Does the SVT-3 Pro suck ?......

No this amp rocks. The tone is a little more "vintage" sounding due to the 3-tube preamp and 2-tube/MOS-FET poweramp. Adjust the gain and tube gain and you can get a lot of variety in your sound. Most people either love SVT tone or hate it. I for one, love it. The B2R, since it is solid state, sounds good, but still sounds more modern than the tube ones.

 

so then...why'd ya buy it?!

just messin with you. if you like a good clean tone, i'd recommend SWR stuff. does your cab have a tweeter? that makes a big difference.


jason

 

i'm not a big fan of the svt 3 pro. i had one used it for a resonable time and then sold it. i like old ampeg sound, but in my opinion the svt 3 was nothing comparable to the old. i found a lot of controls quite useless (the tube gain, 3 of the 5 position of the mid switch). speaking abour reliability, i had to change the mosfet poweramp section. and the head was not enough powerful for my ideas. i feel much better with my current setup:

hughes and kettner tubeman plus premp
swr sm 400s head

 

I have two! and love them, I have the old black face model and the newer grey face model.
It's all in what your ears like and your taste in tone ! Sorry to hear you hate the tone, the svt3 is a little gritier or dirty sounding from the all tube pre wich is what I like. Funny I had a B2 before my 3 pro and I thought it was to clean and steril but it is a great head if you like that solidstate tightness. Like I said It's all in your ears ! Play whatever amp makes you happy

 

I've seen some posts on this head, and I did try one out once. I found I didn't like it either, and in general (TBers) it's not found to be near as loud as it's watts would indicate. I too like the B2R better.

If it were me, I'd keep your cab and just swap the SVT3 for the B2R; should sound great. If you do it right, it won't cost anything as you should get for your SVT3 as much as a used B2R would cost.

Good luck, let us know what you do....

Mark

 

Their very cool, mine has the raunchiest, thickended lows. I love the grease I can get out of that head, I set Bass to +5, Mid to +4, Frequency @ #5 sort of used as a make shift presence control, and boost the treble +2dB. The tube gain is the coolest feature I keep it pretty low; around zero to keep it thick and dense, and assign the graphic eq sometimes to put a little bump @ 150Hz and a little bit of cut @ 900Hz. I get a real fat vintagey tones from that head I am happy with it, takes a little bit of tweaking to get the just right tone though but once you finnally hit that sweet spot your in heaven.

 

no it doesn't suck, but it does sound different from the B2r. I didn't really notice that much difference between the two in tone until I got it home and pushed a 4 ohm load with it. (I only used one 8 ohm cab at the store). With the 4ohm load I really noticed a fuzzyness to the tone. i think it is the power amp driver tubes because when I run a line out from the pre amp to a different power amp the fuzzyness(distortion?) is gone. One other thing I noticed between my SVT3 and My old SVT200T(solid state similar to the B2r) is the bass boost sounds totally different. On my SVT200T it adds a sweeet warmth to the tone, on my SVT3 it just seems to muddy the tone. But in an actual band situation I don't really hear the fuzzy distortion of my SVT3. Especially against my guitar player's 100 watt distorted Marshall I am running the SVT3 into 2 bag end 15's behind me on stage and the SVT200T into a Carvin 210 wedge in front of me on stage and it sounds pretty good to me. So like a previous poster said maybe you should consider a trade.

 

Does the SVT-3 Pro suck ?......

Yes.

 

Since it has an internal fan it either sucks or blows. I guess it depends on if you are standing in front or behind it.

 

lol

 

oddly enuf, the best sounding ampeg head i've played (imo) is the b2r. the b5r ain't bad either. i played an svt4 pro the other day, and was not at all impressed.

i can't talk about the vintage ampeg stuff though.

 

ampeg is known for its grittier tube sounds... the b2r and b5r are all solid state heads... if you like those more.. you might want to look more into hi-fi heads... give SWR a shot and Gallien Kruger... maybe even (gasp) peavey. I mean i think ampeg is the coolest thing ever.. but if you don't like the sound... look for the more hi-fi amps...

and yea... i would say the SVT-3 sucked if I couldn't get the sound I wanted out of it...

 

I don't think they suck. Pretty good tone, pretty small package, ok power output. When I used them live I ran two of them, so power wasn't really an issue for me.

 

IMO they suck
No, but they sound too muddy and so does most Ampeg cabs.
Try Ashdown thats what I bought after I had sold my SVT 3 pro and my SVT 2.
Ashdowns are better at doing that old SVT thing then Ampeg itself.

(Remember this is my opinion.)

 

i hear the sovtek bass heads are modeled after old ampegs...and they're cheap - less than 600 bux for an all tube head.

 

I own a SVT 3 Pro too, ( 2 Ampeg cabs ) and I have to say I really like the tone ! It has alot of features (even abit too many) so it takes awhile to find the tone that sounds right to you ... but once found .... man ! I really love it !
I really like the tube gain too !

 

Definitely give Gallien-Krueger a shot. They have awesome clean tone at any volume, and they can get dirty if you need them to. Sounds great either way. Another plus- they're LOUD!!! Peavey amps just don't do it for me, but give 'em a try anyway. It's up to you in the end. Play it all until you fall in love with something. Then buy it and guard it with your life!!! Good luck...