I've just gotten seriously back into playing in the last year or so, and have been collecting all kinds of great gear. Back in the day I played Gibsons, a 345, Les Paul etc. But I always played through a Twin. But in my new incarnation I'm all Fender. I've got an American Standard, an off the rack mid-90s Tele, and most recently a G&L Legacy with Suhr LPV60 pups. I've collected a huge number of pedals, Barber, Lovepedal, Zvex, Fulltone, etc. Love 'em all. The amp I decided on is a Tone King 40a and it's great sounding. Big beautiful blackface sound, and a tweedish channel I don't use that much.

I've been liking the sounds I've been getting, but something occured to me tonight. I sometimes practice through a POD2 into headphones or stereo at night, and though lots of the pedals I've been using sound great in the Tone King, there's something a little harsh or unforgiving about the sound. And yet they sound terrific through the POD into the stereo. I never paid attention to that until I realized I always use the 'Brit Blues' amp model on the POD2. I switched to the blackface model and it sounded like crap, couldn't tune it in.

So the question is, do I secretly want a Marshall type amp? An EL84 or 34 or whatever they are? I've never played Marshalls in any serious way, any time I tried I couldn't dial it in. Except: A rehearsal studio we used to use had a few Randall stacks, and with the strat I got a decent Jimi tone.

Could it be that I'm actually a Marshall guy? And if so, what do I want to look at? Dr Z? Bogner? Or do I just like hearing my guitar in stereo?

man, i don't know exactly what to tell you, having been more of a marshall/brit guy for so long. you should definitely give marshalls and voxes a go. i tend to prefer british voiced amps, and have never been a huge fender man (i always found them a to be a tad harsh), but i haven't played nearly enough amps to swing strongly in many directions.

i own and love a bogner shiva as of right now. if you're going for mainly a clean amp, and you get most of your dirt tones from your pedals, then it probably isn't for you. the clean is good, but the amp's main merit is it's dirty channel.

the amp model that you like was based on an older (early-mid 60s) marshall jtm-45 i think. that's a great place to start. i haven't a clue where to play one, but there must be an amp builder that makes a jtm-45 clone somewhere.

you should definitely give vox type amps a go too. that's my personal favorite clean tone, and there are tons of amp builders making clones of ac-30s. i also played through a dr. z 6545, and loved it. there are so many options out there it's almost overwhelming. good luck figuring this one out man.

The Line 6 "Brit Blues" patch is modelled after the JTM-45, Marshall's version of the '59 Bassman circuit. It used KT66 output tubes which have more in common with 6L6 tubes than EL34's. The most famous JTM-45 user I can think of is Angus Young, although Clapton used the combo version for the Bluesbreakers 'Beano" album.

It depends on the tones you're looking for outta your Strats. 6L6 tubes will give you a warm, round, buttery tone that gets warmer and slightly woofy as it approaches clipping. EL34's tend to have an edgier, almost raspy tone when pushed into clipping with far less midrange content.

I prefer the 6L6's for Strat blues tones, although it's hard to go past EL34's for all-out RAWK!!

You already have an amp that delivers the purest "clean" ever made. Get a Vox or a Marshall pedal - keep the Tone King. And while you're at it, get a 4ohm HotPlate so you can discover the uses for the Tweed channel.

There is no pedal that can give you the clean that is in that amp. The clean can be shaped into whatever you desire with the hundreds of quality pedals out there. Its already there in the Tone King - you just need to find it.

Well, I don't know that I'd be relying on a POD for my reference tones! As you said, you like the sound of your Blackface style Tone King but the BF model sucks in the POD. I don't think you can anymore reliably count on the "Brit Blues" model as being an accurate representation of British tone either. (Brit Blues is supposed to be a Bluesbreaker model, isn't it?)

I would also remind you about that phenomena where our ears tend to adjust themselves to a tone and then something else in comparison may sound a little too warm, too bright, too midrangey, etc. But if you play THAT tone for a while, you'll realize that at some point it started to sound good too. It's like our ears compensate for any "deficiencies" we hear (up to a point, that is). So in comparison, your amp may seem a tad harsher, but it's also far more "3 dimensional" than anything you're going to squeeze out of a POD and you may be hearing some of that.

Now, none of this is to say that you really dig your Tone King - maybe you do want something more British voiced. But I would recommend getting away from using the POD as the comparison point. I've owned two of those and it only ever sounded good with headphones - never through a PA or amp. And the second one didn't sound good at all under any circumstances so I sold it after a month. I think it might be more appropriate to look at the tones you dig and the tones you need for the music you play the most and that should help you decide what might be the most appropriate style of amp. For example, I had never been a fan of Fender amps, but for my Top 40 country gig, it's hard to beat the blackfaced '71 Bandmaster Reverb I've been using as of late.

Soundhound, I'm suprised you don't use the tweed channel of the Tone King. It sounds so warm and sweet. For me, blackface is the way to go, but if you want more mids, then the tweed channel is great. Plus, the mid bite knob lets you shape that tone perfectly.

I don't know much about the Tone King but considering that the JTM-45 was very similar to the Tweed Bassman I would think you have the ability to get those tones now. I would bet that if you crank that tweed side up you'd love it, maybe hit it with a germ boost like the Beano or fuzzface or tonebender if you really want to get that old Brit thing happening. My TopHat has some Tweed flavor to it and I love it for any kind of overdriven tones, particularly fuzz. I agree with Khaled, you've got the potential there for killer cleans and killer OD from the same amp so turn it up!

Thanks for all the analysis and consideration, guys. I'm not sure what the answer will be. Maybe I'm just not driving my Tone King hard enough. We've only played one club where I was able to turn it up past 5 and that was fairly loud, everybody mikes amps these days it seems. I had played a friend's red knobbed twin a while back and liked it, but it's way too loud for what I need. I played another one in a second hand store recently and loved it.

When I go through the POD I keep the Drive and Compression very low, but I can't turn them off all the way, the thing doesn't seem to have any tone without it. And I'm liking a variety of sounds caused by a combination of that setting with just about any pedal: Mosferatu, LTD, Blue Collar, Blues Devil, TIM, etc., some stacking combinations work well too. (Brian, I know using the POD as a reference for tones is kind of silly, it's just I found some sounds with the pedals that I like and want to 'bring them to life' in an amp setting).

Don't get me wrong, I love the sound I'm getting from the Tone King. And one night has not gone by without someone complimenting me on my tone (though there have been evenings without the same for my playing, but I'll learn to live with that). So it seems like what I'm looking for could just another way to go: Maybe it is some of that cool Vox chime or Marshall grit, maybe a Dr. Z or something. And I haven't explored the tweed channel in the Tone King enough, it always sounds too thick or something to me. I have much to learn, Obi-Wan.

Thanks again. I will not buy another amp, I will not buy another amp, I will not buy another amp...

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Originally posted by Soundhound:
And I haven't explored the tweed channel in the Tone King enough, it always sounds too thick or something to me.

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Then try to tweak the midbite and tone knobs, I'm sure you'll find a good balance.

i think they might be right about that tweed channel. my favorite tones out of a fender i've ever heard were through a vibro king, and i think that's a tweed fender model. could definitely be wrong. don't buy another amp yet anyway. just taste all of the flavors.

My suggestion is put all you pedals and your pod in the closet for a couple of weeks..Learn what your amp can do without that stuff..



I'm Paulydangerous and I approve this message..

Ditto, get right with your Guitar/Amp combo first, period. Pedals are extras. The interplay between your mind/hands/pickups/amp/speaker is your 'tone' - the rest is options....


Get a Deluxe Reverb and change the first channel to Tweed specs, and see which you favor and a Vox will melt over either channel and fill/fatten it up

The other thing you could do is go to every music store within reasonable distance and play a bunch of different amps. That's the only way to really know...

Maybe if you named some of your influences and examples of the kind of tones you like?

I actually did play quite a few amps before I bought the Tone King. Bad Cats, DR Zs, Riveras, old Rivera-era fenders, reissue fenders, new marshalls, etc. But I also don't really know my way around marshall and vox type amps, so I may not have gotten the most out of that search. The only amp I regretted not getting was the Carr Slant 6V 212. Big beatiful 'blackfacey' side, with a little more umph or something than the Tone King, and the dirty side reminded me of a red knobbed Twin. I also really liked the reissue 64 Vibroverb, but it seemed to be a bit of a one trick pony. One hell of a trick though.

Meterman: My influences/tones I love are - early allmans, especially dickey on the fillmore album (100w marshall/gibson, I know, I know) SRV, Doyle Bramhall II, Tommy Bolin, Derek Trucks, Mick Taylor, Townshend circa Live at Leeds, David Hidalgo, Sonny Landreth, Jimi (I read somewhere that hendrix actually used a Twin on a lot of the studio tracks. Who knows...) I know that's a shizophrenic list, but there you go. Generally I'm trying to get a sort of a cross between SRV/Bramhall on the fender side and betts and taylor on the gibson side of things.

Anyway, I really am pretty happy with the Tone King, there's just something I'm hearing in the POD/pedals combo that I want to make happen with an amp.

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Originally posted by DonneR:
Get a Deluxe Reverb and change the first channel to Tweed specs, and see which you favor and a Vox will melt over either channel and fill/fatten it up

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Will you please stop saying that? You're going to cost me several hundred dollars. I should just grab a used DRRI and be done with it.

Soundhound, I'd just go out and start playing stuff..see what you like. There's so much out there. I'm mostly a vox guy but I still plug in my '68 bassman from time to time. I need fendery goodness. My current amp gas is for some tweedness, as well as a 50w mid-late 70's marshall jmp (the predecessor to the 800).

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Originally posted by Soundhound:
Meterman: My influences/tones I love are - early allmans, especially dickey on the fillmore album (100w marshall/gibson, I know, I know) SRV, Doyle Bramhall II, Tommy Bolin, Derek Trucks, Mick Taylor, Townshend circa Live at Leeds, David Hidalgo, Sonny Landreth, Jimi (I read somewhere that hendrix actually used a Twin on a lot of the studio tracks. Who knows...) I know that's a shizophrenic list, but there you go. Generally I'm trying to get a sort of a cross between SRV/Bramhall on the fender side and betts and taylor on the gibson side of things.

Anyway, I really am pretty happy with the Tone King, there's just something I'm hearing in the POD/pedals combo that I want to make happen with an amp.

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Those are some great players & tones and my list would include most of those too (not really familiar with DBII or SL). I also played only Fenders & Music Mans until recently. I love the BF type cleans but the OD tones weren't cutting it....after trying a bunch of amps I found the TopHat Super Deluxe & Club Deluxe and I'm done. Beautiful cleans and raging overdrive tones, these are very versatile amps with an EQ section that can move from snappy Fenderish tones through Voxy chime and into early Marshall crunch. Check one out if you can!

Realize that many of those guys are using humbuckers/P90s as well and that has a huge influence on the tone. I actually really like the sound of an LP, SG or 335 through my Super Reverb, but it's not gonna get that Brit crunch. What kind of speaker is in the TK?

You know I don't know what kind of speaker is in the TK, whatever Mark Bartell put in there. As far as the humbucker/p90 issue goes, I'm not trying for those sounds yet since I got rid of my gibsons a few years ago. I'm going to get a les paul at some point, but have been trying to make the fender side work first.

I can't remember if I tried a Tophat or not during my amp search. They were definitely on my list but I may not have gotten to play many. That's a great idea, meterman, thanks! I should go have a look at those.