D
deano
New member
Hello,
Please accept my apologies for a long first post, but I really need some advice about which Egnater Tweaker to use for home use if that’s okay.
The first thing is that I live in England, and so the range is limited. There is only one distributer and they are about 180 miles away from me, and a round trip down there would add about £80-£90 in fuel costs to the price of an amp, so not insignificant.
However I was down there last week with the family for other reasons, and whilst I was near the shop I tried out the Egnater Tweaker 15 Combo and thought it was great, I really enjoyed playing it. Unfortunately they didn’t have the Tweaker 40 in the shop, so I couldn’t try one out.
Now, I only play at home. I used to play in bands, and from 1985 to 2010 played in bands constantly as a semi-pro (pubs and clubs etc.) using a NMV AC30, because when I started you could actually turn those things up. People accepted music was loud, but I digress.
About 3 years ago I was diagnosed with an illness that makes it impossible for me to gig anymore. I can still play most of the time, but there are times when the illness prevents that, so I cannot commit to rehearsal times or gigs. Yes it’s sad but that’s life, you get priorities straight and move on.
So these days I play along to backing tracks, home record myself, play along to CD’s and jam with some mates now and again (no drummer, the keyboard guy gets a drum rhythm going). All good stuff and I enjoy it.
After selling the AC30 I bought a little modeller (Vox VT20+), which is great and has done okay for the last few years, but I can’t play it for more than half an hour without is starting to sound harsh. It probably doesn’t, it’s probably me imagining it, but I’ve found that if I know something is hybrid or digital, no matter how good it sounds (and I’ve tried an Axe FX II to confirm this), after half an hour they all start giving me ear fatigue; they start sounding a bit harsh. Now, I will be the first person to admit that this is all probably happening in my head, and most definitely “listening with my eyes”, and it’s psychological, but it is real to me.
So I want to buy a nice little all-valve amp for home use.
I can turn the volume up a bit without disturbing anyone (no babies in the house, and there are a few rooms and doors between where I play and the living room), but I can’t play at stage levels, and I don’t want to.
Now when I tried the amp in the shop I was happy with the volume levels on the Tweaker 15 Combo. I play clean most of the time, and want a warm, clear clean tone, which I got with the 15.
For reference I got a nice clean tone by setting the master at around 2 o’clock and the volume at around 10-11 o’clock. Really lovely.
So Tweaker 15… all good. Now, as ever, someone online threw a spanner into the works by saying the Tweaker 40 Combo would be even better. They said that the clean tones on the 40, even at my low’ish volumes are significantly better than the 15. I wasn’t able to play one to test it out. They based their claim on the bigger output transformer, 6L6’s and so on. I don’t have enough technical knowledge to confirm it. I would have liked to play one but that’s life. They didn’t have one and I’m now 180 miles and £90 away!
I know the volume difference would only be a few dB’s and wouldn’t really be an issue (I might have to have the volume at 9-10 instead of 10-11), but the costs are a couple of hundred pounds different, so my question here is this…
Is it worth me spending the extra to get the claimed better clean tones on the Tweaker 40 or are the clean tones on the 15 just as good, given the volume levels I will be playing at?
The other point that is giving me concern over which one to buy is whether my Zoom G3X will work in the effects loop. It has a stated output of +5 dBm (with a load impedance > 10K), so I think it will work in the 15’s Line Level loop return, but I’m not sure how the input (-20 dBm at 1M ohm) will react to the 15’s Line Level send. Unfortunately I didn’t take my G3X to the shop to try with the Tweaker 15 and they didn’t have one, so again, any advice on that would be welcome.
I know that the line level effects loop has been discussed at length and I don’t want to reopen that, but if anyone has knowledge of whether any of the Zoom G3, G3X or G5 work in the loop of the Tweaker 15 I would be grateful. I’d want to use it for delay and reverb effects.
Well, again, sorry for the long post, but I really would like some advice on whether the Tweaker 15 would be “good enough”, and would take my G3X, or whether I would be better off with the 40, and I thought this would be the best place to get that advice.
Thanks.
Please accept my apologies for a long first post, but I really need some advice about which Egnater Tweaker to use for home use if that’s okay.
The first thing is that I live in England, and so the range is limited. There is only one distributer and they are about 180 miles away from me, and a round trip down there would add about £80-£90 in fuel costs to the price of an amp, so not insignificant.
However I was down there last week with the family for other reasons, and whilst I was near the shop I tried out the Egnater Tweaker 15 Combo and thought it was great, I really enjoyed playing it. Unfortunately they didn’t have the Tweaker 40 in the shop, so I couldn’t try one out.
Now, I only play at home. I used to play in bands, and from 1985 to 2010 played in bands constantly as a semi-pro (pubs and clubs etc.) using a NMV AC30, because when I started you could actually turn those things up. People accepted music was loud, but I digress.
About 3 years ago I was diagnosed with an illness that makes it impossible for me to gig anymore. I can still play most of the time, but there are times when the illness prevents that, so I cannot commit to rehearsal times or gigs. Yes it’s sad but that’s life, you get priorities straight and move on.
So these days I play along to backing tracks, home record myself, play along to CD’s and jam with some mates now and again (no drummer, the keyboard guy gets a drum rhythm going). All good stuff and I enjoy it.
After selling the AC30 I bought a little modeller (Vox VT20+), which is great and has done okay for the last few years, but I can’t play it for more than half an hour without is starting to sound harsh. It probably doesn’t, it’s probably me imagining it, but I’ve found that if I know something is hybrid or digital, no matter how good it sounds (and I’ve tried an Axe FX II to confirm this), after half an hour they all start giving me ear fatigue; they start sounding a bit harsh. Now, I will be the first person to admit that this is all probably happening in my head, and most definitely “listening with my eyes”, and it’s psychological, but it is real to me.
So I want to buy a nice little all-valve amp for home use.
I can turn the volume up a bit without disturbing anyone (no babies in the house, and there are a few rooms and doors between where I play and the living room), but I can’t play at stage levels, and I don’t want to.
Now when I tried the amp in the shop I was happy with the volume levels on the Tweaker 15 Combo. I play clean most of the time, and want a warm, clear clean tone, which I got with the 15.
For reference I got a nice clean tone by setting the master at around 2 o’clock and the volume at around 10-11 o’clock. Really lovely.
So Tweaker 15… all good. Now, as ever, someone online threw a spanner into the works by saying the Tweaker 40 Combo would be even better. They said that the clean tones on the 40, even at my low’ish volumes are significantly better than the 15. I wasn’t able to play one to test it out. They based their claim on the bigger output transformer, 6L6’s and so on. I don’t have enough technical knowledge to confirm it. I would have liked to play one but that’s life. They didn’t have one and I’m now 180 miles and £90 away!
I know the volume difference would only be a few dB’s and wouldn’t really be an issue (I might have to have the volume at 9-10 instead of 10-11), but the costs are a couple of hundred pounds different, so my question here is this…
Is it worth me spending the extra to get the claimed better clean tones on the Tweaker 40 or are the clean tones on the 15 just as good, given the volume levels I will be playing at?
The other point that is giving me concern over which one to buy is whether my Zoom G3X will work in the effects loop. It has a stated output of +5 dBm (with a load impedance > 10K), so I think it will work in the 15’s Line Level loop return, but I’m not sure how the input (-20 dBm at 1M ohm) will react to the 15’s Line Level send. Unfortunately I didn’t take my G3X to the shop to try with the Tweaker 15 and they didn’t have one, so again, any advice on that would be welcome.
I know that the line level effects loop has been discussed at length and I don’t want to reopen that, but if anyone has knowledge of whether any of the Zoom G3, G3X or G5 work in the loop of the Tweaker 15 I would be grateful. I’d want to use it for delay and reverb effects.
Well, again, sorry for the long post, but I really would like some advice on whether the Tweaker 15 would be “good enough”, and would take my G3X, or whether I would be better off with the 40, and I thought this would be the best place to get that advice.
Thanks.
