Some ultra-premium amps are packed with a dizzying array of features. But the only dizzying things about Little Walter amps are their superb tones and boldly minimalist designs. (Well, that, and their hefty price tags.)
Little Walter mastermind Phil Bradbury won the endorsements of A-list Nashville players with two previous amps: a 22-watt model driven by two 6V6 power tubes, and a 50-watter with dual 6L6s. And now there’s the Twin 22/50, which combines both amps in a single head.
Super Duper Two-In-One
When I say “both amps,” I mean it. We’re not talking channel switching or some tricky circuit-swapping architecture. Inside the head are two discrete steel chassis, each with its own transformers, tubes, and power supply.
We reviewed the 50/22 with its matching 2x12, semi-open-backed cabinet, which lets you run both amps in true stereo. The cabinet features two contrasting Celestion speakers (a G12 Alnico Gold and a ceramic-magnet G12-T75). You can route either amp to either speaker, or run either through one or both speakers. It’s a clever and versatile arrangement.
Both head and cab reveal top-tier workmanship. They’re garbed in ravishing honey-tinged lacquered tweed, and the speaker cabinet is solid pine. The dual amp chassis are mounted to the bottom surface of the head, tubes and transformers facing up, and everything else encased in metal. The head’s unusual height lets you access the tubes from above (and provides critical ventilation, because these amps runs hot). As on all Little Walter amps, the wiring is strictly point-to-point—they don’t even use turret board, let alone circuit board. The transformers are hefty Hammonds, and the review model arrived stocked with JJ tubes.
Simple, Not Stupid
Both of the Twin’s amps draw inspiration from classic combos of the 1950s, but they’re not retro for retro’s sake. Bradbury and his amps convincingly make a case that the simpler the circuit, the better the tone. There are no master volume controls. No reverb or trem. A single tone control on each amp siphons off treble, but nothing else. These amps are all about sending the loudest, most harmonically rich signal to the power amp tubes, and generating gorgeous distortion there.
That’s the motive for another retro detail common among all Little Walter amps: Bradbury employs strictly octal tubes. That’s no surprise when it comes to the 6V6 and 6L6 power tubes, but it’s an unusual choice for preamp tubes. Octal preamp tubes were common in the 1940s and ’50s, before the advent of nine-pin (“noval”) tubes such as the 12AX7. Octal tubes distort less readily than noval ones, which means less compression, fatter lows, more high-end headroom, and a purer signal to the power amp section. The downside is, they can be harder to source, and relatively large bottles make them prone to microphonics. (It’s almost impossible, for example, to find a non-microphonic replacement for the EF86 tubes that appeared in some early Voxes.) But like early Fender tweed amps, the 50/22 employs 6SC7 preamp tubes. (According to Tube Depot’s Rob Hull, these are in relatively good supply and not terribly expensive.)
The preamp tubes in the review model sounded fine, and you definitely hear their character blasting from the speaker. If the words “power amp distortion” make you salivate, fetch the drool bucket before plugging in.
Nifty 50
The 50-watt 6L6 side sounds glorious. Clean tones crackle and shimmer. Ample headroom provides strong note definition and a sense of “air” around each note. Meanwhile, the stout transformers, streamlined circuitry, and resonant cabinet deliver buff lows. Individual notes and frequencies never leap out too aggressively, even when digging into a bright, single-coil bridge pickup.
While this is the Twin’s “clean side,” distortion sounds equally excellent. Tones grow fatter and smoother as you advance the gain, yet they retain strong attacks. (This thing excels at Stones-style raunch.) The amp is biased hot, though—diming the volume introduces harsh, buzzy distortion. Most players will probably get best results by following builder Bradbury’s recommendation for parking the volume knob somewhere in the middle of its range and shaping the tone via touch and guitar knob adjustments.
Likewise, many players will prefer to leave the tone control maxed. As Bradbury correctly notes, the passive tone circuits in vintage amp amps are strictly subtractive, and you get the maximum signal to the power amp with the circuit wide open. The tone control’s voicing promotes that approach: It nixes highs only modestly throughout most of its range, with a rapid roll-off at the very lowest settings. But with such beautifully balanced tones and graceful treble attenuation at higher volumes, you may never need to fiddle with the tone control.
This amp sounds great through both speakers, together and separately. (As expected, the ceramic-magnet speaker is a bit tighter and crisper than the alnico one.) Why not mike both, and perfect your blend at the mixing board?
Ratings
Pros:
Stellar ’50s-style amp sounds. Superb workmanship. Extraordinarily dynamic and responsive. Great tonal variations via clever cabinet configuration.
Cons:
Did you say five grand?
Tones:
Playability/Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$4,000 (head); cabinet $900 w/ Celestion G12-T75s ($1,000 as reviewed with one G12-T75 and one Celestion G12 Alnico Gold)
Company
littlewaltertubeamps.com
Let’s Get Small
The dual-6V6 22-watt side nails what most players love about early tweed amps— and then some. It distorts gorgeously at relatively low volumes, and reveals many lovely overdrive colors as you advance the volume.
Just as the “clean” amp generates great distortion sounds, the “dirty” 6V6 amp offers fabulous clean tones. They’re not as sparkly as the 50-watt tones—there’s always a bit of “hair” at all but the lowest settings. But you may be startled by how chimy and clear this small amp can sound. (I don’t know if I’ve ever heard such strong pick attack from an overdriven 2x6V6 circuit.) Parking the volume anywhere near the middle of its range puts you in that sought-after sweet spot where you can control the breakup by touch alone.
This tone control feels more linear than that the one on the 50-watt side—there’s a smooth, even roll-off across its range. (Personally, I’d set the tone to max, station the volume at 2 o’clock, and make all tonal adjustments by playing them.)
This amp is small but powerful, simple yet versatile. It sounds as good as any tweed-influenced head I’ve heard.
Plugging into both amps simultaneously via an A/B box sounds as good as you’d hope. You can dial in many useful tones that blend smooth, small-amp overdrive with big-amp definition.
The Verdict
The Twin 50/22’s look, tones, and workmanship are unimpeachable. You don’t need great technique to summon great tones from either amp, but they were clearly designed by and for guitarists who rely on subtleties of touch and technique, and they’re the players likeliest to love the 50/22 the most. Obviously, if you have five grand to play with, there are many other options, including a pair of the antique amps that inspired the Little Walter line. Also, some players who might be attracted to the notion of a true dual amp might wish for a Vox- or Marshall-style side, rather than two Fender-influenced circuits. But recording and touring pros who live and die by the signature sounds of the great mid-century amps will cherish this extraordinary instrument.
The Rickenbacker 481’s body style was based on the 4001 bass, popularly played by Paul McCartney. Even with that, the guitar was too experimental to reach its full potential.
By the early 1970s, the great interest the lads had sparked in 6- and 12-string Ricks had waned. But thankfully for the company, there was still high demand for yet another Beatles-played instrument: the 4001 bass.
Paul McCartney was gifted a 4001 by Rickenbacker in 1965, which he then used prominently throughout the group’s late-’60s recordings and while leading Wings all through the ’70s. Other rising stars of rock also donned 4000 series models, like Yes’Chris Squire, Pink Floyd’sRoger Waters, the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Stu Cook, and more.
And like that, a new star was born.
So, what’s a guitar company to do when its basses are selling better than its guitars? Voilà: The Rickenbacker 480. Introduced in 1972, it took the 4000-series body shape and created a standard 6-string out of it, using a bolt-on neck for the first time in the brand’s history.
The 481’s slanted frets predate the modern multi-scale phenomenon by decades. The eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
“It was like a yo-yo at Rickenbacker sometimes,” factory manager Dick Burke says in Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo. “We got quiet in the late ’60s, but when the bass started taking off in the ’70s, we got real busy again, so making a 6-string version of that was logical, I guess.”
The gambit worked, for a time. Sales of the 480 were strong enough at first that, in 1973, a deluxe model was introduced—the 481—and it’s one of these deluxe versions that we’re showcasing here.
“The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.”
Take a close look and you’ll notice that the body shape isn’t the only remarkable feature. The 481 was Rickenbacker’s first production run to feature humbucker pickups. Here, you can see each humbucker’s 12 pole pieces dotting through the chrome cover, a variant casing only available from 1975 to 1976. (Interestingly enough, the pickups had first been developed for the 490, a prototype that never made it to public release, which would’ve allowed players to substitute different pickups by swapping loaded pickguards in and out of the body.)
The new pickups were also treated with novel electronics. The standard 3-way pickup-selector switch is here, but so is a second small switch that reverses the pickups’ phase when engaged.
The inventive minds at Rickenbacker didn’t stop there: The 481 features slant frets—pointing ever-so-slightly toward the body of the guitar—and the eight-degree tilt of the frets is matched by an eight-degree tilt of the nut, pickups, and bridge.
Long before the fanned fret phenomenon caught on in the modern, progressive guitar landscape, Rickenbacker had been toying around with the slant-fret concept. Originally available from 1970 forward as a custom order on other models, slant frets were all but standard on the 481 (only a small minority of straight-fret 481s were built).
The 481 was the deluxe version of the 480, which preceded it and marked the first time the company used a bolt-on neck.
Dick Burke, speaking separately to writer Tony Bacon in an interview published on Reverb, only half-recalls the genesis and doesn’t remember them selling particularly well: “Some musicians said that’s the way when you hold the neck in your left hand—your hand is slanted. So, we put the slanted frets in a few guitars. I don’t know how many, maybe a hundred or two—I don’t recall.”
Even proponents of the 481 do not necessarily sing the praises of the slanted fretboard. Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, a 481 superfan, told Rickenbacker Guitars author Martin Kelly, “I don’t just love the 481, it’s part of me.... The 481’s slanted frets have made my fingers crooked for life, but I don’t care, I’ll take that for it’s given me riff after riff after riff."
Initial 480-series sales were promising, but the models never really took off. Though they were built as late as 1984, the slant-fret experiment of the 481 was called off by 1979. And these slanted models have not, in the minds of most players or collectors, become anywhere near as sought-after as the classic 330s and 360s, or, for that matter, the 4001s.
For that reason, 481s—despite their novelty and their lists of firsts for Rickenbacker—can still be found for relatively cheap. Our Vintage Vault pick, which is being sold by the Leicester, England-based Jordan Guitars Ltd, has an asking price of 3,350 British pounds (or about 4,300 U.S. dollars), which is still well under half the going-rate of early 360s, 660s, and other more famous Ricks. Some lucky buyers have even found 481s on Reverb for less than $2,000, which is unheard of for other vintage models.
With its idiosyncratic charms, the 481 remains more within reach than many other guitars of a similar vintage.
Sources: Martin Kelly’s Rickenbacker Guitars: Out of the Frying Pan Into the Fireglo, Tony Bacon’s"Interview: Dick Burke on the Creation of the Rickenbacker 12-String | Bacon’s Archive" on Reverb, Reverb Price Guide sales data.
