Small, clean, and loud amp that doesn't rattle with a working bass knob

[Jazzfritz1]

Hi Everyone,

So I've given up on tube amps. The one I own has developed a pretty nasty and annoying rattle that I've been dealing with since September that I can't seem to get rid of. The ones before that either had a rattle of some sort, or just straight broke down.

I'm looking for a solid state guitar amp that doesn't rattle, has plenty of clean headroom, and has a working bass knob. I have always turned the bass on all my amps down to 0, as I am not a fan of boomy guitar sounds. The Henriksen Bud is the frontrunner, and a colleague of mine running a jazz festival up here will have one for me to try out and buy at artist pricing if I like it next month. I like that it has a port on the bottom of the amp, as in my experience with ported amps, ports in the back of the Jazzkat I owned caused the amp to sound very directional.

There haven't been any reports of the Bud rattling, but I wouldn't be surprised with my luck if I tried one out, if it did rattle. Another amp I'm looking at trying out is the Acoustic Image Corus, another solid state amp that has a port on the bottom, and the AER Compact 60 or Alpha (a singer friend of mine has an Alpha, and my guitar sounded great through it when I tried it out), the Phil Jones Cub AG-100, the Quilter Micropro 200, or the Quilter Aviator 8. The last four don't have any ports, which is fine with me. I've ruled out the Henriksen JazzAmps as they have front ports that would greatly contribute to the directional quality of a closed back amp.

I really love my Henriksen The Bud, small and loud without any rattles. The best for me are the two channels with phantom power. So I use it for my Gibson L5 Wes Montgomery as well as the Epiphone Empereor Regent in combination with microphone for singing. If I Need it louder, I use the original Speaker cabinet. And in bigger Setups I use it for monitoring guitar and voice through a PA.

I had a AER compact XL, but that sound was too HiFi for me. The Henriksen The Bud sounds like a modern Polytone Amp.

At the NAMM Henriksen presents a one-channel Bud with a blue Speaker grill. This seems quite interesting, too.

[cmlxiv]

Hey, I'm late to the part on this thread, but was wondering what kind of Princeton clone you had the issues with. I have a Vintage Sound 20 (Princeton clone) that has a nasty rattling in the chassis, similar to what you described. I'm wondering whether my amp has an issue that I can get repaired, or if it's a design flaw that would necessitate me replacing the amp altogether.