Interesting discussion!
Allow me to preface my remarks...if I'm not using an amp on paying projects, it can't stay. My studio requires constant re-investment to stay competitive, and it's silly for me to hang onto unused gear, when I can put the sale proceeds into something needed for the next gig. There's ALWAYS something needed. It's just hard to predict exactly what that is until the gig comes in!
One might ask, why after all these years do I sometimes get an amp that seems to not work out on projects? Sometimes I play through an amp, and it's all wonderful in the store, and the demos kill, but in the heat of a session, with a client breathing down my neck, and a deadline where I have to get a sound quickly, some amps make things easy for me, while others cause frustration. I don't know for sure until I use something under pressure.
So plenty of great amps for other folks just don't cut the mustard here for quirky, individualistic reasons that are hard to explain.
Also, I'm mostly a humbucker player; it's that or P-90s whenever I play. I've been playing since 1967, and I've never liked playing Fenders with those kinds of single coils. If someone wants a Fender type of track, I hire someone who does that. If someone wants metal shredding, I hire someone for that, too. So I don't need amps that do metal, nor do I need amps that sound best with a Strat or Tele.
Players I hire generally work out of their own studios now, or in studios in whatever city they're in, they rarely come to my place. However, lots of people have brought their gear into my studios in the past. I've never felt the need to have every kind of thing here, just the stuff I need for my own tracks.
Past Favorites:
I had a bunch of Two-Rocks - I'll admit to serial buying and selling, but the T-Rs were all fantastic, and were my only studio amps for 11 years. A good run! I sounded exactly the way I wanted to sound with those amps. I could get lots of different tones, they were flexible, and I felt in control when playing through them.
My favorite T-Rs were the Onyx and subsequent Onyx Signature variants (there were a few), but I also had a couple of their more Dumble style Custom Reverb and Reverb Artist Signature amps that were awesome sounding.
If you can imagine a professional studio where one single brand amp was used on every project - well, that would be my studio from 2003-2014. When I had them, I only had one amp in the studio at a time for most of those years. They did a LOT more than just the Dumble thing, especially the Onyx variants which were true two-channel amps.
However, in 2014 my mind was utterly blown by the HXDA, which leads me to my present rig.
Current Favorites:
After nearly 8 years, I'm still nuts about the HXDA. I can do an awful lot of things with that amp, and it's wonderfully responsive. We all know what it does, so I won't belabor it. I generally set it up warmer and with less gain than most players. As great as my T-Rs were at that 'edge of breakup' thing, the HXDA gave me a gear boner the instant I heard it. Never lets me down.
The DG30 is the most uniquely characterful, colorful amp I have ever owned, and I mean that as a high compliment. Nothing else does what it does. It's also the "fastest" amp I have - it's ready for that next note attack without a lot of mush or hangover from the previous note. I run it cleaner and leaner than Grissom does. It blends very well with the HXDA when I want a tune to be supported by amps that sound different, which would be an awful lot of my tracks, but it has a unique clean sound that I use frequently.
I have a Mesa Lone Star that was originally bought because I needed a 100 Watt clean amp (yes, actual
need 'cause I had certain projects).
However, the Lone Star was
not a favorite until I re-tubed it with NOS RCA and GE tubes. Once I did that, it was transformed and came to life. It went from 'it's OK' to 'wow, this is a really good amp', and whenever someone else might use a Twin or a Super, I use the Lone Star. I don't try to make it sound like a Fender, though. I like Mesa's midrange-rich clean tone. I think it works better for me with humbuckers than my old Fenders did.
I didn't mess with the Fillmore 50 I got a couple of years back for very long before guessing that it might benefit from NOS tubes like the Lone Star. So it's stocked with NOS GE. It's a great-sounding amp. Instead of a Fillmore cab, I ordered a California Tweed 212 with Jensen Alnico Blackbirds; I like these speakers better for the work I do with it. I get asked to do 'Tweed' sounding tracks often enough that it's become a go-to for certain things, but I also like it when it's switched into a gain mode. Some tracks simply sound great with a Mesa style overdrive.
