Best sounding metal amp you’ve ever played…

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bram576
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My JCM800 2204 with the Legendary Tones Lynch Mod boosted is the best metal tone I've played. Would love to hear it in a 2203 or 1959 circuit.
 
Bram576 said:
I really think I need to try a jcm 800. I remember plugging into one when I was a kid and thinking it sucked, because I didn’t know you could boost amps lol
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They are surprisingly hard to rival almost half a century later lol, but if you play mainly death metal they wouldn’t be my first choice for that (even boosted)
 
I’m gonna have to say the Engl Savage MK II 120 is a beast of a metal amp. Extremely tight without a boost. And meaty as fuck.
 
For only chugga-chugga the cheapest solution is using solid state amp. For ex. ISP Theta + ISP stealth PA. Bazilion of gain, and built in noise gate, dead silent at max gain.
The expensive tube solution is Larry Dino, but this amp is not ended at chugga-chugga possibility, and dont need any boost pedals.

The problem with pedal boosting is the noise. Tube amps with boost pedals in front are noisy.
 
Its a combo of 2 solid state heads at once. I plug my guitar and pedals into a friedman mini be thats only 30 watts ss. Then from the friedmans fx loop send I plug into the front end of my randall v2 head 400 watts ss on the clean channel. I do boost with a od pedal or eq pedal and the randall has a built in 6 band eq. Its ridiculous playing thru 2 or 3 cabs at once. Randall warhead 4x12 and 2x15 with another randall xl 4x12 cab. Reminds me of fbd tone from pantera or justice era metallica. Dont play my evh 5153 stealth, quickrod or randall thrasher much since trying this combo.
 
Andor006 said:
For only chugga-chugga the cheapest solution is using solid state amp. For ex. ISP Theta + ISP stealth PA. Bazilion of gain, and built in noise gate, dead silent at max gain.
The expensive tube solution is Larry Dino, but this amp is not ended at chugga-chugga possibility, and dont need any boost pedals.

The problem with pedal boosting is the noise. Tube amps with boost pedals in front are noisy.
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I always was intrigued by the theta. The reviews were way too mixed for me to give it a shot at that price point.
As far as boosting a tube amp. My wizard is pretty quiet boosted with my ts808
 
braintheory said:
Have you tried an FBM? I owned one, but didn’t keep it that long
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Yes, 10 years ago I walked into Tone Merchants unannounced.

Loved going to that store because you just never know what you were going to see that day.

I walked in, and there was Rob hanging out with the founder of DAR. I don’t remember his name, but I remember how absolutely friendly he and Rob were. It was a prototype of some sort of the FBM. They were testing it together.

I guess they decided, hey we’ve tested it enough, but now we got an average Joe to test it out on. They put it in that room with all the tapestry, gave me a guitar and then I proceeded to just go full retard. They both went somewhere, while I had a few hours of alone time with that thing.

It was an incredible day I’ll never forget!
 
braintheory said:
They are surprisingly hard to rival almost half a century later lol, but if you play mainly death metal they wouldn’t be my first choice for that (even boosted)
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Death/Human was entirely recorded with a boosted 2203. I think it's a pretty good reference for death-metal.
 
There is a reason the OG Peavey 5150 became the industry standard in metal. When you speak of amps that "raise the bar", you must remember that the 5150 series set the bar.

Honorable mention would be the Rectifier. Mesa amps in general, but for me, the Mesa Mark series is it.
 
braintheory said:
Have you tried an FBM? I owned one, but didn’t keep it that long
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I had my FBM built/programmed different from the others.
All three metal channels are full burn mode. No crunch/rhythm/lead.
And I run mine thru a specific speaker setup that plays to its strengths.
I know it is almost a synthetic type of sound,but I absolutely love it.
Still my favorite amp. The Ultralead is a close second.
 
My enmity mod. It’s built to my ears and has as much gain as my aldrich but can also do stock Marshall crunch tones and is more dynamic with the guitar volume. Footswitchable solo boost, true bypass effects loop footswitchable, depth mod, and looks completely stock from the front. it has everything I wanted in a beast amp and it’s tuned perfectly.
 
rottingcorpse said:
I had my FBM built/programmed different from the others.
All three metal channels are full burn mode. No crunch/rhythm/lead.
And I run mine thru a specific speaker setup that plays to its strengths.
I know it is almost a synthetic type of sound,but I absolutely love it.
Still my favorite amp. The Ultralead is a close second.
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I just played an ultralead the other day. Very great voice and so fun to play.
I love tube amps for playing metal. They have the great sounding chords and then boosting into heavy chug territory is fun.

But i love the solid state type gain for playing metal also. I think it lends itself better. And a lot of "metal" tube amps fail at sounding good and really hitting metal territory without sounding plastic. I would like to try the dar to see how it does.
 
Andor006 said:
For only chugga-chugga the cheapest solution is using solid state amp. For ex. ISP Theta + ISP stealth PA. Bazilion of gain, and built in noise gate, dead silent at max gain.
The expensive tube solution is Larry Dino, but this amp is not ended at chugga-chugga possibility, and dont need any boost pedals.

The problem with pedal boosting is the noise. Tube amps with boost pedals in front are noisy.
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The dino is one of the only high gain amps I've ever played, that truly doesn't require a boost pedal - and boosts actually make it sound "lesser" somehow

I've tested this with everything from 808s, klones, and TCs

Something that does sound cool though, is running it with an hm2 in parallel blended in at a moderate level

The ISP theta is actually really underrated. I would say that, and the KSR preamps are the best in class for SS besides an old Randall RG head
 
my old tverb halfstack and boosted zw 800 halfstack in stereo. fuckin brutal. now I'm running a tverb and ultra + halfstack....mean but not the same.
 
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