Yeah. It feels like the high-end stuff used to around $300, but here in Tokyo that has gone up to like $600, and now stuff is popping up for like $1,500 (all approximate based on yen). Inflation definitely seems to be part of it, but you are right that there is still a big range.
I’m totally jealous of you being able to experiment with amps and cabs like that. If I ever moved out to the country I would totally be into that. For now, I’m feeling pretty grateful that amp sims have come as far as they have. Truthfully though, I don’t really lust over amps like I used to. I am partial to weird old amps like Valcos. I’ve owned a couple of those kinds of amps over the years, but for volume and maintenance reasons have moved them all along. If someone did a full-featured amp sim of that kind of stuff, I’d be all over it.
Flint is good, but you might want to check out the UAD Golden as well. Different shades of some the same thing really. When it first came out lots of people dumped the Flint for it, but I’ve noticed in YouTube comments that some people have returned. Seems to be some personal preference involved.
New(ish) video from national treasure Jim Lill on where amp tone comes from. If you don’t want to sit through the whole thing, the “tacklebox” section near the end is the big payoff.
I know I have it good as far as experimenting with amps goes. I lived in cities for a long time so I can appreciate the contrast.
I’m a little surprised nobody has made a Valco sim. They’re more or less classics at this point. I’ve worked on a couple over the years, cool amps. They’re all at that age now where they need some work but they’re simple enough that anyone who works on amps can easily do whatever is needed.
This old Kay amp I had was one of the coolest sounding amps I’ve ever owned. Crazy tubes. I think originally for radios? I ended up putting it up on the auctions on whim when I was clearing out my space and it went for pretty good amount of money. I miss that one some times. I’d love an amp sim of stuff like this.
Amps like that are great and have been steadily gaining in popularity. I’m sure that a sim will come along before long. There’s definitely a market for it.
A lot of amps from that era were based on radio amplifiers. Many could even be run on dc if you linked enough batteries together because they didn’t have isolation transformers, the downside is that sometimes you get shocked without that transformer. I don’t think dc operation was an intended feature, just an interesting side effect of an incredibly simple circuit with no galvanic isolation. There’s a guy in my town who’s obsessed with that style of amp and buys them regularly. He always hires me to go through them to fix whatever issues they’ve developed from age and add isolation transformers (he’s been shocked a few times). I always enjoy playing them for a day or two before he picks them up (and I enjoy working on them too).
A lot of them were made by danelectro but branded with whatever company hired them as an oem builder.
I have a lot, and I mean a LOT of experience recording tweed, black-panel, and sliverface fender amps for work (let alone every other amp manufacturer under the sun)… the Dream '65 from UA is incredible.
Its now my main “amp” when plugged into an OB4 speaker. It sounds exactly how a blackpanel should sound when recorded or sampled - and if you didn’t know beforehand that it wasn’t a ‘real’ one when listening to a track, you never would… a great piece of kit for Fender fans
Not to mention the added benefit of being comfy direct-in or through headphones for us apartment dwelling individuals haha
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by DI’ing too. I play a silverface Princeton reverb into a Webber attenuator w/direct out into HX stomp for speaker SIM, micing and sometimes reverb, usually room. The “hot springs” reverb is lovely and ploinky. Did I mention I used to be a surf (and rockabilly) nut? I almost prefer the SIM over real spring because of the options. It mixes better. And yes I A/B them like an idiot. The fidelity of this setup is hard to beat. Actually the HX stomp is the most amazing piece of gear. I have numerous tube amps and have owned hundreds of top pedals and all the analog stuff. Helix takes the cake for recording or headphones hands down. It’s almost psycho how I seem to hear the internals of tubes. And the really cool thing is it generally just sounds great but you can always find the parameter to tweak if not. And the “alpaca rouge” (red llama clone) is the best drive for a 303 I’ve encountered. Makes it more dimensional. And the helix version is better than the real thing in many ways (more gain, brighter). I digress…
I’ve read the headphone trick with the Y cable isn’t that good, but haven’t tried that myself.
I play a lot with headphones, but what I do is run the Dream into my looper, which has a headphone out. I love loopers for this as with many you get some basic drums to play over and can also quickly capture stuff you come up with while noodling. I also love samplers, and see loopers as the perfect way to get stuff from instruments into samplers as well.
I also love real vintage Fender amps and would love to check out UA’s Dream '65. My problem is that I haven’t found a decent FRFR monitor that I would have liked at my other modelers. (Line6 or KPA) So I stopped thinking about getting one.
My questions: Is the OB4 really an equivalent to a monitor like the Yamaha DXR 10 or a Headrush? Is it loud enough for rehearsals?
A new addition to the pedalboard, Thorpy FX Fallout cloud fuzz (the orange one). Very addictive (the pedal collecting and playing the fuzz :). And it looks nice next to my also recent Thorpy chorus. Awesome pedals.
I don’t think I posted this here: Epiphone Les Paul Goth Studio that I received in a local trade. It has the factory kill-switch knob and Seymour Duncans added.
I also found a local boutique pedal builder that I’m going to have make some custom pedals for this, modified Rainbow Machine, Uglyface, Fuzz War and serial BBD prototype designs.
