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I’ll be the first to admit that when Egnater’s Tourmaster 4212 combo arrived in our offices a while back, the entire staff was a bit fearful of the thing. We physically despaired at the sight of this amp; weighing a no-joke 95 pounds and rolling uneasily on four industrial casters – requiring the pusher to put a full and unyielding back into it – the 4212 feels monolithic and immutable. The manual was thick, and the two extended rows of knobs on the front panel, spanning four channels plus a master section, were daunting as hell.
Of course, it wasn’t just the looks or the weight of the Tourmaster that had us drawing straws – we’ve all seen and played our share of high-gain behemoths before. It was because it said “Egnater” on the front panel, and we knew exactly what we were dealing with. This wouldn’t just be another high-gain combo; this was courtesy of Bruce Egnater, a man who has spent the last 30 years of his life exploring the world of gain and tubes, the man who frequently brings fire back from the gods and puts it into the hands of guitarists. We were messing with powers that no one quite understood. I envisioned my face melting like Major Arnold Toht in Raiders of the Lost Arkupon strumming my first power chord. But alas, the review must go on, so I tracked down a PRS Modern Eagle II, a Les Paul, a Strat, a few cords and entered the Tourmaster’s world.
Control Freak
| We also reviewed Egnater''s Rebel 20. Read it here. |
While the Tourmaster 4212 (essentially the combo version of the Tourmaster 4100 head) packs in a ton of features, it’s probably easiest to envision this thing as four separate amps shoehorned into one massive, 100-watt package. With this image in mind, the amp’s imposing front panel, lined with big, chunky knobs, becomes a little easier to grasp; the 4212 features two clean channels and two overdrive channels, each of which feature Gain, Bass, Mids, Treble and Volume controls, plus a Modern/Classic switch and a switchable Contour control. The Tourmaster rounds out the front face with a set of high/low inputs and a Master section consisting of a Volume, Reverb, Presence and Density controls.
Moving to the back panel reveals even more possibilities. The Tourmaster features a fully-featured, tube-driven effects loop, including series and parallel modes, and the ability to assign it to specific channels; a Record Out that provides a solid simulation of a mic placed at the edge of the combo’s dual Celestion Elite 80 12" speakers; tube biasing ports; and Speaker Out jacks, with switchable impedances. But the true gem hidden on the back panel is Egnater’s revolutionary Power Grid. Comprised of five innocuous sliders and accomplished through a uniquely designed power transformer, this grid allows users to set the power output for each channel in the amp. A Full Power/Half Power switch sets up the options available: in Full Power mode, users can set their channels to 100, 50 or 20 watts; in Half Power mode, the range shifts to 50, 25 and 10 watts.
For those not accustomed to this level of control, it’s truly a revolution in how you adjust your amp. If you’d like to get a big, fat, clean tone, you can set the clean channels at, say, 50 watts; you can simultaneously set your overdrive channels on the 25-watt setting to get those power tubes cooking without overpowering the entire mix. Aside from the Power Grid’s tonal utility, it also proves to be an eardrum/relationship/neighborhood saver, as the Tourmaster in full 100-watt mode can quickly become an exercise in sonic punishment (although it should be noted that the Tourmaster remains boisterous even in the lowest power settings). And while an amp pushing 10 watts through two 12” speakers will obviously not sound the same as an amp pushing 100 watts through the same pair, the Tourmaster pulls it off, sounding great at all of the given power settings – none of the amp’s character is ever lost in translation.
It may sound like there’s a lot tweaking to be done here, but dialing in the Tourmaster proved to be much easier than any of us anticipated. From the sheer tactile experience of twisting the knobs – each control is easy to read and feels substantial in the hand – to hearing the wide variety of sounds emanating from the Tourmaster’s custom-voiced Celestion speakers, it seems that Bruce Egnater has perfected the balance between options and ease of use. Want to adjust the settings until your bandmates threaten to quit? Go right ahead. Want to just plug in and play? You can do that too. The Tourmaster 4212 combo is truly one of the most versatile, powerful combos I’ve ever used.
Crunch Time
While the 4212 is packed with a bevy of cool and innovative features, but we haven’t forgotten that it has to sound good, too. Featuring no less than eight 12AX7s and four 5881s – a close relative to the ubiquitous 6L6 – this amp is packed with some serious glass and ready to serve.
Because most of us know Egnater for in-your-face gain, the first channel (Clean/Vintage 1) is perhaps the biggest surprise here. All of the sounds here were gorgeous and pristine, even with the humbucker-equipped PRS, all while remaining full-bodied; imagine a British amp doing its best vintage Fender impression and you’ll get the Tourmaster. With the Classic setting engaged, there’s a significant amount of midrange punch and an impressively tight low-end; flipping the voicing switch to Modern hollows things out a bit, removing some of that midrange emphasis and allowing the trebles to shine back through. Perhaps the most impressive part about this channel is the amount of headroom present; unless you have the Gain jacked to the right, this channel refuses to breakup. As a rather heavy-handed player myself, I can report that even my hardest attacks remained clean and clear.
If you’re the type of guitarist that prefers to park it on one channel and let your Volume knob do the talking, the second channel (Clean/Vintage 2) is for you. Arguably the most versatile channel out of the four, this channel packs in more gain than the first, but is capable of the same balanced, crystalline cleans. With the Classic setting engaged and a little help from the Gain knob, you’ll be reliving your vintage Marshall days in no time. This channel does an exemplary job of showcasing the Tourmaster’s sensitivity and response – with just a Volume knob and a set of attentive hands, you’ll be able to take this channel from clean rhythm strumming all the way into a Zeppelin solo.
Of course, clean channels are only so much fun; the third channel, Overdrive 1, finally introduces us to the crunch that Egnater has built a name upon. The position of the voicing switch will determine the sounds you’ll get out of this channel: with the switch in the Classic position, you’ll get a classic British crunch – pair it with an SG and you’ve got the perfect AC/DC cover band rig; with the switch in the Modern position, you’ll scoop out some of that midrange and hear more Mesa/Boogie than Marshall. The Contour control, available on all of the channels, really shines on the Overdrive channels, allowing you to completely shape the midrange content (or lack thereof) of your signal to your liking.
The fourth channel, Overdrive 2, is the deepest end of the pool and where the Tourmaster’s scariest tones hide. With the Classic setting engaged, the Tourmaster does its best souped-up Marshall impression, perfect for sustaining lead lines; with the Modern setting engaged, this becomes one of the heaviest, tightest combos on the block. Using a combination of the Contour control and a light touch on the Master Density knob (essentially a bass boost), you can sculpt impressively deep modern metal sounds. Better yet, even at the craziest of gain settings, the Tourmaster retains a crisp definition through the entire frequency spectrum – only when pushing the Bass or Density knobs far to the right did things become muddy or indistinct. While the single-coil Strat was tough to control at higher settings, the humbucker-equipped guitars loved this channel, begging me to keep playing long after my ears had had enough.
The Final Mojo
This amp’s absurd weight aside, the Tourmaster 4212 combo is truly a stroke of genius. Each channel sounds spectacular, and offers a wide swath of sounds with a friendly handful of controls. The tone-shaping capabilities are unparalleled in a combo, and the inclusion of features like a versatile effects loop and Record Out are great. The Power Grid is an even bigger bonus, meaning that you can have both saturated power tubes and a happy spouse in one package, all without losing gigging capabilities. If you’ve been on the market for a combo that gives you both classic and modern rock sounds, without neglecting the cleans, you cannot do better than the Tourmaster 4212 – especially when you begin comparing price tags. Oh, and my face is still in one piece, so there’s that.
Buy if...
you want one of the most versatile, powerful combos available.
Skip if...
you don''t have a roadie or ranch-style house.
Rating...
MSRP $1599.99 - Egnater Amplification- egnateramps.com |
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
LR Baggs HiFi Duet High-fidelity Pickup and Microphone Mixing System
"When a guitar is “the one,” you know it. It feels right in your hands and delivers the sounds you hear in your head. It becomes your faithful companion, musical soulmate, and muse. It helps you express your artistic vision. We designed the Les Paul Studio to be precisely the type of guitar: the perfect musical companion, the guitar you won’t be able to put down. The one guitar you’ll be able to rely on every time and will find yourself reaching for again and again. For years, the Les Paul Studio has been the choice of countless guitarists who appreciate the combination of the essential Les Paul features–humbucking pickups, a glued-in, set neck, and a mahogany body with a maple cap–at an accessible price and without some of the flashier and more costly cosmetic features of higher-end Les Paul models."
Now, the Les Paul Studio has been reimagined. It features an Ultra-Modern weight-relieved mahogany body, making it lighter and more comfortable to play, no matter how long the gig or jam session runs. The carved, plain maple cap adds brightness and definition to the overall tone and combines perfectly with the warmth and midrange punch from the mahogany body for that legendary Les Paul sound that has been featured on countless hit recordings and on concert stages worldwide. The glued-in mahogany neck provides rock-solid coupling between the neck and body for increased resonance and sustain. The neck features a traditional heel and a fast-playing SlimTaper profile, and it is capped with an abound rosewood fretboard that is equipped with acrylic trapezoid inlays and 22 medium jumbo frets. The 12” fretboard radius makes both rhythm chording and lead string bending equally effortless, andyou’re going to love how this instrument feels in your hands. The Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons add to the guitar’s classic visual appeal, and together with the fully adjustable aluminum Nashville Tune-O-Matic bridge, lightweight aluminum Stop Bar tailpiece, andGraph Tech® nut, help to keep the tuning stability nice and solid so you can spend more time playing and less time tuning. The Gibson Les Paul Studio is offered in an Ebony, BlueberryBurst, Wine Red, and CherrySunburst gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finishes and arrives with an included soft-shell guitar case.
It packs a pair of Gibson’s Burstbucker Pro pickups and a three-way pickup selector switch that allows you to use either pickup individually or run them together. Each of the two pickups is wired to its own volume control, so you can blend the sound from the pickups together in any amount you choose. Each volume control is equipped with a push/pull switch for coil tapping, giving you two different sounds from each pickup, and each pickup also has its own individual tone control for even more sonic options. The endless tonal possibilities, exceptional sustain, resonance, and comfortable playability make the Les Paul Studio the one guitar you can rely on for any musical genre or scenario.
For more information, please visit gibson.com.
Introducing the Reimagined Gibson Les Paul Studio - YouTube
Phat Machine
The Phat Machine
The Phat Machine is designed to deliver the tone and responsiveness of a vintage germanium fuzz with improved temperature stability with no weird powering issues. Loaded with both a germanium and a silicon transistor, the Phat Machine offers the warmth and cleanup of a germanium fuzz but with the bite of a silicon pedal. It utilizes classic Volume and Fuzz control knobs, as well as a four-position Thickness control to dial-in any guitar and amp combo. Also included is a Bias trim pot and a Kill switch that allows battery lovers to shut off the battery without pulling the input cord.
Silk Worm Deluxe Overdrive
The Silk Worm Deluxe -- along with its standard Volume/Gain/Tone controls -- has a Bottom trim pot to dial in "just the right amount of thud with no mud at all: it’s felt more than heard." It also offers a Studio/Stage diode switch that allows you to select three levels of compression.
Both pedals offer the following features:
- 9-volt operation via standard DC external supply or internal battery compartment
- True bypass switching with LED indicator
- Pedalboard-friendly top mount jacks
- Rugged, tour-ready construction and super durable powder coated finish
- Made in the USA
Static Effectors’ Street Series pedals carry a street price of $149 each. They are available at select retailers and can also be purchased directly from the Static Effectors online store at www.staticeffectors.com.