Not to make light of what can be a crippling emotional issue, but I have been known to suffer from a very mild form of agoraphobia, which, when translated from the word’s Greek roots, means “fear of the marketplace.” For me, it means I have an out for not wanting to do grocery shopping. It also means some days the last thing I want to do is call people. I was in the midst of one of those days when I initially began reviewing the Port City Dual Fifty. I did my typical number: plug in, nominally twiddle the knobs and expect the sound of angels singing. Even more specifically, when I didn’t hear said angels, I cranked it – like you’re supposed to with a tube amp, right? And again, I was met not by the song of angels but more of what I hadn’t dug before.
The following day, after getting myself together emotionally, I contacted Daniel Klein at Port City Amplification and approached the amp again. Armed with his suggestions, I got it. It being, firstly, that the Dual Fifty is loud. Its Normal channel provides metric tons of headroom, and the Thick channel needs to be cranked to window-pane-rattling levels to break up. Secondly, in my relentless pursuit of aging, I realized the last time I played (for any length of time, at least) through an amp rated at anything more than 30 watts or so was early on during Bush’s first go-round, and then only when my silverface Deluxe wasn’t loud enough for a particular venue – which wasn’t very often.
The Normal channel rocks as much headroom as you could possibly want, but does so with a sweet, bell-like tone – warmer and more articulate than a typical blackface circuit. In a word, this amp, and more specifically the Normal channel, is very uptown. Sure, it breaks up, but not like a Fender or a Marshall, instead continuing to get warmer and more three-dimensional with just a dusting of dirt on top as the Volume knob moves clockwise. Mind you, this is all via the Normal channel, which provides two inputs (the second with a 3dB drop), Bright switch, Volume, Treble and Bass.
The Race is On
The nuts and bolts of the Dual Fifty include two 6L6s, three 12AX7As and one 12AT7 up front, with a GZ34 tube rectifier rounding out the package. In addition to the Normal channel, the Dual Fifty features a Thick channel, voiced along the lines of a low-wattage British amp – a tall order for 6L6s, but this amp clears that hurdle unscathed. The Thick channel’s layout mirrors the Normal channel with two inputs, the second again padded 3dB, a Deep bass-boost switch followed by Volume, Treble and Bass controls. This is the caveman, turn-it-up-and-rock channel, although keeping the volume at a reasonable level provided inspiring jazz tones.
The idea behind the Wave line of cabinets involves using 45 degree sound deflecting panels, one up top, the other down below, that, in conjunction with the port that runs across the bottom of the cabinet, are intended to make the cabinet more efficient and able to reproduce everything the amp generates. It is also intended to make the rig “responsive and louder,” so much so that “responsive and louder” is underlined in the company’s literature.
The Dual Fifty mated well with everything from Strats to Les Pauls, with my faithful Nocaster sounding particularly glorious through the Normal channel. Starting with the Bright switch off, setting the Volume at 2 o’clock, rolling the Treble up to around 1 o’clock and leaving the Bass at noon offered up some really flexible, flavorful clean tones. Country-ish tones were available on the bridge pickup, but think more along the lines of Vince Gill, not Don Rich. The depth of the amp’s timbre allowed the middle position on the Nocaster to get scarily close to the archetypal in-between Strat tone. The neck pickup sounded phenomenal for jazz, blues or anything else you would want to throw at it. The depth of this amp’s clean tones becomes apparent when playing fingerstyle on a Strat, although the Nocaster sounded amazing sans pick as well. The dynamic nuance provided is almost frightening, with the Dual Fifty not offering up much to hide behind, the amplifier equivalent of running through your shortcomings with your therapist. A Strat in the aforementioned in-between position achieved a dead-on impersonation of Mark Knopfler’s late ‘70s tone, with the same level of nuance available for the right picker.
To check out the Thick channel, Daniel suggested grabbing something with humbuckers in it, engaging the Deep switch, and turning the Volume, Treble and Bass controls all up to around 4 o’clock. Doing so resulted in a nice, dry Brit-flavored crunch. For some reason the word “papery” keeps coming up, but meant as an accolade. Pulling the Volume back down to noon, the Treble around 2 o’clock and setting the Bass at 1 o’clock gave up a warm, woody jazz tone that sounded really uptown with a flatwound-strung Epiphone Emperor.
A big part of this rig’s tone is in Port City’s 1x12 Wave cabinet and its unique design. The idea behind the Wave line of cabinets involves using 45 degree sound deflecting panels, one up top, the other down below, that, in conjunction with the port that runs across the bottom of the cabinet, are intended to make the cabinet more efficient and able to reproduce everything the amp generates. It is also intended to make the rig “responsive and louder,” so much so that “responsive and louder” is underlined in the company’s literature.
So does it work? Yeah. It gave the Dual Fifty ample bass response, along with a rabbit-like dynamic response more along the lines of a 4x12, miles away from a typical 1x12 design. In fact, I reckon it was the main reason the volume produced by the Dual Fifty seemed all out of whack with regards to its 50-watt power rating. I went into this thinking I had a Bassman-like circuit on my hands and ended up with an amp that could hold its own with a Twin, both volume and headroom-wise. In all honesty, this amp moved a serious amount of air, certainly more than would typically be expected from a 6L6-powered 50-watter.
The Final Mojo
The Dual Fifty along with the 1x12 Wave cabinet would be the perfect rig for a player looking for a clean, warm and deep rig, handling jazz, country and uptown blues and rock tones with ease. If your amp needs encompass subtle nuance and an amazing clean tone, be sure to audition the Port City Dual Fifty. And if you’re in need of a speaker cabinet for an existing rig, make sure to check out the Wave series.
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Port City Amps
Head MSRP $1599
1x12 Unloaded Cab MSRP $400
1x12 Loaded Cab MSRP $525
portcityamps.com
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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.
Keith Urban has spent decades traveling the world and topping global country-music charts, and on this episode of Wong Notes, the country-guitar hero tells host Cory Wong how he conquered the world—and what keeps him chasing new sounds on his 6-string via a new record, High, which releases on September 20.
Urban came up as guitarist and singer at the same time, and he details how his playing and singing have always worked as a duet in service of the song: “When I stop singing, [my guitar] wants to say something, and he says it in a different way.” Those traits served him well when he made his move into the American music industry, a story that begins in part with a fateful meeting with a 6-string banjo in a Nashville music store in 1995.
It’s a different world for working musicians now, and Urban weighs in on the state of radio, social media, and podcasts for modern guitarists, but he still believes in word-of-mouth over the algorithm when it comes to discovering exciting new players.
And in case you didn’t know, Keith Urban is a total gearhead. He shares his essential budget stomps and admits he’s a pedal hound, chasing new sounds week in and week out, but what role does new gear play in his routine? Urban puts it simply: “I’m not chasing tone, I’m pursuing inspiration.”
