EVH 5150 III 50 6l6 on way

[Speeddemon]

I find them to sound great, but the honeymoon wears off quicker than any amp I've owned. The red channel is an unusable mess. That, is the biggest con I find, every time.

You just turn the gain down. I rarely run mine over 9 or 10:00 and the amp sounds great.

Never had it past 9:00. Even with 5751's in it. It's way too gainy. Utterly insane amount. I can't, for the life of me, understand why EVH finds that much unusable gain necessary.

How many 5751's were you using for the red channel? I have V3 and V4 with 5751's and I regularly use the gain up to 11 'o clock for Iron Maiden solo's.
If I want Iced Earth levels of gain, I can still crank it to 1 or 2 'o clock, and it remains controllable. I have a NOS RFT in V1 FWIW.

 

[sleewell2]

4cm and midi w the helix sounds great. Snapshot for each channel so one button changes channels, adds an eq to solve the volume jump and adds a boost all at the same time. Add a 4th snapshot for a lead sound w reverb and delay and that's a pretty badass setup with true clean, crunch, high gain and lead sounds.

 

[jeff5]

You can't go wrong with that amp for the styles you mentioned.

 

[errrrrl]

Just as a follow up. Sold the Chupacabra and rockin a Butterslax now. NO comparison.

Hell yeah man! I love all my heads but the Butterslax is still the one for me. I'm curious if that Fortin Cali will be a serious contender for main thrash amp... we'll see.

 

[MetalHeadMike]

Owned a 100 w and 50 watt 5153 back in 2014 and neither stuck around very long. Red ch for my tastes was unusable. Too compressed, too gained out. But I'm a rhythm player and I imagine if I were a lead player maybe I'd have thought differently. The blue ch boosted was pretty cool but seemed to lack gain compared to some other amps I had at the time. I didn't find much similarity between either of those amps and the 6505+.

I'd definitely try another one at this point as tastes are always changing.