El Dunco
Sock Supplier to RHCP
I have one of those, “The Twin” TRs. You just have to make sure the values match the schematic printed in the back of the amp (some sockets can only have 12AT7s, 12AU7s etc it to function properly).
I love it. Hasn’t failed me in over 15 years, the clean channel is a beautiful, pristine sound and I did own a ‘72 Silverface to compare it to. It has very flexible EQ controls. It doesn’t get a lot of breakup, short of opening it up switched to 25 watt mode, but some like myself love the warm yet super clean with a great “spank.”
Now…. The Overdrive channel is where people really got confused. It’s amazing when you know how to use it. The EQ (with pull-activated boosts) is set before the gain stage. Cutting the bass and boosting the mids and highs gives you a very customisable gain voicing which can absolutely be used for tight metal without any boosting required! There’s a lot on tap and it’s useable and musical through the entire range.
One of my first clips posted to the forum was a seriously heavy sound just with the bit in, open-back combo speakers and it kicked a$&. You can imagine how it sounds into an external 4x12. The presence control has a pull-out “notch” has an adjustable mid cut that starts out grainy, Marshallesque to smoother, honkier, early Mesa Mark. With all that set up and then with an EQ in the loop, it can get any heavy sound you can possibly imagine.
Other truly awesomely useful features include a power-amp-thru to slave it to another power amp with the FX loop in use, built in multimeter ports and pots for easy bias and balance, the ability to do standard channel switching, running both channels in parallel from one guitar (or bass for a real, all tube bi-amped sound!) to blend them, running both channels in parallel with two different sound sources/instruments.
One of the best features ever is the XLR out after the power tubes, before the OT to run the full amp sound, not just the preamp to a desk for reamping, running through IRs, a neutral SS power amp to preserve the entire sound with power amp colour or distortion and add more power. It makes it a total swiss-army-knife in the studio.
If I’m doing a demo or need to record silently, loadboxing, running the pre-amp from my amp of choice into The Twin’s power-amp in, getting the power tubes cooking (which adds so much to a solid state preamp slaved in) XLR out to an impulse response adds so much more than just slaving the preamp into the desk.
Every guitarist who had used it in my studio has been obsessed with it, I’ve gotten some really fat bass sounds out of it and though it’s one seriously weighty combo, I feel it was ahead of its time and still holds up today. Blending a very tight, focused metal rhythm sound from The Twin (similar to how you would set up a Mark series Mesa) blended with a huge sounding Dual Rectifier is godly.
I believe it’s a Rivera design.
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