WVH Mammoth 5153 Live Tone

Techdeth said:
I had one

i love my stealth 100 . It really shines with a band live . Articulate af
Click to expand...
Yeah dude for sure. I have 1 friend with the EL34 100 and another with the stealth 100. Both blow away my 50w stealth which I still love but man, I hate being outdone by others 🤣🤣
 
50w Stealth and 50w 6L6 have *identical* gain levels on both the Red and Blue channels. I've had two 50w Stealths and a 50w 6L6 v2 (which I still have) in my studio all at the same time and A/B'd them with a switcher. Identical gain levels. 50w Stealth Blue channel sounds ever so slightly more compressed than 50w Blue at very low gain levels, like knobs below 9 o'clock, but above that, the amps are practically indistinguishable, even listening critically to the amps in isolation.

EVH sells ready-made concentric pot adapter kits for the 50w 6L6 v1 that you can buy and have installed at certified EVH repair locations. EVH claims v1 and v2 are identical and this kit is all you need to bring v1 up to 100% parity with v2. I haven't personally compared them though.
 
Last edited:
Purity said:
Yeah dude for sure. I have 1 friend with the EL34 100 and another with the stealth 100. Both blow away my 50w stealth which I still love but man, I hate being outdone by others 🤣🤣
Click to expand...
I’ve been there lol fr . Stealth 100 is amazing . It seems a tad darker too . Lees high fizz or something. I love it
 
Purity said:
Yeah dude for sure. I have 1 friend with the EL34 100 and another with the stealth 100. Both blow away my 50w stealth which I still love but man, I hate being outdone by others 🤣🤣
Click to expand...

I've compared the 50w Stealth to my 100w Stealth and wanted to see how close I could get them. It took some trial and effort but I eventually got pretty close.

I found that if I put an EQ pedal (I just used a Boss GE-7) at the 50w Stealth's input and boosted the mids a bit, I could get scary close to the 100w Stealth. The low end of the 50w doesn't extend as far down the frequency spectrum as the 100w but with the mids boosted at the 50w's input you can get the amps to feel extremely close.
 
So the recent price increase is a deal breaker. A year ago the 6L6 was $999.

Price is now $1349. So what? Did they make it better in some way?

It’s Putin’s fault, I guess.

I know it’s a great amp & was always priced well, but that jump is not justified, imo.
 
I had a 50W Stealth and SLO30 at the same time for a bit. For me, the Stealth was obviously tighter out of the box. I could hear some slight similarity but the SLO30 was bigger and more complex sounding.

I just sold the Stealth last week because I was never really in love with it. Still want to try the 100W EL34 version at some point.
 
My buddy just brought over his 50w Stealth. I dig it a lot. I've played them before in the store, but I got to crank it up a bit here on my setup.

  • We ran the Presence between 10:00 & 12:00 and that was enough. Resonance maybe to 12:00.
  • I didn't even play the clean or red channel.
  • Blue is pretty sweet. I was curious to see how it would do classic rock, thinking it wouldn't, but it did with the Gain at 9:00. If you boosted that, or bumped it to 10:00 with a boost, it was great for early metal.
  • Gain at 10:00, no boost, and I was easily in Pearl Jam land, doing some of their early stuff, and the guitar cleaned up very well.
  • Bump the amp Gain to 12:00, boosted, and it's pretty angry: perfect chugg tone for me.

Not as full in the mids as my Splawn, but we could get them to sound somewhat close. Feel was a bit different, but not too different. EVH is tighter for sure. I still preferred my Splawn, but not by too much. I would easily own an EVH again.

I'd be very happy with the 50w Stealth. It can do things my Comp, can't. Really awesome amp.
 
Junk Yard Dog said:
My buddy just brought over his 50w Stealth. I dig it a lot. I've played them before in the store, but I got to crank it up a bit here on my setup.

  • We ran the Presence between 10:00 & 12:00 and that was enough. Resonance maybe to 12:00.
  • I didn't even play the clean or red channel.
  • Blue is pretty sweet. I was curious to see how it would do classic rock, thinking it wouldn't, but it did with the Gain at 9:00. If you boosted that, or bumped it to 10:00 with a boost, it was great for early metal.
  • Gain at 10:00, no boost, and I was easily in Pearl Jam land, doing some of their early stuff, and the guitar cleaned up very well.
  • Bump the amp Gain to 12:00, boosted, and it's pretty angry: perfect chugg tone for me.

Not as full in the mids as my Splawn, but we could get them to sound somewhat close. Feel was a bit different, but not too different. EVH is tighter for sure. I still preferred my Splawn, but not by too much. I would easily own an EVH again.

I'd be very happy with the 50w Stealth. It can do things my Comp, can't. Really awesome amp.
Click to expand...
I've had some time to explore the EVH 50s today. I've found plenty of great classic rock tones on the blue channel, gain set to noon, guitar volume turned down. Cool thing is I get the perfect lead tone by clicking over to the red channel and leaving the guitar volume where it is.
Thought I'd see what I could do with the clean channel. This is a very sedate clip, Strat into clean channel using a Klon to sweeten the cleans, EQD Dispatch Master for delay. Gainier tone is a Prince of Tone into the blue channel with guitar volume rolled way off to darken it up some.
Just messing around, but I'm finding some sweet tones in there:
 
LPMojoGL said:
I've had some time to explore the EVH 50s today. I've found plenty of great classic rock tones on the blue channel, gain set to noon, guitar volume turned down. Cool thing is I get the perfect lead tone by clicking over to the red channel and leaving the guitar volume where it is.
Thought I'd see what I could do with the clean channel. This is a very sedate clip, Strat into clean channel using a Klon to sweeten the cleans, EQD Dispatch Master for delay. Gainier tone is a Prince of Tone into the blue channel with guitar volume rolled way off to darken it up some.
Just messing around, but I'm finding some sweet tones in there:
Click to expand...

Sounded great. Good composition. You rocked it!
 
TheGreatGreen said:
I've compared the 50w Stealth to my 100w Stealth and wanted to see how close I could get them. It took some trial and effort but I eventually got pretty close.

I found that if I put an EQ pedal (I just used a Boss GE-7) at the 50w Stealth's input and boosted the mids a bit, I could get scary close to the 100w Stealth. The low end of the 50w doesn't extend as far down the frequency spectrum as the 100w but with the mids boosted at the 50w's input you can get the amps to feel extremely close.
Click to expand...
I just traded my EL34 S combo. I could not gel with it all and had too much gain. Not sure if there was something wrong with mine but sounded really heavy all the time
 
I have 2 OG 50w 6l6 heads, one of them Stealth modded by Kruse Control. I also have the regular stealth 50 and an EL34 100s. My favorite is the Kruse modded 6l6 50. It just has a little bit more open sounding top end. I know guys either love or hate his mods, and I can understand it because if you dial the supersonic mod in wrong it could sound harsh, However if you use it sparingly it kills. The stealth 50 is in second place, followed by the EL34 100s which is kinda a completely different thing entirely. EVH amps give you a lot of bang for your buck, especially used.
 
TheGreatGreen said:
50w Stealth and 50w 6L6 have *identical* gain levels on both the Red and Blue channels. I've had two 50w Stealths and a 50w 6L6 v2 (which I still have) in my studio all at the same time and A/B'd them with a switcher. Identical gain levels. 50w Stealth Blue channel sounds ever so slightly more compressed than 50w Blue at very low gain levels, like knobs below 9 o'clock, but above that, the amps are practically indistinguishable, even listening critically to the amps in isolation.
Click to expand...

this is really interesting. Where does that leave the Stealth with regard to differences? Just the external bias points? Or is there a clean channel tweak, as well?
 
david(j) said:
this is really interesting. Where does that leave the Stealth with regard to differences? Just the external bias points? Or is there a clean channel tweak, as well?
Click to expand...

I didn't really do much testing with the clean channels but I didn't hear or feel any significant differences between them in the small amount of time I spent on them. I couldn't definitively tell you what the differences are, if there are any. However, for more info about the Green and Blue channels...

To understand the 50w versions, first we need to understand the 100w Stealth and how it compares to the original, non-Stealth 100w 5150 III.

The 100w Stealth has a pretty gained up Green channel that isn't really clean, and here's the reason why... On all versions of the 5150 III, the Green and Blue channels actually use the same circuit, but the Blue channel just increases the gain. I don't mean "they're just like each other," I mean the Green and Blue channels both route through the same exact same singular circuit in the amp. Changing from the Green to Blue channel simply switches over to a new set of EQ controls on the 100w version, and the Gain is boosted by quite a bit. Schematically speaking, it's actually a two channel amp and the "1st" channel is just given a few extra switching options (another tonestack and more Gain). However, the 100w Stealth has a Blue channel with more gain than the non-Stealth 100w 5150 III. How did they do this? They gave the 100w Stealth's Blue channel more gain by modding the amp so that the 100w Stealth's Blue channel also uses the first gain stage of the Red channel. The unfortunate consequence of this mod is that it effects the entire "1st" channel of the amp and all its switchable aspects. So, both the Blue and Green channels (the same circuit) got that extra 1st gain stage of the Red channel, so as a consequence, the Blue channel sounds a lot more gainy, and the Green really starts to break up with the Gain control turned up anywhere over about 8:30.

Now about the 50w amps... the 100w Stealth was actually created in the first place because Eddie liked the 50w's hotter Blue channel as compared to the less gainy 100w Blue channel, and the Resonance knob. So, the 100w Stealth was just really just kind of a quick and dirty hack to bring the original 100w amp up to relative parity with the 50w amp. Hotter Blue channel, and Resonance control.

So where does this leave us? Well, the standard 50w 6L6 is pretty much already a "Stealth" version of the 5150 III. There's really not much they could do to make it "more Stealth." So all they really did, all they really could do, was add external bias points and give the amp a fancier, cooler looking all-black front panel design with two "Franky" style stripe metal face plates mounted symmetrically instead of just one like on the regular 50w and call it a "Stealth" model. However, the 50w Stealth does still have a pure Clean sound in the Green channel, like the 50w 6L6, and not the extra gained-up Green channel of the 100w Stealth.

In my testing, I found the two amps are, tonally, effectively the same. I could literally only tell the differences between the 50w Stealth and 50w 6L6 Blue channels with the Blue channel Gain on both amps below 8:30 or 9:00, where the Stealth had ever so slightly less shimmery, Presency-treble on top. The Red channels were identical. Blue channels were identical with the gain set anywhere above 9:00 or so.
 
Last edited:
TheGreatGreen said:
I didn't really do much testing with the clean channels but I didn't hear or feel any significant differences between them in the small amount of time I spent on them. I couldn't definitively tell you what the differences are, if there are any. However, for more info about the Green and Blue channels...

To understand the 50w versions, first we need to understand the 100w Stealth and how it compares to the original, non-Stealth 100w 5150 III.

The 100w Stealth has a pretty gained up Green channel that isn't really clean, and here's the reason why... On all versions of the 5150 III, the Green and Blue channels actually use the same circuit, but the Blue channel just increases the gain. I don't mean "they're just like each other," I mean the Green and Blue channels both route through the same exact same singular circuit in the amp. Changing from the Green to Blue channel simply switches over to a new set of EQ controls on the 100w version, and the Gain is boosted by quite a bit. Schematically speaking, it's actually a two channel amp and the "1st" channel is just given a few extra switching options (another tonestack and more Gain). However, the 100w Stealth has a Blue channel with more gain than the non-Stealth 100w 5150 III. How did they do this? They gave the 100w Stealth's Blue channel more gain by modding the amp so that the 100w Stealth's Blue channel also uses the first gain stage of the Red channel. The unfortunate consequence of this mod is that it effects the entire "1st" channel of the amp and all its switchable aspects. So, both the Blue and Green channels (the same circuit) got that extra 1st gain stage of the Red channel, so as a consequences, the Blue channel sounds a lot more gainy, and the Green really starts to break up with the Gain control turned up anywhere over about 8:30.

Now about the 50w amps... the 100w Stealth was actually created in the first place because Eddie liked the 50w's hotter Blue channel as compared to the less gainy 100w Blue channel, and the Resonance knob. So, the 100w Stealth was just really just kind of a quick and dirty hack to bring the original 100w amp up to relative parity with the 50w amp. Hotter Blue channel, and Resonance control.

So where does this leave us? Well, the standard 50w 6L6 is pretty much already a "Stealth" version of the 5150 III. There's really not much they could do to make it "more Stealth." So all they really did, all they really could do, was add external bias points and give the amp a fancier, cooler looking all-black front panel design with two "Franky" style stripe metal face plates mounted symmetrically instead of just one like on the regular 50w and call it a "Stealth" model. However, the 50w Stealth does still have a pure Clean sound in the Green channel, like the 50w 6L6.

In my testing, I found the two amps are, tonally, effectively the same. I could literally only tell the differences between the 50w Stealth and 50w 6L6 Blue channels with the Blue channel Gain on both amps below 8:30 or 9:00, where the Stealth had ever so slightly less shimmery, Presency-treble on top. The Red channels were identical. Blue channels were identical with the gain set anywhere above 9:00 or so.
Click to expand...
This is a fantastic breakdown. Thanks for that. Pretty interesting how things evolve and push new products to market.

I’d like to grab another 50w head at some point, and this is great insight.
 
TheGreatGreen said:
I didn't really do much testing with the clean channels but I didn't hear or feel any significant differences between them in the small amount of time I spent on them. I couldn't definitively tell you what the differences are, if there are any. However, for more info about the Green and Blue channels...

To understand the 50w versions, first we need to understand the 100w Stealth and how it compares to the original, non-Stealth 100w 5150 III.

The 100w Stealth has a pretty gained up Green channel that isn't really clean, and here's the reason why... On all versions of the 5150 III, the Green and Blue channels actually use the same circuit, but the Blue channel just increases the gain. I don't mean "they're just like each other," I mean the Green and Blue channels both route through the same exact same singular circuit in the amp. Changing from the Green to Blue channel simply switches over to a new set of EQ controls on the 100w version, and the Gain is boosted by quite a bit. Schematically speaking, it's actually a two channel amp and the "1st" channel is just given a few extra switching options (another tonestack and more Gain). However, the 100w Stealth has a Blue channel with more gain than the non-Stealth 100w 5150 III. How did they do this? They gave the 100w Stealth's Blue channel more gain by modding the amp so that the 100w Stealth's Blue channel also uses the first gain stage of the Red channel. The unfortunate consequence of this mod is that it effects the entire "1st" channel of the amp and all its switchable aspects. So, both the Blue and Green channels (the same circuit) got that extra 1st gain stage of the Red channel, so as a consequences, the Blue channel sounds a lot more gainy, and the Green really starts to break up with the Gain control turned up anywhere over about 8:30.

Now about the 50w amps... the 100w Stealth was actually created in the first place because Eddie liked the 50w's hotter Blue channel as compared to the less gainy 100w Blue channel, and the Resonance knob. So, the 100w Stealth was just really just kind of a quick and dirty hack to bring the original 100w amp up to relative parity with the 50w amp. Hotter Blue channel, and Resonance control.

So where does this leave us? Well, the standard 50w 6L6 is pretty much already a "Stealth" version of the 5150 III. There's really not much they could do to make it "more Stealth." So all they really did, all they really could do, was add external bias points and give the amp a fancier, cooler looking all-black front panel design with two "Franky" style stripe metal face plates mounted symmetrically instead of just one like on the regular 50w and call it a "Stealth" model. However, the 50w Stealth does still have a pure Clean sound in the Green channel, like the 50w 6L6.

In my testing, I found the two amps are, tonally, effectively the same. I could literally only tell the differences between the 50w Stealth and 50w 6L6 Blue channels with the Blue channel Gain on both amps below 8:30 or 9:00, where the Stealth had ever so slightly less shimmery, Presency-treble on top. The Red channels were identical. Blue channels were identical with the gain set anywhere above 9:00 or so.
Click to expand...
Ive read several similar posts about how the Mk2 50 and Stealth 50 are the same.
Totally digging the Stealth 50.
I would have been happy to grab a Mk2 and save $ if one was available.
 
romanianreaper said:
I just traded my EL34 S combo. I could not gel with it all and had too much gain. Not sure if there was something wrong with mine but sounded really heavy all the time
Click to expand...

I doubt it was broken. The EVH amps are all pretty aggressive. You can dial down the Treble and Presence to smooth them out but they're naturally tight enough, and the texture of the gain is such that you're not really going to get "vintage" type tones out of them without some serious work. By about 9 or 10 on the Gain knob they're already as saturated as some other high gainers get.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top