EVH 5150III 100W 3-Channel Tube Guitar Amp Head Black

Had the Marshall 410h, then went to the ENGL savage 120. Found this 5150 iii to be a tone that just hit it for me. Very versatile. Clean channel sound of a fender tweed, and blue channel like a Marshall JCM 800. Red channel is in your face with a punch that just screams with a tone like no other. Red channel overdrive is backed to about 4 to 5 for a perfect metal crunch that gives me the sound I love.

Home use. Looks great. Sound sucks. no good overdrive.

When I started looking into buying a 5150 III, all I could find were videos of metal guys and Van Halen riffers. No disrespect to either intended but this amp goes sooo much deeper than that. My background -I've been playing over 30 years, owned dozens of pedals, amps and guitars and I play out a couple times a month. Band does a mixed set Merle and Waylon to Zep and the Foo's. This amp handles it all. Channel One - Gorgeous, lush, chimey Fender clean. Has an immediate attack when playing country but lots of sustain when you want to let those fat crystal-clear notes ring out. Channel Two - Again, immediate attack. rich creamy distortion without getting too grainy. But you can dial it back for some smooth overdrive. Either way, there is beautiful note separation and little compression. Channel three - Perfect lead channel. Will get as searing as you want. This is where you see the metal-guys get that weird smile and their eyes glaze over. Haha. For good reason. I play with the gain at 10:00 and the volume at 8:00 and it is ferocious. Bottom line : One of the most versatile amps I've played. The best live sound I've ever had was with this amp AND the distortion is so good on it, I was able to pull 3 pedals off my pedalbard (Dist,OD,Boost).I can't imagine anyone needing a dirt pedal of any kind with this. I get compliments from country guys and rock guys alike on "my" sound. Who am I kidding though - it's not me, it's this incredible amp. Please don't let all the metal riffers and VH wankers in the reviews make you turn away from this amp. You'd be ignoring potentially one of the best amps you'll ever play.

MOI BUENO, This amp is simply the finest amp money can buy. It has been thorougly road tested and R & D's by Eddie for almost 2 years...on the road. The Fender engineers gave Van Halen exactly what he thought a great power amp should be. All three channels have their specific niche and go way beyond your expectations. Channel one is actually Bell and Chimey clean. Channel two is pure Eddie; and channel three is Eddie's sound on steroids. The controls are beautiful and function with a high qualtiy feel; the pedal for switching is silent and rock solid. The front grille alone weighs about 2 pounds...Schumacher proprietary transformers; JJ tubes; tube driven effects loop performs beauifully and is foot switchable...what more could you want. When you get yours be sure and have the bias checked, you can do it yourself with some care & experience and a tube socket Bias Probe...chassis comes out easy as apple pie and the bias pot is clearly discernible(purple)...they tend to come biased from the factory a little cold whereas mine was only biased at 20 milliamps; the JJ tubes can easily be biased to at least 32 which is out of crossover distortion and into a great "sweet spot".The amp sounds even more alive and present with the higher Bias of the stock 4 JJ power tubes. My guitar player with 30 years experience playing with pro skill fell in love with the 5150iii amp. You will be amazed by this amp...just buy one...you will never look back. Thanks Eddie Van Halen & Thanks Fender. I also placed 2 JJ gold pin tubes in V1 & V8...awesome. P.S. Eurotubes is a great source for tubes and information about easy and proper biasing...great guys. And thanks GC.

After buying all different kind of amps,i realized that i wasnt happy with my overall tone at all, and that means that none of them could give me " the perfect tone" i was searching for, so i end up solding all of them which wasnt a bad idea, after a few weeks testing amp demos on youtube, i found this amp, what i like about it was not just the clean channel, the red ( 3 ) channel too its simply amazing,TIGHT and cleanely saturated , so i start messing around on the internet for a while and i found that this amp is not even builted by peavey, is built by FENDER which is awesome,(super quality products), 2 days before that, i placed my order for this amp, and now i got this monster at home, ever since i bought this amp i cant get enough of it, i highly recommend this amp to any different kind of player, jazz guitar players to metal/hardcore players cause is worth every penny, dont waste your time playing thorugh amps that need tube screamers and stuff, this one dont need ANY PEDAL to get a good high gain sound. ( remember to get the evh cab too or a cab loaded with celestion vintage 30 like mine so your tone will be great, good amps need good cabs )

Wow, I was quite impressed right off the bat with the sparking clean sounds from channel 1 with my G&L strat. I was able to get the chimiest sounds from those single coil pickups. I think that channel 2 has plenty of gain to serve as a lead channel. channel 2 is very dark and sounds like a bogner alchemist on the lead channel. Channel 3 sounds very much like the early Van Halen records "Brown Sound" I listened to as a child. Channel 3 is smooth and dark, but not harsh like the Bogner Alchemist, but much brighter and harmonically rich. This EVH 5150 is equally as good as a Mesa Boogie mark 5 and the Orange Rockerverb 50 which are a little bit more expensive. This amp is a keeper for me. This amp has the true brown sound I've been hearing about. The Bogner alchemist is a toy compared to this EVH 5150. If and when they come out with the EVH micro, I'll buy that too.