Trying Hard to Like the HDRX20

Still loving mine. Extremely versatile.

Always a disappointment when you find something you really like and others don't seem to get it. But I get it.

Usually the master is set at less than 1/2. Sometimes I play it with the master on 2 or 3, sometimes half. Rarely much higher in my bedroom sized music room.

Kind of depends what time of day or night it is!

This is a rock and roll amp and it has great rock clean tones. It is not for playing Beach Boys surf guitar, although it's clean enough to do that if you want that. You'll need some reverb though.

But again, I much prefer playing through this amp with my pedal board in front and using my overdrive pedals for overdrive rather than blowing my ears out (and the neighbor's) trying to get it from the amp without a pedal.

I'm dying to take this thing on a gig, but the way they run the blues jams around here they won't let you use your own amp.

So I get stuck plugging into some generic little Fender or Boss Blues Cube amp with a no name speaker, and being bummed that I can't get my tone.

They won't even let me bring my old Princeton Reverb. They don't want any down time between songs. They just want you to plug in and play through whatever's there.

 
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Still loving mine. Extremely versatile.

Always a disappointment when you find something you really like and others don't seem to get it. But I get it.

Sometimes I play it with the master on 2 or 3, sometimes half, sometimes 3/4, sometime all the way up with the preamp volumes turned way down...sometimes the opposite: master down and preamp volumes way up. Kind of depends what time of day or night it is!

This is a rock and roll amp and it has great rock clean tones. It is not for playing Beach Boys surf guitar, although it's clean enough to do that if you want that. You'll need some reverb though.

But again, I much prefer playing through this amp with my pedal board in front and using my overdrive pedals for overdrive rather than blowing my ears out (and the neighbor's) trying to get it from the amp without a pedal.

I'm dying to take this thing on a gig, but the way they run the blues jams around here they won't let you use your own amp.

So I get stuck plugging into some generic little Fender or Boss Blues Cube amp with a no name speaker, and being bummed that I can't get my tone.

Would you be comfortable volunteering your amp for everyone to use one night? Might be worth offering.
 
My HDRX I would.

Not my old Fenders with NOS RCA tubes and 50 year old speakers.

But my new HDRX? Sure!
Lew, your rig looks the business to me. I'm sure it sounds great!

I don't want to get too attached to my methods in discussions, they probably only work for me. You've got the experience and the ears to know the difference between what sounds really good and what doesn't.

There are lots of ways to approach tone, and all of them are valid if they sound good.
 
If I had to choose between having one guitar and several amps, and one amp and several guitars, I'd go with the one guitar and several amps. There have been times I've done exactly that, and times I've had only one amp and several guitars.

I find having more amps makes a bigger difference than more guitars. Or maybe I just like square boxes! ;)

This isn't to minimize the effect of different guitars, but compared to amps, speakers, etc, it's more subtle. At present, I have four amps, and four electric guitars. It's a pretty good balance!
Begs the question of what one guitar that would be…
 
I do like my HDRX 20. If you're expecting a 1:1 match to a smaller 1987 circuit, its not that.
For example, the tone controls are much more impactful than some Marshalls.

A few observations below:
A couple differences between my Marshall 6100 and the HDRX 20:
1. The Marshall is a lot brighter than the HDRX. Use the bright switch on the HDRX to get closer to what a Marshall inherently sounds like. Or not, your choice.
2. The tone controls on the Marshall do a lot less than the HDRX. (Allegedly that's common to how the old SuperLead circuits were.)
3. The Marshall feels like a bigger amp, which it is. 100 watts.
4. The Marshall seems to have more cleanish/dirty dynamics than the HDRX. Meaning, like Zep or Rush live records in the 70s, turning down the volume pot a bit gets you clean. Picking hard hits the edge of breakup. Didnt find that with the HDRX.
 
I do like my HDRX 20. If you're expecting a 1:1 match to a smaller 1987 circuit, its not that.
For example, the tone controls are much more impactful than some Marshalls.

A few observations below:
A couple differences between my Marshall 6100 and the HDRX 20:
1. The Marshall is a lot brighter than the HDRX. Use the bright switch on the HDRX to get closer to what a Marshall inherently sounds like. Or not, your choice.
2. The tone controls on the Marshall do a lot less than the HDRX. (Allegedly that's common to how the old SuperLead circuits were.)
3. The Marshall feels like a bigger amp, which it is. 100 watts.
4. The Marshall seems to have more cleanish/dirty dynamics than the HDRX. Meaning, like Zep or Rush live records in the 70s, turning down the volume pot a bit gets you clean. Picking hard hits the edge of breakup. Didnt find that with the HDRX.

All true.

Regarding #4: That's why a good overdrive pedal is a must for overdrive tones with the HDRX.

I wasn't really an overdrive pedal junkie before acquiring my HDRX.

I used my Klons and was happy with what I heard from my Deluxe Reverb and other old Fenders. I do have a small vintage blackface and tweed Fender collection and some old Gibsons too.

Now I've started collecting overdrive pedals and they're all a blast to play through the HDRX.

And for me at least, a reverb and a delay pedal are also a must. The amp just sounds better a little wet.

It's one of my favorite amps I've ever owned and will probably be the last amp I'll have purchased in this life.

I have two HDRX heads. Just in case something happens to one. I like it that much.
 
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Well, I guess it's a matter of taste and touch - I got a first-series Hall Of Fame quite a few years back, but gave it away after trying to get anything I liked out of it.

It quite put me off the idea of trying subsequent iterations too: I felt the original HOF had a particular voice in my rig - one that I couldn't work with happily; and given that I used to use a pair of M5000s (!) back in the day, it was quite the disappointment that its voice was so far from what I enjoy. I still have a 4000 reverb on my mixing rig too (in storage mostly :() so it's not like I'm a TC-hater at all.......

I know it's quite a bit more costly, but the FTT Ambi-Space (that threw the original HOF off the board) has remained there ever since.
 
Well, I guess it's a matter of taste and touch - I got a first-series Hall Of Fame quite a few years back, but gave it away after trying to get anything I liked out of it.

It quite put me off the idea of trying subsequent iterations too: I felt the original HOF had a particular voice in my rig - one that I couldn't work with happily; and given that I used to use a pair of M5000s (!) back in the day, it was quite the disappointment that its voice was so far from what I enjoy. I still have a 4000 reverb on my mixing rig too (in storage mostly :() so it's not like I'm a TC-hater at all.......

I know it's quite a bit more costly, but the FTT Ambi-Space (that threw the original HOF off the board) has remained there ever since.
I use them both. The original HoF and the HoF II. One is on a larger board and the other is on a small board I gig with.

Both sound great to me.

YMMV I guess.
 
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