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Below 30w tube amp heads list
- Thread starter deeruss
- Start date
Another vote for the Ashdown CTM-15. I use mine as a stage monitor. With the right cabinet, it is a mad little amp.
Check Mahaffey Amps.
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Also The Noble Pre Amo is outstanding.. but pricey
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Also The Noble Pre Amo is outstanding.. but pricey
Oy vey - I run my CTM-30 pretty far into overdrive with an older Peavey 4x10 no prob. Not in the least worried about it. Any cab rated at 120w continuous or more would be fine.
I’m considering finally selling my Peavey MK III, 115BW and 210 to pick this up for practice/rehearsal
That is NO Tube Amp...
Tube Amp with low wattage:
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Can be used as a preamp or standalone 5 Watt amp.
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IMHO, you should consider vintage guitar amps.. I have a 1963 6G2 Fender Princeton...12 watts approximately out of a pair of 6V6 output and 5Y3GT rectifier tubes. Sounds great with bass. It's pretty easy to overpower the stock speaker being as the cabinet is open back, but it gets louder than my Tacoma Thunderchief, so I use it to lay down loops and a jam with my Stratocaster when I don't feel like blowing the windows out. Easy enough to plug in a more robust speaker if I need more volume. The sound of this amp is a bit darker than a blackface Fender, but otherwise very similar.
I have also played bass through my JMI era Vox AC30 and it sounded fabulous, and also surprisingly bass heavy.
Course these are just examples...the amps I mentioned are pretty expensive on the used market, but there are plenty of low wattage tube amps you can find bargains on.
Hello,
I finally picked this little 5w amp :
160$ new
Loving it so far, it has 2 valves: 12AX7 & EL84.
There's a headphones jack at the back and the manufacturer says that it is enough to act as a dummy load.
I tested it with decent headphones.(akg 702)
I was quite anxious before plugging my pbass into it, but it sounds great. It adds the grit I was lacking with my DI box.
No way to have that tube grit with a plugin.
Icing on the cake, there's also an attenuator at the back (0.1w, 1w & 5w) and... a reverb !
Can't wait to plug a bass cab in it. I'll also try different tubes.
Thank you guys for your tips.
I finally picked this little 5w amp :
160$ new
Loving it so far, it has 2 valves: 12AX7 & EL84.
There's a headphones jack at the back and the manufacturer says that it is enough to act as a dummy load.
I tested it with decent headphones.(akg 702)
I was quite anxious before plugging my pbass into it, but it sounds great. It adds the grit I was lacking with my DI box.
No way to have that tube grit with a plugin.
Icing on the cake, there's also an attenuator at the back (0.1w, 1w & 5w) and... a reverb !
Can't wait to plug a bass cab in it. I'll also try different tubes.
Thank you guys for your tips.
Do you find the EQ to be usable at all? That's always my first question when considering a guitar amp for bass.
Yes, treble & bass knobs have a huge impact on the overall sound.
I like a dark bass tone so I don't push that much the treble knob, of course you need to crank up the bass knob as it is a guitar amp but not all the way up.
I like a dark bass tone so I don't push that much the treble knob, of course you need to crank up the bass knob as it is a guitar amp but not all the way up.
I wonder how hard it would be to revoice that tone circuitry for bass? I have next to no electronics experience but after seeing what people have done with those little Epiphone heads has me wondering.
I'm sure actually doing it is pretty easy--swapping out a resistor or capacitor.
Figuring out what to do is the hard part
/electrical engineer
Hi @deerus! I was wondering how you like this little T5 now that you have had it a few months? How does it sound with a bass, run through a bass cab? Does it sound like an bass amp? I was curious as I have been looking for something to try and get a tube amp sound for home on the cheap.
I'm sure actually doing it is pretty easy--swapping out a resistor or capacitor.
Figuring out what to do is the hard part
/electrical engineer
Isn't part of the trick also, on typical PCB-based designs, getting the PCB out in one piece and being able to desolder a capacitor tightly packed in amongst other components, as opposed to point-to-point designs?
It's logarithmic, so 7W is only half as loud as 70W.
I am now wishing I had kept my little 5W Epiphone Electar. The speaker (8") let it down, but modified for an external speaker it might have been viable for guitar in quiet contexts, or bass for recording. Only a single tone control, though.
