One of my current hobbies is to hunt down and buy "yesterday's news" boutique amps for bargain prices. There are tons of amazing amps made 10-15 years ago that are basically forgotten about these days in regular discussion. They might be hard to find, but they sound just as awesome now as they did back then... one thing about amps, a great tone in 2005 is still a great tone in 2024. It's not like the newest amps are *that* much better than old designs, maybe a slightly different voicing or lower noise floor, or some new cabclone/xlr/digital-something features I don't care about anyway.
I'll name a few that I have gotten for basically 1/3 or 1/4 of their original selling price:
Stephenson Lead 30R - He is still making custom order amps, this model is long gone though. Very unique design, switchable power tubes, power scaling and other unique features like the transformers and ultra-linear power mode. Mine has 4 power tubes (2x EL84 and 2x octal sockets), 6SN7 phase inverter, and a 6SN7 tube driven spring reverb. It's certainly one of the strangest amp designs I've seen. It sounds like a plexi but warmer, gainier, and between the 3-way switchable bright and power tube stuff it can do a lot of interesting sounds. That said it isn't for everyone,
Steavens Poundcake 25th Anniversary- these are apparently getting noticed again so prices are way up, but when I bought it I could barely find a mention of it via google at all, besides the original press material pictures. This one has 4 channels and midi switching, and a bunch of different modes that can be part of the switching (ex. "heat" channel can have a mid shift, bright switch, green/yellow/red mode). The biggest drawback to this amp though is that all 3 gain channels share the same EQ. You can get them to sound pretty different with the mid/bright/modes but it's just a shame they don't have separate EQ's.
3rd Power HLH100 - I know they are still around, but this is the original one with the triangular cabs that was like $6000 or something at release. It's an awesome sounding amp for sure, PTP wired and all that fancy stuff, but it came out during that time when there weren't so many options for handwired amps and people were willing to pay an absurd premium for what is basically a slightly modified 2203.
Hook Captain 34 - I don't think I've ever seen these talked about at all basically, but they were $4000+ back in 2007. I have one, cool amp, great tones. Mine is PCB but apparently the very early ones were PTP as well.
Kasha Rockmod 50 - I occasionally see threads about the preamps, but never the actual head. These were also $3500 when new. Interestingly the PCB inside is even labeled "Rockmod Preamp Copyright 2006" and then it has a power amp added on via a separate board. The really cool thing about this particular amp, and a feature I've never seen on any other amp, is that you can switch the power amp from "A" to "B" sets of tubes. So you can put a set of 2x EL34's in "A" and a set of 2x 6L6's in "B" and switch between them in real time. It's the ultimate amp for actually figuring out what different power tubes do through the same preamp... I think a lot of people describe 6L6 and EL34 sounds but using different preamps and it's not really a good comparison. You can really hear the difference between a certain set or type of tube with this thing. Right now I have 2x EL34 and 2x 6550's in it, amazing how the 6550's just come out and punch you in the chest in comparison.
PWE Event Horizon - I mentioned this in that other thread, but I have an original EH and an EH3. The original EH is fantastic sounding, it gets nice and gainy, but keeps it together really well. Can easily do hair metal and the like unboosted, but it really excels as the smooth, slinky feeling mid-gain stuff. It's really a wonderful amp to play because it just feels really great. The EH3 keeps the same feeling but has a lot less gain, and the low end is so mushy that if you have the gain up over about 3/4, you may as well not bother hitting a palm mute because it flubs out so hard that it actually blocks some of the treble from coming through for a moment. Maybe there is something wrong with mine, I did get it used after all, but it's the weirdest behavior. That said, if you can be disciplined with the gain, it's wonderful in that darker mid-gain territory. It just doesn't do the high gain that the original EH does so well, and it also has two less preamp tubes so I'm not sure exactly how it is designed but I suspect that it is intentionally a lower-gain design than the original EH.
I've been looking for a Henning Cherry Bomb forever, can't seem to find one though. There was a Bottle Rocket at guitar center for a while but I just couldn't justify the price.
