Monty Python? Well, there's a thought - do comedy tastes follow musical tastes? I guess there's no reason they should, but I've tended to have friends with the same musical and comedy tastes as me.

Dude, couldn't you have worked in a "mate" or two somewhere..?

I have a stupid amount of valve-powered stuff at home, but my old Tubeworks MosValve amp still sounds good to me. Once you've "warmed up" a solid state amp with a valve preamp or distortion box it retains that character.

The term 'Bloke' is actually more Aussie than british, isnt it? I spent a bit of time looking at various meanings lastnight. It appears to be an insult used by french Canadians against english speaking Canadian Canadians.
You may enjoy this
Harry Enfield Dime Bar advert

The reason I like solidstate stuff is much the same as Mondo's. Set your sound/pedals/floorboard and its there whatever volume your at.

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i used a ss 100w marshall head for a few years with no probs , sounded ok as well

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LOLOLOL!!! That bloke's a nutter! Oi! Nuttah! Nik, youve got me thinking now! .....steam starts coming out of ears.......Well, i stated that i like the stuff of the UK, as i thought Australia was part of the UK. I guess Britain, or Great Britain is another term for the UK, right? God save the Queen! Now, if a gentleman is being called a great nancy, isn't that the same as poofter, or poovter? and isn't something referred to as the bleedin' thing, using an extremely colorful metaphor, as mr. spock would define it? So bloke is an insult eh? Hmm.....mutter,....mumble..........................zzz,........zzzz,...*scratch-scratch,*......zzzzzzzzzz, ZZZZZZZZZZZZ,..*SNORK!!!*zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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I believe in Christianity as i believe that the sun has risen. not only because i see it, but because by it, i see everything else. C.S. Lewis

Dave I could fill this thread full of slang terms and near profanity. I'll not indulge though.

Sadly even the UK isnt part of the UK anymore since we gave absolute control to Brussels in January. Bye bye national identity, bye bye democracy, hello control of a continent handed to one ultimate figure of authority.
Dont it remind you of 1933?

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Oh, no need for any profanity here, i apologize that some of my example choices of the slang were a bit over the top. However, i sure do dig the solid humour i have seen flow from Mother England, in such fine examples, such as the show faulty towers, of course monty pythons flying circus, to name my two favorites. There's something about all of the material i have seen, that would suggest at least, that most Brits seem to have a refined taste for humour that is just gut busting funny! Frankly, to me, evey bit of it was always far more full belly laugh inducing than almost everything i've ever seen produced it the States. Most american standard comedies leave me laughless, where in contrast, scenes from faulty towers for example, where they would have John Cleese interacting with the little dark haired foreign dude who didn't speak any english, had me laughing till i cried! I would get a sideache laughing so hard! Anyway, settling down here a bit,.... Hmm, 1933, could that be the beginning of the second world war?

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I believe in Christianity as i believe that the sun has risen. not only because i see it, but because by it, i see everything else. C.S. Lewis

Dave, nothing wrong with solid state and you can get some pretty good tones with the right pedals in front of it. However the best clean tones in my opinion come from a decent tube amp and a good reverb spring box.

Depending on your budget I recommend buying new if possible. Tubes can be very temperamental and unless you know what or who you're buying from you can spend as much money retubing and biasing the amp as you paid for it.

I would recommend these tube amps to start
Fender Blues Jr- $350.00 to $450.00 new. Decent spring box adequate for smaller venues and ok thru the PA. Throw a few pedals in front of it and you can get just about any sound you want.

Peavey Classic 30 same price range similar to the Blues Jr. but I think it has an awesome distortion when the tubes start to clip and not quite as boxy sounding as the Blues Jr.

If you have the cash just go to the front of the line. I use the Fender Twin protube series 100watts swicthable to 25 for the smaller venues. Hands down my favorite amp but the downside for me is 85lbs and a bad back. This amp will give you the best clean sound of any Fender style tube amp with plenty of headroom and sounds just as good on a lower volume as it does cranked up. It has a great overdriven channel with spring reverb and tremelo. It also has an effects loop in back great for rack style effects or analog modulation affects. Just be prepared to drop more than a Grand on something like this.

On Sunday at Church I play thru a Line 6 PODx3live direct out to the PA and use a powered monitor in front of me with just the guitar and I put the PA monitor behind me. If the mix is good I don't even use the guitar monitor. The emulation technology is getting better and better, but its still emulation. Good thing is they don't weigh 85lbs...

Dave you didnt use any profanity mate dont worry. My poor choice of words is to blame.

As for no American funnies, you are kidding right?
Remember this guy?


Or the ever brilliant



Scotland may be responsible for TV's invention but you fella's pretty much invented the content. I think you'll find our programs are all inspired by Harold Lloyd, the Marx brothers and Laurel and Hardy amongst others. Particularly the Monty Python gang who's main influence was Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe aka the Goon Show a BBC radio show. Who made no bones about 1930/40's American TV/film comedians being their direct influence.

Even the Beatles cited the Goon show as being a huge influence on their music.

For your enjoyment The Goon Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXbwu6IZvZY&feature=related

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I can't imagine any fault in your words applied here, i was just a bit over the top for me, with suggestive words like poofter, great nancy. yeah, i was not kidding, i do love good ol' American humour, but i'm used to it i guess, and again, the shows i've been exposed to from England, just seemed to have absolutely out of control funny scenarioes that were just nuts! I'm thinking that i mistakenly assumed that everything comedy from england was just perfect for me, where if i had seen much more of it, i suppose i would see that every line isn't goin to be hugely funny after all. i guess it's just because of the novelty of it all, complete with the way cool English accents. It's just me, getting back to the original topic, i learned from the one post, that one can get into a real mess buying a used tube amp? I'm refering to the idea that the amp could end up needing all kinds of tube work, like biasing, at quite a large xpense, even more that the amp casted initially? That's sad to me, after finding a bunch of seeminly great amps at really good prices!

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I believe in Christianity as i believe that the sun has risen. not only because i see it, but because by it, i see everything else. C.S. Lewis

Dave I didn't mean to imply that buying used is always a bad idea but you certainly need to test drive it. Depending on the amp and tubes involved you could sink another $200.00 plus into it after you buy used if they're in need of servicing.

New amps come with a warranty. On Fender I believe its 5 years.

My first JCM800 was a bad un. Valves on the verge of exploding, pots all bad, beat up, caps on the way out, HT fuses blowing constantly.

Its a nightmare if your going to rely solely on that amp. Luckily I didnt have to and carried on using my regular amp whilst I slowly went through the thing.
Dont buy anything thats ungigged or really gigged is my rule of thumb. You want something thats had moderate use. Also if you power the amp up and have a sniff around the top of the thing and the air vents. Make sure you cant smell anything burning, though these amps do get hot.

People go on about the reliability issues of valve amps. Ok their not as reliable as a solid state amp but they are nowhere near as bad as some people make out.

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'Use a SS L6 bass amp for Mass weekly for 1000+ people and don't hear complaints about sound quality.

Fave now and for the past several years has been is an old, used Cyber-Twin (2-12AX7 in the preamp) on "65 Deluxe Reverb" and "59 Bassman."

Ok, i get the picture, it's sort of like when buying used cars for example. One needs to Do a good test drive, and know what to look, listen and smell for etc. Once again, thanks so very much everyone for all the very educational help. With all this graciously shared knowledge from experience I'm getting pretty confident, that i can manage to score a quality tube amp without buying a lemon after all!.

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I believe in Christianity as i believe that the sun has risen. not only because i see it, but because by it, i see everything else. C.S. Lewis