Any love for the Egnater Rebel 30?

[Gatesy]

I'm in the market for a new amp and the Rebel 30 head (along with some sort of 212 cab) is the top contender at the moment.  I just started playing with a new band around town and my old Peavey Delta Blues 115 just isn't giving me exactly what I want any more.  The band consists of a LOUD drummer (we're working on it), a bass player pushing 8 10's, synth player that doubles on trumpet, another guitar player using a mesa 5:25 head and 212 cab, and little ol' me.

I need something that is versatile and can keep up with everything.  That being said, I'm sort of a young player and I haven't found "my sound".  I'm not really sure what sort of power tubes I prefer, nor preamp tubes, hell I'm even having trouble deciding on what scale length I prefer on my guitar (but nows not the time nor thread to discuss that), so I thought the Rebel 30 would be a good amp to help me along my journey for tone considering it has both 6v6's and El84's.

Anyone have experience with the Egnater Rebel 30?

Also: I'm not dead set on this amp! Any amp suggestions around this price range ($750ish and under) are welcome.  The Egnater Tweaker 40 is kind of catching my eye as well...

 

[dudesweet157]

I played through its big brother for a while (Renegade 112 combo).  I wanted the Rebel 30, but they had a scratch and dent Renegade for less $$$.  The tube blend on both amps did very little to my ears.  In the Rebel 30, it may have added a little upper midrange spank as you turned it towards the EL84's, but nothing a tweak of the EQ knobs couldn't also accomplish.  I got rid of my Renegade because it was sterile sounding and too loud (speaker swap would've helped the tone but not the too loudness).  It desperately needed a new speaker.  The Rebel 30 combo has the same speaker if I'm not mistaken.  If you go head/cab or don't mind immediately dishing out more $$$ for a new speaker, the Rebel 30 isn't bad.  I think the stock speaker is a Celestion Elite 80, a very flat/neutral speaker.  One thing to note is that the cabinet voiced line out is voiced to the stock speaker, so if you swap it, the line out won't sound like the sound coming from the speaker.

 

[pabloman]

Without knowing anything about your preferences its hard to make a good suggestion. But I will do it anyway. One of the most versatile amps around is the Marshall DSL 100. I had the older JCM 2000 series and it really is amazing. I could nail any Marshall tone I want with it. The clean on it is great. It takes pedals very well. A 100 watt half stack might be overkill. They did offer that head in a 50 watt version as well as a 40 watt 1-12 combo. They have reintroduced the DSL amps with a lot more configurations. There is a 15 watt head and combo as well as a 40 watt 1-12 combo. I have yet to play them but I can say the  JCM 2000 versions are hard to beat.

 

[Gatesy]

Without knowing anything about your preferences its hard to make a good suggestion. But I will do it anyway. One of the most versatile amps around is the Marshall DSL 100. I had the older JCM 2000 series and it really is amazing. I could nail any Marshall tone I want with it. The clean on it is great. It takes pedals very well. A 100 watt half stack might be overkill. They did offer that head in a 50 watt version as well as a 40 watt 1-12 combo. They have reintroduced the DSL amps with a lot more configurations. There is a 15 watt head and combo as well as a 40 watt 1-12 combo. I have yet to play them but I can say the  JCM 2000 versions are hard to beat.

I guess I should have included some of my preferences...

Well, normally I run my amp on the dirty channel with low/medium gain and use my volume knob to clean the sound up a bit for when I play rhythm guitar and I crank my guitar volume and use an overdrive pedal- when necessary- for a boost for leads.

As for tonal inspiration, right now I'm diggin' on Derek Trucks, Jimmy Herring, Audley Freed, Trey Anastasio, David Grissom, John Scofield, and a lot of various other guitarists.  So I don't really want anything high gain, but at the same time I would like to have enough gain on tap to attempt some searing lead tones. But I could probably get that from a pedal if need be.  I would also prefer an amp that is 50 watts or under and to be in a head and cabinet format.

 

[dudesweet157]

Based on your tone references, I would NOT recommend an Egnater product. 

I just played one of the new Marshall DSL 15 amps yesterday.  The 112 combo was pretty neat, but I wasn't totally sold on the speaker (it might just have needed to be broken in).  They make a head version that you could pair with a 212 cab that could be pretty sweet.  I dearly loved my 212 with a Celestion Vintage 30 and G12H30 (I need to get another one).  For classic Marshally goodness, I don't think it can be beat, and if your band is so loud that it can't keep up, you need to tell them to turn down or find a new band.  I routinely gigged with a dinky little Fender Super Champ XD: 15 6V6 watts through a 10" speaker.  Sub-100 capacity rooms, it held its own unmiked. Anything bigger than that and I just stuck a microphone in front of it and pumped it out the mains.  It was plenty loud for stage volume at any venue; I just tilted it back, pointed at my head.

15 watts cranked for phase inverter/power tube saturation is going to sound a LOT better than 50 watts pushing all pre-amp buzziness too.  I sold all my big amps (Egnater Renegade, Fender Bassman, Vox AC30) because they couldn't do the lush, warm overdrive at a volume that wouldn't get me kicked out of the venues we played at.

 

[bagman67]

Mesa Boogie F30 might be a good alternative, tone-wise.    You can probably get one used for US$600-650.


Very durable, and if memory serves I think they come stock with a Celestion Vintage 30 (mine did, anyway - not sure if that was the stock speaker, in retrospect). Hugely loud for 30 watts, too, if you're trying to bludgeon your drummer into submission.

 

[jackthehack]

My main amp these days is a Rebel 20 head played through one or two 1x12 cabs with Celestion Vintage 30s in them. This is a very similar circuit but single channel with 3 rather than 5 preamp tubes. no reverb or "clean channel".

I would highly recommend the Rebel 20 or 30, but there are a couple of caveat emptors involved, and you need to take any recommendations from somebody that's casually tried one for a bit at store rather than owned one with a grain of salt...

- While the amps sound OK out of the box, they can sound MUCH better retubed, see this post:

http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=19401.msg287574#msg287574

Just noticed I never got around to doing a final update, wound up going with the Groove Tubes GT-6V6-S duet and Mullard re-issues for the pre-amp tubes and EL84 duet.

- The reason I suggest that somebody checking out the amp in the store may not have a good impression is that this amp takes a bit of experimentation to that "perfect sound" out of it, primarily due to the unique EL84/6V6 tube mix control. I tend to play mind dialed all the way over to either the EL84 or 6V6 positions. Due to the differing breakup characteristics of either tube set you need to tweak the volume/gain at either position a bit, and to a lesser extent also if using the built in attenuators and dialing the output wattage way down for bedroom/practice usage. Note that even dialed down to the 1 watt position the amp is still pretty loud played through a Vintage 30.

 

[squege1]

I had A Rebel 30 head for about a week before it 'crapped out' on me. While it was working I did enoy the feel of the amp. The one thing that I did take away from having checked out the amp was the fact that the feature of 'tube blending' had much less effect on the tone then I previously thought it would. It is a selling point for Egnater but it really drove the point home for me that circuit design/tone stack layout have much more of an effect on tone. Tube type (for me anyway) represents amp 'feel' and at what point pushing the output section becomes a tone component, but only for grit, overdrive and sag. I wound up saving a little longer a ordering a Matchless Lightning head and have not looked back since.
JC

 

[thebutcher85]

I'm in the market for a new amp and the Rebel 30 head (along with some sort of 212 cab) is the top contender at the moment.  I just started playing with a new band around town and my old Peavey Delta Blues 115 just isn't giving me exactly what I want any more.  The band consists of a LOUD drummer (we're working on it), a bass player pushing 8 10's, synth player that doubles on trumpet, another guitar player using a mesa 5:25 head and 212 cab, and little ol' me.

I need something that is versatile and can keep up with everything.  That being said, I'm sort of a young player and I haven't found "my sound".  I'm not really sure what sort of power tubes I prefer, nor preamp tubes, hell I'm even having trouble deciding on what scale length I prefer on my guitar (but nows not the time nor thread to discuss that), so I thought the Rebel 30 would be a good amp to help me along my journey for tone considering it has both 6v6's and El84's.

Anyone have experience with the Egnater Rebel 30?

Also: I'm not dead set on this amp! Any amp suggestions around this price range ($750ish and under) are welcome.  The Egnater Tweaker 40 is kind of catching my eye as well...

Yes. I owned a Rebel 30 for a couple months and it was great. Then I realized I liked EL84 tubes WAY better than 6V6's, so I sold the Rebel and bought the new Orange #4 Terror head (basically a 15watt Rockerverb) and it KILLS the rebel 30 in every way. I LOVE the Orange #4, I have used it for gigs and only turned it up half way and it was ear-splitting still! (only through a 2x12)

I also jsut bought an Egnater Tweaker 88 and it is RAD. If you're going to buy an Egnater, go with the Tweaker 88, you can get one used at GC for $599, and trust me you won't regret it! I play worship, Rock, Blues, metal & hardcore, and the Tweaker can do all of that and it does them GREAT. I'm set for amps now for a long time haha!
hope that helps.