EVH 5150III 1x12" 50-watt Tube Combo Amp - Black Reviews

Awesome amp very versatile!! Has nice depth for a combo plenty loud for any situation. I would recommend this amp to anyone any style can be played thru this amp if interested give Jeff Jent a call at sweetwater you guys Rock.

This amp is a beast !! You can have it all: from glistening cleans to crunch to face peeling gain that is a bit more than I need for the type of music I'm playing now...but it's there if I need it. The versatility of this amp is what sets it apart from others & it's the same thing that everyone else has said in their reviews and they are spot on ! From old & new country to old & new rock to hard & heavy to funk & R&B you can do it with this one amp. Love it !!!! Wish I had bought it long ago !
In addition Paul Lea @ Sweetwater has been an incredible help with everything I've needed...couldn't ask for any better !! Lastly I was a bit concerned about having a tube amp shipped but no worries as the amp is ingeniously packaged so there is almost no chance of damage during the shipping process. Straight out of the box, heat up the tubes, rock on !!

I posted a review on December 21, 2020 hailing the glory of this amp, and after 4 months of ownership + hours of playing I can confidently say I STILL love this amp immensely! Versatility in spades with its three channels, takes pedals, stellar attenuator, sweet built-in reverb, and THE BLUE CHANNEL!!!!

It's a big and heavy amp, but it is worth it since the big cabinet lends to its sonic characteristics.

This is the best sounding amp I have ever owned. I have owned Marshall, Randall, Fender, etc. The foot switch is amazing the options are endless with 3 channels and a reverb on/off on the foot switch. Sweetwater is a must for the aspiring musician. They have amazing prices, amazing customer service, and fantastic candy!

"Wow" is the word I'll use to describe this amp. I have a wide range of electrics that have single coils, PAFs, and P-90s; this amp has me covered and is easy to adjust for whatever I am after. Yes, it does all the EVH tones your heart desires, but what surprised me was how fantastic the Green channel is, which I use in combination with a Princeton Reverb in a stereo setup to do lower gain & ambient sounds. I wasn't expecting this to work out since this is known to be a rock/hard/rock/metal type of amp. It's quite nice to have this Green channel option at my disposal for a very "Fender-like" vibe. Or I can roll up the gain for a more bluesy vibe. The Blue channel is my favorite--everything from rock, hard rock, and metal can be had. If you're wild enough, there's the Red channel, which has a comical amount of gain on tap...not my style, so I stay away from it, but it's there for you if needed.

Another excellent aspect of this amp is that the controls have a wide range of sweep/usability. For instance, the minimum and max settings on all the controls make a marked audible change. I've owned a number of amps where turning a knob makes little to no sonic differences. Not so here. As an example, the presence knob makes a HUGE difference in taming my Strat's treble brightness on the Green channel (which can be a very bright channel)--so I'll wind the presence all the way to 8 o'clock and drop the treble down to about 11 o'clock. With those small tweaks the amp turns sweet. On the Blue or Red channels I tend to wind the presence up to 3 or 4 o'clock and bump the Treble to around 2 to 3 o'clock--no harshness to be found. Also, the resonance control does its job so well--I can stiffen the bass response for a more modern metal vibe, or adjust it for a more loose/vintage feel. Same goes for the attenuator--not only does it work well to reduce SPLs, but it doesn't seem to alter the tone at all.

It takes pedals well too. I love the sound without overdrive pedals, but adding in a Klon-stye pedal (a JRAD Archer in my case) to the Green or Blue channel is just stupid awesome sounding.

My gripes & wishes are small. Here's what I would change to make this amp 100% perfect for me:

- Separate tone controls on the Green & Blue channels since the Green channel is relatively brighter
- Separate presence and resonance controls
- Ditch the the Red channel and add in a second Blue channel. Everyone seems to love the Blue channel, so why not have two of these on tap with different

But in reality, these would just make life a bit easier. It's very easy to live with this amp as-is. Overall, I really love it and highly recommend it.

What a great experience. Thanks Timothy, you're a great asset to SW. Hope to see you again in the future.

The evh 5150 is the best amp I have ever bought I have had is less than a year and I love the sound of it and the amount of power is awesome I keep it at a low wattage level I would totally recommend this amp for all the heavy-metal players or for the people that want to have a great clean fender has made a amp it has a beautiful clean tone but then go to channel 3 you have a Marshall JCM 800 in a combo amp it's one of the best distortion sounds I've ever gone out of any app that I've ever owned

I absolutely love this amp. I cant stop playing it. I mean "oh my God" this little beast is AMAZING it will do any thing you want. You just got to spend the love and dial it in.

SW is great! Sales Specialist contacted me to see if I was satisfied; I am. I really enjoy the candy. SweetWater is the best. Thanks folks

formerly a VOX guy with 7 different pedals including 2 overdrives. this amp and its three channels is all you need, really unbelieveable.

special thanks to Stephen Oppenheim @ Sweetwater.
He"s made ordering over the web personal.

thanks Stephen.

First let me say that this amp sounds unreal. I've had old Marshalls, modified Marshalls, plexi Marshall, Mesa Boogie, but this amp does it all. If you want gain. this is a beast! I use Channel 2 which is a mid gain channel..are you kidding me? This thing sings. I had it for a month and was in love, but the 1 and 2 channel stopped working. I was heartbroken, but as always, Sweetwater shows why they are the best and customer service is out of the world. They had me do minimal troubleshooting and after I had no luck, they sent me out a new amp. No hassle, no fuss, just sent one out. I can't say enough about Sweetwater. I have been a loyal customer for years, and now I know why. They NEVER disappoint. Thank you Sweetwater for the love affair you have with Musicians. You guys ROCK more than my new EVH 5150!!!

I had the 50 head of this amp for years and loved it but, I didn't like the shared volume and gain for channels 1 and 2. When this version came out I thought about getting the head again but decided on the combo instead. Although the head is fantastic, the combo offers some features I wanted.
I always ran a reverb through the effects loop and now I don't need to. The reverb is very good with this amp. Anything that makes for a smaller pedalboard, less cables and less problems with ground loops, power supply needs, etc.
The built in attenuator is handy. To experience this amp in it's full glory, you really need to run it above 2 (better if it's around 3+). At that level, you may get a visit from the police. Now I run it at about half power with the volume at around 3-4 and it's tolerable for home use and sounds great. If you run it all the way down to the lowest power level, you could play with other people asleep and not wake them but get the same tone, just not the cave-your-chest-in feeling of a cranked amp.
I don't usually care for combos because I don't care for open back cabs. I like closed-back cabinets for a tighter bottom end. This is a closed back and it responds like a 4x12. It's impressive and you don't have to worry about projecting the sound, it hits hard. It makes the combo heavy, but it's got wheels so no big deal.
I don't know if it's a change in design, tubes or just a variance in the manufacturing but this one has more gain than my head had. I'm running the gain on blue at about 2.5 where I ran it on 4 with my old head. The red is now on 3 instead of 4 and it's still more gain. I'm not complaining, I'd rather have more on tap than I need than not enough! You do get some hiss but nothing abnormal for a high gain amp.
This ones a keeper and for the money, probably the best value for pro-level, modded-marshall type gain. It can do clean, classic or modern rock and metal. It's all you need.

This is truly an amazing amp, and I love it so much more than I expected I would. This is easily a 5-star amp, but it is a little noisy at mid-to-high gain settings, so I took off a half star. I have several high-gain amps, so I realize that some noise is normal, but this baby has a bit more noise than I would like. My Decimator noise reduction pedal helps, but this is definitely a noisy amp compared to others I have (Marshall, Friedman, PRS, Boogie).

That does not take away from its GLORIOUS sound however!!! The sound out of this box is just stellar! The clean channel has a decent clean sound believe it or not, and you can get some nice edge of breakup sounds out if as well. The middle blue channel is the star of the show however, and has this wonderful full, rich, tight tone that is NOT FLUBBY and just sounds like it is supposed to sound. It can get pretty distorted if you crank up the gain, so I tend to play the blue channel somewhere between 2-5 on the gain knob, and it is plenty distorted.

The high-gain red channel can really take you into crazy levels of distortion, but honestly, keeping the gain under control makes this channel very usable as well, unlike some of the other reviews that I have read that say it is too over the top.

I like hard rock sounds, but not really into the dark metal chugging, and this amp is just perfect for my needs as long as I keep the gain under control.

A five-star amp with a little too much noise.

First of all I love this amp. Great for hard rock and metal. But better get a noise gate for the fx loop though. Blue channel sounds great boosted with a Maxon 808 OD. Red channel dont need ANY kind of boost. It can do everything from AC/DC to Machine Head. It's not the old 5150 though. So if your buying this expecting it to have the old 5150 tone then your in for a rude surprise. This amp is a different beast all together.... in a great way.

What can I say about this amp?

First, I can say that it is most likely the best high gain amplifier on the market for its price range, but like any amplifier, it has some drawbacks.

First, I"ll start by saying that this amp roars like a lion. It"s loud and it"s bold.

In regard to the clean channel, unfortunately it does share an EQ with the crunch channel. That does leave you with some limitations, but it"s something that I personally can live with. In addition, both the volume and crunch channel have dual knobs, one top of the other, in the same location, which is not a bad idea to save space. I would just like to point out that the gain you get from channel 1 alone is more than any amp I"ve ever heard. When people say this amp is versatile, I tend to agree.

This is probably the most important part of the review if you do play heavy metal. The second channel, which is the crunch channel, is where you"ll find the "punch" in your tone. It has a pretty good amount of gain on its own, but you can really transform your sound by using an overdrive pedal in front of the amp (I use a Maxon OD 808), and an EQ in the effects loop. Originally, I was on the fence about returning the EVH until I added these components. For a 1X12 amplifier, you can transform the sound from a really good high again tone to a brutal sounding combo if you implement the aforementioned. I kid you not. Once I added the Maxon and the MXR EQ, I knew that I was never returning the amp. My next add on will be an ISP DECIMATOR not only to dampen the noise, but to get that quick gate response for that metal sound. I can"t say this enough...this amp has such potential when adding an OD pedal with an EQ pedal.

Channel 3 has the most gain that I"ve ever heard out of any combo amp. Before purchasing the amplifier, I was convinced that I would be spending all my time on channel 3. That turned out not to be so. You can certainly adjust channel 3 to play rhythm tones, but it is channel 2 with the add-ons that I mentioned that take the 5150 III to another dimension. Additionally, cranking the M will make a huge difference as well. Additionally, cranking the amp will make a huge difference as well.

Now we get to the reverb. This is a digital reverb, but I really like the sound of it. You won"t find any shortage of this effect on this amp,

Lastly, I want to address the attenuator and resonance knob. In my opinion, the EVH does a great job of maintaining the integrity of your tone even down to 1w.

Although you may not use it a lot, the resonance knob does come in handy. When you lower the volume or the wattage, you can fill in the bass with the resonance knob, which is located in the back of the amplifier.

I know the thought of spending a lot of money on an amplifier can be daunting, but as I mentioned, IMHO this is the best high gain combo out there right now for its price point.