Have You Bought Any Amp Heads / Combos & Cabs In 2026 ?

JiveTurkey said:
2026 coming up real soon! :guiness
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I ALMOST made it. Got a message this morning that my low ballish offer on a 1962 Brownface Pro got accepted. Doh!

It appears to be all original except it as a replacement baffle and non original but period correct JBL D-130 which was a pricey upgrade at the time. It will need new electrolytics, but I can handle that mostly with parts on hand.

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The brown Pro arrived amidst a blizzard today in mostly good shape. A few quick fixes and DAYEM! The cleans on this thing with the big JBL are pretty dang sweet, not at all blackface, but also not Tweed or Marshall either...and the harmonic vibrato is something I could get lost in for hours.

It needs a cap job and I can tell some of the yellow Astrons are leaky and need replacing ASAP, but given how it sounds already, this thing is going to be a monster when serviced and dialed in properly.
 
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The brown amps are such a nice middle ground between tweed and black panel. The Pro is probably too much amp for me but I’d def go for a 6g3 brown deluxe.
 
EOengineer said:
The brown amps are such a nice middle ground between tweed and black panel. The Pro is probably too much amp for me but I’d def go for a 6g3 brown deluxe.
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If you don’t want it to break up, it sounds great at moderate volume levels, and takes pedals very well. A really good clean amp if you don’t want the big mid scoop of the BF amps. If you want it to overdrive, it is going to be loud, and the JBL is a very efficient speaker so even louder.

The Deluxe is a very different beast, much closer to a refined tweed circuit with little in common with the BF or even the larger Brown amps. There is much less headroom before it crunches especially with humbuckers. With a LP it is like instant early ZZ Top tone.
 
Chocol8 said:
I ALMOST made it. Got a message this morning that my low ballish offer on a 1962 Brownface Pro got accepted. Doh!

It appears to be all original except it as a replacement baffle and non original but period correct JBL D-130 which was a pricey upgrade at the time. It will need new electrolytics, but I can handle that mostly with parts on hand.

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Nice dude! That's very clean for its age. Congrats!
 
Sadly had no use for new amps or cabs in 2025, only pedals.

2026 might be like 2025 but let's hope for the best!
 
I am waiting to see what shows up at NAMM although 2026 might be the be year of the guitar
It’s been oddly quiet usually by now lots of announcements and hints
 
Early 2025, I bought a used Victory Baron 10W combo, and kitted it with vintage Mullards, to use as a practice amp upstairs. My Sheriff 44 with Mullards was my main recording amp, so I wanted a similar response and tone.
I’m reasonably impressed with it, and boosting mid-range in-front and after the pre-amp - takes it to a nice place.
But however stable and predictable the Victory is - they do lack that secret-sauce that one would call ‘guitaristic’, and they have a distinct sweet-spot for both gainy EQ, and especially the master volume setting, which controls negative feedback. The result is an amp that has limited volume range, if you want the good stuff. They are responsive though, and nuances of the hands all come out very well, and you can coax fantastic tone, which changes with every note - but you can’t relax for a second.
Both the Victory’s are necessarily attenuated with Sequis Motherload Elementals, which also provide line-level recording outs with speaker simulation.

After remembering a rewarding brief flirtation in 1985, I decided that a Seymour Duncan Convertible 100 Head, with flight case, was too good to miss on eBay at £250. So I grabbed it last year.
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Totally nut and bolt rebuild, with some new pots, and a Sylvania rectifier, with 6 Mullard 161’s. Finished it in January.
Now this is a real guitar amp. There is no sweet-spot - every setting sounds good. As you approach your ideal - it is easy to fine-tune nit-pickingly - without fighting the usual bad habits of other amp’s poor EQ and overly stiff negative feedback settings at volume.
I love it, and now run two amps for recording. The Victory and the Seymour. I’m looking for another Seymour head or combo for upstairs, and the Baron combo will no doubt be sold.

The Convertible needs no boost or added mid-range at the input, and has gain in excess of my requirements. I might add mids post amp for recording, but standing alone blasting through a Sequis attenuator, into a Budda cab - the complexity of the beautiful lush mid-range is simply that ‘guitaristic’ nature I have been missing for years.
 
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