Star Amp Opinions

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braintheory

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What do you guys think of Star amps? I got to try the Supernova model once at UltraSound in NYC and remember it sounding really good. Unfortunately they don't have any Star amps there anymore and they're long discontinued but I'm still curious about them. What do you guys think of them compared to Matchless or Bad Cat since they all involved Mark Sampson?
 
Iv had a Gainstar 15 and a Gainstar 30 Sirius reverb for a few years now. Both awesome 3D sounding amps. The 15 is a bit sweeter with el84. The 30 with el34 sounds massive. Best clean pedal platform iv heard.
Heres a link couple of demo clips of the 30 i did some years ago...not sure how to embed them ???
https://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... dID=642439
 
I'm a big fan of the higher gain Matchless designs. I owned a Chieftain and still own a Matchless Excalibur and a Bad Cat Lynx. So a few year ago I bought a Gainstar 30 thinking I would love it. Well the clean channel was heaven, but the gain channel sounded like complete ass! It was coarse and grainy, flabby... just terrible. I honestly thought that there must be something wrong with it, although the amp was quiet and stable and otherwise functioned perfectly. I tracked down Mark Sampson and he agreed to take a look at it for me, but before he did, I ended up selling it, fully disclosing that I wasn't sure whether there was a problem with the gain channel. I gave the buyer Mark Sampson's contact info but never heard back from him on whether there really was a problem with the amp.
 
Interesting. I also remember the Star I tried having a really great clean channel
 
-dude-

-are ya gonna own every amp known to mankind!! save a couple for us poor peasants!!!

-and I'm jealous as hell of ya!!-
 
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