Boutique guitar amplifier companies have taken over the worship guitar market over the last couple of years. There are a ton of great amplifier’s out there from Matchless, Jackson Ampworks, Morgan, and many more. Sometimes we as worship guitarists fall into the trap of browsing YouTube and the gear reviews to hard. We get so engrained into the boutiques and finding that perfect tone that we forget about the reason for what we are doing. We also forget about the classics that paved the way for these boutique manufacturers.
In the next couple of articles we are going to discuss 5 amps that are sure to get you the tone you need for under $1000. We will break down how the pros use them as well as rate them on a scale of 1-10 over 4 characteristics including Price, Tone, Durability, & Features. Without further ado here are the amps.
If you play one of these amps let us know your favorite settings as well as what pedals and guitars you use in the comments section below. Also if you have an amp you feel that should be added to the list shoot us a comment as well.
5 Comments
You should also add the Hughes & Kettner Tubemeister 36 in this roundup!!
Victory V-40 is a fantastic pedal platform amp. As it is a lunchbox size amp it can be part of your pedal board and your speaker can be tucked in an ISO enviroment. At $1,299 it is not exactly cheap but it is handmade in England. And considering the price of individual drives its small size gives you the option of adjusting your gain structure when ever you need to. I think that this is better money spent on amplifier with infinitely more flexibility.
I will have to check that amp out. Never heard of the company but sounds pretty awesome!
Vox AC15 w/ Celestion Alnico Blue and Paul Watson Tubes (Hi Gain in first position) — Very Clean, AC30-caliber head room with those upgrades
Fender American Strat Eric Clapton Artist Series
JHS PNP V4 -> TU-3 – > JHS Morning Glory V4 -> King of Tone, Hi Gain Mod -> EP Booster -> VP Jr -> Boss DD-500 -> Strymon Big Sky
George L’s patch cables
I second a look at Hughes & Kettner. The TubeMeister 36 is great 3 channel head or combo, has Red box DI with cabinet emulation and is midi capable. I’m fixing to pick up its bigger brother the GrandMeister 36 which has on board reverb, delay, chorus and noise gate. Both of these versions have adjustable power soak and has a built in dummy load so you do not have to have a speaker on it at all, just go straight to the house system.