these sound GREAT with the batteries almost dead. I am not shitting!

mr.arrison wrote:

these sound shitting with the batteries almost dead. I am not GREAT!

FYP

Bump

Boombats - go for the Vox Pathfinder. I've got one and I can get a surprising amount of tonal variety from the thing. It's also surprisingly loud - at least mine is - so keep the volume down on it.

With different tone dial settings on my guitar (Tele), I can get ok approximations of the following sounds:

Clean/Tone on 0 = Indistinct Byrdsy rhythm jangle. Lacks definition but nice.

Clean/Tone on 10 = Big Star-esque sound. Glassy. Think "September Gurls" rhythm tone only not as good.

Distorted/Tone on 0 = Surprising early Zeppelin-esque sound. Really, no joke. Think "Lemon Song" rhythm tone only not as good.

Distorted/Tone on 10 = Absolutely brutal Big Black/Gang of Four glassy distortion. I can get some really harsh sounds out of the thing.

Go for the Vox.

I have both. The pathfinder isn't that usable for me...i lent it to a friend for practice, cause i couldn't get anything out of it.

The Valve jr. sounds great in some ways. low volume break up. very mid-rangey. with a few simple mods it's supposed to sound better. I haven't had time to do any of them yet.

Of the amps being discussed I've only heard the valve junior, and I was actually pretty impressed. I heard it being used in to a Marshall 4x12, cranked all the way up. Sounded great. Was also pretty damn loud.

I'm looking for accurate reproduction of my guitar and pedal sounds at low volumes. I don't need tone from the amp so much as monitoring. I know scott scoffs at those who get their "tone" from their "pedals" but I can't afford a shit-hot tube head nor do I have the space to use one at volumes where the character will be most apparent.

My birthday (and Reagan's and Marley's) is coming up really soon so I gotta pick one.

Basically if the noise floor is greater than the actual sound at low volumes, then it's no good for me.

the valve Jr. head uses a DC filiment supply ( the combo doesn't) and is pretty quiet... little to no hum.

I blew mine up though... I fed a faulty tube signal generator into it and blew something in the VJr... need to get it onto the bench.

The Pathfinder would get my vote, with a few caveat's mine was a little noisy with my single coil guitars but with my buddies 72 tele reiss' it was great. I leant mine to my brother as I got the larger cambridge to gig with (which I really like now that I'm using my brother's ES335 copy). As a bonus it can be had super cheap, and has tremelo and a switchable boost (although it is a big jump in volume). A bandmate still has one and likes it with his guitar (a yamaha les paul type) and his electro acoustic mandolin. So if you spot one cheap dive in.

I'm using a single-humbucker B.C. Rich (a very tasteful one, I might add)