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Below 30w tube amp heads list

D

deeruss

Guest
Aug 27, 2014
40
6
#1
Hi,

To my knowledge there are very few tube amp heads below 30w :

Ashdown CTM-15 (15w)
Ashdown Little Bastard (30w)

They seem cool but hard to find.

I'm looking for a small tube head for home use & recording.
Should I try guitar heads ? I've read they're likely to kill all the low end...

Thanks


Edit : I finally picked the Bugera T5 Infinium (see my post at the end)
 
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#2
Most lower power amps were part of a combo speaker/ amp because they were light enough to put in the same enclosure. Separate heads came about as the higher power amps were too heavy to carry along with the speakers and enclosure. You might find something with push-pull 6V6s, but I can't think of anything specific at the moment.
 
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#5
deeruss said:
Hi,

To my knowledge there are very few tube amp heads below 30w :

Ashdown CTM-15 (15w)
Ashdown Little Bastard (30w)

They seem cool but hard to find.

I'm looking for a small tube head for home use & recording.
Should I try guitar heads ? I've read they're likely to kill all the low end...

Thanks
Click to expand...
Adding an external eq. will help compensate for the tone control difference.
 
#7
deeruss said:
Hi,

To my knowledge there are very few tube amp heads below 30w :

Ashdown CTM-15 (15w)
Ashdown Little Bastard (30w)

They seem cool but hard to find.

I'm looking for a small tube head for home use & recording.
Should I try guitar heads ? I've read they're likely to kill all the low end...

Thanks
Click to expand...
Here you go:Invalid Link Removed

It also has 25w and Silent record modes.
 
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#9
Ampeg B-15N!

68AC7847-199E-4CC8-85CF-9753ABB7B31E.jpeg
 
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#11
deeruss said:
Hi,

To my knowledge there are very few tube amp heads below 30w :

Ashdown CTM-15 (15w)
Ashdown Little Bastard (30w)

They seem cool but hard to find.

I'm looking for a small tube head for home use & recording.
Should I try guitar heads ? I've read they're likely to kill all the low end...

Thanks
Click to expand...
I know of the little ampegs, but a lot of guitar amps have a switchable wattage. Like, 1, 5, 12, etc. That could be a good way to go.
 
#13
Kind of a stretch, but you can use one channel of a Mesa 2:50 with the pre of your choice and get a nice tone @ 25w.
I have done this before with a 2:90 and it sounded pretty great. Somewhat complex for a gig rig, but it works just fine.
 
#14
RoadRanger said:
... and it's newer version the CTM-30 (I have one) and now the "CTM 30 Little Stubby". Also IME most guitar heads are fine on bass with the right cab.
Click to expand...

I've certainly played one of the Electar 5W single ECC83, single EL84 amps with bass, into a bass cabinet. I had to liberate the internal speaker to do it, but AFAIR it was push-on terminals, so doable (at a pinch). I don't recall soldering. Very limited controls (volume, tone), but it sounded pretty reasonable. You wouldn't be able to gig with it without using a speaker level DI and a power amp, though. I wish I'd kept it, as it's hard to find anything as cheap like that now. The internal speaker wasn't that great, even for guitar,

Edit: yes, much like Invalid Link Removed

If I end up playing more guitar, I might consider that, as I have a speaker-level DI. For guitar I'd want something that either sounded like an old Bassman or Vox, though, or maybe a Marshall JTM45, but that's it.

Edit: Looking at the links I remember my issues with the Electar were the speaker (not so great for recording after all), and lack of reverb, and effect that needs to be between pre-amp and speaker. I could have got a reverb pedal and spliced it in, but that was going to be complex, so getting it to cover all the guitar bases (haha) was going to be tricky, even if it worked as a bass tone time machine. It had very little clean headroom. What I should have done is actually bought that Laney LC15R 20 years ago.
 
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#18
I've owned and used a Little Bastard for the past 2+ years in a home studio set up.
It powers up my 70's 4ohm 412 Bassman slant better (vol. and tone) than the matching bassman 100 head
I also use it with my 8ohm 410 Fender neo with great results.
I rarely go past 12 o'clock to get the clean volume that rattles the windows.
Best results when you let it warm up for 30min to get the best out of the valve tone

Not far behind it in terms of valve-esque tone but with far greater tonal flexibility is my Markbass Blackline.... but again.... in a mid-volume studio set up
 
#20
Thaibassman said:
I've owned and used a Little Bastard for the past 2+ years in a home studio set up.
It powers up my 70's 4ohm 412 Bassman slant better (vol. and tone) than the matching bassman 100 head
I also use it with my 8ohm 410 Fender neo with great results.
I rarely go past 12 o'clock to get the clean volume that rattles the windows.
Best results when you let it warm up for 30min to get the best out of the valve tone

Not far behind it in terms of valve-esque tone but with far greater tonal flexibility is my Markbass Blackline.... but again.... in a mid-volume studio set up
Click to expand...

I use mine with an Epifani UL410 for gigs. Several of my sound guys like it better than any other amp I own.

The line out is a tap off of the output transformer so the power tubes are included in the sound. That makes a huge difference in my view.

And with that Epifani cab, it gets stupid loud. Volume wise, it's no different from taking my Mesa Walkabout or even my SVT. Any louder than the LB30 will go clean would blow my speakers anyway. If I went into distortion I could blow that 1100W cab with that head.

I've been told it's impossible here on this forum. But if you heard it in person, you would swear I could blow it to bits. I can't run the LB30 and UL410 at full clean volume on any stage I've played. It would be simply too loud.
 
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