played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

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well, yesterday me and my friend Cailin went to MAE. he's a bass player so we walked in there and we jammed out for a little bit on the alembic and ken smith basses. then i walked into the guitar section, and i saw one PRS guitar. it was a standard 24, plain mahogany with 1 vol and 1 tone and a 3 way switch with a push pull pot on the tone. nothing special, looks wise. but i played it acoustically, and WOW!!! it sounded incredible even then. i then plugged it into the Bogner ecstacy head, and it was the most beautiful tone i've ever heard in my life. the clean channel, the crunchy channel and high gain channel.... holy crapy!! i sat there for about 2 hours with just that guitar and that amp. the guitar was great, in it's sheer simplicity and tone. the push/pull pot was great! im probably gonna do that with my les paul. and wow, that freakin amp could rip someones head off on the clean channel!!
i've decided, im gonna get a job and save up $7000 to buy those 2 pieces of equipment :laugh2:

 

[Quencho092]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

sweet man. how many watts is the extacy? Did the PRS have 2 buckers?

Maybe an SG with PAF's could put you in that territory perhaps, for much less $$$

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

When I was broke, living on Ramen noodles, I walked into Bogner's Showroom in North Hollywood back in 95 and plugged into an Ecstasy. For years that memory tormented me, because I knew there's never been, nor will there ever be an amp that's better.
After years of playing all kinds of different good amps, I came across the ad for an original white chassis early model with ALL the options. I sold all my amps in one week and ran to that guy's house with $2175 to get him to accept my lowball offer.
Months later, I aquired the 4-12, then the large 2-12. The amp came with the metalfront headshell, but I've also recently found a canefront headshell, which you saw in the pics of UGD. I've gotten so spoiled by that amp that I can't even hear anything else without knowing the Bogner kills it.

If I lost everything, the Bogner Ecstasy would be the very last piece of gear I'd sell.
It's the final evolution of the all tube amplifier. When biased with the best tubes, it's impossible to top it. It sounds good with a 2-12, but with the 4-12, you could put any amp next to it, and watch the Bogner just destroy it, using any of it's 3 channels.
Reinholdt nailed it. He's the king of amp builders, IMO.

 

[Jeff_H]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

If I lost everything, the Bogner Ecstasy would be the very last piece of gear I'd sell.

Send me your Silver Jubilee then....if it will make you feel better. I'll even pay for shipping! :laugh2:

 

[That90'sGuy]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day Mr. Bogner will release an Ecstasy 102B that will have the Shiva's cleans and the 101B overdrive channels. If that can be designed with a Master Volume system that's good enough to be able to get good tone in the bedroom (like the CAA OD-100), I will be sold. Also, the shared EQ things gotta go, separate EQs would make people's lives SOOOO much easier. I'm not asking too much, am I?

 

[Bones]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

MAE is one of the best stores I have ever been in. One of the only stores not run by a bunch of jackasses.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

Chris, I've played the CAA and the Bogner's still a superior amp. I'm not just saying because I have one. There's nothing you can't get out of the Ecstasy's clean channel. It's just as good as the Shiva's, if not better. Because the blue and red channels are voiced fairly similar, they don't need separate EQ. Since there's all the little switches above the blue and red channels, you can morph them into anything you want. I could cover the history of Marshall on the blue channel alone! Somehow, Bogner figured out how to make all these bells and whistles NOT effect the fundamental sound of the amp. It's got so many options, that you can tweeze the channels into just about any sound in your head. Even though it sounds great at low volumes, it's designed to be a stage amp, so when you turn it up, it just oozes killer tone. I know I rave about it quite a bit, but it's like a Swiss Army knife of EL-34 tone.

It's a 120W amp, but what's amazing is that I can turn it into a bedroom amp by cutting the power down to half, turning on Class A, setting all the switches to max gain, then bring all the levels down. What you end up with is an amp that sounds like a cranked 15W amp. I've put this amp through everything, and everytime I play with it, I'm amazed at how genious Reinhold is, as an amp designer. After coming home from the Amp Show, I'm still convinced that he's got all the competition whipped, and there was some fierce competition there too! I talked to a guy that has a Diezel, CAA, Bogner, and everything else, and he talked about the shortcoming of the others, but not the Bogner. He even agreed that it's the best design ever.

 

[\m/(00)\m/]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

i will agree that MAE is the best music store in florida. PRS named it the #3 music store in the world.

and, i agree again that the shared EQ is a little...eh...

but thats about it, but even with the shared eq it was still perfect.

i've come to a conclusion with bogner, it's harder to find a bad sound with a bogner amp, then it is to find your perfect, ultimate tone with an amp like a mark 4 :laugh2:

hey GJ, what are your amp settings?

one thing i noticed, is that CH 3 has got some serious bass. it still has clarity, but sometimes it's a little too bassy. what are the settings you use on the amp? if i could find yours, and according to the people who have played your amp, it'll be done and settled!!

...hmm...

now, where to get $7000 from..

maybe i could buy used... :laugh2:

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

On the used market you should expect to pay around $2400 for an Ecstasy head, $750 for a 4-12, and you can always find a deal on a PRS for around $1350

The difference between the Bogner's EQ and most other amps is that it's set up like a mixing board. 12 O'clock is neutral, so you only have to add or subtract frequencies slightly. You could set every knob on the amp to 12 Oclock and the amp would sound perfectly fine. One mistake people make when demoing it, is to set the EQ like they do on a Marshall, with the bass on 10. I set it with the T 6 M6 B 7
The mini switches configure the gain structure, so you can put the EQ in any gain range. The structure switch makes it woody like a Marshall or more crushing like a Recto. One trick for adding sparkle to the clean channel, making it more Shiva-like, is to assign the assignable presence control to that channel. It's a sophisticated amp, but once you own one, and can spend the time to figure it out, it's amazing!
Unlike many other amps, you don't find yourself constantly tweaking, since you actually find the tone that's in your head......then leave it set that way all the time.

 

[Scott_F]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

That's pretty much how I feel about my TR.

 

[Quencho092]

Re: played the most beautiful sounding gear yesterday...

and thats how i feel about my bandmaster :laugh2:

After i put it up against my pignose practice amp and my crate mx20RC 20 watt SS i knew that this blonde mofo was the best amp in the house!