Tell me the driest (least saturated), most open/raw (least compressed), tightest (least bass) amps.

[Hollowway]

I’m a fan of dry, open, tight amps. I know a lot of people call these thin and sterile, but I like ‘em. I’m aware of Fryettes (specifically the Pittbulls, as the Deliverances are more saturated). I now have a Mark V, and it gets routinely knocked for not being thick/saturated enough, but I totally dig it.

So anything else out there? Seems like everything else I see people talk about is very saturated (like the Fireball, KSRs, MT-15, 515X, etc)

 

[Emperoff]

You can't have all those things at once.

Besides from the Pitbull and Mesa Marks nothing much else comes to mind. People that like open raw amps don't like tight amps, they like full sounding amps. Same deal as compression. If you want a tight and focused tone, you need compression. There's not much market for what you're asking besides modded stuff.

 

[Antiproduct]

Fryette, SLO (60) or a HotRod, JCM800, RockerVerb or one of the other "classic" amps that needed to be driven + a graphic EQ.
As Emperoff said, you can't have all of those in one amp. Best bet is to get a "raw" sounding amp and shape it with pedals. Either with a TS/EQ in front or even in the back.

Speaker are also important in making it sound "tight".

 

[chassless]

I think what you want is less gain?

 

[Hollowway]

Well, maybe I’m using the wrong terms. I guess overall, the main trait I like is the dry sound, as opposed to the saturated, liquid tone.

 

[Hollowway]

I think what you want is less gain?

Yeah, I do like less gain. But, whenever you hear people talk about the Fryette tone, they talk about it having a huge amount of gain, but very little saturation. Now, I don't know what that means, in terms of the actual signal. But I do like that sound, and I do find that if I take an amp with a lot of saturation, and back off on the tone, then I like it.

But I made the thread because I think I’m in the minority, because everyone praises amps that are super saturated, so it’s hard to find those that aren’t.

 

[chassless]

Just thought about it, have you looked into the Laney Ironhearts? To me they fit your description somewhat.

 

[LiveOVErdrive]

Sounds to me like you want less bass before distortion. If you put an EQ in front of your amp or distortion pedal and remove some bass you'll probably get there.

 

[Asdrael]

While it can get saturated, the Ironball 25 would fit what you want from an amp imo. Just keep the gain below 9:00.

 

[budda]

SD-1 into a plexi?

 

[Blytheryn]

SD-1 into a plexi?

Even into a JCM… it’s THAT tone.

 

[Choop]

A cool somewhat dry but heavy sound is a boosted 5150 II or 6505+ on the crunch setting. You could probably get similar sounds with the blue channel on some of the 5153's, but I don't have any hands-on experience with those.

 

[Kosthrash]

Maybe an Orange super crush 100 work for you? I mean it's tight & dry & raw imho...

 

[Emperoff]

So if the Pitbull is what you want, why not get one instead of circling around?

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

You brought up KSR but aren't they also pretty dry? I know the Ceres isn't a 100% KSR amp but it's definitely a dry sound

 

[narad]

You want a Pittbull? I'm your guy. That said I think the reputation of "dryness" is a bit overstated. Old marshalls and stuff to me are dry, or "stiff", where you want a bit more out of them unless they're cranked or you have a SD1 in front of them. The Pittbull is more saturated than that, and with a TS9 out in front it's a really full sound that I would say is quite balanced on the dry-saturated spectrum.

 

[MoistTowelette]

You brought up KSR but aren't they also pretty dry? I know the Ceres isn't a 100% KSR amp but it's definitely a dry sound

They can be if you turn the gain down. The Juno I got recently is more dry compared to the other ksrs I’ve owned in the past.

 

[Emperoff]

Since we're bringing up KSR, I think the new Orion with the adjustable NFB could get you exactly where you want.

 

[Shask]

This characteristic normally comes from having multiple semi-clean gain stages cascaded into each other, instead of trying to get a ton of gain out of fewer stages.

 

[budda]

Good candidate to try a bunch of things in a modeller, then buy the real thing and maybe sell the modeller