Trace Elliot Amp Advice

[Jaykingfunk]

Morning all, 

 

After some advice on a protein TE set up. A chap local to me is selling his AH150 head and 15” TE cab. It looks in very good condition and the light still works etc.! I’ve currently got a TE 715 SMC that I gig with. Can anyone tell me what the difference is, apart from the obvious stuff! They look to be very similar amps but wondering if anyone can tell me which is more recent, if one is better than the other etc. 

 

Thanks in advance, J.

[pete.young]

@SimonK this might be one for you.

[Downunderwonder]

AH150 covers a lot of ground. I think the SMC stuff is slightly less old?

 

Either way the extra cab should come in handy. It will really wake up the combo assuming all is original.

[SimonK]

OP may want to check out some of the information on the thread below.

 

Personally my preference is the SMX amps, but I think this is more for nostalgic reasons in that they were "the" amp at the time I was 18 and unable to afford one! I had a Mark V AH250 for a while but it was too heavy to be practical and I also didn't like how the little green buttons used to stick.

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:00 by SimonK

[thodrik]

At this point when you are looking at Trace Elliot, your are mostly looking at amps which are at least 30+ years old. Even the Peavey 'relaunch' stuff is nearly 20 years old now. 

The 'best' Trace amps at this point might be the ones that are still operational and well looked after rather than any particular models. This would certainly be my view in determining between an AH150 and 715 SMC. 

In terms of the old school amps, SMX ones I think are about the pinnacle of the Trace Elliot designs, though series 6 stuff is really good. Some of the Kamen era GP7/GP12 stuff are really good too, kinda like an SMX without the extra features of a preamp tube, compression and fancy crossovers. 

[SimonK]

Thought I'd add a gratuitous rig picture only because I was playing it last night and it does sound awesome. The amp is a GP7 SM300 running into 2x10 and 4x10 cabs, although I would say these (the cabs) make a bigger difference to the sound than the different trace amps I have tried. I would suggest to the OP that going into the same cab many of the Trace amps will sound similar, but if you start changing the cab as well as the amp you will get a much bigger variation.