Amps !? What am I doing here ?

[jp]

Well I don’t know about that , sales are on the slow side around here . lol
So what kind of music do you play or did you play with this amp?

I've never had one, but as I wrote before, I've owned several DC-5s in both combo and head, as well as the DC-3. The Express series are the more evolved versions of the Dual Caliber series.

My first DC-5 was the workhorse gigging amp. I used it in a blues band, for jazz gigs, a soul funk band, an ole timey country band, and a slew of rock bands of different kinds. It's a versatile amp. When I had the rare chance to crank it up to it's full wattage with massive distortion, it was pure heaven. I'm an early Metallica fan, and it can get real close to the Kill'em All/Ride the Lightning era.

I would love to buy an Express 5:50+, but I currently have a taste for a small Marshall, like a DSL20.

 

[GAD]

FWIW after watching a lot of Psionic's videos on YT, I would not buy a modern Mesa amp and I lusted after on for years.



This one is queued up at his Mesa rant:



Mesas can be great amps - until they break.

 

[jp]

I like this guy's channel, and although I understand his critiques of Boogies, I've never experienced any major issue firsthand. I've had (4) of them, and the only problem I had was a flaky speaker cable. Also, my main DC-5 combo endured pretty rigorous touring for years without one problem. I trusted it so much that I never brought a backup amp with me, and it never failed me once. I didn't even have a road case--just drunken bandmates huffing it into the back of a smelly van.

I agree with his under $1000 choices.

 

[Rayk]

FWIW after watching a lot of Psionic's videos on YT, I would not buy a modern Mesa amp and I lusted after on for years.



This one is queued up at his Mesa rant:



Mesas can be great amps - until they break.

I’ll check it out see what’s up . Kind of sad if that is the case and there’s underlying issues considering their USA hand made so to say , right ?

Well ok I just jumped in and crap ! Not what I expected.

I found this ironically though he’s not going overly in-depth . Maybe I can find a better one .

 

[GAD]

I should clarify that I would buy one for the right price which I realized as I sat here contemplating DRC's. (Curse you DRC! LOL) Hell, I'd probably buy anything for the right price. Well, probably not Bose stuff...

Modern lowest-bid manufacturing plus the need for a lot of features means that amps made to a price point while also being more and more complicated just means that they will likely have higher failure rates while also being more complicated to repair. If you're not dragging an amp all over and abusing it then it will probably last a long time.

The simple truth is that everyone wants top-quality equipment but no one wants to pay for it; there's a reason that high end boutique amps cost a lot of money. Hell - just look through one of AcornHouse's guitar building threads and it should be easy to understand why any actually hand-crafted instrument costs thousands of dollars. It's the same with amps. It's WAY cheaper to have Chinese factories make low-quality PCBs with wave-soldered components than it is for someone to sit and hand-solder more robust part, and honestly the wave soldering will probably have fewer errors. The problem is that every single aspect of anything being built has been penny-pinched to the extreme so the manufacturer can charge more and deliver less thus increasing profits.

I've built a few amps and I love the results, but being meticulous means that if I were to do it for a profit I'd need to charge over $5000 for a JCM 800 head. No one wants to pay that when you can get an actual vintage one for $2500.

 

[Rayk]

I understand I have a music friend I. Finland but wait he moved um yeah anyway really good guitarist and he had an amp built , can’t say how much but it was lots and seeing some of the pics it was pretty amazing work .
I’ll try to hook up with him and see if has pics you might be interested in checking out . There’s a chance he sold it it’s been a few years . Anyway yeah I understand the high costs .

From what that tech guy says they could made the amp a far bit better with just a little bit more cost .

As for my use it will be pretty much just be for home use . I don’t really have any body but a few online buddies around world so to say lol to collaborate with .

It would nice to have some local players but not so easy to find in my area of music . lol

 

[Rocky]

Modern lowest-bid manufacturing plus the need for a lot of features means that amps made to a price point while also being more and more complicated just means that they will likely have higher failure rates while also being more complicated to repair. If you're not dragging an amp all over and abusing it then it will probably last a long time.

I skimmed through a lot of that video, and he does bring up a lot of valid points about construction. It's not just transport though, some of those amps with tube sockets mounted directly to thin PC boards. If they're biased at all warm, they can scorch the board if you run the amp for longer periods - a shorted tube could burn the board too. Also, if you're one of those people who like to experiment with tube swaps, you can flex the board and crack it.

That said, I think he would a little aggressive about one of the 5E3 clones being a piece of crap. It wasn't the neatest job in the world, and yeah, I would have done a few things differently too, but if it fails, anybody with a soldering iron and a bit of know how could fix it in less than an hour, and it'd be better than new. Those others, not so much.

 

[Rayk]

Here’s two pics of my friends amp for you geek types . lol

 

[JohnW63]

It's a row of corn on the cob and hotdogs with skewers.

 

[GAD]

It's a row of corn on the cob and hotdogs with skewers.

Thanks. Now I’m hungry.

 

[Rayk]

Thanks. Now I’m hungry.

lol me too !