I just want to know if I'm crazy if i want this

So, i can't find my tone in my budget. which option you think is the best per buck solution:

  • Sell all the pedals; buy modeling digital gadget (Helix, Kemper, Fractal, etc)

    Votes: 3 21.4%

  • Build a Soldano SP77 and be happy with it (yay) and integrate it with what i have

    Votes: 5 35.7%

  • Keep the pedals and use what i have already and stop whining

    Votes: 6 42.9%

  • Other type of tube pedal pre and keep all the gear I've already have

    Votes: 1 7.1%
  • Total voters
    14
cris_mas

cris_mas

Active member
Well, I've got tired of searching my sound on pedals, i will always be thankful of pedal pcb for existing but i'm coming to a point were I'm thinking "with all the money I've spent on pedals, i could have bought a tube amp or a preamp" and i just realized how much i miss my Jetcity JCA50H, moded to make the mids more 800-ish. That amp was killer. But hard times came, had to sell it, and now all those amps (where i live at least) are gone or simply with crazy prices. So yes, my sound is more towards Soldano with fender-y- types of clean. And I'm on a budget constraint for acquiring anything new or beyond say 350 dollars. So, back in the day when i was starting in this thing, i've bought a project of a 1987 Plexi with very home made details, but sounded so darn good. Times have changed and now i'm not able to carry such behemoth plus cabinet and pedals. I came to my pedalboard as a solution for convenience and trying to keep the tube sound on a portable format. Well, curiosity killed the cat and saw someone who cloned a Soldano SP77, a two channel preamp with the right DNA for me.
Some intrusive thoughts are coming to my head around it, I'm searching some info about how much all can cost and the hardest parts to get are the rack enclose (in my country i haven't found a local supplier, all i can do is import) and the power transformer, that i can send to build under specifications, the rest i can manage to obtain. You may ask, "but why bother with racks, didn't you said you can't carry lots of weight?". Well, case is better for protecting tubes, besides i can store everything in one place. I have a micropedal power amp that behaves quite well and i'm using a very portable 1x12 cab (mainly for monitoring9, i don't feed the PA with it because i go direct) so i just need to figure how to get my pedals routed and to control the pre on presets. And I'm working for the next year with an event manager so we will have backline on most of the gigs we do.
To pack all up, i will post a poll on what you think would be better in my situation,
 
If you can’t afford a good tube amp (which in my experience is key for my tone), I would find a good modeler that does what you want. I have an old Fender modeler (Mustang II maybe?) that has decent Fender tones which I like. But I am skeptical that you can get good tone with pedals alone.
 
giovanni said:
If you can’t afford a good tube amp (which in my experience is key for my tone), I would find a good modeler that does what you want. I have an old Fender modeler (Mustang II maybe?) that has decent Fender tones which I like. But I am skeptical that you can get good tone with pedals alone.
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yup, i agree that pedals on its own aren't enough. I have a C2c Particle Accelerator that helps a lot but still something's missing
 
If there’s only one piece of gear I could use besides my guitar, it would be a tube amp.

After playing in a band where I ran my guitar through some pretty wild electronics (including an Alesis airFX mounted on a mic stand that I controlled with my head), I decided eschew pedals in my next band. I plugged straight into an AC15. There’s beauty in that simplicity.

Regarding budget amps- I picked up a Monoprice 15w a few years ago. Definitely within your price range. $350 probably doesn’t get you past transformers and a speaker on a build.


I’ll give you my honest experience. It’s a pretty good sounding amp. I can get a very nice overdrive tone in many shades on it, clean to chuggy. The unlabeled tubes started going microphonic after about a year. But simple enough- I had some JJs laying around and I was back in business. The Celestion Seventy80 it came with is good enough. But nothing to brag about. A bit dark, but can be brightened up with FX.

Pretty crazy for a 15w 1x12 that is currently selling for ~$240.
 
If you’re still gigging for money, do what it takes to get what you’re after. Have you looked at the universal audio amp in a box? It’s literally an amp in a box with a direct out, from what I’ve seen.
 
jimilee said:
If you’re still gigging for money, do what it takes to get what you’re after. Have you looked at the universal audio amp in a box? It’s literally an amp in a box with a direct out, from what I’ve seen.
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well, im trying not to go back to full digital, for the price of the digital pedal i can get a far better analog machine. Here we don't have yet those AIAB ones, but the FX ones costs aprox. $470 us dollars so i imagine those cost kind similar to the amp ones
I'm not gigging yet, but next year we will (hopefully)
 
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