Can my Starfire sound like this ?

crank

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Of your 3 amps I like the Carvin best and you should be able to get a good tone with some nice breakup at a not super loud volume. The Peavy is not an amp I would expect to have great tone. Not sure about the Randall but I sometimes play through a solid state Roland that has great clean tones.

My main amp is a Fender Blues Jr. which is similar to your Carvin - a 15 watt combo with a 12" speaker. I tend to keep the treble a bit low and boost the mid and bass. bit of spring reverb is nice too but I never turn mine up much past 2. But if your looking for a deeper, more round tone maybe get a bigger tube amp with more speakers.
 

D30Man

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Plus one for the Carvin being your best chance for tones close to the initial video..

The Randall is pretty cool. Metal heads are buying those up it seems. Good metal amp for not much money. Not real familiar with the cleans on that one.
 

JohnW63

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I got the Randell for Jazz tones, mostly. But it works for my Ovation guitars too. I was playing around with my wife's bass through it yesterday.

The Peavey was given to me by the Mrs years ago when I only had 1 guitar and it was acoustic. I find it does well with Jazz like tones too, with electrics.
 

GAD

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Plus one for the Carvin being your best chance for tones close to the initial video..

The Randall is pretty cool. Metal heads are buying those up it seems. Good metal amp for not much money. Not real familiar with the cleans on that one.

While there are definitely Randalls in the world of metal, that's not one of them. That's more like a solid state Twin or a Roland JC120.

I agree with others that between the three listed the Carvin is your best bet because tubes are just better for the tone you're chasing.

While money isn't everything in the quest for tone, I'm sure you're aware that you're chasing Two Rock tone with a Carvin amp and that's going to be an uphill battle. That dude's also got a Klon always on on his pedal board and while I don't necessarily buy into the Klon mystique, plenty of people feel it gives a fair bit of magic to their tone. Every item in his chain is top of the line from the guitar to the amp - and his playing ain't so bad, neither.

If your guitar needs real setup work than it can absolutely sound plinky so I'd start there before going anywhere else down the path of madness and brother, that way lies madness for sure.
 

JohnW63

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I clicked on the link, Gary. The slide on the side was VERY small. As you said it MUST be a long tale to tell.

Chasing some tone is why we all have multiple guitars.
 

GAD

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I clicked on the link, Gary. The slide on the side was VERY small. As you said it MUST be a long tale to tell.

One of the longest articles on my site and the second most popular of all of them by hit count.
 

D30Man

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While there are definitely Randalls in the world of metal, that's not one of them. That's more like a solid state Twin or a Roland JC120.

I agree with others that between the three listed the Carvin is your best bet because tubes are just better for the tone you're chasing.

While money isn't everything in the quest for tone, I'm sure you're aware that you're chasing Two Rock tone with a Carvin amp and that's going to be an uphill battle. That dude's also got a Klon always on on his pedal board and while I don't necessarily buy into the Klon mystique, plenty of people feel it gives a fair bit of magic to their tone. Every item in his chain is top of the line from the guitar to the amp - and his playing ain't so bad, neither.

If your guitar needs real setup work than it can absolutely sound plinky so I'd start there before going anywhere else down the path of madness and brother, that way lies madness for sure.

I thought that might have been a klon but wasn’t certain.. those things are upwards to $1200.. big game changer from a tone perspective.. that pedal is worth more than your amp.. or mine for that matter..
 

Quantum Strummer

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Re. Klons: earlier this year I got to do a comparison with a gold original, a Wampler Tumnus and my JRAD Archer Ikon. Set the way I like 'em (no dirt, slight treble kick & volume boost) I could hear minor pedal-to-pedal differences, mainly in the mid-boost character, but nothing in the realm of better or worse. Don't see any practical reason to $hell out for an original. (The Tumnus had the most characterful dirty sound IMO, but I think an EHX Soul Food sounds just as good for that.)

Re. the G string: an unwound third is the least stable string in a typical six-string set. It's really a bit thin for the amount of tension it's subjected to at standard pitch. If string bending is an important part of your playing thing, you'll have to put up with this. As I moved away from a blues approach and more toward a jazz one, I began using wound Gs…and my tuning/stability issues went away. But as I alluded to earlier in this thread, this means opening up the G nut slot (and sometimes the bridge saddle slot too) on pretty much any non-jazz-centric electric guitar made in the past ~45 years.

Re. attenuators: my main amp this year has been a 50-watt Hi-Tone (Hiwatt repro) via a Fryette Power Station attenuator. (The Power Station is a Swiss army knife gizmo and so does other things too, including acting as an additional power stage for small-wattage amps.) The Hi-Tone sounds like three different amps depending on how I use it. With no attenuation and the master volume set at ~9:00 it's pretty darn loud and also pretty bright & hard sounding. Almost HiFi. With its built-in power scaling, master volume still set at ~9:00, it takes on the character of a black/silver Deluxe but with more control over midrange frequencies. But plugged into the Power Station, with the master vol at ~1:30 and the PS throttling the volume down to a non-deafening level, the Hi-Tone sounds like a proper Hiwatt: rich, full and very responsive to playing dynamics. Best home amp sound I've ever had.

(Edit: my point above isn't that you need a Hi-Tone and a Power Station to get a great sound…just that whatever amp gear you've got will sound its best when run in its sweet spot. The amp could be a Fender Pro Jr., a solid-state Marshall Lead 12, a Line 6 modeler, etc.)

-Dave-
 
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JohnW63

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whatever amp gear you've got will sound its best when run in its sweet spot.

I know the Carvin has a switch to go from 15 watts to 5 watts, but I'm not sure what that will do other than be quieter. Pentode vs Triode mode. Here is what the manual says...

NORMAL (pentode) 16W and TRIODE 5W modes.The TRIODE 5W mode will allow more harmonics to be produced by the power amp and acheive saturation at lower levels.

Would the Triode setting be better as a bedroom practice setting, to find the sweet spot at lower volume ?
 

crank

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The lower wattage setting will let you get to breakup, in my mind meaning a bit of distortion, at a lower volume and all the overtones that come with that, yes.
 

Quantum Strummer

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I know the Carvin has a switch to go from 15 watts to 5 watts, but I'm not sure what that will do other than be quieter. Pentode vs Triode mode.
Would the Triode setting be better as a bedroom practice setting, to find the sweet spot at lower volume?

Yeah, running the amp in triode mode should make the power section a little spongier at a given volume. This should also let you wind up the preamp and, as Leo Fender liked to say, "put some hair on the notes." :)

-Dave-
 

JohnW63

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I think it sounds better in the 5 watt mode, at the levels I play it at. Lots of playing around with backing tracks from YouTube with the small studio monitors turned up a bit.
 
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