Not to take anything away from ambitious amps with multiple channels, high-octane preamps, and complex tone stacks, but it’s tough to beat the tactile response and sonic immediacy of a simple signal path populated with high-quality parts.
The new D2O from North Carolina’s Dusky Electronics is a stellar example of doing lots with less. Dusky says the amp’s name alludes to the chemical symbol for the heavy water used in nuclear reactors, and was chosen because the amp can sound both heavy and clear. It certainly does—and in cool and unusual ways.
A Fresh, Clean Look
I tested D2O with Dusky’s Hydrogen Cab ($575, sold separately)—a 1x12 with a ceramic Warehouse G12C/S speaker. With their coordinated orange/sky-blue color scheme, the head and cab look fab together. Their cheery colors could have been inspired by a 1960s detergent box—or a pop artist’s interpretation of one. And then there’s that wild front-panel cutout—back lit by LEDs.
Lacking reverb or tremolo, the D2O is comparatively no-frills. And the head’s two 6L6 power tubes evoke such ’60s Fender amps as the Bassman, Bandmaster, and Super. (According to Dusky, you can substitute EL34, KT88, or 6550 power tubes with no modifications, though I only evaluated the amp with its stock Russian-made Tung-Sol tubes.)
of harmonious sustain.
Meanwhile, the preamp tubes are 6SL7s—octal models that fell out of general use during the ’50s. The amp’s paraphase-style phase inverter circuit (most associated, perhaps, with Fender tweed circuits) is even more primitive. But while various D2O design details are plucked from the guitar amp’s early history, the resulting tones feel edgy and modern.
Far from Fender
The 32-watt D2O is about as loud as most dual-6L6 Fender blackface amps, though its tone profile is quite different. Compared to, say, a ’60s Super, D2O distorts more readily and at relatively low volumes. The distortion’s character is different, too, with crackling upper-mid crunch reminiscent of vintage Vox amps, even when listening through the Hydrogen Cab’s American-style speaker. D2O has less clean headroom than an equivalently powered blackface, but between the harmonious distortion and crisp definition, your clean parts may sound great a little dirtier than usual. The frequency range is extraordinary. Lows are powerful yet tight. (D2O actually works nicely as a retro-style bass amp.) Highs can be as intense as you want, and then some.
Expanded frequency range isn’t always a good thing. With extra highs and lows, your tones can start to sound as if they were recorded directly. Fortunately, D2O boasts a novel set of tone controls uniquely suited to wrangling the amp’s potentially overwhelming lows and highs. The bass and treble controls in the first preamp stage are configured Baxandall or “James”-style, a relatively little-used circuit capable of serious high and low boosts. Meanwhile, the mid control is isolated from the bass/treble controls in the second preamp stage. It’s a cut-only control that siphons off the low mids that accumulate when you crank the bass control. Finally, there’s a high-cut control located in the power amp stage.
Ratings
Pros:
Unique design. Bold, tactile tones. Great touch response. Excellent build quality.
Cons:
No reverb or tremolo.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$1,500 street (cabinet $575, sold separately)
Dusky D2O
duskyamp.com
In other words, the tone controls require you to work via both addition and subtraction. There’s no “right” way to proceed, but I found it helpful to start with approximate bass and treble levels before setting the gain (because the amount of added highs and lows affects the degree and character of distortion). At this point, tones may be excessively boomy or brittle, but you can tame top-end nastiness with the cut control, and then adjust the mid control for the right balance of bulk and clarity. All settings are supremely dynamic. If you like, you can simply crank the amp’s volume and control the distortion amount via your guitar’s volume knob.
No matter how you set the controls, tones are deep and intense, with gobs of harmonious sustain. Thanks in part to D2O’s big-ass, U.S.-made Edcor transformers, the amp always sounds authoritative, with ultra-present highs and rock-solid fundamentals. D2O also works splendidly with gain/distortion stompboxes (like the homemade germanium booster heard 40 seconds into the demo clip).
Pretty on the Inside
D2O is beautifully built. The head’s folded-steel exterior is tough and attractive. The head weighs a sensible 27 pounds and has two rugged metal handles. You can access the tubes by removing just four screws, which takes all of 30 seconds. It only takes a minute or two to expose the full-sized, modern components inside the chassis. These are meticulously hand-soldered on turret board. It’s easy to imagine D2O sounding great decades from now.
The rear panel includes a 3-way speaker impedance selector and a switch that reduces power to 8 watts. Quiet mode sounds every bit as good as loud mode, with little of the “veiled” quality you sometimes get from, say, speaker attenuators. (My demo clips were recorded in low-power mode.)
The Verdict
With D2O, Dusky Electronics has pillaged the past to create something new. The amp offers wide-ranging tones with virile lows, face-slapping presence, and superb dynamic response. The $1,500 price tag is sensible for such an expertly crafted, hand-wired head with a fresh, fun look and so many high-impact tones.
Watch the Review Demo:
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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