Valve amps

Who uses them still? I’ve still got a few valve amps for guitar but it seems to be all transistor for basses these days. The reason I ask is I came across this video and bizarre as it sounds, I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard a bass guitar played through a bassman amp. Gotta love that old school valve tone Original 1959 Fender BASSman Turns Out to be an Amazing BASS AMP! ;-) - YouTube

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a have way too much guitar valve amps, but I don’t want to use valve amps for a bass. it’s just too heavy, too bulky, too expensive, and it does not sound better than modern modeling amps IMHO, at least for what I ask to an amp.

a tube preamp can still be fine if needed/wanted, but I absolutly don’t see the point of tube power amps for a bass.

just my 2 cents :slight_smile:

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I don’t disagree with any of that, I just think that bassman is frickin lovely :smile:

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it was just my opinion anyway :smiley:

I went with a separate valve preamp to drive a solid state power stage and it’s my favorite sound yet. Their website claims to be able to dial in even or odd harmonics on different switch settings. I don’t know anything about that for sure, but I do think the purported even harmonic character is the most delightful I’ve heard and the odd sounds more like modern aggressive favorites.

It’s my current reigning champion for this pursuit. I also didn’t want a full heavy maintenance problem thing. I haven’t done any comparison to plugins.

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that looks like a really sweet pre-amp

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It’s all about the tone. Pretty much nothing comes close to an SVT. Maybe some of the Mesa Boogie.

But this could be something Similar to why people like Fenders?!

My first amp as a teenager was an old Fender bass man. No idea what happened to it, nor did I know how good it was. Lol

Yeah it looks super awesome.

I did the same thing originally as @DaveT and went with an EBS ValveDrive preamp, which sounds awesome. Easy to swap out the tube for other ones to try too. And it is so nice and flexible to have the tone be separate from the power amp.

I’m selling it though, because I simply prefer amp models in the DAW. It’s even more flexible, even than the preamp. And sounds as good or better.

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:grinning: Argh!!! I had an original early 60s VOX AC30 as a teenager. I have no idea what happened to it either. I probably traded it in for something stupid

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that’s my holy grail for guitar amps. my #1 amp is a VAC Hayseed 30 which is a boutique version of the '63 JMI Vox AC30/6 Top Boost. with an added pre-TB AC30/4 EF86 channel.

:v::grin:

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It’s the amp my bandmate really, really wants too. Iconic and used in a lot of post-punk.

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