New (to me) Amp Day

GizzWizzKing

GizzWizzKing

Well-known member
I only really have 1 tube amp at a time and my Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 went the way of the mammoths šŸ¦£ but in a considerably faster and more flashy way. I plan on pulling the hardware and converting the rest into a 212 cabinet. So I made do for a while with the Katana 100mkii I had got for a headphone/practice amp when kiddo was on the way. Now it's been about 20 months since kiddo and maybe ~5 months since the amp pulled it's own plug. So I told the wife what I wanted for my birthday/father's day/xmas. I think she thought I was joking initially but she eventually got the point.

(Shout out to the better halves who know this keeps some of us sane. They're the best.)

A note about buying an amp on Reverb: when an independent seller says 'Free Shipping' what they likely mean is 'I have never shipped an amp and I have no idea how much it costs.' The first purchase was cancelled and the seller said he had no idea how much shipping was going to be. He later relisted out of my price zone which I don't blame him for. I contacted the 2nd owner and specifically asked about shipping ahead of time. So the wife does her part and then the seller contacts us and says he will have to cancel unless we split the shipping. Just be prepared if you ever want to try to save a buck like me.

At long last I have the Friedman Runt 50. I've not had it long and the time I get to play is more rare than I would like but it sounds awesome and I am once again loving putting my handmade gear through an amp. 2 great channels with a simple clean and a tweakable (but not overwhelming) gain channel.

I am excited to sift back through things I've built and see what I do and don't like as well as trying out the Cab IR and effects loop. I may even try a demo at some point once I get a bit more tech literate.

Thanks for reading and being generally cool people who enjoy similar things as I do. Drop suggestions as to what I need to try out if you have any.
 

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Man, thatā€™s a great looking amp. Are there any cool mods to make the distortion more awesome? I bought a couple of used amps from GC online. They have no idea how to ship them or how to work them, really. The boxes were shredded but the amps were ok.
 
jimilee said:
Man, thatā€™s a great looking amp. Are there any cool mods to make the distortion more awesome? I bought a couple of used amps from GC online. They have no idea how to ship them or how to work them, really. The boxes were shredded but the amps were ok.
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For once FedEx didn't do too bad. The packaging didn't look terrible when it got to me. I maybe would have tightened it up a bit but it all seemed fine when it arrived. The FedEx driver had a distinct herbal characteristic, but he didn't drop it in front of me so that was nice.
owlexifry said:
first thing i'd be doing is checking out how it goes with YATS flogging the front end of the high gain channel :cool:
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I am rearranging my board and I've got my TS of choice going back in the mix. So far I've hit it with the Timbre Man and a compressor, but nothing to really push it yet.
 
I've only ever tried one Friedman and that was a little Dirty Shirley from memory. It came in a cab with a ten inch speaker. I was quite impressed with the sound and it certainly seemed well put together. I'm not sure how easy or advisable modding the amp would be but the Friedman I tried took pedals like a champ. I was definitely a LOT better built than any recent Fender or Marshall I've seen and should last a lot longer too. Noise levels were way lower than the competition. I'm not really interested in the high gain stuff and the Friedman did the clean to dirty thing really well.

I'm a bit jealous!
 
HamishR said:
was definitely a LOT better built than any recent Fender or Marshall I've seen and should last a lot longer too. Noise levels were way lower than the competition. I'm not really interested in the high gain stuff and the Friedman did the clean to dirty thing really well.
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So far my experience is the same. The noise floor is so low it's almost weird. It is virtually silent even when cranked up pretty loud. I'm with you in not really buying it for the ultra gain. Putting the clean channel to 6/11 is blisteringly loud, has a nice gain structure, and is nicely responsive. But it is fun to see how the gain channel responds to different types of drive. On the gain channel it is very much light overdrive pedal amp where you don't need that much oomph from a pedal to get a lot of harmonics going on. I need to pull out some more fuzz pedals to see what it does when fed a square wave.

It does indeed like the TS pushing it. And it sounds less sterile than a lot of amps can when taking a fixed mid hump. I still like the timbre man for the dynamics.
 
Dude. I watched a ton of demos of those Friedmans wondering which one I'd get and it usually came back to that Runt 50. Very nice.
 
cdwillis said:
Dude. I watched a ton of demos of those Friedmans wondering which one I'd get and it usually came back to that Runt 50. Very nice.
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100%
I was looking at fenders but not wildly impressed by the build quality and driven sound I was faced with. Seems like every one I came across was in need of a fair amount of bench time that I don't have the skill set for. I still question if I would have been totally satisfied with the Runt 20 (because the clean channel on the 50 will rip your arms and legs off set to 50% volume) but the clean channel, drive channel, and the effects loop combined make for a really enjoyable experience. Much more an extension of my guitar and I don't feel like I have to fight with it to get it where I want.

No regrets at all.
 
I don't really need any more amps, but I had a goal to build a brown deluxe or princeton this year. That was until I spent a bunch of money on drum stuff lol. I'm working on finally paying off my truck, so the amp is probably getting pushed back to 2025.
 
I did get my truck paid off which is a big financial burden lifted. Now I need to start saving money to buy a house or at least move away from here. Not to get too into the weeds, but I'm pretty miserable where I'm at and desperately need a change of scenery.

I thought about doing a run of pedals to sell and if they sell using that money for some gear projects like the brown deluxe kit.
 
cdwillis said:
I don't really need any more amps, but I had a goal to build a brown deluxe or princeton this year. That was until I spent a bunch of money on drum stuff lol. I'm working on finally paying off my truck, so the amp is probably getting pushed back to 2025.
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I can definitely recommend building a Brown Deluxe! I am loving mine, which I built about a year ago. I play it every single day. I was inspired to built it after playing through a Suhr Hombre in a store. After having built a bunch of amps there are very few brands I would actually buy these days. Suhr and Friedman might be the only two.

As far as high gain goes I have found that pedals are just as good as amps for the sound, at least in my experience. I don't generally use a lot of gain but prefer the sound of a pedal into a clean or dirty amp over any hi-gain amp I've tried. A friend had a 5150 and loves it but the background noise at hi-gain is ridiculous. If I put a Vemuram Karen clone in front of my brown Deluxe it actually chugs! Even some Barber pedal clones can get chuggy too. At those levels of gain you can't really tell whether it's tube or pedal anyway.

Sometimes a brown Deluxe can sound a little boxy - another friend has an original '62 and it definitely does, probably because of the original speaker. I use a Celestion G12H Creamback in mine so while it has plenty of midrange it tends not to sound boxy. I have modified the normal channel slightly by making it identical to the Bright channel but using a .1ĀµF coupling cap instead of the stock .022, which removes any hint of boxiness. Unlike a 5E3 Deluxe I don't have any low frequency issues. And if I want completely stock I have the bright channel.
 
A while back I was trying to figure out what Suhr had tweaked on the Hombre vs a stock Fender brownface, but I don't know that I ever figured out anything as far as cap and resistor values. I did like the demos I heard. I've heard demos with Celestion V-Type speakers, like in the Hombre, that sound fantastic and some that sound terrible.
 
cdwillis said:
I did get my truck paid off which is a big financial burden lifted. Now I need to start saving money ...
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You're a rare specimen of financial responsibility around these parts. 100% go for the things that matter over that amp that you may or may not get adequate time to play. I see the appeal of the DIY amp.

HamishR said:
sound a little boxy
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I think a drive into a fender style pedal platform can do some metal but it does react differently to having your amp on the edge of catching fire and letting it do the talking. Different yes but better or worse is a personal decision.

cdwillis said:
Celestion V-Type speakers, like in the Hombre, that sound fantastic and some that sound terrible.
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My Bassbreaker (which currently sits bassbroken) had the celestion V type G12s and I personally liked them quite a lot though I haven't tried them with other heads. Always seemed airy and open but never farty in the lows.
 
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