has said is "my sound", others have concurred is "my sound" and is, in fact, my sound. AC30, volume noon, bass/treble at 1:30, cut off. Fender with singles, tremolo, tape delay. Signed, sealed and delivered, that's my signature thing. Roll back the volume on the fiddle a bit for real cleans, step on a dirtbox for distortimicating. Quoth Chris from Garda last night: "he doesn't have enough distortions on his board". This is an obvious lie for laughs from his perspective, but from mine it's true. But I digress.

1.5) Motherfucking powertubes die during the gig. My shit's cutting in-and-out. I have a Fulldrive and OCD chained simply to get any fucking volume. (And no top end. Sounds like I'm playing on the neck pickup with the tone off.) I'll be on retube 3 in a year. Don't ask what happened when I needed to kick in the Geiger Counter for the songs I use it on. Either that or the map roars back to life and I'm killing everyone onstage with the settings for a dead amp. And massive volume, ubergain and epic feedback.

2.) Again, love the toan. When it works. But I'm fighting the thing, and my band is fighting me. With an attenuator, half the time I can't hear. Without, half the time they can't hear anything but drums and my guitar.

So: shit's mad gay, bro.

The AC30 edge-of-breakup thing is my base tone. That's my sound, period, fullstop. Anything else is added or subtracted from that sound. I chased it, I found it... its source is an uncontrollable weapon.

So I have two options.

One, permanently affixed attenuator, in-ear monitors, retube every four months. joey, you're a sweetheart, and the individually adjustable treble and bass controls on your attenuator I've been using are an awesome idea. That does not work for me in practice. Too thin or doesn't cut like it needs to. I like it in theory, but I fight it like I fight the amp. I have the money for the in-ears, I'm the last person in the band without them. My shit never changes, regularly scheduled maintenance, hope I'm at a good venue... works.

Two, fuckit, diferent map that I know works/take a shot at something else that I'm not intimately familiar with but may do the trick. Even maybe something with a master volume.

Super Reverb, Shiva. I know they work. Have both gigged and recorded with both of them before. Hearts muchly, my two other Fave-O-Rite Maps. Other options: Dr. Z, Hiwatt, Matchless, Bad Cat, another Fender- Twin? Vibrolux? Maybe a Valvetech? (Will that, being an AC30 clone, shit out on me?) Diezel Einstein or Schmidt? (Lulz at an electro-goth band going onstage with a pair of Diezels for not-metal-toans!) Orange anything? (I doubt this, but two people told me to try a Rockerverb today?!)

TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW. Keep going with The Beast, or say fuckit and buy something halfway reliable?

But... THE TOAN??!!

What gets me THAT without the inherent fuckery of an AC30? Problem is "that sound" is the sound of an amp running at its edge 100% of the time. Balls And Shaft!

What about a Hayseed 30 or one of the boutique AC30s?

A lot of guys seem to like those toanes even betrar then their AC30s, and usually people who like their AC30s love their AC30s. Also, from what I hear, they are of a much higher build quality. Then again, I am not 100% what model you have

6/TBX. '90s. Forget the exact year, but I once knew and posted it. This is the one that's supposably closest to the oldschool stuff toan-wise.

Don't get me wrong, I love my AC30. It is that sound. The problem being it's everything that comes with getting that sound out of an AC30. It's a maintenance hog and retarded loud without an attenuator. Or whisper-quiet unless the guitar is blasting in the monitor. There Is No In-Between. One of the shows we did with Lost Patrol I was overjoyed that I could actually hear myself onstage for once... And Mr. Chris on synths was all like "all I could hear was Eric" and I was all "my mix was great?!". Ballsack. Everyone hates that thing except for the fact it sounds fucking awesome, which everyone acknowledges. Along with the fact it's broken down repeatedly because it totally fulfills its reputation for reliability.

Problem being the toan does actually rool, and everyone knows this. I've gotten comments from random musicians who've run into me randomly.

...the best compliment, in my current mood, being some metallerd00d I don't even know who saw us Friday night telling me how tight we were and I'm thinking "I played half that shit by muscle memory and the solos halfway by eye 'cause I was cutting out about four songs in".

I'm shocked, now that I think about it, that the guy stayed to see us, 'cause right around when we did Wasteland Of Your Heart and the Kate Bush cover, all the metalhead kids left. Save for our industrialisms, we're not a heavy band.

Have you played around with an Orange?

Lovely amps but I am thinking they may not be quite what you are looking for.

Twins are loud and bright. I like Twins, I like Twins a lot. If you haven't played a Twin yet, you should play one. Metalfanatic has a Twin, you might be able to convince him to do some clippary for yous.

Other Fender offerings are awesome as well. I really only have experience with my SF Bassman and SF Twins though. I have noodled around on a DRRI that was plenty swell, but I did not get to mess with it much.

I have heard the Valvetech offerings are high quality stuff, and I think one of the selling points a lot of owners talked about on HCAF/HCFX was that they required less maintenance/broke down less. However, I could just be smoking crack on that one, so you might want to fact check it.

Yes, and I don't think they are. I was actually kinda weirded out by the Orange recommendation. Part of me thought "is this because they sound "old" to you guys and I play an AC30?"

I've spent time with Twins. They're nice, but Supers are more my speed as far as Fenders are concerned. I love the Super Reverb.

I know that crowd liked the Valvetech stuff, but it's been so long since I've actively been on there I don't remember why.

Re: other stuff I mentioned, I have recorded and gigged with a Shiva before. Albeit in a totally different context. But I heart that amp. That, Super Reverb and AC30 are my three favorites of anything I've put to serious use. The rest of my list from the first post, I've fooled around with at best and never put to a practical use outside of a guitar store.

I'd say take some time to play around with some older Fenders like the Supers and Twins.

Maybe see if a local shop will let you "borrow" one to test out in a band situation before you buy. A couple of shops around here are cool with it as long as you leave some sort of collateral with them like a credit card.

I feel like you may like the cut and dry simplicity of those maps, plus they are notorious workhorse amps that rarely need maintenance. Shit, some of those old Fenders have been running fully stock for decades. And, if they do breakdown, they are usually some of the easiest and cheapest amps to repair.

snaxually, have you ever had a chance to play around with any of the versions of one of these: ...?






I have not really had a chance, but I have heard good things. IIRC, they can be a bit quirkier than other Fender maps though.

I can gig with a Super whenever I want, and have. I know that they'll do. I loved those before I had regular access to one. There's a '73 Super- Silverface, but with the Blackface circuit- on the Garda record. I've used the Blackface RIs as well. I've not played a Concert though. Were I to go with a Fender, I'd probably hit a vintage Super or RI before anything as they break up sooner than Twins and I generally prefer the tone. Years later, I'm kicking myself for not buying a '65 Bandmaster head (read: Super Reverb in head form) when I found several of them for not very much at all.

The only place that has anything cool around here, really, has all the boutiquey stuff GC doesn't. The chances of me renting anything are, roughly, nil. Not anything I'd actually want, anyway. I do want to take a trip out there anyway to play around with some of their stuff- current production Bogners (they've changed the Shiva), Bad Cat, Diezel, Dr. Z, anything else they have in stock that wouldn't bore me. And maybe for laughs to hear a Splawn in person, not because I'd want one but simply because they carry them.

ugh. A Quandry.

You have your toan but reliability and volume can put a fucking real damper on the joy. As a quick aside, when was the last time you rewired your pedalbored? I was having issues with the Egnater , or what I was thinking was a problem with the Eggie and I decided to re-wire the pedal board and voila, issues went away. I honestly thought it was a premap tube issue as I was intermittently losing gain. My board has all newer cables but I changed them out and have not had an issue since. That was an odd circumstance but couldn't hurt. That said you have been replaced your toobs more than usual.

Sucks that the attenuator didn't workout. Maybe a different attenuator?

I'm thinking with the reliability issues a different map may be your only solution.

You know, checking into Dr. Z stuff may not be a bad idea either.

But yeah, with your board preferences I think a stripped down amp with the least amount of things to fuck up would be your best option.

Voxes, though toan beasts, seem to have a bad reputation for reliability.

Shit what about one of those old 70's Musicmans that were essentially a Bassman with a SS poweramp (IIRC, I know at least one part of the amp is analog SS) just for live use? They are supposed to be damn near indestructible, and with lots of usable toanes. May not be your ideal sounds, but they are also cheap (heads), so you could keep the AC30 for recorderings and that for liveries as a pure workhorse.

Valvetech Hayseed 30 is a more reliable format for the vox style, and not super pricy either.

I almost think that you might, as it seems the vast majority of your parts have some dirt on them, be able to swing an AC15 or Matchless Lightning(or clone) sort of map. If you are playing mic'd clubs then it can be the perfect format. You would actually probably be able to play many but the hugest places unmic'd also. If you can rent or borrow a 15-20w map to try out at practice it might give you some better ideas of what they are capable of.

I would say consider a 15-20w with either a 2x12 with efficient/loud speaks innit, or some type of 4x12. The head format is much more reliable due to the separation from the speaker vibration. Shit will just last longer when it is being rattled about less.

Also be sure to czech out all of the crop of recent cheaper decent stuff, the Egnater Tweaker, the Jet City 20w and 50w(but maybe be prepared to recover them to hide their uglinesses). Just to make sure that you aren't overlooking something good there. The Jet City stuff in particular, i find very intriguing. Though quite hideous visually.

Also, if you find that 15-20w can cut it, there is a whole crop of stuff you could look into. Personally, i ditched EL84s a while ago because they were simply not lasting very long for me. I like Vox circuits into 6V6s, 6L6s, and i intend to try EL34s at some point. The octal tubes regain some of the overbass that is present in the large amp but lost somewhat when the circuit is reduced to lower wattage. Oversized transformers also work well for this. Matchless, Valvetech, Dr. Z, DIY , lots of different ways to get there.

He does not want a Twin... if his AC30 is too loud, the Twin will make his band members (including his drummer) cry in frustration. At half power, the Twin does the edge of breakup thing with the volume at around 8, and anything more would drown out my drummer, whom is the loudest drummer on the face of the earth. I'd say the thing would still be clean when at the maximum volume that his drummer could still hear himself.


They do sound like sex, though.

Postscript. Snaxo, what did you wind up getting for the porpoise of recto tubeness?

Oh I know Twins are stupid loud, I was thinking one of the older mid-seventies SF models with a Master Volume though. A bit more tameable but still can get loud as fuckall. Though, they are less known for there ability to break up. They usually stay clean clean clean but are moddable.

Any non-MV Twin is damn near unusable if you want it to be break up even just a little bit.

Great, I just reminded myself how badly I want a SF Twin.


ffffffffffUUUUUUUUUUUU

Luckily they is on the cheaper side. 'Specially in today's buyer market.

Nothing is never going to get you there except for your special NMV AC30... I would get something similar yet equally awesome in its own right (and reliable too!)

Were I in your shoes/boots, I'd go Matchless DC-30.

It does have a sparkly grillecloth...