Re: Compare the H&K TriampMkII to Bogner Ecstasy...
Really, tho, at this point we're just splitting hairs. By the 90's, amp builders knew how to make a good sounding high gain amp. By the 2000's, they can now make an amp that excells at clean, highgain, and everything in between, all in one amp.
At the end of the day, any player with a good set of ears can put together a great sounding rig, whether it's from 'do it all' amps or one trick pony amps. With multi-channel amps, you're just eliminating the need to patch together a bunch of amps and switchers, and getting it all in one amp. I played for years and years with single channel, or dual channel amps. Then went rackmounted, wasn't satisfied with the tone, then went back to heads, but this time, versatile/great sounding amps. It wasn't easy scraping up that much money for my new/used Ecstasy halfstack, but now that I know how to navigate it's controls, my search is over. There will always be those amps that have a different vibe than the Bogner, and I'll still enjoy those, but the Ecstasy is the benchmark. It's design was the dream amp I'd always wished a company would make, but kept falling short. After using it for a couple years now, I almost can't imagine any amp company topping it. There's other amps that I'd love to have, but feature for feature, tone for tone, the Bogner is basically a "Ferrari."
The only person who wouldn't like it, is someone who doesn't like EL-34's, or someone who has no use for an amp as loud as a Marshall 100W. Even still, there's about 6 ways to tame the volume it produces, not to mention Class A/AB switch. The halfpower switch is nice, but I'd really love it if Bogner would come out with a 50W Ecstasy. Same exact amp, only 2 power tubes. The probably haven't because the halfpower switch on the Ecstasy actually takes two tubes out of the signal, and makes you change the ohms rating on the amp. Others are usually cathode/pentode switches.