The fact that small amps excel—and can sound really big—in studio situations isn’t news as much as it’s audio engineering gospel. But while little amps like the Fender Champ, Gibson Skylark, and Danelectro DM10 have been pulling feats of trompe-l’oeil on records for decades, some small combos still sound bigger and badder than others. And I feel pretty good about making the case for Magnatone’s new 5-watt Starlite as one of the biggest sounding—and most flexible—little amps that’s ever joined this club of overachievers.
Maggie Mélange
The Starlite is something of an early-’60s Magnatone mashup. The name is borrowed from a series of Maggies from the mid ’60s best known for their arresting “squiggle” grill cloth. But the cabinet design and circuit are more closely related to the Custom 210, a 5-watt, single-6V6GT-powered rival to the Fender Champ and other small amps of the time, distinguished by the inclusion of Magnatone’s rather legendary vibrato circuit.
Sadly, there’s no vibrato on the new Starlite. The inclusion of the effect would have likely made the amp exceedingly expensive for its size. But the flexibility of the Starlite’s circuit is still extra impressive thanks to a clever tone control and a negative feedback switch that, as we will see, can profoundly transform the sound and tactile experience of playing the Starlite.
Just like every new Magnatone we’ve seen since the company’s 2014 resurrection, the Starlite is both sturdy and exceedingly handsome. I can’t think of an amp that’s less likely to disrupt the design of a well put-together living room. And its compact 17" x 8" x 12" dimensions might make it look—to less guitar-savvy interior-design-enthusiast friends—like a beautifully restored vintage radio or hi-fi speaker.
The Starlite’s construction is robust. Its smallest components, like caps and resistors—which number fewer than 30, by my count—are neatly arrayed on a glass epoxy PCB. The power transformer is from Hammond, and the power and preamp tubes are Apex-matched JJs—a 6V6S and 12AX7 respectively.
Tiny, Toneful, and Brutish
Though the benefits of using a small amp in a recording situation are well documented, there are limitations to such setups. Sometimes an 8-inch speaker won’t offer the bass response necessary for inciting a certain kind of performance. Lower wattage and smaller speakers can also change the way pedals like fuzz and high-gain overdrive respond to your playing in adverse ways. But if ever there were a 5-watt, 8-inch-speaker-equipped amp with the flexibility to help bridge those gaps, it’s the Starlite.
Much of the Starlite’s versatility is derived from its very flexible tone control. Magnatone suggests that it helps bridge tweed and black-panel Fender Champ sounds. And to some extent that is very true. Counter-clockwise from noon, the control scoops out progressively more midrange, which is a hallmark of black-panel Champs, resulting in exceptionally crisp, sparkling high-end output and honking, modest bass response with low to moderate amp distortion. Cranked to the gills, as any black-panel or early silver-panel Champ fan knows, this tone profile can sound pretty brash and splatty—particularly with single-coils. That’s where the midrange-boosted clockwise half of the tone control becomes invaluable.
Warmly saturated overtones can give you the confidence to lean hard on the amp at full volume without fear of being too piercing.
Clockwise from noon, the added midrange starts to massage and round off harsher transients while increasing saturation to the lows and low-mids, adding flattering contours to 5th- and 6th-string output and a satisfyingly distorted edge to high strings. Because of the Starlite’s class-A single-ended circuitry, there isn’t any of the tweed sag you associate with amps like the Deluxe—at least in the clinical sense. But these warmly saturated overtones can give you the confidence to lean hard on the amp at full volume without fear of being too piercing.
The beauty of both of these tone settings, and the many cool in-between shades available through the control’s ample range, is that the Starlite is super responsive to guitar-volume attenuation. You can very easily set the amp up at wide-open volume and move from aggressive crunchy tones to clean ones with a slight adjustment of your instrument’s controls.
The amp’s response and distortion makeup can also be completely reshaped by the negative feedback switch. With the switch on (a configuration that sets the amp up as Fender designers of old would have intended), the Starlite’s distortion tends to be warmer, and clean tones tend to be less spiky. In general, the negative feedback “on” settings were more satisfying and versatile to my ear. But in the moments I hankered for extra Mike Bloomfield-style sting, taking the negative feedback out of the mix was an enticing and thrilling option.
The Verdict
At $1,299, the Starlite is 100 bucks more than Fender’s excellent ’57 Custom Champ. And I suspect that for many potential customers, the more expansive and flexible tone control, negative feedback switch, output for an 8-ohm external, and the dashing, less-common styling will be worth the extra cash. Even if you find the head-to-head tweed-style comparisons a toss-up (and the Starlite is not, strictly speaking, a tweed Champ equivalent), the Maggie arguably has an edge in versatility. In its most black-panel-like settings, I still found the Starlite throatier, more massive, and even a little more sparkly on top than my otherwise sweetly ringing early-’70s silver-panel Champ (which is identical to a black-panel in most respects). The same qualities also make it a little more conducive to use of boost, overdrive, and fuzz, which, by the way, all sound fantastic-to-fantastically-trashy in tandem with the Maggie.
Such margins of advantage may be slim to modest in each comparison. But when using a small amp in the studio, where creating the illusion of a bigger amplifier is often the aim, the Starlite’s knack for lending a little extra illusion of mass and muscle is no small consideration.
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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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