Best quality clean Amp under £250?

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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by Sam Spoons »

The Harley Benton will, likely, be loud at full chat but the 1w setting may well be good but I suppose it depends on the kind of 'clean' you want. Fender Twin (and my old Boogie Mk4) has a fantastic clangy loud and punchy clean tone without a hint of breakup, my 18 watt has some edge to the clean sound even at modest volumes (think AC30 clean). Very different beasts. I tried the Kat 50 with a Strat at shop volume and the clean sound was fantastic (very Fender Twin in character). The fx are very good too, based on Boss pedals not surprising really even the distortions are pretty decent.
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by SecretSam »

Vox MV50 clean? Well within budget, and kind of valve.

You would need to add a speaker, obvs.
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by ef37a »

My two P's worth?

"Clean" on stage in a middling sized pub with a civilized drummer? 30 watts minimum and that from valves and a 100dB/W/mtr speaker, e.g. Celestion V30. That however will be seriously loud at home and well out of budget, likely even second hand.

To get that sort of clean volume from transistors you would need to treble the advertised power (assuming they are not telling porkies!) but you should find something in budget and sstate amps tend to be quieter for recording purposes.

"Bass guitar" was mentioned? Don't put that through a combo except at very low levels, literally just loud enough to hear what you are doing , Don't be tempted to jam bass with other players, you could wreck the speaker.

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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by Murray B »

Just another thought to add the list of options given that you are looking to amplify a bass too...

Perhaps consider a powered PA speaker and a modelling pedal.

For example the Alto TS 312 is around £220 and a Harley Benton AC True Tone for around £30.

You'll have more headroom than you'll probably ever need and the bass guitar won't break it. You could upgrade to a fancier amp modeller and or bass modeller in time and will have the option of adding a small mixer and using as a PA in the future.
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by behenny »

Decided to go for the champion 40 in the end and love it so far, seems to take nicely to my pedals. Thanks for your help everyone.
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by Drew Stephenson »

:thumbup: Thanks for 'closing the loop'. :)
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by uselessoldman »

problem with effects amps like the Katana is it will be outdated as soon as a new version is released so if that was on your list get one second hand that has already lost some of its original value. They dont let you update the software they just bring out a new version, they just a marketing stunt cos people are conned into buying them

harley benton are great value I have a Vintage 212 cab I bought for almost nothing cos the guy bought it just for the speakers (V30s) and I put G12Ts in it, sounds great and its a well made cab for the money.

AS for Punk, UK style, its easy cos they/we used very little in the way of effects it was straight into amp and out to speakers. But it was never a clean sound we sought, it was just rough and loud, cos thats what we played when we started to learn to play, so knew nothing much about anythng. except annoying out parents

I guess you never experimented with the computer, audio interface and plug ins like guitar rig?

Good guitar speakers do not need to be played loud to sound good, bad ones always sound bad no matter what the volume
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by Sam Spoons »

uselessoldman wrote:problem with effects amps like the Katana is it will be outdated as soon as a new version is released so if that was on your list get one second hand that has already lost some of its original value. They dont let you update the software they just bring out a new version, they just a marketing stunt cos people are conned into buying them

That's not entirely true for the Boss Kats, they were updated to FW V4 a couple of months after the MK2 had hit the shops. But TBH you could say the same thing about an AC30 when the brought out the Top Boost model or any other bit of kit. I agree it's always a good plan to wait a little and buy modern kit used. and let somebody else take the hit for the initial deprecation.
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by thefruitfarmer »

uselessoldman wrote:
AS for Punk, UK style, its easy cos they/we used very little in the way of effects it was straight into amp and out to speakers. But it was never a clean sound we sought, it was just rough and loud, cos thats what we played when we started to learn to play, so knew nothing much about anythng. except annoying out parents


Far from useless, old man
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Re: Best quality clean Amp under £250?

Post by uselessoldman »

haha says me surrounded by amps guitars synths speakers/cabs, if only I had all this when I was 16 I might have taken them all a little more seriously. I would never say I learnt to play anything proficiently, but I understand the technical side (computer DAW recording) well enough. Latest acquisition QSC 2450 came to me as working was not got my money back repaired it, collect Friday cost me less than half what they sell on eBay for and its am absolutely FANTASTIC amp. But then nothing wrong with my Crest (Peavey) or Crown amps either
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