A friend of mine has narrowed his new amp search to an EVHIII 100 watt standard 6L6 or Stealth 6L6, Stealth has resonance controls....

[harddriver]

 

[glpg80]

Just a heads up:
NEVER put El34's or 6CA7's in a 6L6 5153 100watt. The PT was not designed to put out the heater current required by those tubes, and worse, you will likely melt the heater traces on the power supply pcb @ the fuse holders.
I've seen this on a couple of occasions, and manged to repair one.
Used to happen a lot before the EL34 version came out.

Regarding a resonance mod on the OG.. total pain in the ass... the board has to come out to access the area of the pcb with the nfb. Its in the front corner by the presence controls, so you have quite a run of wire to the back panel for the potentiometers
But... if you do it ( did it to mine ) add a response control as well, to help dial out some of the the "squish".

By response control you mean a variable NFB resistor? What do you like to use, 250k?

 

[Bloodrock]

For my money the OG 5150 or 6505 win all day for metal. Most of the EVH amps just have so much unusable gain it's silly. But they're definitely all the same flavor, but slightly different flavors.

 

[blackie13]

I don't think I've heard a stock amp so tight without some type of EQ or boost up front. I have to run a VFE standout EQ and a Revv G8 noise gate to tighten my Splawn modded Marshall to this level......good Lord......... Ola usually breaks out the boost but not in this video, just a Fortin Zuul+....


I can see why you Chugga Chugga metal guys love these amps......I would imagine the 6L6 would grind even more.

Ola is a heavy hitter...he can make an amp sound tighter with his hands (I dont like him or his music)
Also the front loaded V30 helps a ton...

 

[fusedbrain]

By response control you mean a variable NFB resistor? What do you like to use, 250k?

Yeah, I think I put a 100k pot in series with the existing 39k nfb resistor.
39k off the 8ohm tap seemed a bit much.
It opens the amp up a bit so it doesn't feel so compressed and dark.
The presence pots are audio taper, so that doesn't help either. All the good stuff is bunched up between 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock, which makes it tough to dial in some cut without going too bright. The response control helps with this.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

Yeah, I think I put a 100k pot in series with the existing 39k nfb resistor.
39k off the 8ohm tap seemed a bit much.
It opens the amp up a bit so it doesn't feel so compressed and dark.
The presence pots are audio taper, so that doesn't help either. All the good stuff is bunched up between 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock, which makes it tough to dial in some cut without going too bright. The response control helps with this.

You think it would be doable to replace the Presence pot with a reverse log pot or something like how most Presence pots are? I think the pots are soldered direct to the board so it wouldn't be as easy to do as pots that use flying leads.

 

[fusedbrain]

You think it would be doable to replace the Presence pot with a reverse log pot or something like how most Presence pots are? I think the pots are soldered direct to the board so it wouldn't be as easy to do as pots that use with flying leads.

Yeah, sure... but you would have to pull the board, as the pots are pcb mounted. The taper on the stock pots is more of an inconvenience than a deal breaker. You just need to be aware of whats going on.

 

[the rossness]

I have the 50 now and used to have the 100 watt. The 50 actually sounds better. Go figure that one? But what I miss most are the individual presence controls per each channel. I like the blue channel set high and the red channel set low, but on the 50 watt, I have to compromise. I usually set my depth at 3pm and it works well there.

 

[rbasaria]

Both are great amps, but I 100% prefer the Stealth. More gain and aggression. Deciding whether or not it's worth the extra money is so subjective, but for me it absolutely was.

The Iconic is a good amp, but it does not compete to the 100 watt EVH heads, IMO.

 

[Bram576]

Both are great amps, but I 100% prefer the Stealth. More gain and aggression. Deciding whether or not it's worth the extra money is so subjective, but for me it absolutely was.

The Iconic is a good amp, but it does not compete to the 100 watt EVH heads, IMO.

The stealth models are awesome, deals are out there to be had too. Just picked up a 6l6 100 watt from guitar center for 1100 bucks.