Timestamps for quick comparisons 4:25 Stock Sylvania 6L6 5:03 Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier 100w 6L6 5:44 VHT Pittbull 50w E34L 6:27 Bogner Uberschall 150w KT88 7:03 Soldano SLO-100 100w 5881 7:42 EVH 5150 IIIS 100w EL34 8:20 Splawn 100w 6550 8:57 Omega Granophyre 100w EL34 9:35 Bogner Ecstasy 20th Anniversary 100w 6L6 10:14 Friedman BE-100 100w EL34 10:52 Marshall JCM900 w/ JMP xformer 100w EL34 11:30 Diezel Hagen 100w KT77 12:10 Engl Powerball II 100w 6L6 12:48 Rhodes KSR Orthos 100w 6L6 13:24 Revv Generator 120 100w KT88/6L6 14:02 Mesa Boogie Mark IV 100w 6L6 14:40 Peavey Invective 120 6L6 15:16 Peavey JSX 100w EL34 15:50 Seymour Duncan Powerstage 200 Class D Solid State 16:27 Blackstar Amped 1 100w Class D Solid State 17:03 Mesa Boogie Strategy 400 200w 6L6/EL34

The power section is why people love their rectifiers and AC30s. While other companies left costumers without an option to change power section characteristics, VOX and Mesa made it the feature of their amps.

That little white pedal amp suprised me!

The 5881 section of the SLO was God Tier. Super defined, still enough mid squank without becoming too over saturated, and the cab resonance was actually perfect. I bet double tracking that left and right would give an incredible 3D low end.

Just goes to show the tones are limitless by mixing preamps and power amps. Awesome video Kyle!

The Blackstar pedal 😮👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

It all matters. Every part of the signal chain - it’s just some matter more than others - this is a cool experiment, and the differences are there - I really liked the KT88 sound with the 5150. But at the end of the day in a mix this is probably pretty negligible - likely more a fun thing to do in a room than something to worry much about consistently. Thanks for the cool video!

That Blackstar CRUSHED holy crap!

For me this just proves how the stock power amp is the perfect one for the 5150. There are some great tones here but stock it just has that magic midrange

What a great video Kyle! JSX won for me, however I’m shocked on how good the Amped 1 was compared to the tube poweramps. Blackstar did their homework! Cheers!

I dug the tone through the KT88, the Soldano 5881 and the Marshall with the JMP output transformer. All different but to my old ears sounded great.

Epic video, great job Kyle!

Love these types of vids! Thanks Kyle!

Hey Kyle! I know this isn't supposed to be "Scientific" but in tests with speakers, power sections or different amplifiers, You should run a loop of the same performance through them so eliminate that as a variable. Still an amazing video.

What a gem of a video Kyle! It´s an amazing reference for the sound signature all these amps have.

Great vid, I know a lot of work and time goes into putting something like this together.

I appreciate you sharing this experiment. It was fascinating to hear just what a difference the power amp alone really makes. It seems to play a larger role in determining the voice of an amplifier than the preamp does, in a lot of ways.

I love this stuff! My favorite was the Uber Ultra with the Diezel closely behind. The Blackstar hangs right along with the rest too!

Amazing how much more Marshally it sounded through the JCM with JMP. Very balanced through the Revv. Went way in the Metallica direction through that Mk2. Very cool experiment.

Excellent episode Kyle thanks 😊 👍 congrats on 2nd channel and u success bro.🎉

I’m an oldie. I’ll tell you about the 80s and early 90s. In the 80s it was “You want a Marshall, a Boogie or one of these fancy ADA-MP1s?” Most of us were broke kids so a Marshall combo it was. If you were really broke you got the loudest Peavey combo you could afford. Then you worked some summer jobs and got your first real amp with a head and a cab. It was a life or death decision. This was going to be your sound because you didn’t have two more summers of high school to work and start over if you picked wrong. Then you’d get a couple pedals like a chorus and a delay if you were into Rush. Lol. If not, you bought whatever distortion pedal the advertisement promised would melt faces. For getting sounds we didn’t have much of a way to record anything except boomboxes or a 4 track cassette machine if you had $$$. So all we heard was what was in the room at practice or the bar. With your head down in front of your cab you could try to guess what the audience “might” hear, or if you had a long enough guitar cord to stand out front, if you got a sound check. That’s how we got sounds. Everything was geared to being heard or at least able to hear yourself at band practice in the basement and live at the bar. The only PA gear a lot of guys had was some kind of Peavey setup with an SM58 for the singer. Forget about micing drums or cabs. That was voodoo, high dollar stuff that the “professional” sound guy at the bar would hopefully have enough mics to do. If not, you hoped he’d at least have a couple of stage monitors for the drummer and singer. It was bush league, primitive times dragging your gear around in a pickuo and hoping it didn’t rain on way. Fun as hell though. When the 5150 original flavor came out it was a miracle amp. I still have mine.

Great video! Goes to show how much the character of each of those amps is down to the power amp design. A huge part of the power amp is how it interacts with each specific cab, I think it’s good to think of the poweramp and cabinet together as their own part of the chain as the interaction works in both directions. BE100 poweramp sounded massive here, enjoyed that one a lot. How did you set presence and global master volume (if the amps had them)?

This content is great. Especially as a modeler user that uses a power amp and guitar cab. Power amp shootouts are very hard to find. Thank you.

Excellent Video! Thank you for doing this! You rule, Kyle!!🤘

You can get impulse responses of power amp sections. i use an impulse response of a 6l6 tube amp with my mooer x2 preamp as it only has preamp profiles in it as i go into solid state power amp(powerstage170) , the power amp impulse adds so much more 'realism' and depth to the signal thats missing when only using a preamp.

The VHT and the Omega were my favorite. Love how tight those amps are.

Great vid! Your collection is impressive.

The second channel of yours has fire content. Keep up the good work

Love that riff, Kyle. Has a great groove to it, and sounds nasty at the same time.

I fuggin LOVE this channel!!! So nerdy w the shit!! Thanks man!!

The guitar tone on Metallica's Black Album was created by slaving a Mesa Boogie through the power amp of a Marshall. I wish amp sim companies would model the pre-amp and power amp seperately, so you could combine different amp sims together (the plugins from Brainworx can do this, btw)

5150 through it's own Poweramp sounds best in my opinion. I really like the KT88 of the Bogner aswell and also the Blackstar Amped...damn that little thing surprised me. Really good comparison Kyle thanks ❤

Great vid man. Really liked the Blackstar power amp…keep up the great work man!

...Okay now I understand why you like that Blackstar pedal amp so much as a power amp. Really kept up with the tube amps in terms of girth. They should make a power amp only ersion of that. I'm shocked at how little low end the Recto and Mesa Strategy had though.

Don't let Glenn Fricker see this 🤣

I didn't expect that, but JSX was just perfect. Cool, thanks for the comparison

Wholy shit, the low end on that Invective!!! Remember they are known for "weak" low end? Right.... The Bogner with KT88, alonside the EVH EL34 , and the Diezel with KT77, all sound amazing!! I liked most 100w 6L6 power amps, I was underwhelmed by the SLO100 power amp, sounded muffled... The biggest disappoinment was the dual rec, made the 5150 sound like a pedal...

WOW, this was a real eye opener.

Interesting idea with different power amps. Good job. 🎉

From my experience the tube "goodness" or analog warmth comes from the power amp. It's also something I've never heard in a recording recording

The stock sounds great! I also loved the JCM900 tone - quite different than the rest and really great!!!

Another good nerdy comparison. Nice.

I always love and trust your reviews

I was listening through my phone speakers and the differences were very noticeable. I think this is a discussion worth expanding upon as it could revitalize the physical amp market, as well as make future modelers and plugins more unique.

Great video and very true that a lot people ignore power amps. I think a de-esser plug in would help your voice sound better in your video, just a suggestion and it's a detail so no biggie.

Real eye opener! Bigger difference than expected. A bit bummed that the duncan power stage clips, wanted to maybe go the preamp+power amp route. Thanks for the good vid!

Love reading these comments. Always cracks me up. Sweet video as usual Kyle.

Very intersting!!! It is cool to hear how the different power tubes are featured here. The 6L6 amps all seem to sound very similar: creamy, silky, smooth. Except for the Rhodes amp. That one has some EL34 characteristic: that lower mid hump, on palm mutes and certain notes. Amazing also: the DIEZEL still sounds like a DIEZEL and the BOOGIE Mk IV still has its character. Very cool!!! Btw.: I just checked the preamp schematics of the SLO100 and the older Rectifier circuit, from 93. Yes, you can definitely see where the Rectifier derives from. But, there are also some differences. The gain staging with its coupling is built very alike. There is more filtering after the first gain stage inside the Rectifier. The gain pots have different values. The EQ is very different. Also, the SLO seemed to have its FX-Loop before the EQ, with some extra buffering. So, they are not the same amps!

I like the idea behind this. Here's one I'd LOVE to see explored more than I'm able here with my gear... I've found some success with splitting my guitar-out signal using a single-input/dual-output pedal (mine happens to be the Boss tuner that literally almost everyone has) and piping both of those into two, different and independent amps at once. The blended abilities of a Triple Crown and a JVM has proven pretty dang Brutus-Maximus, if I do say so myself!

Great video. I run my evh stealth in stereo sometimes, slaving it to the power amp of my peavey xxx. It’s a very different sound and gives a wider tone. That Friedman amp sounded killer in this video! Good job Kyle! I love these types of videos!

Amazing demo. I've insisted for years to people how power amp makes a huge difference espically with the new modelers and preamps.

This is the nerdy (slightly esoteric) corner I’ve been digging. Hell yeah good nerdy shit & sick demonstration

Very cool comparison. I wish he would have considered presence and depth controls on the power amps that had those controls, since their settings would also make a difference.

Was it just me, or was the Mark IV and the Peavey 5150 power section kinda similar? I was sliding the audio back and forth listening. 😂 This was a great video btw!

preferred the stock 5150, invective, and the boogie mark for the power section tones. the old 5150 block letter really is a beast on it's own. glad i got one here :D

Mesa 400 at the end is just ridiculous. Markedly cleaner than any of the rest. Could probably peel paint with it.

The best tone I've ever heard was TWO 5150's through a Mesa Boogie Strategy 400 and four Vintage 30 cabinets.

I am really loving this recent content! Edit: Much to my own surprise, I really liked the solid state power amps

Kyle I liked the Engel the best. IMO the output tranformers also make a huge difference. Its the whole package that change the tone.

Fryette Poweramps definitely still reign supreme.

I really liked the mids of both the VHT and the SLO.

I think my favorites (besides the Peavey’s own power amp) were the Marshall and the Engl. I love the snarl of the Marshall, and the Engl sounded really balanced with aggressive highs, and rounded, percussive lows. These were the two amps that had the most clearly defined personalities to me.

That guitar has to be one of my favorite looking ones youve used in a while!

The 150 Watt KT88s crushed everything. Such sick tone.

Nice video. Could you tell me how to connect the amp for just using the preamp into other amps power amp section? Thanks

Man.....your amp collection is SIIIIIIIIICK!!!! 🤘🤘🤘. I preferred the VHT Pitbull. It just sounded “bigger” without being significantly mid-scooped or boosted compared to the others. VHT/Fryette power amps are so coveted for a reason! Cool video!

Surprised to see how much of a difference these made!

The SLO 5881, the Splawn 6550, and all of the EL34 power amps sounded great. The Bogner KT88 was a bit spongy on palm mutes for me, and the KT77 sounded dead, but the Revv KT88/6L6 hybrid circuit was amazing. I've always liked EL34 and I always say it sounds more aggressive. Recto/Mark Series from Mesa and 5150 type amps from Peavey and EVH/Fender are the ones besides Engl that can make a high gain 6L6 circuit sound good by itself, IMO, and even then I still prefer the EL34 variant. 5150 III EL34, 6534+, Marshall/Friedman, Laney, and Orange, all day, every day. Otherwise, SLO is pretty cool. The Mesa Mk IV actually also stood out as really aggressive and biting on the high end in a good way to me. Strategy 400 also had a nice sound.

Great video, dude! I did notice two things though. Firstly, on the Mesa Mark IV you had the GEQ engaged, which is located after the FX return. Thus not an accurate representation of it's power amp. Secondly was the Dual Rec. Did you have channel cloning / modern mode engaged? This disables the negative feedback which is a huge part of the "recto" sound, which I frankly didn't hear in the recording.

Call me crazy but I really liked the JCM900 power amp here, not sure if it's because of the JMP output transformer but I really liked it. Not a lot of low end content, but very midrangy and surprisingly smooth treble compared to some of the others. I also really enjoyed the Strategy 400 Stereo at the very end, it had probably the least amount of low end out of all of them, but the midrange was there in spades (to the point of being a little nasally, which most people hate but I personally really like).

I've read Strung Out used an "original 5150" and a Marshall Valvestate on Twisted By Design. I've also read Ryan Greene used the Dual Recifier power section. I see why, that was one of my favorite combos. I also liked the 5150III, which is not surprising.

Great video

Amazing video, thanks! Only if you could have added an EL84 too... I was hoping for that when seeing the thumbnail.

Very interesting, thanks

Sounded killer though the kt88's🤘🏻

This is a great video. Surprised at how much your results with the Dual Rec were like mine. 2 Questions: #1 how do you slave without noise? I can't seem to get rid of some weird 60 cycle hum type noise when slaving.... #2 did you notice any change in the poweramp section when changing channels on the Dual Rec? I've heard the 2 channel heads activate different parts of the Power Amp. Red channel uses a lowpass filter wired in reverse where the orange channel uses a traditional negative feedback circuit...

Wow those are interesting results! No clear winners although the difference between more mid forward ones and more scooped ones in the order of amps definitely made for a few "ugh nope" moments, that I had to skip back and forth to compare with others to fully get if I really didn't like a certain amp or if it was just because it came after a mid-heavy one. Best example was the Mesa Mark coming after the Revv, big "ugh where are the mids" even though I didn't like the Revv that much. Standouts for me were the Engl, Bogner... Ubershall I think? The KT88 one, EVH, JSX, and of course the big Mesa fridge at the end. Not impressed by the Omega or Invective at all 😖 or the solid state ones obviously. I was surprised I liked the Recto more than the Mark, though I'm guessing the 5 band EQ works on the power section? 700 all the way down like this remind me too much of AJFA, and maybe that's more tailored to the Mark preamps anyway 😅

They all seemed to have their own voice but the invective and mesa mark sounded identical

I like how the Captor is moving because of the vibration :D

My top 3 were: Omega Granophyre 100w EL34, Diezel Hagen 100w KT77, Peavey Invective 120 6L6. The Omega to me was the better EL34 power section with the peavey 5150 preamp. Had a good balance of chugging lows, & cut through highs. Diezel Hagan's KT77's were a nice taste, also enough low end, & perhaps a little bit less highs than the Omega (but this is down to internal design more than the power tubes themselves perhaps). Still a good flavour Invective's 6L6 with the 5150 pre, damn - never knew a 5150 could sound much more open, & the power in the low end just clear roar. Honorable mention goes to Boogie Mark IV. Beefy!!

I think I prefer the stock 6L6 in this case. Best solid state power amp I've tried (and kept after going through a whole bunch) is a Rocktron Velocity 300 with the Reactance control at about 2 o' clock and Definition at noon.

NB : you can try that ITB with the Two Notes WOS (wall of sound) and Genome plugins, which carries different poweramp sims

I just woke up and saw this and not being fully awake thought it was a 20 overdrives through a 5150. Oh well maybe another video, still cool though.

As soon as that Mark IV came on, it was like 80s Metallica. Great video!

My favs are the Uberschall, the SLO, the Mark IV, and the Omega. That's just me, but there it is.

Hello kyle, can you test ksr ceres on amped 1 vs power stage please? Thanks...

The whole power section, not just the power tubes but the transformer, makes a difference too. The transformer is primarily what gives Rectifiers that sound I believe. Some amps are designed to use the power amp as part of the whole sound, and some amps are designed to have the preamp do everything while the power amp is super clean and transparent. This means people may disagree on this stuff based on experiences with amps designed totally differently. Something to keep in mind.

That riff is now sitting out the back smoking a cigarette....!

I am really digging this channel of yours. How about giving some pickups a try you haven't before? As a fellow thrasher I'd love to hear some of your rhythm playing through some Dimarzio and others.

Many of these power-sections of course have obvious depth(reso)/presence controls, but in the case of the rectifier it's easy to not know that the orange-channel's presence is active when using it's power section. iirc modern modes(red or orange cloned to modern) should be avoided when using it as a power amp only. Kyle always runs his orange channel in vintage so I'm sure it was set properly on this vid. Playing with the orange presence helps a lot when running a pedal straight into the rectifier's return.

Holy shit man, double tracking this way would probably sound huge. 🤯

The EL34 clips were overall the best ones imo.

Only like 20 seconds into the video. But he's so right. I love the preamp of my evh 5153 50 watt into my bugera 1990s poweramp.

@ 13:25 I noticed the "Resonance" knob on the 5150 is missing and remains missing for the rest of the video. Just wondering what happened? lol Great Video Kyle! My favorite besides the original 5150 was the Invective power amp! I wish I had all these heads! lol

I thought the bogner xtc and the engl powerball were the most brutal and clear aounding but honestly the stock 5150 just needed a bit more gain or a boost and it'd sound pretty much good to go. The blackstar did well for a transparent power amp.

I liked the JSX and Amped 1 best. I'd like to see a shootout of the power amps of the 6V6 and EL84 class amps. Are these amps running an attenuator or are these full 100+ watt volumes. My ears are ringing just thinking about it.

It's not just the poweramp voicing. It has also a lot to do with ths output transformer as well. The OT is that which drives the speakers afterall.

you've have to turn presence and depth to min as its an poweramp parameter. or match it between different amps

KSR/Rhodes was my favorite and seemed perfectly balanced. Uber Ultra and JSX were great too

All right, let's fucking go! Any thoughts on the 5150 III 6l6 power amp you care to share? I have a Fender twin power amp and a B52 with a fixed presence circuit in the NFB portion of the power amp. I'm eventually gonna replace that resistor in the presence circuit with a pot and would consider slaving the 5150 III because the master on the b52 is actually pretty great, and the "low res" portion of the NFB loop is extremely well voiced for low tuned guitars. My main issue with the B-52 preamp is that the mids are extremely harsh no matter what I do with it, and it's even worse when it's mic'd then it is in the room. It's like that on both lead channels, but it actually has a better clean channel than my 5150 III does. I can't say for sure that the harshness doesn't come from the power amp. The diezel power amp sounds incredible and the Amped thing by BT was really convincing. I was impressed. I was surprised how many of them actually sounded better than the 5150 BL power amp. Thank you for lifting like 2000 lbs for a 20 minute video, it was really neat to see the differences.