I had an interesting experience today that I thought I might tell you all about.
There's a local boutique shop about 30 miles from me called Tone Merchants in the city of Orange. They're an awesome shop... extremely knowledgeable, low pressure staff that understand music and gear as tools for a lifestyle and not just a sales point. They have a web page and several videos on youtube.
Today, I went there and tried out a few hi-caliber amps just to see what was available and if anything really tickled my fancy. Something did, but it wasn't what I expected...
I initially wandered in there to test a Custom Audio Amplifiers CA100, as they usually keep one in stock. I've debated selling my Bogner and buying one of these several times. They're loud, smooth, bold, powerful amps that sound pretty amazing. Vintage Fendery cleans with a modern-sounding drive section. Forum bro samhillband (Mark Day) has one and makes excellent use of it, as seen on his YouTube demo vids. The controls are very straightforward and yield an excellent range of tones... you really can't get a bad sound out of this amp.
They didn't have one in the shop but they did have the PT100 model... it's a variant of the CA100 that was designed for Peter Thorn. It was built with a 3rd channel (instead of the normal two) and voiced for more mids and highs, and given Plexi transformers and EL34s. After spending about a half hour with it, I found that while I really dug the clean channel, the drive channels were a little too bright and cutting and strident for me, and I preferred the fatter, smoother sound of the CA100. Excellent amp, but not for me - too bright overall, especially on the drive channels.
Next, I moved on to a Bogner Uberschall Twin Jet. Having never tried either Uberschall incarnation before, I was looking forward to this. Unfortunately, I wound up not really liking the amp as much as I'd hoped I would. The clean sounds were OK but not great, and the medium-gain settings were somewhat lackluster. The hi-gain settings, which are supposed to be the amp's selling point, were the best tones the amp had to offer, but had a tad too little definition, and were too compressed and saturated for my taste. The amp also had a lot of bass available to it that would've been unusable in a band context. The problem is, you had to be careful when dialing it down or else you'd lose the body of the sound.
It was at that moment the owner of Tone Merchants, Ron, walked in and greeted me. He asked me if there was anything I needed and that eventually led to a discussion about tone, gear, etc. The kind of thing you'd expect. We talked about the Uberschall and I told him it wasn't really doing anything for me. He commented that this amp usually sounds best with brighter-sounding 7-string guitars, as the low end and high headroom was designed to acommodate those guitars.
He asked me more about my current rig and what i was after, what I liked and what i didn't like, and listened carefully. After thinking for a bit, he led me to another amp I may have not looked at otherwise.
It looked like a new Marshall JMP clone with an extra knob, it had no logo on it. It was a Dave Friedman amp called the Naked.
It belonged to Ron (who was running the shop with Jay, their YouTube demo guy/salesman/tech today). It's his personal amp but he's using it on the floor to sell that model, and has had a few orders placed since NAMM. I've heard of Dave's amps before and knew that Jerry Cantrell is currently using his "Marsha" amp, but nothing beyond that. Ron explained that the Naked was designed and built for Billy Howerdel, and now Dave is putting them into production as built-to-order amps. Billy has the first pre-production units, Dave has the prototype, and the first production model is sitting in one of the Loud Rooms at Tone Merchants.
(contd)
There's a local boutique shop about 30 miles from me called Tone Merchants in the city of Orange. They're an awesome shop... extremely knowledgeable, low pressure staff that understand music and gear as tools for a lifestyle and not just a sales point. They have a web page and several videos on youtube.
Today, I went there and tried out a few hi-caliber amps just to see what was available and if anything really tickled my fancy. Something did, but it wasn't what I expected...
I initially wandered in there to test a Custom Audio Amplifiers CA100, as they usually keep one in stock. I've debated selling my Bogner and buying one of these several times. They're loud, smooth, bold, powerful amps that sound pretty amazing. Vintage Fendery cleans with a modern-sounding drive section. Forum bro samhillband (Mark Day) has one and makes excellent use of it, as seen on his YouTube demo vids. The controls are very straightforward and yield an excellent range of tones... you really can't get a bad sound out of this amp.
They didn't have one in the shop but they did have the PT100 model... it's a variant of the CA100 that was designed for Peter Thorn. It was built with a 3rd channel (instead of the normal two) and voiced for more mids and highs, and given Plexi transformers and EL34s. After spending about a half hour with it, I found that while I really dug the clean channel, the drive channels were a little too bright and cutting and strident for me, and I preferred the fatter, smoother sound of the CA100. Excellent amp, but not for me - too bright overall, especially on the drive channels.
Next, I moved on to a Bogner Uberschall Twin Jet. Having never tried either Uberschall incarnation before, I was looking forward to this. Unfortunately, I wound up not really liking the amp as much as I'd hoped I would. The clean sounds were OK but not great, and the medium-gain settings were somewhat lackluster. The hi-gain settings, which are supposed to be the amp's selling point, were the best tones the amp had to offer, but had a tad too little definition, and were too compressed and saturated for my taste. The amp also had a lot of bass available to it that would've been unusable in a band context. The problem is, you had to be careful when dialing it down or else you'd lose the body of the sound.
It was at that moment the owner of Tone Merchants, Ron, walked in and greeted me. He asked me if there was anything I needed and that eventually led to a discussion about tone, gear, etc. The kind of thing you'd expect. We talked about the Uberschall and I told him it wasn't really doing anything for me. He commented that this amp usually sounds best with brighter-sounding 7-string guitars, as the low end and high headroom was designed to acommodate those guitars.
He asked me more about my current rig and what i was after, what I liked and what i didn't like, and listened carefully. After thinking for a bit, he led me to another amp I may have not looked at otherwise.
It looked like a new Marshall JMP clone with an extra knob, it had no logo on it. It was a Dave Friedman amp called the Naked.
It belonged to Ron (who was running the shop with Jay, their YouTube demo guy/salesman/tech today). It's his personal amp but he's using it on the floor to sell that model, and has had a few orders placed since NAMM. I've heard of Dave's amps before and knew that Jerry Cantrell is currently using his "Marsha" amp, but nothing beyond that. Ron explained that the Naked was designed and built for Billy Howerdel, and now Dave is putting them into production as built-to-order amps. Billy has the first pre-production units, Dave has the prototype, and the first production model is sitting in one of the Loud Rooms at Tone Merchants.
(contd)
