WHY SMALL TUBE AMPS ARE BETTER

hey it's the weird accent beard guy and here i've got four amazing ridiculous sounding amps the morgan ac20s chime you can wake me up for that any time a deluxe room 53 the greatest fender amp i'm sure we all agree [Music] the gremlin by tone king from a cute clean amp to a monstrous sounding thing [Music] and the mid 70s fender viral champ the smallest of the bunch but still pecking a serious bunch [Music] before we get into the magical small amps we've got to talk about a stunning hand-wired vox ac30 and maybe the best sounding amp fender ever produced with vibro king and an angle screamer i was the proud owner of each of those amps and they sounded absolutely phenomenal but still they're all gone now they were too loud so while i was enjoying playing this battle through my pc speakers and my rolling cube 30 all i read was crank the amp louder is better this one goes to 11. i want to feel the air moving there has to be folks who also love playing with this battle ride show me some 505 love in the comments you're not a real guitar player unless you like loud amps but it's time to come clean about something i do not like it i hate loud abs and here's the problem because i do love the sound of a loud tube and nothing better than pushing the tubes right over the edge but when i do that with my 30 watt matchless this is what happens it makes no sense it is so extremely loud [Music] it's crazy because it's the loudest amp i ever owned and heck no i'm not selling this one it just sounds too good but to be fair i don't use it half as much as i would have wanted to the amp turned down just it doesn't sound the same and it's always switching around attenuators and stuff it isn't ideal either and this is exactly the reason why i love small combos so much so here's four amps that all excel at different fields one is actually mine and three i've gotten down loan but i may be thinking of buying one so maybe you can help me decide which one to go for after watching this video so let's start with the one that surprised me the most at the beginning it's the morgan ac20 so when selecting this amp i thought it could be the smaller more sensible quieter matchless and to be fair it sort of does that thing both are class a type amps running on el 84 power tubes and they have that unique chime and compression that we all love but this amp does it all on sensible volumes and that really makes me happy [Music] so although the controls look seemingly basic there's more than enough control over the tone so i'm plugged in directly no pedals apart from a little reverb to spice things up a little bit and the time is just lovely with that bright switch turned up so now let's push the tubes a little bit more i'm turning up the game a little bit over noon and i'm turning off the travel switch for some more low end and punch [Music] [Music] such a beast right and now let's push it some more with mouth overdrive [Music] so you might think this is a little bit too bright maybe and that often happens on vox amp so it's too bright and everything becomes a little bit too harsh so back in the days people would actually go into the circuit board and solder certain elements out or change certain components to make them a little less bright but on here we've got the bright switch which is turned up right now in the sun position but if you flick it down to the moon position it becomes a little bit more a better pedal platform so it sounds like this [Music] so now we can easily add a brilliant fuss pedal to this [Applause] so i'm sure we all can agree that sounds kind of epic right so at the volumes i'm playing at right now it sounds extraordinary and that's because the morgan did something special with the power level knob on there it's essential that the breakup happens right at the volume you want it to so with a more traditional master volume you're weakening the signal before you hit the output tubes but with this you're actually limiting the wattage of the output tube so more like an attenuator so now we still have that brilliance from the pushed output tubes so that edge of breakup will happen at exactly the right volume but just you can tune it in with a level [Music] that's really loud anyway time to move on let's go to the smallest amp of the bunch defender champ so here's a vintage can we call this vintage yeah yeah we can this is a silver face fender jam from the mid 70s and jeez this little amp it stole my heart and there is something just very sweet about it look at it anyway it sounds like this [Music] so [Music] so i believe this is a 5 watt amp with just an 8 inch speaker so everything is just a little bit smaller and although it definitely doesn't sound as big and boomy as the morgan we just played when playing it you don't feel like you're missing out on anything to be honest and maybe some of you may see this as some kind of practice amp but don't be mistaken this amp made it on some serious records for example dwayne almond use it all the time and the best thing about it you can just turn it up to and don't feel awkward about playing [Music] that's seriously gorgeous anyway this isn't any champ this is a vibro champ which means it's got the lovely lovely vibrato which just smears a little bit of cuteness onto everything right [Music] and actually it works surprisingly well with some mild overdrive on there this is gorgeous isn't it but the thing is with vintage amps is that before you buy it you got to make sure it is in good condition or save some money to have it serviced because after time you just have to replace certain parts like the transformers maybe recon the speaker capacitors resistors what have you but if you got a good vintage amp then there isn't anything that can beat it right or can it because i feel like the next amp can beat almost anything so this is the tone king gremlin and this might be the amp to do it all from the perfect bedroom amp to studio beast and i'm sure even live this amp will hold its ground [Music] [Applause] [Music] so as tiny as it is with just 5 watts don't let this amp fool you yes there is a little bit of less headroom but i don't need headroom anyways just push it baby [Music] yes i love that but can be just as quiet as the smallest practice amp because at the back there is the iron man 2 attenuator so if i turn it two clicks down we've got that lovely volume and still that cranked amp feel so this attenuator has a different workings for each setting because lowering the volume also does affect the frequency response and it compensates for that so of course it's never 100 the same and to my ear when i turn it down it becomes a little less bright but you can easily compensate with the tone up at the top so this is full volume three clicks down [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so this amp has two channels the rhythm channel which i'm playing at right now it's voiced after the blackface sound for lovely cleans to mild overdrive so let's see how that works overdrive pedal [Music] right sounds [Music] just great but it doesn't take heavy overdrive too well since it's just a little bit too bright so when i turn on the fuss pedal by itself because a little bit too bright so the lead channel takes some of that spike in it just [Music] [Music] that is just awesome sounding so in the lead channel is super versatile because by itself it can go from a mount overdrive [Music] to pretty heavily overdriven [Music] and then when you add an overdrive to that [Music] it is such a versatile beast and so simple and i love that about amps the simplicity combined with basically everything you need it's just it's ludicrous amazing little amp anyway last stop is the end that i actually bought a few months back and probably the most iconic fender amp ever made so this is a fender tweed deluxe from 1953 and this amp really got to me and i've been using it non-stop for the past weeks just because i really do love the magic of small amps [Music] so there is something about this amp that makes me love it more and more every time i turn it on so you hear the amp really needs to work to deliver and that's exactly what gives the am the character and why it's probably the most copied and probably the most recorded amp ever leo fender designed his amp to stay clean even at higher volumes but [Music] [Applause] as you hear that didn't happen but that overdriven tone at higher volumes is the reason why so many notable players favored this little app [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so this amp also works surprisingly well with overdrive pedals so this is just the amp [Music] the overdrive [Music] and even some fuzz [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] that's crazy right so after hearing all of this which one should you get i mean all these amps are really really great and deliver spectacular tones at the sweet spot at just at a decent level i mean some are still pretty loud but you can always turn them down and that's exactly what i'm looking for so i've been searching for the right amp for for so long and i've been super happy with the tone king the 18 watt or 20 watts tube i'm the red one i'm sure you've seen before on my channel and the more different amps i play the better i understand how they work with pedals how to break up in what scenarios i may prefer a muddler or maybe the camper of some kind it's all different beasts different applications and different ways to interact with your playing but one thing i do really know is that i don't really like loud like obnoxiously loud abs so as long as it's at a decent level i'm a happy guy so please leave your comment below about these amps i'm sure you've got some thoughts about them and i hope to see you next week another video i'm sure you were watching bye in front of the end [Music] okay

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 266,042

Rating: 4.961472 out of 5

Keywords: paul davids, small amps, amp, amplifier, morgan ac20, morgan, tone king, tone king gremlin, gremlin, Fender, Fender Deluxe, deluxe, Fender Champ, champ, vibro champ, vintage, tweed deluxe, vintage amp, bedroom amps, edge of breakup, loud, quiet, bedroom, practice amps, too loud, attenuator, video, guitar, stratocaster

Id: xmkkkwa7VII

Length: 17min 14sec (1034 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021