Bruce Egnater’s contributions to the amplifier world are a big deal—just ask any guitarist who’s used a master volume and gain control. At the height of arena rock in the ’70s, Egnater was at the forefront of developing amp designs that provided highgain tones at reasonable volumes. Word got out about the incredible work he was doing on tube amps from his shop on Detroit’s 8 Mile Road, and the rest is history.
Today, Egnater Amplification remains revered by high-gain nuts. And the Tweaker amplifiers were designed with the same mindset that drove Egnater three decades ago—to build an amp with immense amounts of gain, crystal cleans, and great tone at a manageable volume. His newest introduction to the series, the Tweaker-88, is built to satisfy those who need a little more kick, with enough volume on tap to cover the biggest gigs.
Tweaked to Perfection
The Tweaker line has historically been about
big tone in a small, all-tube packages, which
makes the Tweaker-88 a noteworthy deviation
from the formula. The 88’s maximum power
of 88 watts (duh) dwarfs its more diminutive
brethren, the Tweaker (15 watts) and the
Tweaker 40 (40 watts). Most players in the
market for an amp that accomplishes what
the first Tweakers were designed to do might
not be in the market for such a high-powered
amp, but those who enjoy Egnater’s approach
to big volume will doubtlessly be intrigued.
At the heart of the Tweaker-88’s preamp circuit, you’ll find four 12AX7 preamp tubes (two for the preamp signal itself, one for the serial effects loop signal, and the last as the phase inverter) and a pair of KT88 power tubes. KT88s are commonly used for bass amplifiers and high-grade, home-audio equipment because of their capacity for high, clean headroom. They’re much harder to push into overdriven territories than EL84s, EL34s, or 6L6s, which make them a fine choice for country and indie-alt guitarists who like to keep their tone as punchy and grit free as possible. But heavy rockers gravitate towards their expansiveness, which is perfect for crafting huge, bassy tones that can fill a room more easily than dirtier power tubes.
The Tweaker line is, to a certain extent, about a tweaker-friendly layout, and the 88 has a pretty straightforward 2-channel layout for lower- and higher-gain tones. Each has its own Master Volume control, along with a switch that flips the power amp’s response from flatter, vintage voicing to a more modern response with boosts in the highs and lows. Both channels also share a simple 3-band EQ, which includes a Tweaker amplifier trademark—a 3-way Tone control switch. It engages three, completely different, passive tone-stacks which range from powerful low-mids (BRIT), sparkly highs and strong lows (USA), and warm, British smoothness (AC). Each of the channels can be switched from the amp’s faceplate, or from the included footswitch.
One of the nicest features of the Tweaker-88 is its ability to set separate boost levels for each channel and change how the boost affects tone and response. Each channel has its own boost level knob and 3-way switch that changes the characteristics of the boost by making it a clean or gain boost, or switching it out of the circuit altogether. They can also be conveniently switched in and out via the amp’s 4-button footswitch.
With a namesake like “Tweaker,” it’s no surprise that the Tweaker-88’s features don’t stop there. Located to the left of the input jack are two sets of controls (one for each channel) that allow you to mold, twist, and morph the gain structures themselves. Each begins with a single preamp Gain control, and moves to four separate switches that give you the option of tightening or deepening the lows, boosting the gain into metal territory, cutting or flattening the mids, or brightening the top end. With all these options at your disposal, the 88 is certainly the most versatile and powerful amp in the Tweaker line, and possibly one of the most impressive in the entire Egnater family.
Show Me The Money
The strongest aspect of the Tweaker-88’s character
is derived from melding the juicy, warm
nature of the Egnater preamp design with a
powerful, clean power amp. Since the Tweaker
and Tweaker-40 employ 6V6 and 6L6 power
sections (respectively) with such small wattage,
the preamp tone is colored when cranking
the power section to overdriven levels.
They sound great in their own right, but
the Tweaker-88’s output section lets one of
Egnater’s best-sounding preamps breathe and
stretch its legs more than ever before.
Arpeggiated notes from a Fender Telecaster soared through the 88’s Rhythm channel with great detail in the midrange, and a pleasant, soft high-end that’s become a defining characteristic of Egnater amps. Even when I had the treble control cranked above the 4 o’clock position, the highs were still surprisingly sweet, round, and non-abrasive. Flipping the voicing to Modern kicked in a healthy dose of highs and lows, but not enough to introduce clashing overtones.
Each channel’s four, tone-shaping switches helped me carve the tone in greater detail— some with more noticeable effects than others. The most drastic of these is the Hot/ Clean switch, which kicks the pristine clean tone into dirtier territory for blues leads. The Bright/Normal switch, meanwhile, adds tight highs that brought out the twangy tendencies of the Tele’s bridge pickup for country fingerpicking. The Tight/Deep switch yielded some of my favorite tones from the amp, keeping me in a Chet Atkins-inspired thrall of smooth, lead work with soft, but present, moving basslines over the top.
Kicked In The Teeth Again
Egnater amps are known for their copious
amounts of overdrive, and the Tweaker-88
is no exception. The amp’s Lead channel has
loads of gain on hand. But because of the
open and clean nature of the KT88-fueled
power section, the overdrive tones rarely got
congested—which I found to be an issue
with the Tweaker and Tweaker-40 amps at
extremely high-gain settings.
With a Les Paul in the chain, the Tweaker-88’s Lead channel stayed firm and solid in the low end and maintained a crisp, high end no matter how much I pummeled the strings. And the fierce-sounding, mid range grind I first heard in Egnater’s Tourmaster and Renegade amps ripped through a Marshall JCM800 4x12 without harshness. Egnater could have voiced the highs and mids to have more of a razorsharp, modern bite, but in passing over that temptation, Egnater gives the amp a very balanced personality—even with the master volume’s voicing switch set to Modern. As a result, I was able to hear every note in a fat, Malcom Young-esque open chord, while individual notes sang with body and richness.
The Verdict
Egnater’s new multi-faceted powerhouse
is an anomaly in the Tweaker line. It certainly
doesn’t fall under the small wattage,
bedroom-amp category, nor was it built
with low-volume recording as a top priority.
Its super-clean power amp creates a more
honest representation of the preamp’s tone
and does a great job of preserving a guitar’s
character, rather than exuding the raunchy
and rude attitude of its little brothers.
If you love the tone of Egnater’s punchy,
small-watt workhorses and crave the power
needed to project that tone across a club or
barroom floor, you simply cannot pass up
trying this amp out.
Buy if...
you’ve loved the thick, smooth tones of the Tweaker amps, but have always wanted more power.
Skip if...
you need onboard effects like reverb.
Rating...
Street $899 - Egnater Amplification - egnateramps.com |
Revv G3 Purple Channel Preamp/Overdrive/Distortion Pedal - Anniversary Edition
The Revv G3 revolutionized high gain pedals in 2018 with its tube-like response & tight, clear high gain tones. Suddenly the same boutique tones used by metal artists & producers worldwide were available to anyone in a compact pedal. Now the G3 returns with a new V2 circuit revision that raises the bar again.
Unlike the simplest sustain pedals, the Layers enables the player to significantly mutate sustained notes and textures. You can add blends of delay and chorusing that aren’t perceptibly either effect, which creates uncommon-sounding stacks and waves of guitar sound. The Layers pedal takes practice to use with precision, but even partial command of its time-warping capabilities makes it rewarding to use, and it’s relatively easy to dial in chaotic—or fluid and ordered—sustain and harmonizing effects to suit your whims.
Blink Twice If You Understand
Dive straight into Layers without a peek at the quick-start guide and you might fast end up swimming in washes of repeats and harmonic tangles. At first, it might not even be apparent what a layer is supposed to be, particularly because the delay and modulation effects can be so prominent. Essentially a layer is a snapshot of the sound you’re playing as you trigger the effect—either by pressing the soft-relay footswitch or by dynamic picking, depending on where you set the threshold control. (This type of functionality will be familiar to players that use envelope filters.) From there, you can control the length of the layer with the decay control, the wet/dry mix, and the rate at which the layer becomes audible, with the attack knob. By getting a feel for these functions, you can use Layers to predictably create droning and harmonizing accompaniment to what you play. But several additional features enable dramatic alteration of the shape and color of your layers. The “single” button allows switching between a default mode, in which as many as three layers can play concurrently, and another that allows only a single layer at a given time.
A set of secondary functions for each knob are activated by holding down either the single or sub-octave button, which primarily transposes layers down an octave. Options here include the ability to adjust the modulation time, modulation blend, delay time, diffusion (between more or less cavernous ambience), and the amount of dry signal sent to the delay effect, which makes the echoes dirtier and more prominent. The footswitch does triple duty. A single click activates a layer, clicking and holding sustains a layer for as long as you hold the switch, and clicking twice clears layers and puts the pedal in bypass. Functions like dry/wet signal splits, stereo operation, and control via external pedals are also available.Third-Eye Super Vision
The features listed here make the Layers seem more imposing than it is. As I said at the top, you may stare at the pedal a lot to see when the attack threshold is crossed or see which layers have been activated in the multi-layer mode. But the longer you work with Layers, the more you can do by feel. Getting a feel for what rate of swell and decay are right for a given guitar part can change from tune to tune, which makes the absence of presets a slight inconvenience. But it’s not terribly hard to make these adjustments in between tunes or even on the fly, when you’re comfortable. If you elect to go with a single set up and stick with it, you can still add much dynamic control depending on where you set the threshold. Configuring the pedal with a low- to medium-sensitive threshold, three available layers, conservative mix levels, and more generous delay times means you can move between gentle passages where you ride over misty, slow-fading overtone backgrounds or forceful, blown-out ones—all by varying pick intensity. It’s a much more interesting way to build quiet-to-loud dynamics than just switching on, say, an extra drive pedal and reverbs simultaneously. And that flexibility can help you respond to a live performance with extra sensitivity to the mood of a piece. (By the way, it bears mentioning that Layers is often more effective at the start of an effects chain, where it will respond most directly to your input.)
Layers can be subtle. I enjoyed using low mix levels, long decay settings, a permissive threshold, and slow-ramping rise times to create hazy harmonizing trails. I also loved the avalanches of deeply modulating, colliding, and completely unsubtle soundwaves you can slather over a still-coherent melody. Loopers will love building stacks of rising, falling, swelling, and swirling passages of all of these textures that roll like storm clouds. In fact, a two-pedal setup of Layers and a looper will make a simple guitar and amplifier weirder and more otherworldly by orders of magnitude.
The Verdict
The Layers inhabits a sweet middle ground between a simple single-function sustain pedal and overflowing loopers or multi-delays. And though you can utilize very prominent harmonizing voices, it’s generally grainer, less loaded, and more unique than a shimmer reverb. It’s these very uncommon voices and sounds, as well as a capacity for intuitive operation, that make Layers so alluring.
It would have been easy for Wampler to simply make a Mostortion clone and call it a day, but they added some unique twists to the Mofetta pedal. While the original Mostortion had a MOSFET-based op amp, it actually used clipping diodes to create its overdrive. The Mofetta is a fairly accurate replica and includes that circuitry, but also has a toggle switch for texture, which lets you choose between the original-style diode-based clipping in the down position and multi-cascaded MOSFET gain stages in the up position.
Luscious Low Gain and Meaty Mid-Gain
The Mofetta’s control panel is very straightforward and conventional with knobs for bass, mids, treble, level, and gain. The original Mostortion was revered for its low-gain tone and is now popular among Nashville session guitarists. Wampler’s tribute captures that edge-of-breakup vibe perfectly. I enjoyed using the pedal with the gain on the lower side, around 9 o’clock, where I heard and felt slight compression that gave single notes a smooth and silky feel. I particularly enjoyed the tone-thickening the Mofetta lent to my Ernie Ball Music Man Axis Sport’s split-coil sound as I played pop melodies and rootsy, triadic rhythm guitar figures. The Mofetta has expansive headroom, and as a result there’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much. Even turning the gain all the way off yields a pleasing volume bump that would work well in a clean boost setting.
There’s a lot of space in which you can find really bold, cutting tones without muddying the waters too much.
Switching the texture switch up engages the MOSFET section, introducing cascading gain stages that elevate the heat and add flavor the original Mostortion didn’t really offer. Classic rock and early metal are readily available via the MOSFET setting. If you need to stretch out to modern metal sounds, the Mofetta probably isn’t the pedal for you. Again, the original Mostortion was, first and foremost, a low-to-mid-gain affair, so unless you’re using it as a boost with a high-gain amp, the Mofetta is not really a vehicle for extreme sounds.
One of the Mofetta’s real treats is its responsiveness. Even at higher gain settings the Mofetta is very touch sensitive. You can tap into a wide range of dynamic shading just by varying the strength of your pick attack. I enjoyed playing fast, ascending scalar passages, picking with a medium attack then really slamming it hard when I hit a high climactic note, to get the guitar to really scream.
The Verdict
Wampler is a reliably great builder who creates pedals with a purpose. I own two of his pedals, the Dual Fusion and the Pinnacle, and both are really exceptional units. The Mofetta captures the essence of the Mostortion and makes it available at an accessible price. But even if you’ve never heard or played an original Mostortion, you’ll appreciate the truly versatile EQ, touch sensitivity, and the bonus texture switch, which expands the Mofetta’s range into more aggressive spaces. The wealth of dirt boxes on the market today can make a player jaded. But Wampler pushed into a relatively unique, satisfying, and interesting place with the Mofetta.
Filthy, saturated fuzz is a glorious thing, whether it’s the writ-large solos of Big Brother and the Holding Company’s live “Ball and Chain,” the soaring feedback and pure crush of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” or the sandblasted rhythm textures of Queens of the Stone Age’s “Paper Machete.” It’s also a Wayback Machine. Step on a fuzz pedal and your tone is transported to the ’60s or early ’70s, which, when it comes to classic guitar sounds, is not a bad place to be.
Catalinbread’s StarCrash is from their new ’70s collection, so the company is laying its Six Million Dollar Man trading cards on the table—upping the ante on traditional fuzz with more controls and, according to the company’s website, a little more volume than the average fuzz pedal, while still staying in the traditional Fuzz Face lane.
The Howler’s Viscera
Arbiter Electronics made the first Fuzz Face in 1966. The StarCrash is inspired by that 2-transistor pedal, but benefits from evolution, as did almost all fuzz pedals in the ’70s, when the standard shifted from germanium to silicon circuitry to improve the consistency of the effect’s performance. The downside is that germanium is gnarlier to some ears, and silicon transistors don’t respond as well to adjustments made via a guitar’s volume control.
While Fuzz Faces have only two knobs, volume and fuzz, the silicon StarCrash has three: volume, bias, and low-cut. Catalinbread’s website explains: “We got rid of that goofy fuzz knob. We know that 95 percent of all players run it dimed, and the remaining 5 percent use their guitar’s volume knob to rein it in.”
I suspect there are plenty of players who, like me, do adjust the fuzz control on their pedals, but the most important thing is that the core fuzz sound here is excellent—bristly and snarling, with a far girthier tone than my reissue Fuzz Face. It’s also, with the bias and low-cut controls, far more flexible. The low-cut control allows you to range from a traditional, comparatively thinner Fuzz Face sound (past noon and further) to the StarCrash’s authentic, beefier voice (noon and lower). Essentially, it cuts bass frequencies from 40 Hz to 500 Hz, resulting in an aural menu that runs from lush and lowdown to buzzy and slicing. And the bias control is a direct route to the spitty, fragmented, so-called Velcro-sound that’s become a staple of the stoner-rock/Jack White school of tone. The company calls this dial a “dying battery simulator,” and it starves the second transistor to achieve that effect.
Sweet Song of the Tribbles
Playing with the StarCrash is a lot of fun. I ran it through a pair of Carr amps in stereo, adding some delay and reverb to mood, and used a variety of single-coil- and humbucker-outfitted guitars. While both pickup types interacted well with the pedal, the humbuckers were most pleasing to my ears with the bias cranked to about 2 o’clock or higher, since the ’buckers higher output allowed me to let notes sustain longer before sputtering out. Keeping the low-cut filter at 9 o’clock or lower also helped sustain and depth in the Velcro-fuzz zone, while letting more of the instruments’ natural voices come through, of course.
With the low-cut filter turned up full and the bias at 10 o’clock, I got the StarCrash to be the perfect doppelganger of my Hendrix reissue Fuzz Face. But that’s such a small part of the pedal’s overall tone profile. It was more fun to roll off just a bit of bass and set the bias knob to about 2 or 3 o’clock. Around these settings, the sound is huge and grinding, and yet barre chords hold their character while playing rhythm, and single-note runs, especially on the low strings, are a filthy delight, with just the right schmear of buttery sustain plus a hint of decay lurking behind every note. It’s such a ripe tone—the sonic equivalent of a delicious, stinky cheese—that I could hang with it all day.
Regarding Catalinbread’s claims about the volume control? Yes, it gets very loud without losing the essence of the notes or chords you’re playing, or the character of the fuzz, which is a distinct advantage when you’re in a band and need to stand out. And it’s a tad louder than my Fuzz Face but doesn’t really bark up to the level of most Tone Bender or Buzzaround clones I’ve heard. In my experience, these germanium-chipped critters of similar vintage can practically slam you through the wall when their volume levels are cranked.
The Verdict
Catalinbread’s StarCrash—with its sturdy enclosure, smooth on/off switch and easy-to-manipulate dials—can compete with any Fuzz Face variant in both price and performance, scoring high points on the latter count. The bias and low-cut dials provide access to a wider-than-usual variety of fuzz tones, and are especially delightful for long, playful solos dappled with gristle, flutter, and sustain. Kudos to Catalinbread for making this pedal not just a reflection of the past, but an improvement on it.
Catalinbread Starcrash 70 Fuzz Pedal - Starcrash 70 Collection
