Yes, but the thing is - when I hunt a nice tone I do it for myself, not you guys 
(although I always appreciate your nice comments and hope some of you will listen in an environment that makes it possible to hopefully enjoy the tones I slaved to get)
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I think itās fine if you can share a good tone with a listener, but I find itās mostly about inspiring me, the player. Itās similar to the subjective benefit of how an amp responds and feels. Listeners donāt care about how your amp is responding to your playing (at least not directly), but it can be influential and inspiring to the player. If Iām playing through a rig that I think sounds great and that feels responsive and āaliveā to me, Iām going to enjoy that and probably play better than I would otherwise. To me, thatās something worthwhile.
That said, your comment about modern music consumption is valid. Most people listen on tiny speakers, and to an audio stream that is highly compressed, volume adjusted, and so on. Kind of a pity, in my opinion.
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Apart from that a lot depends on where youāre posting your music from, I always used to post from my Google drive, but now a lot of my stuff is on YouTube, itās nowhere near as good, your tone is disguised a lot by YouTubeās processing. These days I always listen through decent quality IEMās, itās a better experience than through anything other than really good monitors.
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What a list a gear
I needed a sheet to jot it all down on, Iāll never beable to go and test all this so I best find demos online , make a note of the specs. When iām done with a short list Iāll let you all know.
Thanks everyone for all the amazing info her, incredible.
R
I donāt think Iāve ever heard anybody (at least a non-professional) looking for an amp to match a specific guitar. Is that really a thing? Is it just a question of matching the quality of the guitar and amp? Or are there specific characteristics of amps and guitars that go together?
Iām quite gear-ignorant and am curious.
For me, I think I see it both ways, some guitars " I " wouldnāt entertain playing heavy metal with, and there are definately some Amps BUILT ! with certain genres/tones in mind. Bad Cat-Black Cat aimed at rock tones. So, I wouldnāt use my guitar for heavy metal. Kind of yes and noā¦
R
Since this discussion started this amp dropped:
Looks incredible wrt tones and feature set. It has both a nice clean channel and a fat singing overdrive channel. You can use it with a cab, with various power modesā¦ down to 1W. Or without a cab, because it comes with a loadbox built in (like we discussed above). On top of that it uses IR tech and can host 8 IRs, can be used directly with headphones or into computer for recording. And it has noise gate, reverb and delay effects. And it can be midi controlled (not that you probably need that).
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Hmm, a little more expensive here in UK, but still an acceptable price.
R
Ā£1250- at andertons , look spretty decent will have to watch a review
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Thatās ridiculously expensive for a 2 x EL84 20w amp. About 5 times what I paid for mine.
Yours has a built in load box and cab sim?
Though tbh wasnt commenting on the price specifically just it looks good wrt to the OPās requirements
I donāt need a load box, I can switch it down to 7 watts. Will have to hear one for a proper assessment.
Yeah theres more to an amp than just the valves but sure its not the cheapest amp on the planet
Yeah, itās not cheap. However, as we discussed, it essentially contains a Torpedo Captor X (Ā£400) as well as a quality noise gate plus delay, boost and reverbā¦ that would set you back at least another Ā£200-300. But obviously it only makes sense to consider if you need and want those extra features If you do on the other hand, then itās also very convenient to have it all packaged together. An external Captor X is more space, more cables etc etcā¦ same for the pedals.
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Honestly that engl seems a total beast of a swiss army knife amp , probably all most people would need be worth a try out if you are looking
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What cab would you pair this amp with? Engl 1x12, or something different?
I prefer the sound of 2x12 cabs (closed back), but of course they are double the sizeā¦ so Iām sure a 1x12 will work fine as well, especially for home use. I think the cab (well, I should really say speaker) is one of the most important and defining parts of a signal chain, and much of it comes down to personal preference. Celestion V30 speakers are good for rock and lead playing, and this is what I would expect most ENGL cabs to come with. They can be a bit āshrillā for clean tones, where I personally prefer Creamback speakers. A lot of people really like Greenback speakers, but for whatever reason I donāt use them much. All comes down to taste 
The reason I go for 2x12 cabs that I can then mix two different speakers, and get a bit of the best of both worlds. For example, in my 2x12 cab that I use with the band I have one V30 and one Creamback, placed in a diagonal pattern. That works quite good for me.
If I were new to this, and considering to buy this Engl head, then I would probably get the head first and experiment a bit with the IRs it comes with, and perhaps try some Celestion IRs in the DAW (for the recording minded / technical people). That way you can really learn how various speakers sound, which might make it easier to pick a real cab.
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Speaking of cabs and IRs, I thought it might be fun to show what Iām talking about wrt differences in tone.
So I took one of my projects - my YouTube cover of the solo from Still Got The Blues - and rendered out the opening section with 4 different IRs. So, everything else is exactly the same - only the type of speaker is changing.
I rendered it out with V30s (which I actually used in my video), then with Greenbacks, Celestion EVH speakers and Creambacks. Headphones recommended for this one.
What I learned myself from this one is that I might have chosen the āwrongā IR for my actual video, since right now the Greenback tone sounds a little bit closer to Garyās tone to my ears But I use V30s for almost everything that I do, so I probably just picked my default plugin settings and went with itā¦
Here is the video:
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When I set up a new preset on the POD, this is something I experiment with. Hugely different sounds/tone depending on which you choose. Same with mic types, now there is an option to change that as well. So much to learn but the learning is fun ! 
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Thank you for the extensive reply, this is really useful! I appreciate it.
I actually prefer V30 sound and it sounds to me very close to the original recording.
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