Preamp tubes for Marshall JCM 600 Head
November 4, 2008 by Chazders · 2 Comments
About preamp tubes for a Marshall JCM 600 head Read more
Egnater Rebel 20 Guitar Amplifier
November 1, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
You know that kid in your class that was the rebel? Always sat in the back and caused chaos by disregarding all of the rules? The teachers couldn’t get him under control, and all of the girls thought he was cool for that. Well, what if you could get those same qualities in a guitar amp? Now you can. Read more
Fortin Bones Tube Amp
October 6, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
The BONES amplifier is a stripped down “bare bones”, single channel, all valve, electric guitar amplifier. With delicious modern styling and a straightforward & intuitive front panel layout, BONES is exceptionally versatile and completely inspirational from the first note played. It maintains all the detail of your guitar and playing dynamics as well as front-end dynamics from stomp box pedals.
The BONES front panel features consist of Input, Gain, Bass, Bright switch, Boost switch, Middle, Treble, Voicing L/M/H switch, Depth, Presence, and Master controls as well as Power and Standby switches. The Voicing L/M/H is a 3-way switch that selects between 2, 3 or 4 stages of gain. This function really changes the tone and feel of the amplifier giving you an astounding array of sounds. From succulent, vibrant cleans to blazing, cabinet erupting high gain overdrive, it’s like having three totally different amps! The rear panel includes 5 LOUDSPEAKERS, AC input, 4-Bias controls and test points, jacks and if requested, the following optional features (FX loop, Lineout with level, Footswitch & MIDI). The individual Bias controls are a powerful feature and tool for tapping into more tonal possibilities with the BONES amp. You can also mix and match different tube types together for virtually unlimited variety of tones.
BONES Chassis mounted components are wired, “flying lead” design, to a 1/8″ thick, 4oz weighted FR4 PCB. All ceramic tube sockets, sealed stainless steel shafted pots, metal jacks, metal switches, custom designed precision wound power, choke and output transformers are mounted to a rugged14 gauge brushed stainless steel chassis. Front and back panel are clear anodized brushed alloy with laser etched lettering that will not wear off. Housed in a ¾-inch birch-ply head case, accented with custom black aluminum anodized metal grills and a ¼-inch thick machined alloy logo plate. Premium components are used throughout, combined with solid, reliable design that will last several lifetimes over.
BONES FEATURES & SPECIFICATIONS:
World Mains 100/110/120/220/230/240 VAC 50/60HZ.
VOICING L/M/H selects between 2, 3 or 4 stages of gain.
4 - 12AX7s (1 x 12AT7 FX Loop) & 4 x Power tubes in any combinations of EL34, 6CA7, KT77, 6L6, 5881, KT66, 6550, KT88, KT90, KT100. Class-AB, 100 to 180 watts
4 - BIAS locking pots.
RMS, depending on types of power tubes used.
Fully regulated preamp DC heaters for an ultra low noise floor.
Optional FX Loop, Lineout w/ level control and other footswitching and MIDI options.
Marriage of PCB and Point-to-Point assembly.
Approx Street price: $2575.00
Visit Fortin Amps web site at www.fortinamps.com.
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Johnson Marquis JM60 Guitar Amp Review
September 28, 2008 by Chazders · 2 Comments
Johnson’s Millennium amplifiers have set a good standard for what a digital modeling amp should be. While the Marquis is something of a scaled-down version of the Millennium, it retains much of what makes the amp noteworthy, resulting in a user-friendly amplifier with excellent voices overall and flexible, wide-ranging functions.
The Marquis eschews the Millennium’s multiple LED and LCD screens for a single LED readout showing which preset is on call. Good old-fashioned knobs—master volume, gain, treble, mid, bass and level—remain, along with dedicated buttons with which to scroll through the amp voicings and effects, and platform editing chores. The amp voicings have been reorganized into three groups of six (American, British and Johnson), the built in tuner is gone and the effects-processing circuitry has been simplified too: one 12AX7 does the work of the Millennium’s two, and the power output has been scaled down to 60-watts in mono or 120-watts in stereo. Surprisingly, MIDI implementation is gone as well, leaving you with 27 editable factory presets recallable from the front panel rotary knob via optional foot controllers.
As mentioned before, the JM60 comes with a single Eminence 12-inch speaker and delivers 60 mono watts in this configuration. By plugging in the J112 satellite speaker cabinet, the output is double to 120 watts stereo. The headphone jack, like the Crate’s, doubles as a speaker compensated direct output. It won’t automatically shut of the speakers, which is smart, since using it as a direct output usually means that you’ll still want to hear what you’re playing. Instead, the speakers are disabled with a recessed switch. The effects send and return points are accessed with two stereo ¼-inch phone jacks and, at 680 ohms out and 15k ohms in, are intended for use with rackmount effects.
The Marquis’ 27 presets show off it excellent modeling circuitry and adds enough effects to demonstrate how wide ranging and detailed its possibilities are. The onboard effects consist of three groups (Mod/Pitch, Delay and Reverb) that, like the amp voices, are accessible by scroll buttons. The chorus was somewhat weak, but the tremolo and vibrato were quit usable. The phaser and flanger both dishes out plenty of thick psychedelic swirl, while the pitch/detune went a long way toward beefing up some of the more aggressive settings as well as providing that trademark Digitech parallel harmony. (Johnson and Digitech are both owned by Harmon International.) The delay flavors consist of a high-frequency-suppressed analog, a clear and amazingly regenerative delay and “Ping Pong,” which sends the delay bouncing back and forth in hard stereo separation. The reverbs (plate, hall and spring) are all excellent.
The Marquis’ amp modeling is largely excellent and earns high marks for nailing some of the more difficult tube tones. This could have something to do with the fact that they’ve chosen to keep one 12AX7 tube in the circuit. For example, the “Class A Clean” and Class A Dirty” both had the warm, fuzzy bottoms and grainy mids one would hope for, and the “Boutique” (based on a Matchless DC30) was nothing short of jaw-dropping in its huge range of dynamics via pick attack. The Fender clones were spot on, although a little more grain from the “Tweed” would be nice. The aggressive metal voicings, including the Soldano-inspired “High Gain,” the requisite Marshall models and Johnson’s own “Saturated Tube,” “Overdrive” and “Metal” settings, all had punch to spare. In fact, Johnson’s forte is in the bottom, where notes are felt in the groin rather than heard. The only setting which seemed to suffer form over-bodacity was “High Wattage” (based on a Hiwatt S50LC), which never quite mustered the high-end crackle of the original.
Special mention should be made of the Marquis’ noise gate circuit, which is subtle, kind and adjustable. The adjustment is “hidden” within the amp model selector switch and preset selector knob, but a quick read of the well-written manual will unleash as much or as little gating as you please, and provide a cool backward-attack sound, too. http://www.johnson-amp.com/jm60.htm
End Note
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The Marquis delivers a heap of high quality and tones and effects in a very attractive package. If you don’t miss the MIDI implementation, the Marquis could be your pro-level workhorse.
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Mesa Boogie Formula Pre Recording Amplifier
September 10, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Recording engineers know that it’s never been easy to get good guitar tone by “going direct” into a mixer. Yet, for many guitarists with home studios, miking an amplifier to achieve a more natural-sounding live tone isn’t always an option. Maybe you don’t have the best sounding amp and cab setup; perhaps you do, but your home studio environment prevents you from cranking it up. Maybe you’re recording live in a small space and you don’t want your guitar sound to leak into the drums or vocal mikes. Obviously, there are any number of reasons to record directly—and there are number of devices to help you do it.
Meet Mesa Boogie Formula Pre (buy it used between $400-$500). Read more
Hughes & Kettner Triamp MKII
September 6, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
It’s loud. It’s clear. And it’s all lit up. Read more
Vox Black Diamond Modeling Combo Amp -Music Equipment Reviews
June 23, 2008 by Chazders · Leave a Comment
Vox has released 2 new and great products; the first is the Vox Black Diamond Modeling Combo Amp which is a combination between the sweet vintage tone (valve) and the latest technology (digital modeling) that is related to the Valvetronix series family.
Features of the Vox Black Diamond Modeling Combo Amp include 200-massive-watts of output power (2×100-watt in stereo mode), a 12AX7 preamp tube (inside the Valve Reactor circuit, like in all Valvetronix models), 32 built-in different amp models (from the highly regarded classic to the modern models), 25 effects types (essentially 76 different effects in 3 banks, including, compression, wah and pickup simulator. In addition to another with distortion and spatial effects and the final one with modulation, delay reverb and noise reduction), 128 user and 64 factory presets, Celestion Neo Dog 150-watt speaker and a very appealing manual mode, which reflects the physical position of the knobs in the selected presets.
The Vox Black Diamond is loaded with an editor and library software, chromatic tuner, MIDI connections and optionally you can control some of the effects with a footswitch controller. The price and availability of the Vox Black Diamond Modeling Combo Amp have to be announced yet, but Gear-Vault can’t wait to get our hands on one and try it out. We’ll keep you updated – but in the meantime, head over to Gear-Monkey.com discussion boards.
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