What is your favorite guitar amplifier and why?

peavy vyper. It can create any tone you can dream of (without countless and expensive petals), its user friendly, the distortion is sick (great for metal and rock), the clean is good too, and its affordable.

I'm going with the tried and true. The top three on my list are as follows...

- Marshall

- Marshall

- Marshall

The frontrunner is of course the JCM800, the classic Marshall Stack. That's the official amplifier of every rocker since The Who, and there's a reason for that. Nothing else in the world gives that distinct tone with that much aggression, especially on a clean channel.

My practice / small venue amp is a VS100R combo, and it's as close as I can get to the stack sound when I play. On both, I set the amplifier to crystal clear cleanliness and then distort the f**k out of it with my floor rack.

I won't ever put the other amps down, in fact I'll speak well of them. Mesa Boogie, Peavey, Fender and Orange all build incredible equipment with an amazing versatile sound. And Peavey, in my humble experience, stands up to physical abuse much better than Marshall.

But nothing else gives that Marshall sound.

I've played just about everything out there and Mesa is just what works for me. I use my Lonestar Special for blues and classic rock and my Rectifier for heavier stuff. Lots of great amps out there, but everyone has to find what works best for them. I am also a huge Marshall fan, but the other guitarist in my band has always played a JCM 800 so I wanted something with a slightly different tone. Marshalls are incredible tube amps though.

Fender Twin Reverb. Tight bottom end, punchy, playing-responsive and uncompressed (SS rectifier), beautiful clean tone that goes for miles, great warm sounding tremolo... and 6L6 power tubes. Blackface is better than Silverface (tighter, darker, less "hi-fi"), but the Silverfaces are great, too.

The cons are that it's huge/heavy, that it's too loud for just playing in an apartment, even too loud (past around 3 or 4) to play at a venue that mics/runs through the PA... If I could find a smaller/quieter amp that sounded like a Twin, I'd jump at it. But finding one with 6L6 tubes (most smaller amps are 6V6), with a SS rectifier, with that tremolo, with that sound... haven't found it. The Vibroverb with a 15" speaker is close/also great, but ridiculously expensive.

Not sure if it counts, but the Axe Fx is my favourite piece of equipment I've ever owned. Can literally get any sound I want.

In terms of traditional amps, I'd say an early 90's two channel Dual Rectifier is my favourite. Wish they still made em like they used to.

My JCM800, because it's a Marshall obviously.

Orange amps; nice and crunchy and especially good for metal and punk.