So, what are your experiences? I would think at least a few, like the Victoria Double Deluxe, would have promise.

Like to hear your stories.

As a rule, I'd say the amps built on the "English" model (mainly Vox) such as the Matchless and Bad Cat are not as good for steel as the "American" model amps (mainly Fender clones) such as the Victoria and Kendrick, and blackface designs like the Allen. Design issues such as the use/lack of negative feedback in the output circuit, class of power amp operation, tone circuit design, and speakers and tube-types used will all dictate how well an amp will work in a given application.

It all comes down to what your steeling needs are. I have a few fantastic amps but lately my default amp is a Steel King---it sounds great and it will never come up short for headroom & power.

Uh, Steverino - I called the pharmacy, and your Prozac is in.

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Words don't do very well to describe this, so here are some examples.

This is a sample from my first album. Most of the playing sounds clean, but the solo is overdriven. It's a single take with the steel going through the same amp with no effects. The only difference between the solo and the rest of the song is about an inch of volume pedal travel. (the amp is a prototype THD amp )
One More Midnight

This next one is a sample from a Kym Tuvim album I played on. It sounds pretty much clean, but this was a THD BiValve with a little bit of power amp pushing.

Hard

This is from my latest album, pretty much just rockin'

Lean On Me

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[This message was edited by Dan Tyack on 23 October 2006 at 10:39 AM.]

Nice playing. Nice solo on "One More Midnight". I wouldn't have even thought it was a steel. Nice support on "Hard", and a great band sound on "Lean on Me".

James, I do go light on the volume pedal for clean playing with this amp, either in the studio or live. The amp is plenty loud, and can get clean, but doesn't do loud and clean. If I want to play loud and clean, I take the direct out from the amp (comes after the power stage) and put it through a small transistor amp. I had been using a Steward 200 watt amp, but just bought one of those Crate Powerblock amps for $99 at Guitar Center for this purpose. My main speaker cab is stereo, so I power one of the speakers with the THD, and the other with the Crate. It's plenty loud. And way lighter than a twin with JBLs.

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what I'm using

[This message was edited by Mike Shefrin on 06 November 2006 at 08:42 PM.]

Peavey reached a milestone when they started the separate "mid" and "shift" controls.

Steel guitar is famous for producing too much midrange. With the separate mid controls, you can dial out the unwanted frequency. (usually 800 Hz)

VERY few boutique amps have that sort of mid control option, as you really do not need it when playing electric guitar.

I would stay with an amp that is designed for the steel guitar. Boutique amps are not.

IMHO, of course.

One can talk about tone differences between clean solid state amps in only a very limited way. They are all designed to have no characteristic tone in the tube amp sense, but they can have different EQ controls that give them some nuanced tone differences in the solid state sense. But all steel amps (except the NV112) are high watt, designed to have clean tone with no distortion in the lows regardless of the volume level. Except for the NV112, steel amps are 100-300 watts, and rack rigs may have 500+ watt power amps. Mike’s jazz SS rig is so clean and flat, it could be used for acoustic instruments, if a flat full-range speaker (meaning 2-way with a tweeter) was used. But he doesn’t use it that way, and instead has a woofer sized guitar speaker only. That makes it much like SS steel amps, and not at all like boutique tube guitar amps.

It seems like Eric was really interested in boutique tube guitar amps for steel. Most of them have so little clean headroom that they would not seem to be very useful for clean country or jazz steel, except in low volume situations such as in the studio, or possibly miked on stage. However, to the extent that it exists, their clean tube tone might be gorgeous for steel, and Dan’s stuff seems to bear that out. But they really come into their own in terms of the characteristics and tone of the controlled distortion. That’s what they are all about. That’s why designers make them by hand in small quantities, and why 6-stringers pay huge bucks for them. They are like musical instruments, and even ones with the same model name sound different, with no two being alike. You don’t need to make a clean SS amp by hand for big bucks. The current state of the art makes it possible to make them inexpensively. So, no, steel amps by Peavey, Webb, Evans, Fender, or even Standel are not the kind of boutique amps Eric asked about, and their clean SS tone cannot touch boutique amp intentionally designed tube distortion, much less blow it away. Because boutique tube amps are designed with so little clean headroom, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to ask about how they are for clean country and jazz. In terms of controlled distortion for blues and rock, would the requirements for steel be any different from regular guitar? If so, which boutique amps sound better for steel, and why? Like Eric, I’m curious about that. Anybody other than Dan have any real experience on this question?

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 08 November 2006 at 09:48 PM.]

If I can use an analogy, it's like asking how many colors I can have in my palette. If a Victoria Double Deluxe is great for people who like the Fender Deluxe tone but more so... great! If a Two-Rock will give my steel a sound like Robben Ford on steroids, far out! If I want modern Nashville clean and some little company I've never heard of builds a tone box to make us drool, I'd like to know. Maybe I'm just a troublemaker, but I love outside-the-box solutions.

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[This message was edited by Dan Tyack on 09 November 2006 at 09:50 AM.]