The British Steelies Society

Hey chaps,

Currently I'm using a Peavey Classic 30 Tweed Combo Guitar Amp, but since it's not mine and requires a service and I'm about to record. I thought it's high time I buy my own.

£600ish budget.

So I've been eyeing up the Peavey Nashville 112 Pedal Steel Combo.

Anyone have any comments on this? or any recommendations for a similar budget - Petty, but I like the Tweed on my on loan one right now so that'd be a selling point for me, but not essential.

Ideally I would like something I can also use for regular electric guitar, I assume any steel amp will be more than capable of accommodating a regular electric?

Cheers in advance.

Hi Charlie,

I haven't used a Roland 80X or XL, but have had some very good tones from my Atomic Amplifire http://atomicamps.com/amplifire-pedal/- a profiling amp with effects, all inside a small-ish pedal. It's also got provision to use a volume pedal via the effects loop (like the Peavey '3 cable' method) although I've not used that yet. I think, generally, if you are after a variety of sounds then a profiling or modelling amp is a good option (Roland, Line6, Atomic, Kemper...). I like the Amplifire because it's small and the tones are very good - I bought mine mainly for overseas gigs (on Telecaster) as it fits in the guitar case.
You would need a monitor speaker for live playing, but as the box contains speaker IR models any neutral sounding monitor should do the job.
Or, if you want something cheap and cheerful that looks good and is reliable, the Line6 Flextone III can be bought for £50 and is very versatile - I had one for a while for rockabilly guitar playing and it was bulletproof! Even did some recording with it with lap steel which came out very nicely.
Aesthetically, I guess anything could be re-covered with tweed if you were bothered about that - there's a guy who runs an ebay shop (search 'Solsound') that has all the 'proper' cloth for re-covering amps. I've used him before and been very happy. Other suppliers are available

If you're based near me you're welcome to try out the Amplifire pedal for a week or two if that's a help.

Charlie
Check echospence's ad in this forum's For Sale section. Peavey 112 with Ken Fox mod (whatever that means!). Reduced to £300, I think.

Agree with Nick, Spence’s amp would be a good buy if still available, if not you could try a GK MB200 bass amp head, and any speaker cab preferably with a Neo speaker for weight saving, Sica speakers are excellent and very reasonably priced. The MB amp head weighs 2 lbs. I have mine built into a 12inch cab weighs around 21lbs, or can be removed to use with my spare 15inch cab. Amp heard sells around £210, Sica 12 inch Neo 4ohm, is around £125, only negative is you have to use outboard effects. Had mine over four years great little set up, used by a lot of US players.Check US forum for posts about MB200.

My MB200 in cab.

I have a rig very similar to Malcolm's but with a Telonics 15in in a separate cab. The MB 200 is a great little amp and is half rack size. I use a (cheap & second hand) DigiTech multi effects pedal as first in the chain but reckon any multi effect unit would give the additional EQ, reverb/delay and compression control. I have set up about four patches for pedal and lap steel and that covers all I need; and both have DI for recording.
When I was gigging I used a Yamaha FX550 for guitar, a Yamaha B100 for acoustic and another for steel guitar - these were mounted in a box on top of and feeding into a 3 channel keyboard amp with a 15in speaker (which happened to be a Carlsboro Cobra 90). So that's another idea to work on.
The B100 was one of a series of processors Yamaha made to use with their version (MT-100) of the Tascam and Fostex "portastudios" of the 1980's. It was designed for bass, but had a 3 band rotary EQ and also a 5 band graphic, which handled pedal steel and acoustic guitar fine. These three units fitted into a home-made 2unit x 19in rack-size box with the fourth space taken up by a home-made blanking piece with three jack socket outlets on it; connected inside to the "outs" of the processors (to patch to the amp's inputs). These or similar things often crop up s/h and cheap. Again, often with DI facility for recording.
If you can come to the NESGF (details elsewhere on forum) I'll show you the thing I made.
Don't suppose you want a silverface Fender Twin? I have one not being used!