MetalHeads, what's your fav amp block for metal and WHY?!

Billbill

Billbill

Power User
For med to high gain stuff I have been rigorously auditioning numberous amps for some some chug chug metal tones and have been getting familiar with how the different amps REACT to adjustments and what plays well with others. Just curious as to what other metal guys have discovered with these amps in the AxeFx 2. And yes I have the @yek amp guide saved on my iPhone but sometimes I just don't have enough time in a day to allow me to dig in and work on my literary studies:(
 
I’ve been favoring the Euro Uber model lately. All of my favorite bands use some kind of 5150 variant, but with the Uber, I’ve really been able to capture The Sound in my Head™️. It’s tight and aggressive, and really works for a lot of the music I like to listen to/play.

I also like the Angle Severe 2 for a very dry distortion. Modern III is great for anything a Recto would fit. And I love the Citrus RV50 for pop punk.

Edit: I recommend checking out Leon Todd and a fella named Kostas on YouTube. Leon does a lot of cool videos, highlighting different amps (he has a great Mesa, Deizel, and Modern High again video, with presets attached). Kostas has a much older video, but it’s a play through of 28 or so high gain amps. I can’t post links yet but they’re easy to find.
 
I typically use 5153 Red and Recto 1 Red the most.

I also mess around with Engl Savage, FAS Modern III, HBE, Mesa Lead +, Uber, and JVM a lot. I have a tendency to pretty much dial them all in to sound the same, lol. I don't think it matters which one I use.
 
All the high-gain amps used for "modern metal tone" today tend to sound the same to me, but that's probably because to my ears there is a bland uniformity to the "modern metal" sound in general. You see a lot of replies here that list five or six amps, and I think there's a lot of truth to that because it really doesn't matter which one you pick. You can take any one of them, tweak it a little, and get the same unimaginative, chugging djent sound that you hear everywhere on YouTube these days.

I prefer a more, I dunno, vintage? metal sound. Something with a hard charging Marshall driving the tone. I like lots of juicy upper mids, which is where the electric guitar truly lives as an instrument. Sure, you can add an extra string or two in an attempt to drag the instrument's tessitura down an octave, but I feel that's the bassist's territory, and something about the sonic texture of 56-64 AGW strings on a scale length under 30" just doesn't sound good to my ears no matter what amp you hook it up to.

For a Marshall sound with just enough "modern" bite to sound legit today (IMO), you can't go wrong with a good overdriven JVM OD2 preset.
 
My favorites are Mesa IIC++, Mesa Dual Rectifier (Orange Modern and Red Modern), and ENGL Savage. If I were going for a more 80s thing, I'd probably go with the Friedman Smallbox.
 
5153 red all the way, and sometimes the Savage!

Other good ones I tried:
Herbie Ch3: Could not handle the lows.
IIC+(+)/IV: Sounds too smooth to me.
Block Letter: A little too raw in comparison to the 6505+ and 5153.
6505+: Nice, but 5153 is nicer. :)
HBE V1: The best & most articulate tone maybe, but the immediate feel of the 5153 is not there.
SLO: Same as above.
JVM: Noisy AF, and too smooth for me.
Rectos: Recto 1 is quite good, but 5153 is a bit more saturated, I lean towards it every time.
 
I always come back to the savage, usually #2 although its a tossup. Might be because its the nicest amp I've actually owned, so in the days of my tube amps it was my favorite tone. I've just never really meshed well with a 5150 tone, real or modeled. They always sound really cool at first, but then after a (short) while I find them lacking and make my way back to the savage. I've had decent results out of some of the mesa Mark series amps (particularly 2c++ I think) but I still went back to the savage......same story with the FAS Moderns, Brootalz, friedmans, diezels, etc etc. Pretty much always end up comparing them back to my engl preset and then sticking with that instead.
 
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