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Sound Clips Coming Soon!
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Don’t judge an amp by its cover: that’s
apparently the lesson I have to keep
relearning. There’s been plenty of anticipation
about Richard Goodsell’s promise to
branch out into new territory (for him at
least) with his new Black Dog 50, and the
high-gain crowd has certainly been wondering
when Goodsell was going to produce
something just right for them—but I’ve had
so much on my plate lately, I had to put it in
the back of my mind to look into later.
As a result, when the amp came out of
the shipping box I made a number of
assumptions about how it would sound
based solely on the way it looked. The
Marshall-style big box head cabinet said
only one thing to me—classic hard rock—
so with only a few minutes to test it out
that day, we hooked it up to an Egnater
4x12 closed-back cabinet loaded with
Vintage 30s, and plugged in a Richmond
Dorchester with Lace Alumitone humbuckers.
We dialed it in for “heavy” and immediately
got the tone we were looking for:
a meaty midrange grind with an assertive
low-end thump. We also immediately
noticed the sag-free “tightness” that signals
a more-than-adequate power section
and solid-state rectifier. Goodsell informed
me later that this amp really began with not
much more than a JCM800 transformer and
the itch to “go big.”
It’s easy enough to tell that this single-channel
brute is powered by EL34s, but I
wouldn’t have guessed it’s a cathode-biased
design. That makes the “50” in its name
more of a model number than a description
of its output power, but it sounds plenty big
enough to top a half-stack. When I did finally
get time to give it some in-depth investigation,
I found out that the real departure
here is farther from the typical tones and
features of amps in the vintage “plexi”
mode, and less from Goodsell’s stock-in-trade.
Those departures, however, will be a
real treat for all but the most dyed-in-thewool
Marshallites. Goodsell is already highly
regarded for his more refined, lower-power
EL84 combos, like the Super 17 and the
Custom 33, so it makes a lot of sense for his
entry into the medium-power/high gain zone
to retain much of what made those amps so
successful—I just wasn’t expecting it.
His “less-is-more” approach is readily evident
on the outside: with only a single input, On/
Off and Standby switches, volume, gain, and
3-band EQ, the Black Dog is bare bones. The
back of the amp demonstrates simplicity as
well, with two speaker outs (switchable for
8 or 16 ohms), and a jack for the “by-pass
boost” footswitch as the only “extra”—what
a kick, too! I’ll explain a little further on.
Plugging In
Figuring that not a few players attracted
to this amp are going to want to plug in a
vintage Les Paul with real-deal PAF humbuckers,
but not having one of those around at
the moment, I decided to go first with the
Duesenberg Mike Campbell signature model,
since the Grand Vintage humbucker at the
bridge has very similar qualities. I set all of
the amp’s controls at noon and let fly. With
the guitar’s tone knob down around 3, the
Black Dog had all the aggressive punch and
definition of an old-school Les Paul/Marshall
combination, so it’s definitely able to rock
that early-seventies vibe. While the overdrive
is less creamy than the typical plexi-inspired
design, that roiling, ballsy low-mid crunch is
just as ample, and the dynamics are just as
generous. If you’re still digging Thin Lizzy,
Humble Pie, and Free, the Black Dog will
surely get you there.
Moving through a few adjustments, though,
the surprises started coming quick. With
the tone knob rolled all the way up, the
amp gained a different character altogether,
with the humbucker producing a rawer
bite that evoked a more modern Marshall
tone, but without the raspiness of too much
preamp gain, and more open-sounding, less
“vowelly” in the mids. The lack of filtered
negative feedback lent it an edgier, less
refined top end that nevertheless stayed
clear of brittleness.