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NY Amp Show - Red Iron Amps
Here are three of Red Iron Amps' creations, the Mil Spec, the T-Rex, and The Bronx, all featuring octal preamp tubes.
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Red Iron Amps
Moths and butterflies are admirably, amazingly adaptable in flight. I mean, imagine you weigh mere milligrams. You’re trucking along, minding your own business, and a 45 mph gust blows you straight into the path of a garbage truck. As a moth, you have to be ready for anything. I’ve been in a lot of jams like that. The Moth Electric C. Regalis would have been a perfect companion.
The C. Regalis (the name honors the largest moth, by mass, found north of Mexico, making the moth in my earlier metaphor seem pretty lame) derives its own adaptability from blendable drive and clean tones. There’s nothing revolutionary about that idea. But the C. Regalis has a drive section that sounds great and is very versatile by itself and makes the whole very special. It has a flexible +/-15dB treble-and-bass EQ and a smooth/crunch switch that functions, more or less, exactly as advertised by adding even-order harmonics. The many possible tones from the drive section can, in turn, be compounded exponentially with the dirty/clean blend. All this room to roam in the controls means C. Regalis isn’t encumbered by a rigid agenda. It cares little about whether you use a Jaguar or an SG, a Fender Deluxe Reverb or a Marshall. The C. Regalis is eager to please. And it’s hard to imagine a player that couldn’t find a sound, or 30, to love in this pedal.
Master of Metamorphosis
Overdrive pedals, even lovable, essential, invaluable ones, can be pretty boring. And I can’t remember the last time I thought of an overdrive as a songwriting machine. But the C. Regalis is varied, forgiving, and intuitive in ways that facilitate fast movement between tones and make morphing between mere sounds and more concrete musical ideas fluid and effortless. There are many springboards and templates to work from too: Randomly choosing pedal settings, I bounced between sweet, toppy clean boost, hot treble-boosted tones, tweed Deluxe haze, Stonesy grime (’60s and ’70s versions), Dinosaur Jr. grind, and Sabbath sludge—and that was with a single guitar and amp.
Not surprisingly, for an overdrive and distortion with a clean blend control, there are strong hints of Klon, and I found many comparable tones in the C. Regalis and my fave klone at many settings. But the C. Regalis is also generally airer and less compressed than the klone, which translates to a lot of headroom and range. That range can reveal potential in the amps and guitars you already have. A few examples: I turned a raspy P-90 and Marshall combination into deep, pillowy Kevin Shields smoke. A Telecaster and vintage Vibrolux bellowed like a plexi, then ripped lines of treble-boosted acid twang. Curtis Novak Wide Range pickups in a Telecaster Deluxe plus the Moth sounded good with … everything. And I don’t remember encountering undesirable combinations that couldn’t be fixed with a simple, quick adjustment to the pedal or guitar controls (the C. Regalis is also highly responsive to guitar volume and tone attenuation).
The Verdict
Moth Electric’s C. Regalis is a really lovely, thoughtfully designed drive unit. At $179, it’s also a deal. The controls are smooth, precise, and situated in a clean, clear, and straightforward layout. And the simple, spacious design makes it easy to move between drastically different tones, mid-performance, without feet or presets. (Yes, bending over mid-jam kinda sucks, but if you don’t have enough time to pull this off, you’re probably playing too many notes.)
There are, of course, specific drive sounds that the C. Regalis can’t recreate. But it was hard to find any sizable holes in its performance envelope. And it can convincingly approximate almost any pedal, and many amps, at anywhere along the clean-boost to mid-gain distortion spectrum. If you chase specific pedal tones at super-granular levels, the C. Regalis might not always hit the mark. But if you’re out to craft a tone of your own that’s rooted in the organic, analog, vintage realm, C. Regalis has a very high likelihood of delivering.
A Canada-built, tastefully styled mini jumbo serves up comfort, a unique and expansive tone profile, and addictive playability.
Godin may be a Canadian company that skews modern in its design approach. But staring across the room at the new Godin Connaisseur MJ, glowing in soft spring sunlight, I kept thinking about two very classic American guitar companies. Martin and Rickenbacker are famous for very different things, and one of them rarely made acoustic instruments. But check out the Godin’s sunburst finish—it sure reminds me of Rickenbackerfireglo. The herringbone-patterned purling evokes that found on a D-28 as well as Rickenbacker’s checkerboard binding. The split-hexagon fretboard inlay? It conjures thoughts of aD-45, and Rickenbacker’s shark-fins. There are practical reasons that this Godin feels like an alternate-universe offspring from the two American companies—most notably the super-satisfying playability. Hermann Rorschach might have told me I’m more inclined to see and feel these likenesses in the Connaisseur MJ (I’m genuinely captivated by the beauty of Rickenbackers and Martins). But style is a big part of what sets the Connaisseur MJ apart, and you don’t need an inkblot test to know that the Godin Connaisseur MJ is a handsome, well-built, and fine-playing flattop. It’s a guitar that reveals its virtues quickly and easily.
Maple Leaf Rag
Consider another unorthodox melding of concepts: “mini” and “jumbo.” Obviously, they are a contradiction in terms. But as an acoustic guitar design guideline, the combination can yield pure gold. The jumbo in mini jumbo (MJ in Godin nomenclature) alludes to the body’s basic shape which, in its fluid curvaceousness, echoes Gibson’s SJ-200. But while the Connaisseur MJ isn’t a behemoth like the SJ-200, it’s not exactly mini either, and feels much more like a shapelier Martin OM. It’s a very comfortable profile that does much to alleviate the arm fatigue that can come from wrestling a dreadnought or genuinely jumbo jumbo.
At $2,499 the Canada-built Connaisseur MJ is Godin’s most expensive flattop by several hundred dollars. And at that price it has to tussle with giants like Martin, Gibson, and Taylor—all of whom sell very established and well-known models in a crowded market segment that most of us could call “getting expensive enough to hurt.” So, what distinguishes the Godin in a densely populated field? Well, it’s certainly pretty, and the melding of classic flattop design touchstones and contemporary styling moves achieves a unique, attractive result rather than an uncomfortable, incohesive mash up of influences.
Golden Glow
In the sonic sphere, theConnaisseur MJ exhibits many classic spruce-and-mahogany characteristics. The warm, concise fundamentals, sunset-hued, softly decaying overtones, and lack of brashness are all hallmarks of this tonewood combination. But the Godin definitely doesn’t live on the dusty, dry, and antique end of the mahogany-and-spruce spectrum. It’s alive and dynamic and responsive in ways you might even categorize as “modern,” and has ample headroom that leaves space for shifts in mood and intensity without shedding its essential voice. It’s easy to be struck by the Connaisseur MJ’s sparkle, especially when you use a light fingerstyle touch. But as I got to know the guitar, I grew to love the balance and resonance in the low end. I suspect that the mini jumbo body, and perhaps the 25.5" scale, have a lot to do with the Godin’s even, inviting voice and range. There is a beautiful combination of energy and air, even in the most softly plucked notes, and it’s easy to see how the extra expanse of spruce aft of the bridge might have a lot to do with how lively and rich the Godin sounds.
“The Godin definitely doesn’t live on the dusty, dry, antique end of the mahogany-and-spruce spectrum. It’s alive and dynamic and responsive in ways you might even categorize as ‘modern.’”
All the tone in the world doesn’t mean much if a guitar plays like a log. But the Connaisseur MJ shines in the playability realm. A few less-than-perfectly-dressed fret ends aside, the neck is addictively comfortable. If there’s a lot of Richard Thompson hammer-ons and pull-offs in your own playing vernacular, you’ll love the snappy touch responsiveness.
The Verdict
The biggest compliment I can offer the Connaisseur MJ is the considerable time I spent with it in a meditative musical state—thinking not about a review, just basking in its warm, sprightly resonance and inviting touch response. At $2,499, the Godin arguably offers more personality than a satin-finished instrument at the same price with a more famous name. It’s well built and feels like a guitar that’s in it for the long haul. And when it comes to tone and a pure playing experience, the Connaisseur MJ shines.
Billed as a practice amp, this 40-watt, solid-state combo with reverb and tremolo is clean, pedal- and stage-friendly, and affordable.
Orange O 40
I enjoy that back-of-the-throat, big cat growl that starts happening when you turn up the preamp of an Orange amplifier. But the company’s new O Tone 40 is a different breed of feline. With no gain control and a 1x12 made-in-Poland Voice of the World speaker that doesn’t break up until you start cranking it past noon, the O Tone 40 is designed to purr rather than snarl—unless lashed to an overdrive or fuzz pedal. It adds a different, more American-vintage flavor to the company’s lineup of versatile, low-priced new-generation amps and a voice shaped, in many respects,by the number and character of the stomps on your pedalboard.
Practice Schmactis
The solid-state O Tone 40 is billed as a practice amp, but I’d feel comfortable taking it onstage anywhere I’d use, say, a Deluxe Reverb or Blues Junior. It’s a 40-watt, class-AB build with 3-band EQ, digital reverb, and footswitchable JFET-driven tremolo. There’s an effects loop, too, and the combo clocks in at a light 26 pounds. In the modern practice-amp spirit, the O Tone has a 1/4'' headphone out and an unbalanced line-out to run into a DAW. There’s also an auxiliary input for, say, pumping in rhythm tracks or plugging in a metronome. The cabinet is medium-density fiberboard, versus the birch plywood of the 35-watt, 1x10 Orange Crush, which has no reverb or tremolo. And it’s tagged at a very reasonable $399, given its overall functionality.
With its classic control set—reverb, depth, speed, bass, midrange, treble, and volume, from left to right—the O Tone 40 is easy to use, and dialing up a host of good sounds with single-coil and humbucking pickups was a snap. The closed-back design and overall sonic profile tends to make the amp a bit bass heavy, especially with humbuckers, so it’s important to watch the EQ settings. I found a set-it-and-forget-it location with the bass at 9 o’clock, the mids floored, and the treble at 11 o’clock. This is a matter of taste, of course, and mine runs toward the mid-heavy with tempered treble. After all, Orange amps’ strength has always been the harmonic richness of their mids, and the O Tone 40 hits that mark. Plus, adding a little more treble pulled things toward Marshall territory, too.
Another aspect I loved was the breakup I started to hear working the volume up past noon. It’s more subtle than snarling, and reminded me of the organic dirty sounds that can be achieved by cranking up old Valco and Gibson amps from the ’50s and ’60s. So vintage tone hunters may find the O Tone 40 a great lower-priced alternative to an actual period piece. But the quiet effects loop also makes the amp ready for sonic futurism, if that’s one’s goal.
Finally, the reverb is deliciously spring-like, and the dial will travel from dry to surf to the supernatural. The tremolo has plenty of vintage character, too, although I would like to see a little more response in the lower range of the depth control, like that I’ve experienced with old Supros and Gibsons, which can get pretty radical right out of the box.
The Verdict
The super-affordable Orange O Tone 40 is versatile and pedal-friendly, with vibe-y reverb and tremolo as well as an effects loop, so stomp OD fans likely won’t miss the amp-maker’s usual appealing gain profile. There’s enough headroom for clean stage and rehearsal sounds at substantial volume, and pushing the volume past noon yields a very vintage-amp-like breakup profile, which make the O Tone a dependable work-pony with much more than a single trick.
Incremental improvements yield a deeply satisfying whole in a Tele for all seasons.
Fender Player II Modified Telecaster SH & Stratocaster Demos by John Bohlinger | First Look
As the slightly unwieldy name for this new series suggests, Fender is not averse to regular, incremental tweaks and refinements to core and legacy instruments. Some such improvements get guitar folk riled up more than others. But the refinements and overall execution in the new Player II Modified Telecaster SH are almost exclusively lovable. It’s musically flexible, stout, precision crafted, and satisfying to play. And the sturdy build, plentitude of sweet sounds, and the accessible price add up to a satisfying sum—a guitar capable of fending off competitors striving to beat Fender at their own game in the $1K price range.
The tight fit-and-finish I’m used to from Fender’s Ensenada, Mexico, factory is plain to see everywhere. In an almost black shade of purple/indigo called dusk with rosewood fretboard and black pickguard, it’s a beautiful guitar with a moody personality. Design elements that are felt rather than heard, however, reveal a sunnier disposition. The neck profile is a variation on the C profile Fender uses in scads of guitars, but the satin finish and more contoured fretboard edges make it feel extra fast and lived in.
There’s a lot that’s exciting and satisfying to hear, too. Any good Telecaster in the single-coil bridge/humbucker neck pickup configuration has a high potential for magic. So it goes here. If there is any difference in core tonality between a vintage Telecaster bridge pickup and the Player II Modified Tele bridge unit, it’s that the latter might feel a little beefy in the low-midrange and maybe just a little fuzzy along the edges where vintage Telecasters shatter glass. I heard these qualities most via a vintage Vibrolux Reverb, which made the Tele bridge pickup sound a touch bellowy. The pickups are a fantastic match for an AC15 though, and most folks will hear tones squarely, identifiably, and often delectably along the Telecaster spectrum regardless of amp pairing. The pickups are also a great match for each other—both in combinations of the bridge and humbucker and the bridge and split-coil humbucker. The possible combinations are compounded by rangey pots and a treble-bleed circuit that keeps guitar volume-attenuated settings awake with top end. If you’re keen on working with the Telecaster SH’s volume and tone controls and split-coil capabilities, it’s remarkable how many sounds you can extract from the Telecaster SH and an amp alone. With a nice overdrive and a little echo, the world is your oyster.
At a click just north of a thousand bucks, the Player II Modified Telecaster SH is in a crazy-competitive market space. But it is a guitar of real substance, and in this iteration, features meaningful enhancements in the pickups, bridge, and locking tuners that offer real value and utility.
The punchy and potent practice amp that propelled many classic QOTSA tracks proves surprisingly versatile thanks to a flexible EQ section and cool clean tones.
One of the reasons classic Queens of the Stone Age tracks leap from radio speakers like striking vipers is because Josh Homme is a true recording artist—an individual that chases and realizes the sounds in his mind by any means necessary. When you play the 10-watt, solid-state Peavey Decade Too with Homme and QOTSA in mind you understand why the original Peavey Decade became integral to that process. It’s feral, present, nasty, bursting with punky attitude, and when tracked and mixed with a booming bass, sounds positively menacing. But it’s also a lovely clean jangle machine that will lend energy to paisley psych pop or punch to a Bakersfield Telecaster solo.
Objectively speaking, if you’ve played an ’80s Peavey practice amp before, you will know many of these sounds well. (Many of my own early amplified experiences came courtesy of a borrowed Backstage 30, so they are etched deep in my marrow and consciousness.) Like any small amp with a little speaker and cabinet, it’s marked by an inherent, pronounced midrange honk—no doubt, an ingredient that Homme found appealing in his original Decade. The saturation is thick and surprisingly dimensional. But it’s the 3-band EQ, with added bass and top-end boost buttons, that really extends the versatility of the Decade Too. In many contexts, it made a cherished vintage Fender Champ sound like a one-trick pony. The Decade Too may not excel at cooking-tubes-style distortion, but in terms of punch, clarity, and versatility in the studio environment, it delivers the goods.