How much does your guitar amp contribute to your sound?

[Little Jay]

Yes Jay about the Pro Reverb! I tried to get the 4 10s to sound the way I wanted but liked the 12s better. My next mod is probably going to be replacing the bright switch cap from a 120 pf to something less . Perhaps 47pf or 68. I like the tone of the deluxe reverb which uses a hardwired 47 pf.it will be a little hard to get to the underside of the control panel circuit board, so I'll probably try at least two cap values before I close it all back up.I heard silver Micah might sound smoother than ceramic disc. It probably won't be a noticeable difference but because I only want to do it once I might try to get silver mica. I was wondering what amp do you use?

I use a Twin Reverb that started it's life as a 70ies or early 80ies Japanese Guyatone. I modded that quite intensively and it's a 1:1 clone of a '65 AB763 Twin right now. It had a pair of Fender-labeled Pyle speakers that I really love. It has a mix of orange drop and TAD caps, and silver mica for the small ones. The difference in caps is very subtle at best, but the sum of parts can be heared imho.

My other main tube amp is a '93 Fender Blues Deluxe with a Jensen NEO 12-100 speaker. That's modded as well, circuit is now also almost AB763, except for an extra 1/2 12ax7 in the preamp that gives it a little more tweed-flavor. Ithasbecome a great amp that matches my ES-125 perfectly!

Both amps have cheap Russian 6P3S power tubes and properly biased I really love those!

For smaller gigs I use a Session Rockette:30 or a Session BluesBaby 22. When it's got to be really portable I take my AER Alpha with a Fender FRV-1 reverb pedal.

So yeah, I am pretty anal about my amp. A bit too much unfortunately. I think they account at least for half of my sound anf if the amp is not right, my playing isn't either

[feet]

I generally play a vox so it can go from 20% to about 200%, depending on how I set it and what I do to it. The cut knob is quite powerful, and goes a long way toward tailoring the sound to suit each guitar.

[JCD]

Hi Little Jay, I bet your twin sounds good with those caps. And with the es125. I saw that you used a neo magnet speaker in your blues deluxe, I wonder how you decided on that and how it sounds. I thought possibly some day of getting a twin reverb reissue, there also is a George Benson twin with solid pine cab and two 12 inch Jensen neo speakers. It cost a little more than the regular reissue and probably couldn't be found in a store to try out. Another thought is to buy a used twin reverb and replace the caps and maybe the speakers if needed.

[Little Jay]

Hi Little Jay, I bet your twin sounds good with those caps. And with the es125. I saw that you used a neo magnet speaker in your blues deluxe, I wonder how you decided on that and how it sounds. I thought possibly some day of getting a twin reverb reissue, there also is a George Benson twin with solid pine cab and two 12 inch Jensen neo speakers. It cost a little more than the regular reissue and probably couldn't be found in a store to try out. Another thought is to buy a used twin reverb and replace the caps and maybe the speakers if needed.

Ah, the speakers. Yeah, well, my Twin came with two different underpowered Fender-labeled speakers. Probably Eminence-made speakers out of 80ies Fender transistor combos. Thru a friend I got hold of a pair of Jensen C12Ks and those made that amp sound 300% better, but also a lot heavier. So I bought a pair of Jensen NEO 12-100s since they are advertised as very similar to the C12K. Later I couldn't resist on a pair of Fender blue-labeled Pyle speakers that came by cheap and when I tried those out I liked them even better. They were heavier than the NEOs obviously but still a lot lighter than the C12Ks, so they stayed in.

So when I overhauled my Blues Deluxe it tried the different speakers I had laying around and liked the NEO best in there. The NEO's have a certain 'airy-ness' to them that works very well in my BDLX. Also they are pretty efficient at 98dB and the 100W-rating gives confidence handling the power.

So there was no specific reasoning, just a process of trial and error

I think it is a very good idea to buy a cheap Twin (or reissue) with crappy speakers and replace them for NEOs: those sound good, can easily handle the power and keep the weight low.