A real pleasure for me was the tone of the
P-90 at the neck of the Duesenberg. It broke
up less easily, so I could really lean into a
gritty half-clean tone without it crumbling
and losing the defined attack. I was able to
take it from thick and bluesy to lean and jangly—
without touching the amp. More than
any other pickup I ran through it, the P-90
showed off the superb touch sensitivity of the
amp; it kept me riffing “Chickamauga”-style
for the better part of an afternoon.
The biggest surprise has to be the clean
tones. Those are going to catch everyone
off guard. Think blackface Super and you’re
more than just in the ballpark. Switching
over to straight single-coil guitars made
my head spin. The bridge pickup on a Tele
produced a confident, snappy twang that
went positively gnarly with some gain on it,
while the neck pickup went fat and deep
while staying beautifully clear—and it just
wailed when I rolled up the guitar’s volume
knob. My Nash S63 strat poured out everything
from old-fashioned golden tones to
overdriven Texas blues, slinky funk and soul
tones and twitchy, punk grittiness. In particular,
the “notched” settings on this guitar
sold me on the power of Goodsell’s mojo,
invoking shades of Hendrix and Tommy Bolin
(in his less-fuzzed-out moments).
The Black Dog also features a footswitch
control that works like a boost; it bypasses
the tone stack when engaged—Goodsell
says the switch makes about 20 – 25 dB
more gain available, while also kicking in a
fixed midrange compensation cap. Stomping
on it turns the amp into an unrestrained,
fire-belching incendiary device. Fortunately,
the Treble control still works as a high frequency
roll-off in bypass mode, or there’d
be no way to stand in the same room with it.
If you want more saturated high-gain intensity
than you thought was plausible in an
amp of this design, here it is—but get some
hearing protection.
The Final Mojo
Did I mention that after a day’s worth of blissful
tone tripping all the amp’s controls are still
set at noon! I’ve decided not to mess with
them until after I’ve balanced my checkbook,
and taken it up on stage—I could really use
a gigging amp that doesn’t distract me with
the urge to tweak it all night. Among the
features I expected to find here, a presence
control isn’t missed. And though four inputs
is pretty common for the single-channel,
Marshall-inspired 50-Watters, the lack of
them is no loss here—not just because it
keeps things simple, but also because there’s
at least as wide a range of gain control with
the Black Dog’s single input. When you add
in the extra gain from the bypass boost, it’s
probably a great deal more than most. For an
amplifier this simple, the tonal versatility of
the Black Dog 50 is just plain huge. Richard
Goodsell might’ve had in mind a gain-heavy
stage rig when he designed it, but it’s also
easy as hell to imagine it taking up a second
job as the go-to amp for studio work.
Buy if...
you want an amp with superb
dynamics and sensitivity that
travels fluently across the spectrum
of vintage tones.
Skip if...
you’re a card-carrying member of
the “Marshalls Only” club, or you’ve
got to have an effects loop.
Rating...
