5150 III 50 watt and 100 watt comparison clips

I'm not surprised that the 100 watt sounds dull with the presence at only 6-6.5. I put it way up to 8-9. Mic'd tones always sound much better to me with a lot of presence. Then again, the Mesa cab has a pretty smooth topend that allows more presence without getting too fizzy...

How is the clean channel on the 50? Can you get it to stay crystal clean with a lot of volume?
 
It stays a LOT cleaner than the 100 watt version, but if you dig in, it will start to breakup. I love the clean channel on both amps, but where the clean channel would be easily breaking up with the gain at 10:00 on the 100 watt, on the 50 you need the gain pretty much full on to get the same amount of overdrive/grit.
 
... and around 15kg according to EVH. akbeda hasn't weighed it but he thinks it's more close to 15kg.

By the way we did our first reamping tests with the 50W amp through a Marshall Mode Four 4x12 cab (SM57 mic) last weekend. It all sounds very promising so far.
 
yeah, the head weighs about 35 pounds.

As for the green/blue channel difference, yes it is definitely a difference! To me, I don't see someone being real comfortable switching between these for live playing.

I see the amp serving 2 purposes/sounds. Someone who wants a great clean and then dirty it up with an OD pedal, and then the red channel for leads or high gain...Or, someone who wants a gritty/dirty clean or mid gainy crunch and use the volume pot on their guitar to clean up the tone, and then the red channel for leads or high gain...Basically you have 2 choices for a 2 channel amp...Green/Red or Blue/Red. Either way, I don't feel limited at all by the shared controls. I get everything I need for clean/crunch from either the green or blue channels.

Want a gritty clean that cleans up with light picking while still having chime? Green channel.

Want a crunchy tone with some mid grunt that cleans up when rolling back the volume? Blue channel

And then you still have the red channel for all the high gain shenanigans.
 
Also, the volume knobs on both amps were set at the same point. Perhaps if the 100 watt was louder and more in the sweet spot it would have been brighter.

This could definitely be significant. I have only used the Peavey variants, but mine definitely brightens up significantly as the volume increases, especially at very low levels.
 
It stays a LOT cleaner than the 100 watt version, but if you dig in, it will start to breakup. I love the clean channel on both amps, but where the clean channel would be easily breaking up with the gain at 10:00 on the 100 watt, on the 50 you need the gain pretty much full on to get the same amount of overdrive/grit.

I wasn't asking about the sweep of the gain knobs. I personally don't care where the knobs are set as long as I get what I'm after. On the 100 that requires keeping the gain knob almost all the way down and cranking up the volume, but it works well enough...

Can the 50 stay just as clean with the SAME amount of volume?

People are saying the clean channel and crunch channel have a big volume difference. Is the clean channel really quiet or something?
 
I wasn't asking about the sweep of the gain knobs. I personally don't care where the knobs are set as long as I get what I'm after. On the 100 that requires keeping the gain knob almost all the way down and cranking up the volume, but it works well enough...

Can the 50 stay just as clean with the SAME amount of volume?

People are saying the clean channel and crunch channel have a big volume difference. Is the clean channel really quiet or something?


But to me the sweep of the gain knobs (i.e. how much gain is added) is naturally part of the equation, especially in amps where preamp gain plays a big role...And the precise reason the green and blue channels ARE so different.

The tradeoff in cleans with the 100 watt is you have to run the preamp gain really low...you compensate by turning up the post gain, right? right...But, since the preamp gain is pretty low, you still kinda "top out" on the post, to a point.

However, with the 50, you can run the preamp gain a lot higher, and still run the post gain high, too. But because of that, if you switch to the blue channel, it's going to be a LOT louder simply because there is an abundance of preamp gain on that channel. So no matter where the preamp gain is set on the green, the blue will always have more. On any clean channel you have more volume control using pre and post gain controls because of the inherent headroom a clean channel has (less gain stages). On amps with a lot of gain (more gain stages), you are pretty much only relegated to the post gain giving you VOLUME (once the threshold into over drive is reached, which happens REALLY early on the pre gain knob).

Do they stay the same amount of clean at the same volume? For me so far, yes, but I've had no reason to try to crank the clean channel as loud as I can just to compare, nor the desire...But I'd go farther and say that it's "easier" to keep the 50 clean at any volume simply because there isn't an abundance of gain on tap at any point of knob position compared to the 100 watter.

I'll also say that - to me - the 50 watters cleans just plain sound better with the added high end and the lower amount of gain available. You have a lot more "shades of gray" in the sweep to derive varying and subtle amounts of grit across the gains sweep (or conversely, differing amounts of "clean" to suit a variety of definitions of what a nice clean tone is) . With the 100, it's more like 1 clean tone at any point with the preamp gain knob under 10:00...After that, it spills right into the blue channels territory. On the 50, you HAVE to have the clean channels preamp gain DIMED to get it to APPROACH the blue channels gain...Which is why it seems the blue channel is louder or differing in volume.

Make no mistake, both can get loud enough.

I'm not sure how much more I can describe. You'll just have to try it yourself.
 
I hope my local dealer will not get one of these... have to buy some food first...
I still love my 100w 5153 but what's better than have one 5153... to have two! :D
 
But to me the sweep of the gain knobs (i.e. how much gain is added) is naturally part of the equation, especially in amps where preamp gain plays a big role...And the precise reason the green and blue channels ARE so different.

The tradeoff in cleans with the 100 watt is you have to run the preamp gain really low...you compensate by turning up the post gain, right? right...But, since the preamp gain is pretty low, you still kinda "top out" on the post, to a point.

However, with the 50, you can run the preamp gain a lot higher, and still run the post gain high, too. But because of that, if you switch to the blue channel, it's going to be a LOT louder simply because there is an abundance of preamp gain on that channel. So no matter where the preamp gain is set on the green, the blue will always have more. On any clean channel you have more volume control using pre and post gain controls because of the inherent headroom a clean channel has (less gain stages). On amps with a lot of gain (more gain stages), you are pretty much only relegated to the post gain giving you VOLUME (once the threshold into over drive is reached, which happens REALLY early on the pre gain knob).

Do they stay the same amount of clean at the same volume? For me so far, yes, but I've had no reason to try to crank the clean channel as loud as I can just to compare, nor the desire...But I'd go farther and say that it's "easier" to keep the 50 clean at any volume simply because there isn't an abundance of gain on tap at any point of knob position compared to the 100 watter.

I'll also say that - to me - the 50 watters cleans just plain sound better with the added high end and the lower amount of gain available. You have a lot more "shades of gray" in the sweep to derive varying and subtle amounts of grit across the gains sweep (or conversely, differing amounts of "clean" to suit a variety of definitions of what a nice clean tone is) . With the 100, it's more like 1 clean tone at any point with the preamp gain knob under 10:00...After that, it spills right into the blue channels territory. On the 50, you HAVE to have the clean channels preamp gain DIMED to get it to APPROACH the blue channels gain...Which is why it seems the blue channel is louder or differing in volume.

Make no mistake, both can get loud enough.

I'm not sure how much more I can describe. You'll just have to try it yourself.

Interesting. I guess I was just skeptical because with most amps I've played that have a 50 and 100 watt version, the 100 watt version always has a nicer clean channel due to the extra headroom.

I thought they wanted to make this amp as close sounding as possible to the 100 watt version? I remember reading that in a few places. It's kinda weird that they would tweak it substantially like that. If many people like it more than the the 100w head, then the 100w head sales will probably start suffering a bit...

I'll probably try to scoop one up when you can get one used for $700 or so.