get a nice guitar amp

How I did it: How few features could I live with in my new guitar amp and still be satisfied? I asked myself this question because most music gear today is overwhelming, confusing and largely developed to do too many things pretty well instead of one or two things really well. When I talked to Ben Verellen of Seatle, WA about building me a custom tube amp we settled on a very basic amp modeled after the classic Vox A30.



We decided on one volume knob (therefore only one gain structure), and standard bass/mid/treble EQ knobs. This allows me to rely on the amp and the tubes to attain distortion and really pushes me to play with the amp instead of relying on too many bells and whistles. That said, it's anything but a compromise. My new Verellen amp totally rocks! It has a fat, warm clean tone and a rounded tube distortion. I love that there is no amp modeling or multiple gain stages. Less is definitely more. Here's the Verellen amp:



I guess that's best advice: choose simple over complex and you're much more likely to land an amp that does one thing great. This also has a lot to do with my taste in guitar tones which may not match with other folks. I particularly like guitarists who know their tone and zero in on a specific sound. Guitar audio pyrotechnics are not very interesting to me, but a solid rocking amp is right up my alley.

Here's my review of the new Verellen amp.

Resources:
The Verellen website:
Verellen Amplifiers

Here's a good Wikipedia article on amps in general.

And the scary part - look how many amp manufacturers there are (and, trust me, there are plenty more than this list).

But, don't fret. Great guitarists often use very simple amps. For example, Steve Albini's amp is pretty minimalist ... and Wes Montgomery didn't care much about music gear.

Sep 03, 2008, 03:51PM PDT | 0 comments