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

Three separate channels, each with their own settings. Four button footswitch. 100 watts.

Best I've seen in a looooong time!

You get what you pay for. Good price for this quality and versatility.

First off. Thank you Ed.

I have been playing guitar both in bands and as a hobbiest for 35 years. I own over 30 nice guitars and 8 amps. For guitar, up to this point, I have been a Marshall stack man for distortion, or a fender delux or fender super reverb for blues and clean. I have a huge amount of respect and passion for both of these companies and their quality.

Now for the EVH 5150 III. First. Read the directions. I read lots of reviews and spoke to lots of guitar friends before this investment. I got a lot of various reviews, but from those I trusted and knew, they gave me the thumbs up.

This amp head, run through a good cabinet (I use a marshall 4X12 1960 VT with 25 watt Greenbacks), and using good quality guitars (I will get to this), can do anything you want it to, from nice crispy, sparkly cleans, to huge distortion. The only effect I am using is a delay running from the amps effects loop. I have always loved the Warren Demartini 80's clean slippery distortion. No fuzz. This can be achieved with a little tinkering with the knobs at hand.

The knobs. Each channel has its own, low, mid, high, gain, and volume. At the end of the channels is a presence for each channel. Carefully adjusting each of these will get you what you want.

I have read some review saying this amps is too loud. It can be if you don't spend some time to adjust the choices of knobs at hand. I get a really good brown sound on channel two at a fairly low volume setting and a huge lead or rythm sound out of channel 3 at about the same volume setting (in my music room, about 20 X25 feet I keep the volume at about 1 and adjust the gain a presence to get the sound I want). I keep the lows at about 11 oclock, the mids at about 1 oclock and the highs at about 4 oclock. the presence varies on each channel.

I spent 3 hours yesterday and about 12 guitars ranging from an epiphone elitist sheraton, a Gretch Chet Atkins 1957 reissue, a 57 strat reissue, a 2000 Les Paul Standard, an ESP MII Standard, a custom shop Dweezil Charvel, and a Charve wild card #6, This amp is so articulate that you can tell the quality of the guitars you play through it and get a really good idea of the different woods and pickups being used. Everything sounded great with the exception of the Wild card #6, which sounded "cheap" because it is an inexpensive guitar.

So with all this said, I still love my marshall, but the 5150 III is in a class of its own. I feel that it is more versatile and as good quality as anything I have played. I would highly recommend this product to any guitarist who likes to play a variety of genres.

Be mindfull, this is a 100 watt amp. So if you are in a small room, this may be too powerfull and you may want to look at the 50 watt version. For those reviews saying this is a poor amp, you are not using it correctly. Take some time to adjust the settings. The sound you want is there, from clean, to extreme.

I have played many amps over the last 30+ years in my life. I need not mention all the names we are familiar with. And as far as Features go, it is a cool thing to have three separate channels with no master volume. It's features are very simplistic! I also like the silent channel switching. it is pretty much silent for the most part as long as you match the volume level so when you step on it, it hardly is noticeable at all. One of the reasons this is, is because of the signal switching that Eddie demanded from Fender. It is fast and on earlier models it sometimes gets confused and your signal gets hung up when first trying to turn the standby switch on when running gear through the loop. This is part of the instructions within the manuel to connect the switch box before you turn the amp on. But this baby is simple and easy. This would be the only slight down side of this amp being it's signal switching gets a little blind sometimes but it is easy to get it going and once that gets going it's cool. This was mainly in earlier models and I understand that Fender fixed the problem and it is not common now. What I do is simply connect the switch box. Turn on all my rack gear. then turn the amps power switch on and let it warm up. Then once I flip the stand by switch it is on no problem.

I think it is really cool being a Fender! Jim Marshall himself was inspired by leo Fender's bassman amp back in the day and that got him putting together the amp that rocked our world our whole lives beng a classic Marshall. I think this is so cool being what Eddie did to a Marshall and how even after Peavey we find ourselves back to Fender adn they actually incorperate the tone and enough gain with the right speakers but using technology that is even better (More stable) ,  than Eddie's 78 Plexi set up!  G12C low wattage Celestions!  I have two of these on two of their cabinets. I recently bought a marshall Vintage/Modern 100 watter to compare. I ended up returning the Marshall. The Marshall is good for the clean tone but not enough gain. Even the 2000 series Marshall have a different sound in their gain structures to me. The gain I get from this Fender 5150 III is all I need. And I can switch channels and back off on the gain and it will do any vintage feel for blues or that classic sound period.  For me, in a not so perfect world... There is no other amp I want. I tried mixing up my 5150 III with another amp but it's not necessary and then I have one amp that really cannot do what the other can. So why do away with that !?

I wonder if there will come a time when Eddie drops the EVH line and these heads are no longer made? Im glad I have mine. So far they have not broke down at all. I have two heads and two of their matching cabs. I think this is simply one of the finest systems on the planet!

Overall I used to be a Marshall man. Back in the 70's I used to have one of the old heads wired point to point on these exact speakers that are in these EVH cabs. I used to run this Boss 10 band EQ through the marshall to get enough gain and it sounded perfect. But the Fender is like having that same amp without having to run anything at all in it for gain. No other amp has done this for me period. Not like this one.....

I have a Vox Saturator and a Vox Ice overdrive on the floor. I only use those pedals when My 5150 III is in a much cleaner mode on a different channel. This gives me everything I could have ever had with my Marshalls As with a marshall I would have had to have it on most all the time too. Through the 5150 III's loops in the back I run a BBE Sonic Max and some Lexicon MX400 for reverb and delay. And I also have a Rocktron Xpression in series with one of my Lexicon units as well. There is still a place in my heart for Marshalls! But man this amp is a special beast. So if your considering buying another brand due to $$, I would seriously reconsider waiting it out or going the extra mile if possible or doing what ever you need to do to get one of these. I was glad I did.

My only complaint is why didn't they come out with this 25 years ago?

Ok first of all you  are wondering should you buy this amp?...lol

Well i had the 5150 powerful amp,them i got the 5150 II killer amp as well i liked the II better than the first one,some liked the first one,then eddie split from peavey soooo i got the 6505+ omg great amp......But i wass missing something all this time yall and althogh the peavey amps were awsome

i was missing warmth....hmmm sooooo i walked into the store to try this thing out and it sounded horrible.....???????????? Wait a minuite dang i almost sold my 6505+ for this? then the guy at the store said hey man wait a second did you crank that amp? I said no man why? he said come here dude here ,he gave me a cable and said theres no one here anyway crank it.......WOW Im in shock........

I must admit peavys are buit more durable,but the cleans on those 5150s werent so good still this amp is better built than a marshall for sure....Ill give it a 8....I heard that eddie told fender to do what they wanted on the clean channel,no one makes a better clean than fender

Ill give it a 7 value.......its a pricey amp but still it rocks-

My band opened for a national act and the main sound guy was giving me the sound check,he came down all the way to the stage and said.....Man what the heck are u using there buddy? is that that new evh? I said yup its only a half stack,he said "Man that sounds kicks butt i did nothing to your sound on the board its a flat eq for you man.....Thats when i was super glag i got this head...Bottom line is the head doese not sound good at low volume,but when cranked its a flame thrower,u might wanna use a combo in a small club anyway...