lil' boutique tube amps

makepeace · 2010-06-15T08:40:09+00:00

Hi guys, I've been looking at getting myself a small class-A tube amp for home use. So far the models i've come up with are: Vox AC4TV Bugera V5 Fender Champ 600 Epiphone Valve Junior Gretsch Guitars Electromatic G5222 I hope I haven't left anything out. Has anyone ever owned or played any of these? I've done a bit of research and they all seem pretty strong, its just a matter of choosing the right one for me at this stage. The Vox looks to be the most expensive, and the others are pretty much the same price. The Bugera and Vox have attenuators to adjust the output, which could be useful. The Bugera has a reverb unit which i quite like the look of. All of them are 5w apart from the Vox which is a 4w. The vox has a 10" celestion which is pretty quality, while the bugera has a selfbranded 8". The Epi has an Eminence 8" and the Fender and Gretsch (which look like carbon copies of one another imo) have 6" selfbranded speakers. All of them have an output jack for external speakers except the Gretsch. At the moment i'm leaning towards the Bugera for functionality and value. Thoughts would be much appreciated.

AlanRatcliffe

Last week I got to play with the Mesa Transatlantic, which is switchable between 5, 15 and 25W. It has some great tones - five in all between two channels, two I really liked (a Top Boost clean and a classic Brit high gain). Handsome bugger too. More than a little spendy though...

At the same time I got to play through Mojo's new Marshall Class 5. Through the same 2 x 12 Mesa cab we used for the Transatlantic it was great - pure Marshall tones from clean through driven. It doesn't do anything other than the Marshall thing, but it does that well. The tone stack is a bit limited and the built in speaker is a bit boxy, both of which are curable.

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