Found a great use for my Class 5's!!

[Rickenjangle]

I have a great new and she has graciously allowed me to put stuff pretty much wherever I want - I am of course careful to make things look like they "belong" - but I've got my newly-set-up practice rig in the living/dining area in my wife's house.

She's a keeper, and I love my Class 5's again, 'cause they look great and sound great at low volumes...

Mini Marshall Madness



I was playing earlier and my stepdaughter thought I was listening to Youtube - this rig gives me a very polished and professional tone. Yeah, it's not a blues rig, but I can get the Neil Schon and David Gilmour tones I crave, and it's fun to practice with a super crunchy distortion at whisper volumes. Call me crazy but I like my lil' 80's rig!

[wingnut1]

I play a lot through my tweed Champ and Tweed Princeton. Great tone at low volumes.

[Rickenjangle]

This rig sounds great at low volume - though I was able to coax some pretty big tones out of it last night when we had some folks over to pick a couple of tunes.

Wingnut, I love that grille cloth on the amp in your avatar...

[Kap'n]

Nice. I usually play through a Deluxe at home volumes. I don't use the tweed champ/princeton all that much.

[Cactus Jack]

Rickenjangle, please tell me more about your Class 5's. I am thinking about getting one after viewing many youtube demo's. My only concern is that it sounds very similar to my Blues junior? Why is it not a "Blues Rig"? I thought it sounded similar to a Bluesbreaker on some of the demo's I heard. Are you talking about the Class 5's low power or the distortion? Does it go from clean to too much distortion without that great "in between" break up we all love for Blues? I want to us it with my Les Paul & ES335 but Tele's sound great through it too. I didn't hear too many good demo's with a Strat? Your tone report would be greatly appreciated man.Thanks, Cactus Jack

[Rickenjangle]

Hi Cactus Jack!

When I said it's not a Blues rig, I meant that with the rack and all the effects, it's not a typical guitar-->overdriven amp simple blues rig. At bedroom/living room volumes the amps are plenty clean. But in a live gigging situation, I've been disappointed with them, since I am the lead singer/chief strummer in my band, and the Class 5's are really not clean/jangly amps like my Voxes.

If I were going out on a gig with a Tele and perhaps my SG, and I just needed to lay lead lines and accents around someone else strumming - AND if I could mic the Marshall - they would work fine. But they give up the 'grunt' at fairly low volumes.

Mini bluesbreaker? I would say so - with the caveat that they are not really big enough to have that 'knock' and 'thump' we've all become accustomed to.

I've played the amps with a variety of guitars (LP/Strat/Tele/Jazzmaster/Gretsch/SG) and they do sound really nice. I'm not sure it will trump your Blues Jr. but it might make a nice companion to it. Hell, if you wanted to get crazy you could A/B between a relatively clean and 'verb'ed sound from the B Jr. and then a more overdriven sound on the C5.

I think that my next purchase will be some kind of Fender, since I have the Vox and Marshall territory covered.

[Cactus Jack]

A Big thank you for the reply Rickenjangle. The Class 5 sounds like it is just what I am looking for. An amp that gets dirty at low volumes for home use. I do not plan on gigging with it.I have many amps and all but one is a Fender, so I am covered in the great fender clean department. I liked the Class 5's warm sound I heard in the demo's which would be a great addition to my humbucker guitars. I also have an addiction to low power tube combo's. I think I will add the C5 to my christmas list! Thanks

[Don]

I had fun with my C5. It had a great "British Blues" tone. It sounded awesome with a Rangemaster clone that I had built and a Les Paul.

However... I didn't like it for anything else. I really didn't like it's clean sound and I didn't like it with single coils.

The biggest concern that I had with it was that it was loud as heck when it was set at the volume where it sounded good! It was the only amp that I've ever been asked to turn down in a music store and was too loud to be used in my basement studio (where I regularly play a Vibrolux Reverb, a 5E3 clone and a Mesa Express 5:50 with no complaints).