With a tone vocabulary that spans clean, smoky, grinding, and growling—plus a Two notes speaker simulator—the 25-watt Airwave is a ferociously fun, potentially formidable amp for any size stage or studio.
Needless to say, the splashy news about Supro’s Airwave is its onboard Two notes cab sim that expands the amp’s studio and live capabilities, not to mention a player’s creative options. Having Two notes cab simulations onboard is a cool thing. It takes many of the cab sim tailoring capabilities of, say, the Universal Audio OX or Boss’ WAZA Tube Expander, and makes them part of the Airwave’s amp architecture, which is no small victory for convenience.
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But the 2x6V6 Airwave is a very cool stage and studio amp before you ever touch the cabinet simulation capabilities. At 25 watts, with tube-driven tremolo and spring reverb, it’s a cool alternative for players considering a tweed Deluxe, Deluxe Reverb, Princeton Reverb, or, for that matter, any of Supro’s excellent low- to mid-power combos. But while it’s not quite the blank slate a Deluxe Reverb is (the Airwave’s voice is generally more compressed, with lower headroom), if I had to record or play a show with the Airwave, a delay pedal, and a guitar, I’d do so confident that I had about 4-zillion awesome, tender-to-gnarly textures to work with.
Little Basher
The Airwave is a handsome amp, designed with lots of vintage Supro motifs, a wide aluminum control panel, rocker switches, and a control layout that are more than a little evocative of the Rolling Stones’ early Ampegs. There’s also a little Stones swagger in its voice. For while it can do a very convincing approximation of bright, almost-cleanish Princeton Reverb or Deluxe Reverb sounds, it’s basically grittier than either of those. Not in a way that confines the Airwave to garage-rock trash realms, but which hints at sepia-tone speaker sounds and a loud, rowdy vintage Supro or tweed Fender edge when you dig in with a flatpick. These savage-around-the-edges facets of the Airwave’s personality are tempered, perhaps, by the 12'' speaker, which adds thickening counterpoint to the barky midrange growl and enhances bass frequencies. It helps make the 3-band EQ section feel more sensitive and interactive, too.
The tone variations available between just the EQ and master volume/gain control interplay are plentiful. But all those sounds can be dramatically recast and even made electrifyingly aggressive with the onboard, switchable boost and drive, which are activated by the two rocker switches on the front panel or optional footswitches.
Alternate Realities
To interface with the Airwave’s Two notes capabilities, you download the Torpedo Remote app. But you can obtain excellent sounds without going deep, thanks in part to the amp’s onboard boost and drive switches. They feel like pedals perfectly selected to work with the amp and each other. The drive in particular is tough and snarling. And though your results may differ, to me the effects feel organically enmeshed in the fabric of the amp’s output. Both effects can be gritty, punchy, and explosive extensions of the amp, and together they can make it sound huge for 25 watts. The Torpedo Remote app calls up more-or-less photorealistic representations of several studios and live spaces (ancient temples included!), microphones, and cabinets. As in many other cab sim applications, you can readily and easily change microphones, slide microphone positions back and forth, switch between virtual cabinets of various sizes, as well as add preamps and reverbs with easy-to-use analog-style interfaces. If the wealth of sounds here isn’t already everything you need to get a great recorded sound, they get you off to a great start. What’s important, though, is how seamlessly they function with the whole range of the amp’s tones.
The Verdict
Although $1.5K might seem like a lot to pay for an Indonesia-built tube amp, it’s noteworthy that amps like the Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb reissue are now pushing the $1.8K barrier. But the Airwave includes a useful and well-integrated Two notes Torpedo cab sim solution worth several hundred dollars by itself. Most impressively, Airwave excels in both the purely analog and digital cab sim realms without compromising capabilities in either. The amp has loads of personality and range. It’s up for a punky Kinks/Ramones rumble or Alvin Lee rippage, but just as eager to please as a clean-cut extra in a Jaguar-and-spring-reverb surf party flick or vintage soul session. If you’re the kind of artist inclined to do a little of all that in your recording and performing life, the Airwave satisfies on every count.
Like so many pedals that became legends, the Klon Centaur spawned legions of copies and imitators that possess unique virtues all their own. You can now count Keeley’s new Manis among the Klon-inspired stomps that took a great idea and shaped something uniquely awesome in the process. As far as klones go, it’s a great one. Tested alongside a very accurate klone that I use as a benchmark in Klon tests (it was A/B tested with a real-deal Klon once owned by my colleague Joe Gore), the Manis was virtually a mirror image, and often a more satisfying one for its slightly less compressed voice.
One of the most practical attributes of good Klon-style pedals is the relative ease with which they pair with very different rigs. The circuit’s inherent ability to span mellow boost and ferocious, chugging distortion while maintaining dynamic response and detail makes it an invaluable tool for coping with luck-of-the-draw backlines and adjusting to venues of varying size. With options to use germanium transistor clipping and a bass boost, however, Manis multiplies this multifacetedness considerably.
The Deadly Manis
Germanium clipping diodes are, of course, among the most critical parts of the original Klon’s architecture, and the Manis sounds beautiful and accurate in germanium-diode mode. But when germanium transistors take over the clipping function, the character of the pedal changes perceptibly. The Manis is audibly and tangibly less compressed, there’s more air and space in the output, and it’s easier to summon extra grit from your signal by changing pick intensity. You might hear a little less focus in germanium transistor mode, which can adversely affect the pedal’s ability to slot in a busier mix. But in isolation, the germanium transistor clipping sounds and feels much more awake and dynamic. The ability to switch between the two also makes the Manis more versatile when stacking with fuzz and other overdrives, and merely flipping between clipping modes could significantly recast the personalities of Big Muffs, Fuzz Faces, and even other klones without diluting their essence.
“The Manis is audibly and tangibly less compressed, there’s more air and space in the output, and it’s easier to summon extra grit from your signal by changing pick intensity.”
Switching in the bass boost, which gives the Manis a 3 dB kick one octave below the circuit’s usual cutoff frequency, also adds a significant breadth to your available tone spectrum. It can lend warmth to the most authentically Klon-like voices in germanium diode mode, or lend an almost Marshall-like sense of oomph to a signal without compromising much in the way of dynamics.
Ultimate Klon Killer? The Keeley Manis Overdrive Demo with John Bohlinger | First Look
The Verdict
If the Manis was merely a klone that hewed close to its inspiration, it would be an admirably authentic example of the breed. But the bass boost and transistor clipping modes make the Manis a potentially invaluable survival tool for any player that faces changing amplifiers, venues, and recording situations, and needs to extract the most utility possible from every pedal. It might well be the only klone you ever need.
Wanna talk about rabbit holes? Well, few are deeper or darker than one that awaits when you compare the virtues, shortcomings, and construction peculiarities of Big Muffs. Make no mistake, I love the things. And studying real, audible differences among Big Muff variants is fun. But I would happily take back many hours I’ve spent contrasting Ram’s Head, Triangle, and Sovtek versions, and their clones—all to arrive at the conclusion that they all sound awesome in their own right. One dude that has spent about a million hours dissecting Muff tone minutiae is EarthQuaker Devices founder Jamie Stillman. Hisefforts to reverse engineer his pal Dan Auerbach’s unique-sounding Sovtek Muff begat theHoof, which remains among EarthQuaker’s most enduring and successful products.
Just as Auerbach’s Muff possessed a certain something missing in otherwise identical Sovteks, so it was with a Version-6 (V6) Electro-Harmonix Big Muff used by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem for his band’s fuzz-bass tones. As 40-something pedals will, Murphy’s V6 Big Muff got a bit fussy for tour life, so Stillman and EQD were tasked with crafting a replacement. But like so many vintage pedals that have become notorious and legendary, Murphy’s V6 Big Muff is distinguished by construction inconsistencies that made it a quirky and unique thing.
EQD’s interpretation of this formula—made manifest here in the Chelsea Low End Fuzz Driver—is a Big Muff-style voice that leans more Ram’s Head than Sovtek. In strictly sonic terms, that means lots of grind, presence, and a delectable balance between air and aggression that make the Chelsea soar. Like a vintage V6 Big Muff, it features a tone-bypass switch which removes the tone pot entirely. The midrange-heavy result is appealing and impressive in its own punky way. But the rangeful tone control, and the oxygenated sounds that live in its treblier zones, in particular, are highlights of the pedal’s vocabulary that make it distinctive.
As the “Low End Fuzz Driver” handle and Murphy’s historically bass-oriented usage suggest, the Chelsea’s tone profile is a great tool for crafting gnarly, nasty, bottom-end sounds that have a trace of almost saxophone-like honk and grit on top of mere mass—a sound composite that gives bass and baritone riffs lift and definition. But as sweetly and swaggeringly as the Chelsea gels with bass, guitarists will find it a source of rich and blistering tones, and a distinctive alternative to early Triangle-, Ram’s Head-, and V6-style Big Muff sounds.
Xotic Effects newest version of the Vox-flavored AC Booster, the AC Booster V2, adds a second, footswitchable boost circuit (tweakable via a small, clear knob tucked among the four main-channel controls), plus a set of four DIP switches on the box’s righthand side which engage compression, modern or classic voicing, low-mid boost, and high-mid boost.
This new suite of features packs significant extra functionality into V2’s still-diminutive enclosure. The Vox sounds are all there, and with the high-mids juiced and treble nudged, you’re squarely in clanging Top Boost territory. The modern voicing trades some furry mid-range chunk for a bit more aggression and clarity, while the compression is useful for leveling leads and smoothing out unruly playing.
The boost knob is a little difficult to access, situated as it is in the center of the primary four-knob array. I don’t have particularly big fingers, but even I had trouble twiddling it. That’ll annoy some. But it’s a small price to pay for such a pedalboard-friendly footprint. The boost doses you with a healthy bump in level and gain that’s great for stand-out leads and solos. And speaking of standing out, the upper-mid boost switch is a treat. I found that creating a greater disparity between the high mids from the low mids made for a more precise and satisfying tone-shaping experience than I would experience using a standard mids knob.
There are no shortage of pedals that ape Vox AC30 mojo, but I haven’t seen many that will give you the range of utility that the AC Booster V2 will, for less for $200. Xotic nailed a smart and versatile redesign here.
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.