What I Wish I Knew Before I Bought a Tube Amp

"Use your ears, not your eyes" - that's actually great advice. I've been playing for 25+ years now, and I still make that mistake... Thanks a lot, Rhett!

So nice to hear an Amp demo short and sweet by a player repeating the exact same phrase just a simple 2/3 chords s short riff and a quick couple of chops And repeated perfectly each time to be as close as before Instead of a random shred that has no Relevance to what was previously played as the Amps dynamic range and features are demonstrated Great job sir 👍 🤙

What I wish I knew: the neighbors will hate me and my wife will eventually leave me.

The “dialing in your amp” part is so true. I had a Marshall DSL40C for a while and I always thought it was a “bad” thing that I had to turn the treble all the way down and the mids all the way up. But it sounded fantastic when I played it that way, and it turns out a lot of Marshalls sound best when the EQ knobs are pushed to extremes. Those knobs twist for a reason!

My biggest problem with amps is i tend to want every one i can get my hands on. It’s starting to get as bad as my guitar buying addiction!

This really should be a must-watch for folks new to the Tube/Valve Amp scene. Kudos to you, Rhett! 🔥🙏🏻🔥

There was a spinal tap moment ." Did you hear that sustain"

I wish I’d known that the Vox AC15 is the world’s perfect amp. Would have spared me years of blowing folks’ ears out chasing that creamy tone.

I have a Laney Lionheart 5W combo. Great amp and I feel is very underrated. I’ve got one of the earlier British made ones with a Greenback. They are built like a tank…probably around 45-50 pounds with a 12” speaker for a five watter. Very versatile. Takes pedals well and built in drive can easily get to a good rock tone. But the cleans are phenomenal and very articulate.

Very helpful… thanks for diving into fundamentals! So easy to get caught up in gear and pedals, but there is so much that can be done with just dialing in the amp! Great video, thanks!

Great Video! I just “graduated “ to a tube amp and I’m happy I did. I went from a Line 6 Catalyst 60. To a Marshall DSL40cr. I’ll be staying with tube amps from now on.

Great video; I wish something like this was around when I was a tube amp noob. "Listen with your ears, not your eyes" when tweaking the eq, and "you need fewer watts than you think. No, really" are two of the best bits of advice that I should have learned much earlier!

I know it's obvious, but something I learned early on is that how powerful an amp you need for stage volume mainly depends on how clean you need it to be. So you might want a 2x12 100W Fender Twin for squeeky clean stage volume cleans for a pedal steel or Rhodes mk.I. Or a Vox AC30, to a lesser extent. And most people don't need that, which I guess is why Twins can seem good value compared to Princeton's or Deluxe Reverbs. But, these days for dirty Marshall tone, the small light 20W studio heads make more sense than a big heavy 100W model. But then small Fender's like Tweed Champs and Princeton's are stun guns when fullly dirty. So yeah, no perfect amp, always the question is what's the main intended use.

Rhett…thanks for the U&C excellent vid/content. I’ve been a musician & guitarist for 43 years now and while you didn’t present anything new that I didn’t already know, you did give me a different way of thinking about a couple of things. While kinda off topic, but not entirely, you’d mentioned the scenario where you park your PRS 15 watt head next to you and then park your cab in another room… I play gigs at a few venues where the stage volume is restricted or there’s a Silent Stage rule. I used to have my amp head on stage w/me and I either had my cab in a back room or I used an internally mic’d iso-cab backstage. About a 18 months, ago I started experiencing the progression of a health issue that necessitated a reduction/simplification in load in/out considerations. Fast forward to a year ago and after researching potential solutions, I purchased a Quilter Aviator Cub UK 1x12” 50 watt combo. It emulates, as I recall a 1963 Vox AC30, a 1964 Vox AC30 Top Boost and a 1977-ish, give or take a couple of years, Marshall JMP 2204 50 watt head. It is solid state as opposed to tube, but it’s also a 50 watt 1x12” combo that weighs in at only 22 pounds (10 kilograms). That’s the icing on the cake. It sounds outstanding. Pat Quilter did a remarkable job nailing the tone and feel of the emulated amps. The preamp is FET/MOSFET based and the output section is Class D. I plug in, turn on and set my tone. I then set the master volume to the venue limits or roll it back to zero for silent stage (I’m plugged into the amp’s volume-controllable, speaker emulated out that goes to FOH for venue mixing purposes no matter the scenario) and I’m ready for sound check. The amp takes pedals very well too. I don’t have to fiddle with the knobs once I set my master volume as the Class D output doesn’t change the tone or gain/dirt set in the preamp. It just makes the sound quieter or louder without affecting the signal’s salient preamp configured qualities. Rhett, I’ve always been a tube guy. I never saw myself plating a solid state amp little alone playing one and enjoying it. While the deterioration of an aspect of my health was the mule I was given to ride for my trip through QuilterLand, While my fat, infirmed ass limited what that mule could carry, I had other choices, tube driven choices besides Quilter that I’d discovered. Still, nothing had the tone, versatility, feel and feature-set that Quilter offered me. It was not the least expensive by far, but it was just the best balance of all things considered. Talk with Pat. Perhaps he’ll sponsor a video by lending you this or the American-flavored model for you to go through. Hint, hint…topic for a future video.

My first tube amp (after a few solid state amps) was a used Blackstar HT-5R. It was very affordable, so I wasn't too concerned about money down the drain if it didn't work out. Turns out it's great for my practicing at home. I've learned how to replace the tubes without sticking my fingers where they shouldn't go. And I like the range of tones I can get by twiddling the knobs.

Awesome presentation, you did a great job explaining the controls it's always good to have a refresher. Rock on brother!

We all know that tone in a PRS amp comes mostly from the wood of the amp chassis 💀

Thanks for explaining that “no sound comes out of the amp head”. I’ve been wondering why all my amp heads weren’t working! Gotta try out this “speaker cabinet” thing!

I was wise enough to know that I did NOT need a 100 w Marshall for my 1st amp. I bought a 40 w Fender Blues Deluxe Tweed combo amp and I NEVER turned the volume above 2.5. That thing was LOUD! In fact, it was too loud to be practical as a home practice amp. My next amp will be a 1-watt Blackstar head. I plan on buying a separate cabinet or building my own from a kit at Stewart MacDonald. 😊

Very informative and useful video, especially how each of the tone and volume controls interact with each other.