sampson designed the amps for "badcat" but that was it. now sampson has his own amp company called Star amplifiers. they have the worst website i have ever seen and sampson looks like barney rubble. still they are pretty cool amps. i have a single channel 15watt model called the super nova. sounds like a voxy/marshall preamp with a deluxe reverb power section. It has the most beautiful clean tone i have ever heard. the channel switching heads get into that super higain lead tone . but the clean channel has an awesome overdrive also.

alex maiolo wrote:On the subject, Fender fans should check out Carr. My friend Steve owns that company and he builds great stuff. He's a true fan, great musician, and love goes into the product. Built right here in my town. I fell guilty for not owning one, but I don't play Fenders.
-A

I was very intrigued by these Carr amps, but couldn't find one in Seattle to try out. Are they all 'Fenderish'?

rayj wrote:

alex maiolo wrote:On the subject, Fender fans should check out Carr. My friend Steve owns that company and he builds great stuff. He's a true fan, great musician, and love goes into the product. Built right here in my town. I fell guilty for not owning one, but I don't play Fenders.
-A

I was very intrigued by these Carr amps, but couldn't find one in Seattle to try out. Are they all 'Fenderish'?

I haven't talked to Steve lately, but a few years ago, that seemed to be the case. To be clear, they are a versatile amps, particularly the Slant 6 (the flagship) but those use 6V6s and 12AX7s as a combo, so you get the idea of what that might sound like. I think a lot of the amps use 6L6s.

There are two amps, the Mercury and the Hammerhead that use EL34s I think. They are Class A.
I've not heard them, but my guess is that those would sound more "British" for obvious reasons.

Steve is a *great* guy and his products are fantastic. The customer service is second to none.
Years before he built amps, I owned a HiWatt that he had hotrodded. I wish I still had that. Phew.

-A

mr.arrison wrote:

jason spell wrote:nice amps. fuck all that shit.

www.valvetechamps.com

what are these about? checked out the page.

"All the tones you'll ever need!" = "Danger, Will Robinson!"

andy cohen uses a matchless (pretty sure it's an SC10) to great effect.

I will almost certainly never own a matchless. they are absurdly expensive. and there's just no way they're *that* much better than other cheaper amps, like a YBA-2.

the transformers are the only components that could possibly merit that huge price, and i'll bet they're not *that* much better than the hammonds that traynor used.

what with being handwired, and using premium components like mustard caps blah blah, i'd say a $300 yba-2 and a couple hundred bucks worth of fancy new filter caps and you could just copy the AC30 circuit, or the DC30 circuit, or whatever you want.

I got a YGM-3 on ebay for under $200 a few weeks ago. I have no need for any other EL84 amp.

oh, and it's not the dream sound city, but I got my 120 for right around $500. as a beauty platform for massive mods, I like it. stock, it didn't impress me a ton.

I swear to jesus--at least I think, about two years ago, you could find sound city's close to $300. they've gone up quite a bit, it seems.

Maybe i've just had poor luck, but i've never found a Sound City A: at a good price, even 5 years ago, or B: that sounded all that great. The ones i bump into most often (which isn't all that often) are called "concord" i think? and they always struck me a pretty lack-lustre. Didn't posses the Fender "sparkle" the marshall "drive" or the Vox "Blang-chug-Blang", -i remember thinking the last one i played sounded a lot like a crappy "Red Bear" head i owned for like a week. Maybe it needed more sevicing.

And maybe I'm just being ape-eared, but i don't really see the value of a lot of the boutique amps. They tend to be low wattage, which is great for recording, but how often does anyone record? the show volume models are insanely expensive, and are usually clones of 'classic' equipment, which is itself much cheaper. Matchless made great stuff, it sounds very nice. But if i'm gonna spend $2k on an amp, i'd much rather have an overbuilt bassman copy, maybe one that lives in a shock mounted rack and dispenses blowjobs evey third day of tour.
-chris

alex maiolo wrote:
I haven't talked to Steve lately, but a few years ago, that seemed to be the case. To be clear, they are a versatile amps, particularly the Slant 6 (the flagship) but those use 6V6s and 12AX7s as a combo, so you get the idea of what that might sound like. I think a lot of the amps use 6L6s.

There are two amps, the Mercury and the Hammerhead that use EL34s I think. They are Class A.
I've not heard them, but my guess is that those would sound more "British" for obvious reasons.

Steve is a *great* guy and his products are fantastic. The customer service is second to none.
Years before he built amps, I owned a HiWatt that he had hotrodded. I wish I still had that. Phew.

-A

T'was the Hammerhead that I wanted to try out. After reading the manual, I really wish that I had. I like EL34's, although I'm way stoked on my EL84 gnarler...

I bought a sound city concorrd w/ fanes for 450, but it came with NOS preamp tubes, a set of used but good mullards and an extra set of el34s.

At the time I felt like I paid 100 more than I wanted too, but it has a tube driven reverb in there as well, and the sound city's have jumped about 300 bucks over the past year even I think on ebay.

I love my sound city.

zom-zom wrote:Another "boutique" amp that I really like is the locally-built Savage Audio amps. Savage Audio had been a top quality repair shop for years until they recently started building their own line.

I second this. I recorded using a Blitz 50 this past weekend, and it sounded absolutely wicked.