Which generation of the Catalinbread SFT is the way to go? Or alternative?

I never liked the SFT, too darn compressed.

Go for a Barbershop, an Azure Drive, a Valvecaster, or something like that. Some people get good results out of the Beta, but again IMO/IME it was too compressed.

 

I kinda agree with Blindrabbit. The SFT never sounded all that good. Too furry and not much articulation or definition. At least with the one I had about 4 years ago.

 

@fasto Maybe another Catalinbread — Catalinbread Formula 55 and 5F6

 

Creation Audio Grizzly sounds exactly like I always wished the SFT could sound like.

 

The Southampton Fifth Gear v2 is one for that as far as I am concerned.

 

v1 has the big white knobs, v2 has smaller black knobs, or silver knobs. v3 has a switch to go between two gain settings 'stones' and 'stoner'.

18V is definitely the way to go, especially if you have a high output bass.

V1 has less low end and top end, but fatter lower mids that really fill out the mix. I had both for a while and thought I preferred the deeper lows and extended highs of the V2 at first, but with the band at volume, the V1 had more low mid grunt.

I eventually replaced it with a Bearfoot Blueberry though. It sounds more tube like and responds better when digging in really hard. Fast forward several years and I am using a Solidgoldfx Beta as a dirty boost instead. Sounds very much like a tubescreamer but with massive lows and low mids, and not much top end!