Tweet
I remembered about the other local music shop in my town and found that they stocked some things the main one doesnt (main one has jacksons, where else do I need to go?). Ashdown amps are one of those things and I've wanted to try them out for a while now.
First I plugged into the 60watt head, into a mode four cab (sounded like a nice tight cab in the test room). The amp has a nice tube tone, and the clean channel breaks up very sweet and/or dirty on demand. Lacks that wonderful crisp clean tube sound though. Big distortion was my main aim for this though and it was WAY off. I don't understand how people can call amps metal or highgain when you cant even get a good chug' going! I asked the store for the pedal to set the 'boost' on and instead they handed me a cheapass behringer metalzone copy. Wonderful, beginning to remember why I dont come here. So after they ruined all the glory of tubeness by running a $2 pedal saturating the clean channel, I tried a clean boost on the distortion channel. Big difference! With the dist level on the pedal zero'd, eq flat and level dimed, same with the amp, I finally hit the sweet spot! Shaping with the amp proved much better then the pedal, and it didnt take long to get good riffing and good lead in the one tone. Impressed with this (for relatively cheap) I tried one of the combo's.
The 40watt combo comes with a V30 and 3 12ax7/4 el34's. Same again with the lack of gain, but a clean boost made this thing shine! Satch and dime in the one amp, which is what I'm after. Not to shabby volume wise, and for the money its alot of amp with quality components, electro harmonix pre's and sovtek power tubes, genuine v30, and cool red lights.
Without the pedal boosting the input these things sucked balls, and the younger guy said the 'boost' channel doesnt add much, I guess I'll never know, but slammin' the pre tubes with a pedal makes them really work. It was my first attempt at a clean boost, do all amps take to it so well? For those that have played these, let me know how they compare to other high gain offerings, cheers!
First I plugged into the 60watt head, into a mode four cab (sounded like a nice tight cab in the test room). The amp has a nice tube tone, and the clean channel breaks up very sweet and/or dirty on demand. Lacks that wonderful crisp clean tube sound though. Big distortion was my main aim for this though and it was WAY off. I don't understand how people can call amps metal or highgain when you cant even get a good chug' going! I asked the store for the pedal to set the 'boost' on and instead they handed me a cheapass behringer metalzone copy. Wonderful, beginning to remember why I dont come here. So after they ruined all the glory of tubeness by running a $2 pedal saturating the clean channel, I tried a clean boost on the distortion channel. Big difference! With the dist level on the pedal zero'd, eq flat and level dimed, same with the amp, I finally hit the sweet spot! Shaping with the amp proved much better then the pedal, and it didnt take long to get good riffing and good lead in the one tone. Impressed with this (for relatively cheap) I tried one of the combo's.
The 40watt combo comes with a V30 and 3 12ax7/4 el34's. Same again with the lack of gain, but a clean boost made this thing shine! Satch and dime in the one amp, which is what I'm after. Not to shabby volume wise, and for the money its alot of amp with quality components, electro harmonix pre's and sovtek power tubes, genuine v30, and cool red lights.
Without the pedal boosting the input these things sucked balls, and the younger guy said the 'boost' channel doesnt add much, I guess I'll never know, but slammin' the pre tubes with a pedal makes them really work. It was my first attempt at a clean boost, do all amps take to it so well? For those that have played these, let me know how they compare to other high gain offerings, cheers!
Comment