Re: OT: The Search for the Perfect Home Recording Amplifier Saga

[Ian Petersen <iep@mail.dk>]

Paul,

> Does anyone have any suggestions for a reasonably priced amp?

Build your own! I can warmly recommend MADAMP tube amp kits 
(www.madamp.biz).
I've built both the G2 and J5, and they're both great small 
practice/recording amps
with - to my taste at least - great tone. Obviously, you need to know 
which end of
a soldering iron is the business end, but I'd never built anything other 
than simple
stomp boxes before and both amps worked first time for me.

The G2 costs a little over $100 and the J5 around $200.

For recording direct with these amps I use a Palmer Junction DI box 
and/or a Weber MiniMass speaker sim. Both of these enable taking a line 
output from the speaker output of the amps which sounds much better than 
a normal 'line out'.

I'm not an analogue purist by any means, but I do find the knobby 
combination of stomp boxes and small tube amps more satisfying than 
Pod-like digital emulations. Especially when I've built the effects, 
amps and, for that matter, most of the guitars myself ...

    Ian