Amp confusion..

[werx]

Hey.. I'm a recent jem purchaser, and I decided the other day that It wasn't right to be playing this thing through a Vox AD30VT. So today I went to my local guitar center to check out amps. I have little to no information on guitar tech (i learned a lot from the amplifiers sticky thread here), and I went in with an open mind. I tried every amplifier in the place, spent a total of about 6 hours there. Amps I tried were about 10-15 marshall full stacks, a JSX full stack, 3-5 mesa's (single, dual, triple rectifiers, marks, a nomad), a peavey 6505, and a bunch of fenders/other miscellanous amps i can't remember.

After all that testing, I didn't find one amp that had the sound I wanted. The one amplifier in the entire store that I liked was a JSX combo amp, the others didn't seem to give me enough control over the tone of each note I was playing. I've always played on combo amps, and that could be why I like the sound of combos more. It might be I have too high of expectations after hearing all these amazing tones from fantastic players, or maybe I'm slightly brain damaged. Anyways, I was wondering if you guys had any thought as to what's wrong with me.

[jb4674]

There's nothing wrong man. When your ear tells you "this is the tone", then you should trust your instinct. The JSX 212 is a great amp. I happen to have one and I'm pretty happy with it. I'd say wait a couple of days, go back to the store and try the amp again. If you're still digging the tone try to test the head and see what they sound side-by side.

Jimmy

[RSVampire]

Originally Posted by jb4674

There's nothing wrong man. When your ear tells you "this is the tone", then you should trust your instinct. The JSX 212 is a great amp. I happen to have one and I'm pretty happy with it. I'd say wait a couple of days, go back to the store and try the amp again. If you're still digging the tone try to test the head and see what they sound side-by side.

Jimmy

agree'd

there is a big difference in sound and feel when an amp is a combo (open back cab) and a head-cab (closed back cab)

the closed back cabs will have a much tighter sound to them and better lower note articulation at higher volumes.

but like Jimmy said, give your ears and head a couple days rest and go back and play some more amplifiers. The tone you hear on records and stuff is drastically different from what you hear live. You're dealing with the other player's fingers, mic placement (huge tone changer), a studio eq (another huge tone changer), double/triple/quadruple layers of guitar sounds most of which have more than 1 type of amp or guitar combination. So take what you hear with a grain of salt, until you play the amps yourself you can't tell what the amp really sounds like and how it'll react to your playing style.

[werx]

Originally Posted by RSVampire

agree'd

there is a big difference in sound and feel when an amp is a combo (open back cab) and a head-cab (closed back cab)

the closed back cabs will have a much tighter sound to them and better lower note articulation at higher volumes.

That's wierd, I would say the exact opposite. After trying out all these amps today, my conclusion was that combos have a much tighter sound where I could predict what every note was going to sound like before I played it; and that the full stacks had much grainier/dirty distortion where the notes I played kinda swam together instead of articulating each one.

You probably know better than I do, but that was just my experience. I'll take your suggestion and head back over to gc in a couple days (though I won't be purchasing anything there).

Edit: O yeah, and I kept going back and forth between the jsx combo and the jsx full stack and the combo seemed to have better articulation and depth.

[RSVampire]

make sure you're at the same level as the speakers, cabs have that slant on top which will point the speakers more towards your ears and make them sound dirtier/grainier to the ear. It happens all the time, people here what the amps sound like farther away from the speakers, or above the speakers then when they mic it it sounds grainy and they are confused as to why the sound from the mic sounds completely different than the sound they are hearing in the room.

also having a 4x12 vs a 2x12 cab will make the low end stand out a lot more.


but again, it all comes down to personal preference and if you can hear a difference between the head-cab and a combo then by all means by the one that sounds the best to your ear! Even if people say there isn't a difference there is a magic between the player and his gear that you can't ignore.