Amps Under $500 | A Tech's Perspective | Part 1 of a Series

the question i get asked more than any other is what amp or apps do i actually recommend people see the amps that i point out flaws in things that catch on fire things that are common failure points things to avoid things to look for but they want to know what amps on the market do i actually recommend and it's usually asked just hey what empty recommend i don't know whether you're playing country jazz blues heavy metal whatever i don't know your budget i don't know your stage volume needs so i'm going to do a series on these and this first video as you can see from the from the title is amps under 500 so to get started i did what just about anyone would do these days i went to reverb now i'm not endorsing reverb and any particular listings that i show later in this video i'm not endorsing those sellers i went to reverb because i can show you new prices and use prices you can see shipping we'll get into some of those details later new verses used and shipping considerations it gives a good overview of what's on the market it's what most people would do so that's going to be the big box guys like sweetwater it's going to be mom and pop stores and it's going to be individual sellers so i went to reverb and i clicked on pedals and amplifiers eventually and then i went to guitar combos and that's important because most people in this price range need a combo so i went to all listings i don't care about the brand and the filtering i decided to go 225 to 500 that's a pretty good range anything below 225 is not gonna be worth your money that's just reality and then i went to ships too and ships from continental u.s that's going to be u.s pacific but you know just for your reach or for your own region the prices are going to be roughly comparable from country to country like that pv classic 50 no not anymore more on that later let's look at that black star ht club 40. that's one of the most popular amps on the market and we'll just add that to our list for comparison now let's get into the apps that i actually chose for this list so after setting those filters there are a little over 3000 apps from which to choose now i did not go through all 3 000 listings i did go through the first 20 pages or so i began to see that it was the same amps over and over again but after going through all that i found seven amps that i've had direct experience of kind of sort of we'll talk about that in a moment these seven apps are not the seven amps i recommend these are the seven amps for consideration and will narrow that down depending on your needs some of you might be surprised to see that two of the seven amps i chose are solid state modeling apps the boss katana and the lions x catalyst the others are two maps the hot rod deluxe you know i think it's the number one selling tube of all time the blues junior is not far behind the vox the marshall very strong contenders in this price range the black star hd club 40 is a very popular amp model in this uh price range and the next one up up to a thousand dollars a lot of players are choosing the black star we'll see if it makes the cut this list is also interesting in another way in that the two modelers the katana and the lion six catalyst can be had brand new under five hundred dollars that can be the 50 watt or the 100 watt katana that could be the 60 watt 100 watt or the 200 watt catalyst all under 500 brand new with warranty shipped to you we'll talk about the pros and cons of the modeling stuff in a little bit on the tube side every one of these apps is a used listing and that's good and bad as we'll get into but you know every one of these apps was well over five hundred dollars some of them around a thousand dollars new but you can get them used for under 500 or just at 500. with those amps typically because the amps are being sold used and apps weigh a lot there's very rarely free shipping sometimes there's no shipping available at all so it'd be local pickup only which is not necessarily a bad thing if you live near an area where if you live in an area where you can actually have local listings if you're out in the middle of montana that might not be great but a lot of us have access to local markets so if one is one town over or just another part of the city you can go and do a local pickup which means that you can play the amp before buying it so that's a good thing for local pickup you can visually inspect it you can play it you can ask questions i would urge you to try to look inside the cabinet of a used tube app look at the board if possible it's not always easy on the hot rod it's easy on the blues jr it's easy the custom it's easy the marshall and the black star it's not none of the reverb listings i saw for any of these apps and i looked through a few dozen for each amp model trying to find gut shots no one's showing the inside of these apps and i'll talk about some things that you need to look for particularly on the hot rod and the blues in a moment so that's this list sorted into modelers versus tubes a more useful way to look at things is repairability so here i've got the amps which are repairable and for those that i'm calling limited repair and notice the black star has changed columns it's no longer along with its two buddies it's over in the limited repair column with the solid state stuff what do i mean by limited repair the boss the lion six the black star are all selling a lot of features at a very low price point one of the ways they do that is they have very inexpensive boards with what's called surface mount components on them and they're very easy to manufacture they're very difficult to repair at a component level they don't do component level repairs on these under warranty if you have a problem with one of these while it's under warranty the authorized service center will swap the entire board it costs less for the company to change out a board than to pay someone to fix what's wrong with any individual board and so the entire concept behind making these to get these to market at a certain price is that okay that board's not going to last forever but that's okay we'll throw a new one at it and that's actually fine when the amp's under warranty once the warranty expires can you get the board you can get the black star boards uh i don't think you can get the boss katana boards unless you are a boss authorized service center and then once it's out of warranty you're gonna have to pay a lot extra for that and there's another issue which is going to affect you and that's a concept called end of life end of product life so right now somewhere in a warehouse there's a whole bunch of black star hd club 40 main boards will they still be there and available for sale in five years well the companies still have replacement components for these boards in five years ten years fender has screwed a lot of players over in the last 15 years with their various xd modeling apps where the dsp card dies well they stopped making those dsp cards because they came up with a new model and then you have this old app that you just cannot get the board for unless you buy another amp and cannibalize it so with the boss katana the line six the black star two there's a certain window where you can use this app and you'll have support and once that window expires the amp may or may not be repairable so if you know that going in you say okay i'm going to buy that 100 watt catalyst or the 100 watt katana for 450 and if if i get three to four years out of that that's what i need it to do and then i'll get something else so it's not terrible it's less terrible on the katana and the catalyst that are under 500 new the the black star is more than 500 new you know you do the math on that i would say of these amps already i would recommend the marshall dsl40c over the black star it's better built it's repairable they have very similar sounds available but you know i can't tell you what amp to buy we'll talk more about the individual models later in the repairable camp all these tube amps with exception you know all the tube amps on the right not the black star these are all designed to have component level repair if one resistor fails that one resistor can be replaced if something goes wrong it can be fixed if you take care of your amp if you have it serviced or even just have a tech look it up look it over every two or three years these things can last 10 15 20 plus years some of them more than others we'll talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the individual amps later i will say it's a good thing that the hot rod and the blues junior are repairable because they always need repair that said more to come on that once certain repairs are done to those two models they can last for decades they're just not inclined to do so as they come from the factory here are the pros and cons of solid state modeling apps as i see them and some of you might be surprised for me to say that there are pros but there definitely are in 2022 at this price point under 500 a solid-state modeling app can be a very good choice for a lot of people the thing i want to talk about here you can read the rest of this i don't need to read all this for you you can pause it if you need to take time and if you have any questions that i'm not addressing here put them in the comments but low cost per watt that's why i have it in parentheses now it's true solid state always gives you more output wattage for the same price for you get 450 you can buy the 15 watt ac 15 or the 40 watt marshall dsl 40 or you can get the 100 or 200 watt solid-state modern modeling apps so if your only need is to be as loud as possible for as little money solid state has a leg up there that said in real world use there's not a huge difference between a 25 watt amp and a 50 watt amp or a 50 watt amp and 100 watt amp if you double the power you don't double the output more on that later uh that might be a different video but just because you have 100 watt amp solid state it does not mean that it's going to be that much perceptibly louder than a 60 watt tube amp etc etc people don't understand how loud 15 watts can be that's why the bluetooth junior and the ac 15 are still on this list along with 100 watt 200 watt amps they're loud enough to play with the drummer the pros and cons of tube apps and it may surprise some of you to hear me say that there are cons but there definitely are again you can read this i don't need to read it all for you pause it if you need to if you have any questions that about anything on here put it in the comments now longer life in general and at this price point a tube amp can have a longer life because it's repairable and because they're generally better built they have to be because the transformers for tube amps weigh a lot so you have a heavy transformer you need to have a sturdier chassis that chassis with its transformers weighs more so you have to have a sturdier cab in the apps that are done right that's true it's not really the case across the board for the blues jr but we'll get to that classic sounds is a little nebulous a little vague a little subjective that's why i have it in quotes but the longer you play the more you realize that not only does a 60s deluxe reverb not sound at all like a 50s deluxe which doesn't sound like a 50s basement which doesn't sound like a j team 45 which doesn't sound like a martial super lead you'll also realize that the deluxe reverb does not sound like the vibrolux reverb does not sound like the pro reverb does not sound like the super reverb and so what a modeling app says this is a 60s fender sound it may be quite good but it might not be the sound you're chasing if you really want that sound if you if you really want to sound like danny garden you need to have a vibro x reverb you can sound quite good with the deluxe reverb but you won't have quite the same thing modeling apps have not quite gotten to that point they can get you to the point where it sounds pretty much like you're playing through some sort of 60s fender at least at this price point we're ignoring the kempers and the pro and the profiles and the impulses and all that stuff talking under 500 so you're gonna have a fender clean and it may be okay but it won't necessarily be the ideal sound support circuit simple is better that goes across the board more tone per watt another one i have in quotes there's a misconception that tube watts are louder than solid-state watts that's not what's going on a watt is a wad it's a measurement of energy what is real is that if you honestly measure an amp's output you're measuring at the onset of distortion or of clipping and a solid state amp once it clips it's useless it sounds horrible so if it says 60 watts that's as loud as it can go without sounding awful a tube amp however sounds good past the point of clipping in fact a lot of amps that we perceive as being clean are actually clipping and distorting just slight ways and that makes this sound very exciting to us so if i measure a tube amp i might say okay at the onset of distortion it's 16.5 watts that may be four or five on the volume knob you turn it up that amp may put out 25 to 30 watts at its peaks at the most but you cannot sell that amp as a 30 watt amp because you have to measure at the onset of clipping so what happens is you set a tube amp and a solid state up to the same volume that solid state amp is clean doesn't sound quite as interesting to our ears as the tube amp at the same volume which has distortion happening we're just not perceiving it as distortion it's just more harmonically rich more interesting to the ear and certain frequencies get accentuated in ways that we like so the perception is that the more interesting sound which has slight distortions to it is louder grabs our attention more that's how our brains are wired as modeling apps get better and better and even at this price point they're getting to the point where this is less of an argument that perception of tube watts versus solid state watts is going to become less of a thing at certain price points it may not even be a thing anymore 10 years from now probably they'll have the modeling down pat it won't be an issue but it's something to be aware of so a 15 watt tube amp can be a great choice against a 50 watt solid state modeling app particularly now that we have to keep our volumes down if you have 100 watt solid state amp but you have to keep the master volume on three you're right there where the ac 15 will be you're right there where the blues junior would be in fact the blues jr ac 15 can potentially be louder than the 100 watt amp with the master volume on three it's just something to be aware of the other thing i want to talk about here is that they usually hold their value especially if you buy them used and uh harder to outgrow if you have a deluxe reverb you're not going to be worried that the new version of deluxe reverb has usb 3. you're not going to be worried that the new version has firewire or plug-ins or an app that lets you control it from your phone it's a deluxe reverb you've got it you're going to be pretty satisfied at some point you might change out the speaker but the app will suit your needs a good tube amp that really does a certain thing well will always be useful all right let's move on to the individual apps for consideration here let's start with the modeling apps now i have no preference for the line six versus the boss in fact of the amps on this list the line six catalyst series is the only one that i have not had in on the bench they're just too new but construction wise in terms of quality and longevity it's a toss-up between line six and the boss stuff either one can be fine for a certain amount of time but you know if you're if you need something that's very flexible and lightweight etcetera it takes all your boxes and you spend four hundred dollars and you get four or five years out of it that four hundred dollars per year is about the same or less than what we pay for netflix et cetera et cetera it can be a good investment just know that it is not a long term investment as to which model is better that's going to come down to which ones you like the features of which ones you like the sounds of so go look at one play one look at all the specs do some research make as informed a decision as you can make i'm not here to say it's good or bad i'm here to say it is an option at this price point that may suit your needs caveat mtor as always next up is the black star the ht club 40. it's a very popular amp these days it makes a lot of the same promises that the modeling apps do in that it has a lot of different sounds the issue being that it has the same long-term reliability issues as some much less expensive modeling apps so you're not going to get it new in warranty at this price point you're going to be getting it used which may be towards the end of its useful life or you may buy one that's been sitting in someone's house for six months and it's still brand new you're gonna have to make that decision i cannot really recommend the black star because it is not reliable it is not serviceable it's much more expensive than the modelers it costs about the same as the marshall has similar features to the marshall and the marshall is a much better built app so we're going to strike the black star off the list that brings us to the hot rod deluxe now i chose the hot rod deluxe versus the hot rod deville or the blues deluxe or blues deville for two reasons number one the hot rod deluxe costs less than the various hot rod devilles so it meets our 500 and under price point number two i honestly think that the deluxe circuit sounds better than the deville circuit there are differences and that the hot rod circuit sounds better than the blues circuit that said with any of these know that you're primarily buying a clean channel overdrive channel you can use but it's not going to give you the sound of a marshall it's not going to give you a great high gain sound it's just not it does do a very good clean sound that clean sound can be very loud it has an abrupt transition from nothing too loud you can tame that somewhat by using a 12a y7 instead of a 12ax for v1 and there are people on ebay and reverb who will sell you a little box that you plug into the send and return and adds a master volume to the app and that's actually fine they should have done it from the factory it's just a little volume pot that you put in the effects loop and lets you have a master volume if you need a really big loud clean sound and you want it to be tube the hot rod is a very popular choice know that the hot rod deluxe like the devilles like all the blue amps are prone to certain common failure modes number one the filter caps leak the filter caps don't last long you will have to have them changed out at some point number two the low voltage supply in these amps gets very hot and burns the board to the point where traces can be damaged and pads can lift off the board this can be fixable but it's something you need to know about if you go to play one in person because you're considering one ask to take the rear panel off and look in this area that you can see in this video here where you can see the discoloration from the other side you can see if the caps have leaks if they do you might want to not buy that app or if it's just beginning you can take it to a tech and have that fixed and with new caps and the low voltage supply properly replaced with new components mounted off the board the major failure points of this series can be taken off the table and the app can last for decades if you want to have that done that's easily 350 dollars assuming that nothing else is wrong with the app so your 500 purchase becomes an 800 amp if you want it to last for that reason i do not recommend the hot rod deluxe there are people out there who will think i'm crazy and will do it anyway i hope that you're right and i'm wrong but i would not bet on it so now let's move to the blues junior another very popular choice now the blues junior also has its heat woes the amp has a non-adjustable fixed bias and the fender circuit has it set to stun it absolutely kills el84s the heat that the two hot tubes generates damages the tube sockets where they're mounted it damages the board in that area the traces and the pads can be damaged you can have a very expensive repair here's an excerpt of one it's not an uncommon site where someone had tried to fix it and had made it worse i had to end up replacing the entire board at the same time it's 15 watts it's pretty loud it's got a master volume it's got a good clean sound it's got a good light overdrive sound people love these amps they are the worst made amp on this list as far as being rugged they have a very flimsy plastic input jack that breaks the pot shafts are not actually attached to the chassis they wobble it's just little bits of plastic i think when the blues junior came out 20 years ago it was a pretty good choice i don't think that it's a good choice anymore like the hot rods these things can be fixed the amp can be upgraded a little bit but you're easily going to spend 200 to have that done maybe more if it needs a new board next up is the vox ac 15 custom the c1 there are two versions of this amp out there the c1 and the c1x the x just means that it has a blue alnico speaker the c1 without the x means that it has a greenback usually in this price range you're going to get the one with the greenback there is an ebay auction i found where someone had put a weber blue dog in at the same price point so there are good options out there but the greenback sounds quite good i'm talking about the custom series the newer one not the slightly older custom classic series i know it's confusing the custom classic ac15 was not a very good app the ac30 custom classic was pretty good the 15 not so much with the new custom series the 15 is the same app pretty much as its big brother only has fewer tubes different transformers as a result and it does not have the effects loop its big brother has that said it's a very good sounding very reliable for its price point app i would say that as far as the construction quality goes it is the best built app in this list it is the most rugged pcb everything at this price point is pcb it is well laid out it is not prone to systematic failures you may encounter a bad screened resistor at some point it's relatively easy to change those out it's not likely to catch on fire it's loud enough to be played with the drummer it has a master volume for places where you don't want to be too loud and if you're not familiar with the amp it may surprise you it's not just some little clean jangly beetles thing i love the beatles i love some clean jangly stuff all the sounds you can get are fairly versatile it is not as versatile as the marshall it is not as versatile as the modelers it's not designed to be it does two or three really good sounds and it does them well it has built-in reverb which is pretty good it has built-in tremolo which is pretty good it does not have an effects loop it and the blues jr are the only amps on this list that do not have an effects loop it does take pedals in front of it very well though of all the tube amps on this list the ac-15 comes closest to sounding like its heritage the marshall sounds good it has cosmetics that are reminiscent of older marshals it doesn't sound like the older marshalls the two fenders don't sound like historic fender models though they're old enough now that they are in the in a way their own historic model but you cannot sound like a deluxe reverb or a twin with a hot rod or a blues junior you can sound very close to vintage boxes with the ac-15 now the ac-15 in its current form is not a historic model the old 60s jmi era ac-15s were a very different amp with a pinto channel and a tremolo channel the current model ac15 custom is really just a 15 watt version of an ac30 it both those amps have a little more gain than the original circuit that inspired them but they sound quite good and for the price if you don't need a whole lot of different sounds you don't need an effects loop and you don't need this you don't need that you just want one very good sounding app it can be hard to beat and the last contender here is the marshall dsl40c this is a very versatile app it has very good cleans it has very good crunch tones it has very good overdrives it has very good distortions of the tube apps on this list this is the only amp that would make you happy if you play metal but you could also play jazz through it now is it going to be the end-all be-all high-gain sound no not for under 500 used but it is a very good sound and you have a very good clean sound a very good overdrive sound etc etc you only have very basic effects within the app but you have an effects loop so while it is not as versatile as the modelers on this list it will last a lot longer than them you may prefer the sounds to it and you can always add effects before the app or in the effects loop if you're playing a top 40 gig or some other situation where you have a lot of covers and you need to get a lot of different sounds the marshall the black star and the modelers are going to be the most appealing to you let's take the black star out of the list because you have all the cons of a tube amp and all the cons of the solid state amps in one with it with the black star which leaves you with say the line six or the boss or this marshall there's a reason this marshall cost closer to a thousand dollars new versus the brand new five 500 modeling amps you're gonna get greater longevity better build quality and it's not going to go out of style so if you're really looking for a lot of different sounds at this price point it's a very attractive option personally i prefer the sounds of the ac-15 but i'm not trying to get a wide wide range of sounds out of one amp if you are the dsl40c can be a very good choice and it will hold its resale value so if later you want to get something else say you know quote a more authentic marshall you will not be throwing your money away whereas the modeling apps you're not going to get that money back you're just not so here we are we've reached the end we have the final contenders these four abs the katana and the catalyst the ac-15 and the dsl40c all these amps are very good choices for a fairly reliable amp under five hundred dollars the two tube amps are much more reliable than the solid state amps the solid state apps cost less we've discussed all that now i know that some people are screaming at me what about this amp what about that amp i consider just about everything out there use pv classic 50s use pv bandits some of the solid state fenders from the late 80s can be quite good i don't have time to do a list of why i did not choose specific apps the older pvs are getting older they're going to need service pb as a company is falling apart their parts department is being shut down they have specialty parts in those amps odds are you're not going to be able to get replacements down the road that's just one for instance number two unless you are a tech you don't know whether that amp it seems like a pretty good idea it really is these four you're pretty much guaranteed to have a good result the two on the left the new ones they'll have warranties the two on the right the tube apps you probably have to pick up in person which means you can play it first you should you should also give it an inspection as much as possible other people will be screaming at me just in general because i have two modeling apps and two apps with pcbs get real people we're talking under five hundred dollars in 2022. things that used to cost three hundred dollars now cost eight hundred dollars the world changes all the time the next video apps under a thousand dollars are gonna have a lot more options some apps that will make the purists more happy some apps that are better built i don't think we're going to have any modeling apps at that point we'll talk about why when we get to that video but for now if you're looking for an app in 2022 and you have 500 these are four good choices maybe all four of them intrigue you maybe you have no interest in the modeling maybe you have no interest in tubes these are good choices but again five hundred dollars is not as much money as many of us think it is so the choices for a good result are relatively limited once we get to the next level under a thousand dollars there will be a lot more crayons in our box so look for that soon and if you disagree with me let the world know the comment section awaits

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Length: 29min 29sec (1769 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 24 2022