A close friend of mine decided to move on to a real amp as he wasn't happy with specially the clean sounds he gets from the computer. He needed something very versatile, from ambient to shred to Fender-y clean sounds. So asked me to give opinion before he pulled the trigger...
I went to the store with him to listen an
ibanez TSA30 head with Fender hot rod dlx enclosure...he said that he already compared the TSA30 combo version against the head and Fender cab. and they were much better.
So I listened the combination and in a marshall-esque fashion it was nice. The typical thick Tubescreamer coloration and the cab. helped balanced it. But there weren't any highs to it, like use a Fender strat and compared to a humbucker it wouldn't be night and day...So it was good for dist., thick jazzy tones but no crystal cleans...nice but not so versatile...
We were on the budget and the store guy offered to try a
Fender hot rod deluxe special edition (difference from standard; yellow enclosure, jensen speaker and a little tweaked drive channel). It was only a little bit more expensive so we fired it up.
On cleans, the highs were there! the amps reverb sounded amazing (spring reverb but very hall-like), think a typical Fender amp but with stronger low end. Nothing massive but very full. Then on the overdrive channel we tested many settings (on
6 guitars! and yeah each sounded very different too
). It starts from classic blues/rock'n roll to max modern rock'n roll or almost early evh amounts of distortion.
My concern was since it had the highs, would it be ear piercing with strong distortion (like most Fender amps have). We decided to place a
boss ds1x, it sounded amazing
the ds1x is actually digital and I usually find these sort of pedals boxy sounding but that Fender really made it sound nice
As I felt we found the right amp, my friend said it was a bit noisey. Well, it did have noise with the overdrive (and the stores electricity wasn't the most proper as zillions of amps were already plugged) but thats something to be expected...as I was trying to explain him about that noise (analog vs digital thing...
). The store guy suggested to try a Taurus
It was a
Taurus Stomp Head 4 SL HG, I listened to it before but was very short and now I had a proper chance. We plugged it to the same
Fender cab. we tested the ibanez head.
As we heard the cleans (all knobs flat) I had an idiot smile on my face
First thing I noticed was it had the most balanced mid.s I heard on anything ever!
many modern sounding amps sound scooped (too noticeably decreased mid.s) in the mid.s but this was just perfect.
Well, for a traditionalist this also means flat but I'd still say flat in a good way. It sure couldn't do the bluesy cleans of the Fender we tested but did felt it could with a pedal...I actually played with the eq's on it to see if it could be set a bit more traditional vibe but it wasn't engineered that way. But my "engineer ears" says it has the potential
But this thing shines on distortion, did pretty much anything and I felt this might be more affordable as it didn't need pedals or maybe 1 max for personalized tone
Oh and yes its more quiet than Fender, not extreme but side by side was better though I think this isn't important...
So the Taurus option was the most versatile (and expensive) as the tone was super balanced but the Fender amp had the preferable "signature" tone plus proved it could handle anything we throw at it. There was no right or wrong decision and after some debate my friend picked the Fender amp and finally it was over, we realized later we spent 3 hours in that store
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This post has been edited by Mertay: Feb 22 2015, 05:44 PM
I hope You didn't make him listen all those metallica and led zeppelin song he has to listen ew times a day 
