Just got my 6505 mini, quick thoughts...

[Lampshade1973]

Pretty cool little amp, can get very loud but my one gripe is that if you turn the gain up too much it seems to fart out, but there is plenty of gain on tap no need for any OD pedals for lead stuff, it obviously doesn't have the girth of a 100 watt or 50 watt amp but it sounds pretty decent, has plenty of chug and it has TONS of bass, on my 5153 50 watt I keep the bass at 3 oclock, this thing you cant put the bass past noon or it will start to fart out, controls are very sensitive and the clean and reverb are great...I have to play with it more and dial in a bit more to see if I can get the gain all the way up without distorting but I am also playing it through an orange ppc 1x12 with a vintage 30 so it might be the cab, I have an orange 2x12 Im gonna run it trough later and see if it opens it up a bit, overall great amp with great features minus the few gripes!!

 

[Anonymous]

Nice!! Keep the reviews coming ! Interesting to hear that.
SO... Not even a slight competition to the 50 watt??

 

[Lampshade1973]

OK, just a heads up, if you turn the highs up a bit and lower the bass more you can get rid of the high gain farting out, the amp is getting better everytime I plug in, but yeah Dickrose, the EVH 50 watt has warmer girthier tone but this little head is world better than the valveking 20 and I think its on par with more features and better lead channel than the Tiny terror...

 

[Chris6870]

I only played mine for about ten minutes. So far I like it. Sounds great low volume I am interested to hear ow it holds together at high volumes. The resonance adds a nice bottom end that other micro amps lack. Reminds me of the depth mod on the Jet City.
After the first ten minutes with the Mark V 25 I was scratching my head thinking WTF? This sounds great right out of the box.

 

[Anonymous]

Awesome! Glad your digging it. You got a great deal on it too which makes it all the better.
It's good to know that there are heads like this where you can bring to a gig and have good tone. 20 watts are loud enough for a god bar imo.

 

[jisham]

I've had mine a few days and am using two Orange PPC112 cabs with V30s. Sounds fantastic and I really like that there's no volume jump on the green channel when you kick on crunch mode -- makes the amp so much more useable than the 5153 50 watter. I got mine on eBay for $450 shipped. It's pretty loud with my two 112s. I have the gain set a hair less than noon on the red channel and it rips. I only use a boost on the green channel, both clean and crunch. The boost on the crunch is tone deluxe in my opinion (I use a mini Tubescreamer). I played through headphones and wasn't too impressed, but that's the only negative so far for me.

 

[232cap]

Great little amp for the money, best lunchbox amp I tried so far.

 

[Lampshade1973]

I agree the gain at around noon is perfect, I was just playing mine and I realized that the louder you get you need to turn down the resonance to get a clear tone, the low gain setting are awesome on this amp whether your using the crunch or red channel, as I mentioned earlier Im running it through an orange ppc with a v30, gonna try boosting the green channel tonite and see what kind of results I get, Jisham I got it for 450 out the door as well, great value I think....

 

[Chris6870]

Amp has a silly amount of gain. I'm at 2-3 on gain on the red channel. With the boost on the clean channel,its pretty much a 3 channel amp.

 

[Lampshade1973]

Brokenfusion, have you tried cranking it yet?? I find it gets noisy if you put the gain up any more, I also noticed tonite that the amp does well with single coils, way better than my EVH 50 watt, I can get good single coil tones out of the peavey, very creamy on the red channel....

 

[jisham]

I'm so blown away by this amp, Chinese or not! I used it with my Baja 60s Tele last night for the first time and agree with Lampshade that single coils work really well. I like it way more than the EVH 50 watter.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Interesting.. these are bold statements to make in an environment that worships the EVH 50 watters for the blue channel and beyond. I also agree that if you are mic'ing anything, even 5 watts is good enough. Mic to PA system and done in most cases. I am thinking that the 5150/6505 circuit bennefits from EL84's because of the high end and detail those tubes can bring. Those amps tended to be voiced more in the lower mids with big bass if I am not mistaken. Now let's hear some clips! 450$ out the door is a no brainer for this.

 

[Chris6870]

Brokenfusion, have you tried cranking it yet?? I find it gets noisy if you put the gain up any more, I also noticed tonite that the amp does well with single coils, way better than my EVH 50 watt, I can get good single coil tones out of the peavey, very creamy on the red channel....

3-4 on the red channel is as loud as I have had it. I didn't find it noisy, but I had the gain no higher than noon.
At this price point,with the features it has they should sell a ton of them. I didn't even try out the USB or direct out yet. The 5 watt and 1 watt mode sound good.

 

[gbsmusic]

What speakers are you using to everyone?

 

[jisham]

Vintage 30s are standard in the Orange cabs so that's what I'm using.

 

[Chris6870]

A Splawn 2x12 with small blocks and a Mesa 1x12 with a Governor which is kind of a vintage 30 flavor. The small blocks are less mid rangy than the Governor, which has a little more bite. Sounds good with both.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

And yet there is already one in the classifieds!

 

[Tuckerbomb]

And yet there is already one in the classifieds!

Not anymore!!

 

[Chris6870]

Got to play with the XLR out today. My cabs are are not here so I plugged in to my interface through powered monitors it sounds really good. Much better than the Mesa cab clown. It has a speaker defeat that engages a dummy load so you can play totally silent through headphones or your computer.

 

[Lampshade1973]

I have to say I was just playing mine through the orange 1x12 and this thing rocks, great little amp if you want to set up easy and jam at lower volumes, the reverb is great too and I swear the clean channel is chimey, Im going to record direct with it tomorrow so Ill post back...