There it is sitting outside my door. No knock on the door or doorbell ring. Thanks UPS! I open the carefully and creatively packed box. Inside are the aforementioned swimming pool noodles and red rubber balls. My son will be happy with those! It appears to have arrived safely with the exception of one copper elbow fitting becoming separated on the base. I popped the pipe back in without incident.
Yep, She's pretty to look at!. A real work of art. But how does she sound? I plugged in the extra long power cord, plugged in my ESP Vintage Plus Strat loaded with two single coils and a JB Humbucker into the hi-gain input and flipped the power switch on. I gave her a couple minutes for the tubes to get warmed up and started dialing up the volume to about 5. I strummed through some open and barre chords plugging some accent notes. First impression was "nice!". I switched through all of the pick up configurations. There were no bad tones. I crank the volume a little more to about 7. This is where she starts to come alive! This is sounding phenomenal. Warm, responsive, and articulate sweet notes are filling up my apartment. This is when I started smiling
I play through several chord progressions and lead runs and it just sounds fantastic! Then I crank the volume to 10. I wasn't expecting this. The amp turned into a full naturally overdriven beast. At this point, the amp was actually too loud for my apartment. The tone did get a little too bright for my liking on 10 but that was quickly remedied by trying out the Lo-gain input.
Do you know why this amp doesn't have any tone controls? Because it doesn't need them! It's got a pure, unmolested tube driven tone and it's magic to my ears.
Not that i was skeptical buying this amp without any possible way of hearing what it sounds like, but It was a bit of a gamble. A gamble where I definitely came out a winner. Gerry, you outdid yourself on this build and I couldn't be happier. Feel free to use any part of my review as an endorsement to your future builds. I have been playing and buying various guitar gear since i was 14 and I'm now 46. After over 30 years, I know good tone when I hear it, and I am hearing it!
Something that might help your auctions in the future would be to record some of the tones your amps are creating and put them up on Youtube. This would give the potential buyers a feel for what they are buying other than the obviously beautiful aesthetic.
Thanks for the great amp. I will treasure it for many years to come.
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll.
