Preferred Stereo Amp Setup - Principals and Understudies, Solid State and Tube - A Personal Selection!

When I started down this road many moons ago, my intentions were to keep things as simple as possible - but that particular rule book has long since been torn up and thrown under the bus. My rig has evolved pretty organically into a stereo setup - where I always have and most likely always will have a Solid-State amp on the Left Channel, and an All Tube variety on the right (along with 40 or so pedals in my pedal-chain).

My current incumbents are the Boss Katana KT100 and Carvin V3MC - both combo amps and with respective 100 and 50 watt equivalent output, but more importantly - the ability to power-scale down to 0.5 Watt (Katana) and 7 Watts (V3MC). Even though I use my amps as essentially clean pedal platforms, I still like to have those amps as full-featured as possible - to give me further versatility and different playback options as potentially required at any stage.

The 4 amps I currently have at my disposal are the 2 aforementioned ones (Katana and V3MC), and then backups courtesy of a Fender Mustang IV V2 and a Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 18 Twelve. To be fair I’ve not used those latter two for a few years now.

Every few months I review the Amp landscape out there and decide how best to upgrade my current setup which is so dominated by pedals. I’ve already long since decided to upgrade the Boss Katana 100 to the Katana Artist one of these days - it has a few extra tone components to it, and a proper innovative Waza Craft speaker - as well as a front-facing, more accessible control panel. On said solid-state side I had long considered acquiring a Peavey Vypyr Pro as a secondary instead of the Fender - and as much loved by one Pixxy Lixx, now better known as Steve from Boston. While since the recent launch of the new Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit 200 Combo - I think that may rather be the one for me - although there is something of a step-up in price.

Over on the Valve/Tube side I have no intention of ousting or replacing my Carvin V3MC yet as such - it just works great for how I use it. I have though been long considering getting a MESA/Boogie Express Plus 5:50+ Combo for backup / rotational purposes - so long in fact that it’s now discontinued! There are still a fair few in the dealer network though as far as I can tell - and hopefully if I bide my time, a bargain can be struck somewhere along the line - or I can get a lightly used second-hand one.

Generally when I am looking for an Amp - I tend to have the following criteria in mind:

KEY AMP SELECTION CRITERIA

• Combo : Preference for Combination Amplifier and Speaker Cab Units - less cables and connections - easy to stack on top of each other as long as I keep it to 4 (2 x 2)
• Front-Facing Control-Panel : Key Control Settings must be easily visible for settings cues - as well as easily accessible
• Independent 3-Band EQs : 3 Band EQ per Channel
• Multi-Channel : Ability to switch from Clean to Rhythm to Lead Channels ideally
• Pedal Platform : Must work exceptionally well as a Pedal Platform Amp - great articulation across all gain stages and effects
• Power Scaling : Ability to scale down to at least 7W if not lower - for home-play-back
• Output : Ideally no less than 50W Total Output

I feel that much like with the mythical holy grail guitar trying to combine Les Paul, Strat and Tele tones into a single instrument - the same template for amps is combining Fender, Marshall and Vox. Something that 3rd Power Amps believes it has achieved with its Kitchen Sink Head - but has yet to replicate fully in Combo format.

Boss’s Nextone series of amps tries to do something similar with its simulated Power Amp Tube Selector - 6V6 | 6L6 | EL84 | EL34 - which cover the most popular amp power tube types - including the holy grail trilogy. I though feel that in many ways the Boss Nextone is a sort of slimmed-down / streamlined Katana in many respects and prefer the overall versatility of the Katana - where surely Boss could combine the two concepts with just one additional nifty selector.

I have a soft spot for the Yamaha THR series and Boss Katana Air for tiny practice amps - but besides some of the Roland Amps - BluesCubes and Jazz Choruses, there’s not much else in the current solid-state landscape that really catches my attention. Blackstar do some interesting versions, as does Laney - but nothing appeals to me as much currently as the Boss Katana Artist and brand new Hughes & Kettner Black Spirit.

Over on the Tube / Valve side of things, I have always loved the neat compactness of my Carvin V3MC, and while the Distortion voicings could do with some fine-tuning improvements, the clean channel is just stellar. I found the V3MC entirely of my own accord - a sort of junior variant version of an almost MESA style amp - with lots of different controls for tweaking voicings and bright caps and intensity/thickness/frequency-response - as well as full 3-Band EQ plus Presence for each of the 3 Channels - it certainly knows how to cram in the features.

For a secondary rotation amp here I long wanted to get a MESA/Boogie Mark V, but as that does not scale down quite far enough for me on the power side for home-play - it looks like the Express Plus 5:50+ is the more suitable candidate for my setup. These were discontinued a year or two ago now, but I’ve still seen a few floating around in the retail channels. If REVV were ever to do a combo amp which had all the flavours of the Generator 120 and power-scaling down to 5 or 7W - then that would be a prime contender too. Also if PRS ever made a combo version of their Mark Tremonti MT15 I would add that to the consideration as well.

I want all my amps to feature stellar Clean and Drive channels - hopefully in multi-channel configurations. Yet it’s somewhat odd how little mainstream innovation and development there has been for these sorts of amps for a while. The Boss Katana and Hughes & Kettner are definitely the two most interesting evolutions that have come around for some time.