New Cheap Chinese made guitar amplifiers

[mresistor]

Pardon me for a little rant, but I get a lot of guys bringing their cheap chinese made amps with pcbs and switching to me to fix all the time. And I am at the point I almost refuse to work on them anymore. They are just a nightmare. I tell lots of young guys just get a good old school Fender or Marshall or other handwired guitar amp and then use pedals. And it you need two channels get two old school amps and switch between them. Take a look at the way Bonamassa does it. Heck he's got 4 amps on stage and is using all 4 all being imput from his pedal board. I tell them this and they don't listen. But I tell them a good pedal is a whole lot cheaper to fix or replace than a dead $500 - $800 Chinese made POS in my opinion. If you buy one of these cheap amps and it works a long time for you I consider that you are a lucky man. And I know there are some better ones out there, but I have seen and fixed a lot of them too. I have yet to see an original Marshall 18 watt for repairs or a 5E3 for that matter and most of the old school amps I see are just needing new caps or tubes. Simple stuff and then they can go another 15-20 years.
How many of you feel similar ?

[Ritchie200]

I think it boils down to the age old adage that if you want to get paid by a musician, get it up front.  Years ago I knew a guy who played bass for a very well known 50's guitar player.  He was always begging my bass player to borrow his SVT because he had to pawn his and needed the money from the next tour to get it back.   I think it comes down to the almighty dollar.  The imports are cheap(er) and big(ger), than a decent amp that is more expensive and makes for a less impressive back line. They also sound good enough to the girlfriend and/or cat to play Enter Sandman over and over and over..... Many new musicians don't know how good a good ol tube amp sounds.  OR, considering the sixteen death metal pedals chained together pushing the front end - it really would not matter. 

The reason Joe has 4 amps on stage is so he can take them to the local music store after the gig, shed a tear with a story about how they were his first amps , and then try to sell them for twice what they are worth....

Jim

[SILVERGUN]

The reason Joe has 4 amps on stage is so he can take them to the local music store after the gig, shed a tear with a story about how they were his first amps , and then try to sell them for twice what they are worth....

Wow, do you need a hug?

I agree mresistor, PC boards are for microwaves and disposable cars.

[shooter]

I am at the point I almost refuse to work on them anymore

after I got outsourced n downsized I hit the road to avoid winter.  tried getting a bench job fixing amps, 2 places said they don't even work on solid state, I asked what he did with them, his reply; "there out back in the dumpster, help yourself"  I left them

[mresistor]

The reason Joe has 4 amps on stage is so he can take them to the local music store after the gig, shed a tear with a story about how they were his first amps , and then try to sell them for twice what they are worth....

Jim

That might be believeable if not for that Marshall Silver Jubilee that appears in his backline consistently.      Go to the 4 minute mark.  And also check out that Van Weelden
Twinkle Land .. look at the knobs on that thing (LOL) .... beautiful.  ! No longer available

[Ritchie200]

The reason Joe has 4 amps on stage is so he can take them to the local music store after the gig, shed a tear with a story about how they were his first amps , and then try to sell them for twice what they are worth....

Wow, do you need a hug?

That kind of goes against what Joe is all about, don't you think?  You could capture some of his mojo if you charged me for it!  However, I think there are laws against that....

My last foray into a SS amp was an old Crate bass combo amp with a single 12 that a guy brought me.  Output transistors fried, board fried, wires showed melted insulation.  Just to humor him I got new transistors and cleaned up the board as best I could.  Nothing.  So I sourced a new board since STL Music distributed them here at the time.  It was more than he paid for the thing used.  I charge him like $50 for time and parts and he just gave the amp to me for payment.  It became my Firefly mule.  My lead guitar playing electronics ego side wanted me to go back to that board and figure out what was bad.  Fortunately my zen side won out realizing it would still sound like crap if I ever did get it going.

Jim

[Platefire]

I got a small Crate Practice amp with DSP. It was part of the e-bay package with a guitar I once bought. The guitar is gone but still got the amp. I do use it for practice. I must say it's very convenient for late night practice. I do despise working on pcb boards and if this little thing quits, the dumpster might be a good consideration. Platefire

[DummyLoad]

and on the flip side of all this... the carvin mts3200 i just worked on is a breeze. i can have to board out of the chassis completely in under 15 minutes. unplug 3 SIP headers, 7 fast-on connections and 2 molex plugs, the input jack nut, pull the knobs and pot nuts, 3 screws and the board is out. most of that time is spent taking the knobs off and the pot nuts. it's a decent quality PCB with good parts. USA made. current production fender PCB amps are bitch to work on. the worst PCB amp i have worked on was an ampeg V4 - the control board is mu$^r ^$#r to work on, the rest were a easy.

--pete

[TheKT88KilledJFK]

How many of you feel similar ?

I've found that the less things in my signal chain or effects loop, the better.  I'd rather add effects on the mic than the effects loop or input at this point. 

PCB is a mixed bag.  Obviously you have brands like Soldano that do it right.  Even their jet city amp copies have easy to work on PCBs. I've seen laney cub12 copies from china that were easy to work on.  On the flip side, USA made 5150s (one of my favorite amps) are pretty complicated in comparison.  They make up for it with great documentation, but there's no denying that the switching network and inter-stage filtering of these amps were somewhat convoluted.  You can simplify the designs drastically, so it looks like they had set component values to work with so they designed accordingly.  I take that as more of a sign of proper engineering in the face of budget constraints, though.  IMO Mesa is the worst offender in the domestic market.  Poor documentation and proprietary component markings make for interesting troubleshooting. 

Honestly, I just haven't worked on any chinese stuff except for the laney copies and that's just for fun.  I just know that with PCB comes the possibility of stuffing way more into a system than what's actually needed for operation.  This is done for many reasons.