Joined the club :D...better late than never

[Crunchifyable]

So yesterday, the UPS guy dropped off a new C5 head for me. Double boxed with extra care from sweetwater.

She's a beauty..love the rubber knobs. Can also smell the rubber o-rings burning in the back...but hope that smell goes away. But yeah, really like the engineering that went on there, to eliminate valve rattle. Hope they start to apply that to other combos.

So tried it out first thru my Blackstar 1x12 semi-closed back combo. Warm speaker.

The cleans were really amazing. A lot of people give the amp grief over being dark, but to me, best cleans of any amp I've had. Really 3d, I swear there's a chorus in there or something. Headphones or cab, still get the 3-d effect. Doesn't really sound like a small amp when clean at all, sounds every bit as full as a 40 watt 6l6 combo, and every bit as loud at least with both amps on 1-2. But then again, I'm using PAFs at first that probably give me more headroom. Maybe I just have a really low gain tube in V1 or something, but takes a lot of boost to get some grit at lower volume settings (under noon).

With a bit of a clean boost / eq pedal, easily into hendrix territory with single coils. Definitely likes bright pickups and is a great pedal platform.

The drive is good, but still learning how to get high gain without muddyness from it or a mushy low e string.. OD Pedals do sound great and really tighten it up though, but I'm used to playing for the most part with no diode distortions, just clean boosts and eqs.

4x12 helps.

[JCM900MkIII]

Congratulations!!!!

And yes, driving multiple speakers makes it even better.
Personally I have the combo version with a 4x10, open backed.
Sounds a lot better then a single speaker (I also have a single G12H30).


One thing I have noticed is that swapping the powertube will bring a bigger change in grit then the pre-amp tubes (switching pre-amp tubes alters the color of the sound)

Have fun!

[TubeStack]

I love my C5 combo, play it almost every day.

Congrats and enjoy the head.

[Cousin Muely]

Ive got the combo myself. I may sound like a broken record but a treble boost with the C5 really brings it to life. The amp dimed on its own is a good sound but anywhere between 11 - 2 o'clock on the volume wirh the TB is cool as hell to me. Congrats and welcome to the.club!

[Crunchifyable]

Thanks guys...and yeah...using an eq as a treble or mid boost seems to work pretty well to clean up the amp's overdrive. I have found that with a bright open back speaker I don't necessarily need a treble boost.

that's interesting JCM900 - but kinda makes sense if you're running it to the point when it the el-84 starts to crunch up. Really really like the overall clean sound of the amp, so probably going to with the same JJ tube when it comes time to replace it.

[LUVMACHINE]

very nice! Congrats!

[David Corrales]

Grats :) I asked at the store today and they'll have some heads available in the upcoming month or so... hope to join the club then as well!

I love the looks of these little amps, so so classy.

[romeomotive]

Yeah, love my Class 5 head. Just spent about an hour playing through a 412 with V30s. Wouldn't sell/trade it for anything. I am glad I got it before the buzz of all these 1 watt heads came out...no gas for them at all. Enjoy!

romeomotive