[Harp-L] Epiphone Galaxie-10 amp

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Musician's Friend has a special going on: $139 plus s&h for the Epiphone
Galaxie 10 amp.  It's a 10 watt class A tube amp with a 10" Celestion
speaker, neat retro-looking blue vinyl case with steel corners, gain,
volume, treble, bass, and midrange EQ controls, and one 1/4" input. I
decided to give it a try; the price is very good, and I thought perhaps
it would provide a little more power and bottom end than my Crate
VC-508, with its 5 watts and 8" speaker.

Well, it doesn't.  In fact, this amp doesn't have much power -- I found
myself working way hard to get any kind of punch -- and it has lots of
midrange, but not much bottom end at all.  I found that moving the bass
EQ knob produced no effect on the sound at all with Astatic JT-30 and
ElectroVoice MC100 mics.  With my Labtec AM-22, a really bassy mic, you
could hear the bass change when the knob was set to maximum, but even
that wasn't very striking or powerful.      

I compared the amp side by side with the VC508, and the Crate won hands
down.  It was much louder with all three mics, and had far more bottom
end to the sound.  It sounded 10 times bigger than the Galaxie; I didn't
have to work at all to make it roar.  To be fair, the Crate also has a
Weber 8" speaker in place of the stock Crate speaker.  But a 10" should
in general have more bottom than an 8", and the Galaxie has almost
none.  

I tried subbing 12AU7 and 12AT7 preamp tubes for the stock 12AX7 in the
Galaxie.  The sound just got weaker; I didn't get the big, punchy sound
that the Crate gets with its 12AT7.

The Galaxie is going back to the store tomorrow.  I recommend to harp
amp bargain hunters that they avoid this one.  The Musicians Friend
website lists several reviews in which the reviewers talk about how
great the amp sounds with harp; I don't know what they're talking about,
but it ain't the Galaxie I got.  The Crate V58, which differs only
cosmetically from the VC508, is a much better buy, even if it's a little
more money.   

Regards,
Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com