Driftwood Purple Nightmare....What a disappointment

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The one amp that really dissapointed me was the Ampeg Vh-140c, I really wanted to like it but I found it sounded flat and kinda cardboard like, if you can understand that. It wasn't the amp I was expecting, and it felt underpowered for 140 watts.
 
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Spaceboy said:
The Herbert was this for me. I wanted one for YEARS, like seriously a decade. I had it built up in my head to be one of holy grails for myself. I loved every clip and album recorded with it. Then in my hands it was a total dud. I couldn’t even get it to sit in the same room with a bandmate on a 6505+ without getting buried, and no amount of tweaking or boosting seemed to do what I wanted. So disappointing, and the most I had ever spent on an amp.
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Isn't the herbert like 180 watts or something? How'd you get buried? haha. Lack of mid content I'm guessing right? I think if you are going for that big wall of sound thing that a recto does it would be an amp you'd like.
 
It's kinda funny seeing you guys complaining so much about such expensive amplifiers. When I was a 15 year old kid in my first band I had to use shitty SS Kustom, Crate and Yorkville combos cause my parents were too cheap to buy me a proper amp, I hated each and every one of them but I made them work somehow.
 
LPMojoGL said:
These were instant dislikes that left the house the same day they arrived:
AC30 HW - too damn loud for anything I can do. AC15C1 is much more manageable.
Suhr PT100 - too loud again, lower volumes on the drive channel weren't good. Opened up, loved it. Clean channel was purdy.
Original 5153 100w - didn't like the honky mids and lack of gain on the blue channel. The 50w Stealth, on the other hand, is a blast to play. Love the low mids and saturated gain for heavy riffing.
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The og III is the most overrated amp ever.
 
anomaly said:
Isn't the herbert like 180 watts or something? How'd you get buried? haha. Lack of mid content I'm guessing right? I think if you are going for that big wall of sound thing that a recto does it would be an amp you'd like.
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I use Herbert live a lot . My drummer is loud af and I can bury him .
 
Man - I’ve disliked plenty of amps I’ve had over the years, and I’ve had many.

Engl powerball 1 - was so excited to get one back in 2008, couldn’t hang at all with a band. Just sounded awful.

Which brings me to ENGLs in general - had fun with owning a savage, and fireball too, but Engls just aren’t for me. I’m not sure what it is in the top end, but they just have this weird almost modeler like tone that comes from them.

Omega obsidian - cool, but not 3000 dollars cool. My bogner uberschall did what it was trying to do way better. I essentially traded it for a wizard modern classic 6l that shits all over it. Couldn’t be happier with that move.

Revv generator - tried to be too many things, but didn’t excel at any of them. I know tons of guys want all these features in their boutique head. But I’d rather an amp have 1 or 2 channels that are exceptional than 4 okay channels trying to do what something else is.

Victory kraken - overrated, and I felt like it does a very poor job of being a 5150. Honestly I’d get a used 5150 iconic over this thing any day.
 
I saw the live stream too. Made me not want to spend the money.
The Driftwood and the Omega have been on my list for a while.
Glad I have walked away from buying amps,that coulda been an expensive lesson.
 
rottingcorpse said:
I saw the live stream too. Made me not want to spend the money.
The Driftwood and the Omega have been on my list for a while.
Glad I have walked away from buying amps,that coulda been an expensive lesson.
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You’re suppose to sell me your old amps lol
 
anomaly said:
The one amp that really dissapointed me was the Ampeg Vh-140c, I really wanted to like it but I found it sounded flat and kinda cardboard like, if you can understand that. It wasn't the amp I was expecting, and it felt underpowered for 140 watts.
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How long ago was it that you tried it because flat and cardboard is kind of what I’ve always thought it sounded like. But it’s good for the kind of amp it is and has been used on some good albums. However I think these albums are good because of the music and not really the tone, but because people liked the music they end up having a nostalgic appreciation for the amp.
 
anomaly said:
It's kinda funny seeing you guys complaining so much about such expensive amplifiers. When I was a 15 year old kid in my first band I had to use shitty SS Kustom, Crate and Yorkville combos cause my parents were too cheap to buy me a proper amp, I hated each and every one of them but I made them work somehow.
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I was in a band playing shows and could only afford rented solid state combos. Hughes and Kettner had one in the 90’s that was actually pretty decent. The amp I owned my Dad bought for me from a pawn shop when I was 14 - it was a 2 x 8” (or possibly 6”) combo.

I remember I once asked for a “real amp” at the instrument rental place and they gave me what may have been a JTM combo. It was a tube marshall 1x12 and it had practically no gain. I was so crestfallen. I didn’t have any pedals or anything…except the little Crate amp, which I ran into the input of the Marshall to get distortion. :doh:
 
You defiantly struggled to get it to sound good. The brighter cab helped.
The other amp that you played afterwards slaughtered the driftwood and saved me a lot of money \m/
 
I've been pretty lucky not falling into the "cool kid gear of the week" trap, but there have been a couple times.. The biggest disappointment I ever had was the Splawn Nitro. I decided to sell it about 3 1/2 minutes after plugging into it.
 
Any boogie rectifier for me lol it sounds like I have glue stuck to my picking hand when I play one ..... but then I hear other guys plug into them and they sound tremendous.... just not for me
 
GJgo said:
I've been pretty lucky not falling into the "cool kid gear of the week" trap, but there have been a couple times.. The biggest disappointment I ever had was the Splawn Nitro. I decided to sell it about 3 1/2 minutes after plugging into it.
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I had the same exact impressions. That's one of the worst high gain amps I remember trying honestly. I did't like any of the Splawns, but the Nitro was like what the hell is this
 
Bram576 said:
Engl powerball 1 - was so excited to get one back in 2008, couldn’t hang at all with a band. Just sounded awful.

Which brings me to ENGLs in general - had fun with owning a savage, and fireball too, but Engls just aren’t for me. I’m not sure what it is in the top end, but they just have this weird almost modeler like tone that comes from them.
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I don't like the Powerball I either; way too sterile and for some reason lacks the balls to cut through with a band live.

But 'Engls in general'.... I think that's too much of a generalization, given how different the response is in some.
Mind you, I still own 3 different ones and your critique of the Revv Generator is something that grew a bit for me with regards to my Engl Invader 100. It's an awesome amp, but it *does* try to do many things, which not all are great.
I hardly use the 4th channel, since it's soo oversaturated, thick and almost fuzzy/wooly. Like there's some Orange,Bogner &Mesa Recto DNA residing in there or something, that cannot be reigned in. And over the years I started to miss the raw Marshall kerrang from the 2nd channel, which is basically the most Marshall channel of that amp, but it's too polished and smooth sounding. It has some awesome tones, don't get me wrong, but a bit more 'kerrang' would be welcome.

Now my late 90's Savage 60 is the other way around; 2 channel amp, but tons and tons of tones to be had and it does have that pissed off Marshall rawness that I'm looking for. The clean could be cleaner (my benchmark is Mesa Mark/Fender Princeton and Engl Invader clean) and you need some pedals to get a sort of SLO thick lead sound from it, since it's really tight and raw sounding, but other than that, I'm not selling that one anymore
If Engl could release a 4 channel amp, where clean=Invader/SE clean, crunch=Savage crunch, rhythm=Invader CH3 meets Savage, Lead=SE + Savage lead, they'd have a winner.
Which reminds me, I still have to try out that Inferno some day.
 
mhenson42 said:
I thought the EVH stealth I had at the same time blew it away.
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There he is!!!!,
Y’all can keep you ENGL junk, I’ll take
the Pro-cabs, those are dope AF.
Jeez..are the engineers/designers retired
K-Mart guys?
Like a giant confusing plastic alarm clock.
Compression?-that’ll learn you.

-All that plastic and the Euro-voicing,
really gets to you at some point doesn’t it?-


*anybody who wants a nice selection of used
ENGL’s?
Head down to your local Guitar Center,
Go to where they have the heavy-hitters & 4X12
cabinets.
Boom!!!! It’s a damn ENGL holiday!!!
Why is that?
Because nobody wants to take the bath on resale
so maybe the dude’s at GC will realize the value of this and even with them robbing me it will be more then selling anywhere else,
(And saved the embarrassment of takin’ that bath!)
NOT!, turns out they can read like the PP associates, LTFOL!!
-There’s no free lunch..unless your buying and
it sure as shit better not be an ENGL.-
 
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