Guitar Amps? anyone have a clue?

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mikiemo83

mikiemo83

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Looking for an amp for the boy for Jazz band, thought I had an old Roland jazz 60 but that fell thru.

So WTF? should I look for? and what is a good price for the one you suggest incase I find it.

He has an Epiphone 335 pro, and a couple fake Strats along with a PA he has been playing with at home but needs the amp for school.

he also has an old Fender Jazz bass but IF he plays that the school has an amp to use but the upright kid is real good.

thanks
 
The only way to go:

Marshall-stack_mle0y8.jpg


Sorry, there is not much I can help here. I just have a little practice amp for my Fender, and then a middling Peavy bass amp for my bass. Not very good at playing either.

I would think you would be able to get something adequate for a jazz band for a couple hundred. In the auditoriums that jazz bands play in, and the subdued nature of their mix, I wouldn't think you would need a lot.
 
Undertaker #59* said:
The only way to go:

Marshall-stack_mle0y8.jpg


Sorry, there is not much I can help here. I just have a little practice amp for my Fender, and then a middling Peavy bass amp for my bass. Not very good at playing either.

I would think you would be able to get something adequate for a jazz band for a couple hundred. In the auditoriums that jazz bands play in, and the subdued nature of their mix, I wouldn't think you would need a lot.
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Thanks, the going size to get it between 60 and 100 watt, anything bigger is not needed.

Pretty cool thing is he tested into the Jazz Band and by making it he gets an honors class that meets daily, basically he gets Jazz class at school with this new option they added this year. He already knows a few of the guys and they formed a band outside of it. My boy is choosing music over sports and may end up a Mathlete in place of an athlete.
 
You'd think someone who's played the guitar for over 20 years would have some suggestions.... but I'm mostly an acoustic guy, and the times I bust out the electric is when I'm recording and I go straight into the computer.

That said, I have found https://www.sweetwater.com/ to be immensely helpful whenever my purchases strayed outside my comfort zone. If I were in your shoes, I'd start there.
 
If he's going to be hauling it to/from school, he'll probably appreciate something that's not too heavy. I'd probably look for a solid state 1x12 combo.

I have played around with many of my son's solid state kits - Fishman Loudbox Artist, a Tech 21 TM60 and an Ibanez WT80 - and they are all jazz capable though, possibly too heavy. Used market is probably the route I'd go. This way you can re-sell and not take a bath.

In any case, have him plug in and try out before buying.
 
I am a Mesa Dual Rectifier loyalist, but it's a bad choice for Jazz Band.

Take an outing to a music store and torment the clerks with endless noodling on multiple amps- educational and sadistic!
 
Oh good. I am glad some people with some knowledge came to help. :)
 
A nice clean amp will do good for Jazz. The guitars you listed should work fine with any Fender Reverb amp. Fender makes great clean amps, probably the best bet.

If you are looking for something that can handle multiple genres, highly recommend checking out the Fender Mustang amps. They're cheap, very cost-friendly and have multiple clean and distortion amp presets and a wide variety of effects to making presets. They can plug into the computer via USB and you can go off editing and making a good rig set up however you want. These amps sound gorgeous and you get a real bang for the buck out of the cheap price. There are various videos on Youtube demonstrating how the Mustang and FUSE software can pull off a variety of different tones to suit different genres of play.
 
Claremonster said:
Tube Amps only. Jazz is bad enough. Playing it with modeling amps just makes it worse. :coffee:
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Agreed.

I bought a tricked-out Line 6 Spider because it had tons of modeling effects, which means it can mimic all kinds of different amp and guitar sounds, has a drum feature and allowed me to record rhythm loops and then do leads over the playback.

The problem is that while the looping feature is useful, the amp is very complex and I've come to believe that it is far better to buy a simple, good-sounding amp with a few basic features like delay and reverb and then add what you need with plug-in pedals because everybody has their own style. I don't like this amp much and am planning on dumping it.

What I'm trying to say is that I have about 150 different guitar settings to dial through, but after a lot of experimentation I only like about 5 of them.

Same with the drum feature. Most of the tracks sound bizarre and are useless. Mikey's son is better off finding a signature sound and mastering that instead of getting lost in all the electronics, especially if jazz is his direction.

Simple is good.
 
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