5150III Review and Clip

[Lasse Lammert]

I'm loving the "not quite clean"- and crunch tones on this amp soooo much.
the highgain is a bit tricky IMO, it's a really dark sounding amp, so you have to raise the presence and treble a bit to avoid the "blanket", but there's a very fine region it sounds good in, too much and it's getting fizzy easily (kind of a dry raspy scratchy sound, also a bit apparent in this clip imo).
that makes the 3rd channel not really versatile, but as long as you stay in the sweet range it's killer.
The mids sound nice and chunky on this amp (you can clearly hear the 5150 genes).
I still prefer the original 5150MKI but the 5153 definitely rock.
James and Andy are clearly the masters of this amp.

one thing that is weird about this amp are the EXTREME dimensions. easily the biggest head on the planet.

I can also highly recommend the 201 btw...great mic (my favorite mic for snare, sounds also awesome on brass and everything else)...well and on guitars of course.

 

[Sacha]

I'm loving the "not quite clean"- and crunch tones on this amp soooo much.
the highgain is a bit tricky IMO, it's a really dark sounding amp, so you have to raise the presence and treble a bit to avoid the "blanket", but there's a very fine region it sounds good in, too much and it's getting fizzy easily (kind of a dry raspy scratchy sound, also a bit apparent in this clip imo).
that makes the 3rd channel not really versatile, but as long as you stay in the sweet range it's killer.
The mids sound nice and chunky on this amp (you can clearly hear the 5150 genes).
I still prefer the original 5150MKI but the 5153 definitely rock.
James and Andy are clearly the masters of this amp.

one thing that is weird about this amp are the EXTREME dimensions. easily the biggest head on the planet.

I can also highly recommend the 201 btw...great mic (my favorite mic for snare, sounds also awesome on brass and everything else)...well and on guitars of course.

Yeah I agree you have to dial it carefully i've noticed as well. I did notch out some fizzy areas in the final mix for the album, although I do dig a pretty bright agressive tone for rhythm that's not too polite on the ears.

 

[Osse]

Hey, I did a recording with a 6505(regular) and I noticed some similar stuff to what Lasse Lammert said.

I experienced the amp to loose treble as I turned up the volume, which ended up that I had treble on 10 and presence on 9 when having enought volume for the cab to scream enought, is this a common feature of the 5150 and 6505 family?

the amp were sounding bright in the room and I used the fredman style 2x 57's and experienced that the recorded sound to be darker than what I heard in the room, even tho I placed mics at the brightest positions I could find.

I've never heard anyone commenting the fredman style technique to be dark sounding, or not heard any complaints about it anyway so I guess I might be doing something wrong in the micing technique?

 

[Eduardo Apolonia]

I can't get the 2nd channel on my 5150III to enough gain without a serious push on the TubeScreamer volume.

Ch2 on my 5150III has less gain than the crunch channel on 5150.
Is this what you guys hear on yours?
Maybe mine has a problem.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Ch2 on my 5150III has less gain than the crunch channel on 5150.
Is this what you guys hear on yours?
Maybe mine has a problem.

nah, that's correct, ch2 on the 5153 has way less than green on the regular 5150

 

[Ermz]

Wow, that must be totally blues-gain-only without a TS then?

 

[Lasse Lammert]

well, I'd say it totally qualifies as highgain, think of a juiced up marshall (don't forget that the green channel on the 5151 has about as much gain as recitifier's red channel).
the 3rd channel of the 5153 has way too much gain though (for your clip it was somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00)

 

[guitarded88]

The second channel BEGS to be played at high volume.

u can make it work at low with a TS

 

[TheDude]

one thing that is weird about this amp are the EXTREME dimensions. easily the biggest head on the planet.

*pfft* I know several amps that are larger.

 

[Eduardo Apolonia]

nah, that's correct, ch2 on the 5153 has way less than green on the regular 5150

Thanks for the info Lasse.

When I re-amp I can't get the amount of gain necessary without pushing the Master knob Full on a TS.
And I have my converters calibrated to -18dBfs.

Could you reamp one DI track like the Rose of Sharyn without TS so I can check if the gain is the same?

That would be a great help in confirming if the gain on my amp is ok.
I could then sleep well again

 

[Ermz]

Yeah I get the feeling that calibrating the converters for normal analogue headroom would give you some pretty cold reamp signals with most boxes.