My roommate owns a Decatone and I just recently picked up an Avenger and he wanted to hear it, so he invited me to come and sit in on his band's practice (which was a lot of fun since they're a very non-typical power metal band). We were running the Soldanos through a Carvin Legacy v30 loaded cab. He played through the Decatone with an ESP LTD EC-1000 w/EMG 85, I played through the Avenger with my Jackson SL2HT Chlorine w/EMG 85. We kept the EQing very simple (everything at noon) and played around with the gain mostly somewhere between 12:00 and 2:00. Avenger was at about 9:00 or 10:00 volume wise, Decatone I couldn't really tell (has a master and a channel volume). We were looking for metal tones and not really going for anything else.
-Both amps have that "Soldano" sound, voicing on both amps is either love it or hate it
-Avenger seemed a lot darker and more brutal, whereas the Decatone was brighter and needed a bit more gain added in to keep up (but both amps seemed to have more gain than you'd ever need on tap). Both amps sound excellent and they compliment each other very well.
-Avenger seemed to outvolume the Decatone without too much trouble
-Both amps are ridiculously tight sounding through the Carvin Legacy cabs. There is absolutely no flubby low end or excessive rumbling / loose low end. This being said, both amps have excellent bass response and are very heavy sounding
-The amp isn't forgiving; if your playing style is sloppy it shows and fast.
-Open chords sound awesome, and power chords sound very, well, powerful.
-Lots of sustain!
-Leads sing out of both amps.
-Decatone has more plugged in versatility with 2 great sounding channels (clean, overdrive) and the crunch channel really didn't do too much for us,
-Avenger's low gain input enables you to basically unlock another whole set of completely different tones. Preamp gain knob is also really diverse on the high gain input (we didn't go much past 1:00-2:00 though)
My roommate liked the Avenger more than his Decatone, and was saying that he would really want to hear the SLO. I thought that it was pretty much dead even and liked both amps for slightly different reasons.
Hopefully we can get together again for another shoot out with some more gear.
-Both amps have that "Soldano" sound, voicing on both amps is either love it or hate it
-Avenger seemed a lot darker and more brutal, whereas the Decatone was brighter and needed a bit more gain added in to keep up (but both amps seemed to have more gain than you'd ever need on tap). Both amps sound excellent and they compliment each other very well.
-Avenger seemed to outvolume the Decatone without too much trouble
-Both amps are ridiculously tight sounding through the Carvin Legacy cabs. There is absolutely no flubby low end or excessive rumbling / loose low end. This being said, both amps have excellent bass response and are very heavy sounding
-The amp isn't forgiving; if your playing style is sloppy it shows and fast.
-Open chords sound awesome, and power chords sound very, well, powerful.
-Lots of sustain!
-Leads sing out of both amps.
-Decatone has more plugged in versatility with 2 great sounding channels (clean, overdrive) and the crunch channel really didn't do too much for us,
-Avenger's low gain input enables you to basically unlock another whole set of completely different tones. Preamp gain knob is also really diverse on the high gain input (we didn't go much past 1:00-2:00 though)
My roommate liked the Avenger more than his Decatone, and was saying that he would really want to hear the SLO. I thought that it was pretty much dead even and liked both amps for slightly different reasons.
Hopefully we can get together again for another shoot out with some more gear.
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