It’s NAD!! After playing some amps by various makers I ended up going with…..A New Fender Hot Rod Deluxe IV!
While I liked the tones of the Fender Deluxe Reverb (all tube), the Deluxe Reverb Tone-master (SS), and the Princeton Reverb...I struggled with the lack of mid control. I realize that It could be “eq’d” by fine tuning the bass and treble setting on the amp, but that is tedious… and still left me missing the mid-range tone I desired.
Quite honestly, I prefer the feature set on the HRD over most amps I tried. The Marshall’s on hand were somewhat limited… but all of them left me unimpressed when it related to cleans. While Marshall isn’t necessarily about clean tones I needed something that had high headroom, could provide great clean tones, and take pedals well.
IMHO the HRD is all of those.
Speaking of pedals, I ended up with 2 new drive pedals as well. A JHS Angry Charlie (V3), and s Nobles ODR-1 mini. The Angry Charlie is “plexi” like. The ODR is a fantastically smooth OD. They sound great alone or, stacked for various gain levels.
I tried the new JHS Bonsai for a few days. While I like JHS pedals this one left me a bit perplexed. It does 9 TS variants…great! But, imho…it does 9 TS variants…just okay. None of them great by themselves. And tone control on that guy is VERY limited. Almost mud, or ice pick. No sweet spot. At least for me.
I’ve include a couple gratuitous pictures for your enjoyment. And mine
Still tweaking, but I’m on the right path tonally. I appreciate the input and suggestions/recommendations.
Thx, friends.