riffsfordaze
Well-known member
You might dig the Hovercraft amps.
Quick and dirty iPhone in room demo of GT1
The hovercraft amps are cool. The one I had was pretty gainy though. Went straight to super-heavy. I recorded a little demo when I listed it for sale. Was also a bit noisey, though I still think there was a lot of bang for the buck.
Yeah 20 watts. Super compressed, easy to play. Definitely had plenty of push for home playing, but probably anyone playing the types of music that amp fits would want something bigger than 20 watts. But who knows, maybe in the right set up or with PA support.This guy is a lot more let’s get down to business than the Matamp…lol
If I was doing a Kyuss tribute this amp would be killer. Is it only 20 watts?
The NMV Matamps are pretty close, but the designs shift around the locations of the FAC controls and EQ. Plus the Matamps generally have a more standard negative feedback setup than the Orange boost control. To my ear, this makes the Oranges have a more natural treble bite veering towards classic british tones where the Matamp zags into something more chest thumping and less articulate.How similar is this to the vintage Orange amps ?
Reading on the Hovercaft website was interesting. Their whole deal was re-purposing amps that otherwise might be discarded or trashed. Supposedly many a Jet City became a Hovercraft. No idea if they used the existing transformers or had ones built for them. It may be they just gutted the boards and built up their circuit inside. I certainly wouldn’t want to pay top dollar for that but it seems their amps aren’t too crazily priced. Used, they’re not bad. What I mean by that is, if they don’t have the expense of having Transformers and chassis’s built I wouldn’t expect to pay what I would for folks who make their amps from scratch. I’m not questioning the quality of how they rework the amps. Seems they’re very custom work friendly which is a plus.The NMV Matamps are pretty close, but the designs shift around the locations of the FAC controls and EQ. Plus the Matamps generally have a more standard negative feedback setup than the Orange boost control. To my ear, this makes the Oranges have a more natural treble bite veering towards classic british tones where the Matamp zags into something more chest thumping and less articulate.
The hovercraft stuff I'm not sure about. I never looked inside mine as I heard the construction on them was questionable and they were mostly gooped anyways. My guess is that they are more liked tweaked Marshalls than Oranges under the hood and they generally play/sound/feel like modded Marshall style amps.
I have contacted Nial on his Reverb store granted that was awhile ago.I like what I’ve found, video wise, on the Hovercraft Falcon and Dwarvenaut but of course they don’t make them anymore…lol. I couldn’t even find a way to contact them on their webpage. I don’t do social media and it seems that’s how they do business.