Thinking about revisiting the Runt 50? Other suggestions?

Yeah, I've noticed that, too... 2205s & 2210s have gone from $800-$1000 about a year or two ago to $1200 to even $1500 lately. I have no idea why. Even the early ones are that much, although I would expect that's a function of GC not knowing the difference. Used market in general has just been weird lately, up, down, up, down, up... could be fun in the right circumstances... ;)

I wouldn't spend more than $1000 for one at the moment, and it would have to be really clean. Maybe $1100 if it was really special.

For $1200, I agree with the other suggestions here, Splawn - best bang for the buck, or Chupa/Yeti - more versatility.
 
I have a runt 20 and wouldn't recommend it for metal (which I thought it could do when I bought it). You can get high gain tones out of it but for that price you have much better options. I would recommend buying a Mesa Mark III or Mark IV for less than or around a grand and be done with it. Best lead channels out there imho.
 
I have a runt 20, love the hbe and jbe but could not afford it. But still wanted a friedman. They said it had the be channel so i thought it would work. It did feel like it was lacking but now i have it working good.
The master must be up at least to 5 or 6 then it fills out. I run a suhr reactive load into a kemper just for ir,s. And then i put a s-2 valve distortion with sat switch for boost with level maxed and gain around 2-3.
This gives a nice heavy saturated tone, perfect for mastodon. With the pedal i have too much gain on amp and need to pull it back to 6-7.
The pedal does not color sound as much as others i had tried. They call it a distortion pedal but its really a boost. Nothing like the be od or vh4 pedal which need a clean channel to sound good.
I see the runt does not get much love but it seems most times people talk about it they run it with low volume and max gain like the bigger be and jj. But after spending a year with it it seems to work best for high gain using it like a jcm 800 with boost.
Would love to get hold of a be 100 to see how close im getting. It kills the kemper profiles i have of the slax and jj but their just profiles. (Kemper is overrated)
 
Agreed with you, although it's supposed to be a low powered amp, it takes some pretty serious volume before it sounds best. The actual volume increases up until 7-8 on the master (unlike some Marshall's etc where after 3-4 it only increases distortion).
When you're up there it does sound good though and has it's own sound going (haven't tried other Friedman's but comparing to Marshall and Mesa). I liked giving it a small boost with a tube screamer (gain on 0, level at 2 o'clock) to get proper high gain tones.
 
No specific comments on the Runt 50 as I have not spent any serious time with one, but generally speaking, every time I decided to "re-visit" an amp I originally did not like, I was quickly reminded of why I did not like it in the first place.
 
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