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Dark modern sounding amp for LP?

Jedi_Exile

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2020
Messages
2
I'm looking for a tube amp for my LP Standard. But I have no possibility to listen to any amp currently, so only youtube and my imagination.

I like clean tones (no Marshall!), but if it's distortion - it better be powerful and 3d sounding, for my taste some amps are lacking bass response too much when distorted and my ears bleed. Also, for me the articulation of each note is very important and how do they sound in complex chords (while overdriven).

So, I started looking randomly into some brands and found Friedman Runt 50. Great sounding amp, great clean tones, but when played through Friedman cab sounds overly bright for me (I don't want my Gibson to sound like Slash!).

And theeen... I found a video from ML Sound lab called something like "Bright vs dark amp", where the guy demonstrates that dark amp played through bright cabinet is better than the other way around. At least it's more versatile.

So, currently I'm not even sure where to look. Which amps can be considered dark sounding (not meaning metal sounding!)? And also - what speakers complement them the best? I like Jensen C12N, but where I live it's mostly Celestion.
 

metropolis

Active member
Joined
Sep 14, 2018
Messages
390
Interesting question! You're right to discuss speakers as many people feel the speakers affect the sound of the amp as much, if not more than the amp itself. Certainly you can tame highs with some dark sounding speakers. I would say that might be even harder to identify and choose by listening online than the amps (where I find it easier to represent the tone).

On the amp front my intepretation of your needs leads me towards Mesa Boogie for a few reasons. Cleans are beautiful, unsurprisingly as they're often Fender circuit based and the controls are very reactive (and complex) so they're a tweakers dream if you know you're after something specific. For example as you increase the treble the gain increases. The other major plus for you is depending on the amp there's sometimes functions to shift extra low or high, and also the classic graphic EQ which will easily tame any highs. I'm a fan of the Mark series so take a look through Mark IV, Mark V and even related lines like the old Studio .22 depending on your format. I personally have a Studio .22+ combo and a rackmount Studio preamp (and previously a Quad preamp which is a Mark II and Mark III preamp combined).
 
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