Hi Andy,
I think this is a great question, and I agree with everything mentioned above. I purchased all of my amps, used, on reverb. I looove the sound now.
Short version:
I bought my amps used on reverb after trying to understand how tube amps were designed and maintained over the last century (almost!).
I made sure I was able to return the purchase if anything was wrong and made sure I was able to take the amp to someone to fix at low or no cost.
It took some time for me to adjust how I played with the new amps and there was some buyer’s remorse but options like changing the speaker and tubes turned them into something I love now.
Super long version:
Just wanted to share my journey so far, hope it helps. Apologies for the length, working on that. I’m a (software) engineer and played around with low voltage microprocessor and circuits in grad school. I’m afraid of working on super high voltage and high current circuits though, easy to die unless you are very familiar with this stuff, I feel.
I was wondering the same question you asked beginning about 2 years ago, and I’m finally pretty happy with my amps (and guitar, guitar pu’s). Also broke haha. Worth it, however. But don’t go broke. :)
Clay mentioned Guitar Center, that is a great idea. That never occurred to me! Going to the local shop and talking with other players and listening to the amp makes a lot of sense. Less hassle and worry, as Tomo mentioned. Make sure you hear it in a similar sized room as your practice room at home.
For vintage or used amps, make sure the seller has taken the amp to a decent amp tech recently. Then, I felt, the risk was taken out of being bamboozled by an online purchase somehow.
I wanted to understand what I was getting into buying a vintage amp so I watched a lot of amp tech YouTube videos. I found “Psionic Audio” very helpful. He wants to educate young or new players about buying vintage amps for a fair price, and educate new amp techs.
I got a good sense of what vintage amps are and maintenance costs.
The electrical characteristics of the components, mostly resistors and capacitors fade out of tolerance over time and need to be replaced by someone familiar with vintage appropriate maintenance and design. I learned while many folks love some vintage amps, like boogie mesa amps in particular, they are very expensive to repair because designers did not factor repair into the design. I think vintage fender amps became what I think of as heirloom amps because Leo Fender started out as a tube amp radio repair guy, in 1936. Vacuum tube technology started out in the early 1900’s. So I think, while Leo didn’t play guitar, he had a sense of what touring pro musicians needed and built that to be easily maintainable and the technology was stable and around long enough to incorporate repair into new designs. That is why Maestro Tomo is able to talk about playing amps like the vintage fender bassman, super reverb, …to all of his students now.
John mentioned Black Cat amps. Tomo reviewed a Black Cat amp on his channel as well. I liked the sound online. So I took a similar route looking for used modern boutique amps, designed and made by experienced amp techs. I liked the sound of video reviews for Silktone, and Swart.
I found many people buy these amps, try them and don’t like them for whatever reason and sell them, quite cheap. So that’s how I found my first amp, Swart Mod 84, it’s voiced like a vox I think, and it can be very bright.
Purchased “mint” for more than half off. When I received it, I heard too much, I thought I sounded terrible and no matter how loud I played the amp I couldn’t get it to produce any distortion. I was super bummed until I took the speaker out on a whim and found the rim was bent. I contacted the reverb seller and he agreed to compensate me for a new speaker.
I put in a dark hemp-cone speaker and practiced with that for about a year, but not too happy still. Eventually I was able to by a discounted celestian blue speaker famous for being in the old vox amps. I also changed the tubes, so all of that was maybe another $500 over a few years. I am the second owner of this amp and I haven’t taken it to an amp tech yet, no need. I love that amp now. Super clean and, to me, sounds like the bassman on Tomo’s videos.
But before that I also bought an older Silktone Amp, #42 from an older gentleman that wanted to retire. I listened to a lot of online demos and even contacted Charles, the guy that owns and runs Silktone. Charles is in Sacramento about an hour away from me in Pleasanton, CA. He said he would fix it for no additional cost if anything was wrong. He did and this 12 watt amp is rock solid for my needs now. I am the fourth owner of this amp, and I love this amp too.
Originally the seller said he took it to an amp tech and said it was in excellent condition. We agreed on $1400, more than half off new, then he said he turned it on to check everything and blew the fuse and wanted to cancel the sale. After I talked to Charles, I bought it as nonfunctional. Drove up to Sac, met Charles (super cool friendly guy that has a deep passion for what he does) While I love this amp too, after the Swart experience I felt the Silktone was too dark.
For me the solution was using all this stuff to build a dual-mono or wet-dry-wet system (included a supro delta king and a looper) by using an ABY splitter with a phase inverter button.
So, i finally have a sound I like, I took some risks, saved some money and I feel really lucky to have met Charles. He’s really cool and has an amazing intuitive sense of analog circuits, like Moog I feel, after spending his youth repairing tube amps here in the Bay Area.
Hope that helps your journey Andy!!
Sunil