Your Desert Island Amp

LAB Series L5 hands down!
That was my first amp. Sounded great, but my buddies Peavey tube amp was a LOT louder.

I hate to throw this out there, but doesn’t desert island imply that there is no electricity?

I would probably say a Mesa Mk of some type assuming I had the electricity to run it.
 
Are we choosing from the amps we currently own, or could it be something we don’t own but would still choose for this purpose?

If it’s the former, it’ll be my Bogner Shiva 20th. If it’s the latter, I might choose a Mesa Mark series, probably the Mk V, for the flexibility.
 
That was my first amp. Sounded great, but my buddies Peavey tube amp was a LOT louder.

You might've used it wrong. It's not as loud as a 100W tube amp of course, but easily holds up even with a loud drummer.

Also, lots of toanzz in there as long as you don't expect high gain - it'll do 80's rock pretty well with a proper boost in front.

The parametric mids make it versatile and shapeable, while due to solid-state tech it's "lightweight" enough to lift without a hernia.

I read somewhere that they would've cost around 4,000$ in today's money, factoring in economics/inflation, and the steep pricing was what ultimately killed them.

I love them so much, I have two L5's, along with an L2 and an L11. The latter is a 200W beast of a head. Each cost me around 200-250€ used, in alright condition.

My second L5 is actually pristine, it came with the hang tags and manual and looks like it just arrived from the store. ♥️

If it's good enough for folks like BB King and Ty Tabor, color me happy! 😎
 
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It‘s definitely the ENGL Powerball II for me. It has great clean and crunch channels, channel 3 is voiced similarly to the Fireball, channel 4 more like the Savage, and the inbuilt noise gate is really useful.
 
At one point I would have said 2203, but I’m firmly in the Dual Rectifier camp now.

Sometimes I feel like the Uberschall deserves to be there, and the Peavey 5150 is no slouch. I just don’t think anything tops the Recto for me.
I'm right there with you. I've gone through literally dozens of amplifiers to arrive pretty much right back where I started. The best tone I've ever heard live was James Hetfield's Triaxis/2:90 setup in the late 90s in an arena. My favorite recorded tones are from bands like Dream Theater and In Flames, so we're usually talking Marks, Rectos, and 5150s.

That's right where I've landed. My collection of tube amps is basically Marks and Rectos, and whenever I'm jamming with people or recording, I wind up usually using one of those. They're my default for sure, and what I measure all other amps by.
 
I bet it depends on what "generation" of guitarists you ask. :idk
Agreed, a lot of what we consider good is what we got into and what influenced us first. I'm an Xennial myself, technically late GenX but I caucus with the millennials as I generally have more in common with people 2-3 years younger than me than 2-3 years older.

I think most music from the early 90s on has had pretty great tone, I find a lot of the production in the 80s to be thin and I think a lot of guitar tones back then were really thin in rock music, but that's not to say I dislike it, I'm just not a big fan of most Marshall-style tones unless it's Scott Ian playing one. He always had massive tones, especially on Persistence of Time.

My only critique of modern guitar tones I'm hearing from players on Instagram and Youtube is they're using too much gain. I'm hearing plugin players with 8 string guitars that are using so much gain I can't tell what notes they're playing. When I play an 8 string, I turn the gain down, not up, as I want note clarity. The guitar will bring the heaviness on it's own, I don't need more gain.
 
im with fuzzy.. probably a 504. definitely not a boomer, just a loud xer whos witnessed what those things can do :D
Same. I was born in '74, so actually kind of a mid/late X'er. :grin
But we grew up getting the best from the late 60's, 70's, 80's. Then the 90's which was different but had a lot of retro 60-70's rock vibes thrown in the mix. Which I tend to gravitate in that territory as a player, so naturally the classic amps get the job done for most things.
 
My only critique of modern guitar tones I'm hearing from players on Instagram and Youtube is they're using too much gain. I'm hearing plugin players with 8 string guitars that are using so much gain I can't tell what notes they're playing. When I play an 8 string, I turn the gain down, not up, as I want note clarity. The guitar will bring the heaviness on it's own, I don't need more gain.
Definitely. I've noticed players doing a cover track or solo, and many times it's over-gained compared to the original. It can actually make it more difficult to play (control) if you need to coax the notes a certain way, which can be counterintuitive to some.

If it's your own music anything goes I guess, but I will find myself dialing back gain after some listening time.
 
Same. I was born in '74, so actually kind of a mid/late X'er. :grin
But we grew up getting the best from the late 60's, 70's, 80's. Then the 90's which was different but had a lot of retro 60-70's rock vibes thrown in the mix. Which I tend to gravitate in that territory as a player, so naturally the classic amps get the job done for most things.

yeah '71 here. i spent my twenties in a fading steel town.. so money got spent in the 60s and 70s, and was fading by the 80s.. so the good usable used stuff wasnt new and i was a broke student, so i learned gear that JUST broke into the modern era of the late 80s early 90s and have little familiarity with what woulda been en vogue at the time. :lol: other than from catalogs.
 
yeah '71 here. i spent my twenties in a fading steel town.. so money got spent in the 60s and 70s, and was fading by the 80s.. so the good usable used stuff wasnt new and i was a broke student, so i learned gear that JUST broke into the modern era of the late 80s early 90s and have little familiarity with what woulda been en vogue at the time. :lol: other than from catalogs.
I can understand that. I've been pretty frugal with amps over the years. Back when I started playing live in '95 I had bought a Crate Club 50 combo a year or so before that, but we sold it and a few other things to fund P.A. equipment and cables, etc. I ended up using a Traynor YGM-3 combo we got for $100 at a pawn shop and just a few pedals. It worked very well for what we were doing.

I've never owned an actual DR504 or tweed Bassman, although I have built multiples copies of each and sold to friends. But I never kept them for myself. :facepalm:LOL: Although I did own a Bassman 50 for a while.
 
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