Pickup Party Week 2 is live and we're giving away a set of Lollar Monolith humbuckers, hand-built for players who need serious output without sacrificing clarity or feel. Enter below!
The concept for our Monolith Humbucker set was to explore a higher-output pickup set intentionally designed for guitarists who play both modern and extreme styles of music. High-output humbuckers often suffer from either a boxy voicing or a harsh and brittle top end that can be fatiguing. We voiced a set of pickups with the right balance of a strong, thicker midrange and smooth top end for clarity and articulation.
The Monolith bridge position offers a midrange forward frequency response with the right amount of compression and dynamics when palm muting for a satisfying attack and tight low-end grunt. Like our other pickup sets, the neck position is open and clear, but with a prominent midrange that offers a more vocal sound for leads and clean passages.
Splitting the coils on these humbuckers provides a full-bodied single-coil sound. When under gain, the split coils provide the percussive and aggressive tone for lower tunings and extended scale length instruments that progressive and djent players seek.
The Monolith Humbucker set is available as a two-piece set for both 6 and 7-string guitars. For 6-string sets, we also offer an F-spaced bridge position pickup (53 mm) to match a wider string spacing required for guitars with tremolos.
Trickfish Amplification has added the L212 to its L Series cabinetlineup. The L212 is a 2x12" with diagonally arranged Lavoce neodymium drivers in the samecompact footprint as the Trickfish L410.
The new L212 delivers the tonal character that 12" drivers are known for: warm and definedthrough the low end, present in the midrange, and an open and musical top end. The L212provides enough output to carry a stage, without having to use a second cabinet. At 800 wattsAES and 45 lbs., it delivers plenty of output and is easy to move.
Key features include:
2×12" Lavoce neodymium drivers in diagonal arrangement
800W AES / 3,200W peak power handling
8Ω impedance, 45 lbs.
3-way tweeter switch (High / Med / Low)
Same footprint as the L410 — 24.5 × 22 × 15 in.
Trickfish president Ryan Owens said: "Players who want the warmth and depth of 12" drivers atfull gigging volume now have a single cabinet that gets them there. The diagonal driverplacement was a deliberate choice — it supports better stage coverage without changing thecabinet's footprint, so you get more coverage without giving anything up."
The Trickfish L212 carries a street price of $1,449 MAP. For more information visittrickfishamps.com.
Flattley Pedals has introduced the Revolution 10 AE, the company’s special 10th Anniversary Edition of the award-winning Revolution 3-in-1 dynamic overdrive.
Commemorating the company’s 10th anniversary in 2026, the Revolution 10 AE is a powerful and flexible overdrive pedal. It’s based on a tube screamer style circuit but on “steroids” giving you smooth creamy overdrive tones full of depth and reactive sounds depending on your style of playing. It comes installed with a three-way toggle switch which gives you complete overdrive tonal flexibility when you need it.
The Revolution 10 AE comes with purple laser etched control knobs, purple candy lacquer along with a purple halo light ring to light it all up. The clipping options in the forward and rear positions on the toggle switch also got a makeover too giving the Revolution 10th Anniversary Edition some serious fire power.
The pedal’s purple halo light rings installed diffuse the light when playing live, so you can avoid being blinded by standard LEDs, and a purple laser etched aluminium foot topper gives you more real estate for contact when switching the pedal on and off during quick changes when playing live.
All Flattley "Platinum Range" pedals are hand processed in Flattley’s paint shop, with a strikingly unique finish.
The Revolution 10 AE includes this control set:
Toggle Switch: With the switch in the centre position the overdrive circuit runs through an Op amp integrated circuit, the switch in the upper/forward position has asymmetrical clipping in the circuit provided by 3 different types of diodes, the switch in the rearward/aft position has symmetrical clipping in the circuit provided by silicon diodes installed in a special way.
Revolution 10 AE Controls
Volume: Controls the overall output level.
Gain: Controls the amount of gain/overdrive
Tone: Controls the amount of treble/bass
Other features include:
9-volt external power operation (no internal battery option)
20mm purple anodised aluminium custom etched control knobs
Purple halo light rings installed
The Revolution 10 AE comes with a purple custom etched aluminium foot topper
All Flattley pedals are handmade and hand wired in the UK using the highest quality components.
The Flattley Revolution 10 AE carries a street price of $319/£259.00. For more information visit flattleyguitarpedals.com.
There may not be a single perfect amp in this world, but for me, a Princeton Reverb-style circuit with a 12" speaker comes pretty close. Low-mid power, a little extra bass from a bigger speaker, it’s a just-right recipe for so many situations. Magnatone’s U.S.-made, hand-wired Kingston is a beautiful take on this basic architecture.
Many Kingston specs—the two 6V6 power tubes and 12AX7s in the preamp section, for instance—will look familiar to Princeton fans. There are critical differences, too: Apart from the 12" speaker, the Magnatone has no tremolo, employs a solid-state rectifier, and uses an Accutronics/Belton Digi-Log digital reverb instead of a real spring unit. But the amp sounds fantastic. It’s loud—maybe even too loud for some at-home situations where neighbors are a concern. But unlike a lot of other amps in the 12- to 15-watt category, the Kingston stands a really good chance of hanging with a rowdy band—even after they’ve had five beers apiece and lost all sense of tasteful restraint.
Tight and Light
The Kingston is a beautiful thing to behold. Like most of the Magnatone line, it borrows from the company’s late-1950s cabinet designs, though where the 1950s amps were exclusively brown, you can have the Kingston in traditional brown, camel, a beautiful dark green, or sleek, minimalist black. Controls are straightforward, with knobs for volume, treble, and bass. Though the Kingston isn’t featherweight at 31 pounds, the combination of a relatively light plywood cabinet and compact dimensions make it feel very totable. A Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb seemed like a sizable boat anchor by comparison. At the same time, the Kingston is super solid, and projects luxuriousness on the outside. On the inside, the circuit board is hand-wired on thick PCB that is well insulated from hot tubes by the substantial steel chassis. If there are any unusual obstacles to easy, ordinary service, they aren’t apparent. And the whole thing feels like it could run many hours and years without attention from a tech.
Magnanimously Monstrous
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Larry Cragg, the man who helps make Neil Young’s tweed Deluxe sound like Vesuvius blowing its top, consulted on the design of this amp. It may feel light, but it sounds big. Very big. When you step on the gas, the Kingston does not behave like a small amp. The throaty and surprisingly massive drive tones are largely free of the fizz you hear in some amps in this power range. The overdriven output even possesses some of the deep and weighty characteristics of the 1968 Fender Bassman and 2x12 cab that sat next to the Magnatone during this test—a feat that is achieved and aided, no doubt, with the help of the Warehouse Guitar Speaker-designed ceramic 12". And while the Kingston can seem pretty scooped at higher gain settings, it responds to treble addition willingly, without getting sizzly.
Of course, many folks sizing up amps in this class have no intention of running them wide open. A couple 6V6s and a 12" speaker are also a nice way to balance headroom and natural drive if you need space for drive pedals and the nuances in time and modulation effects, and the Kingston excels in this environment. The natural compression that occurs through the first 60 percent of the volume range seems to thicken effects more than obscure or flatten them. Klon- and TS-style drives both sounded deep and complementary rather than flat and harsh—even at advanced pedal gain settings. Ditto for fuzzes like Tonebenders and Fuzz Faces. And effects like chorus and phase sounded especially enveloping.
Magnatone’s 12-watt, handwired combo with 12" speaker opens the field in a competitive class headed by the legendary Princeton Reverb.
All this high-headroom and capacity for high volume does have one minor downside: For a relatively small amp, the Kingston is challenged as a bedroom amp—a function that Magnatone hails as one of its virtues. I still had a great time running the Kingston at its lowest volumes—especially with a little pedal compression and modulation in the mix to enliven things. But it can sound thin on its own at low volume, and it’s hard to resist nudging the volume to recover the thickness in the output that is so addictive. So, bedroom amp? I guess it depends on your roommates, neighbors, and family members. But the Kingston can definitely struggle to get small in some rooms.
Space Status
Magnatone’s decision to use a digital reverb in the Kingston is probably a wise one in terms of keeping costs down. And on balance, I’m happy that they put more effort and expense into making the amp sound fundamentally superb rather than into onboard effects.
That said, spring reverb purists should know there are real, perceptible differences between the sound of the Kingston’s Accutronics/Belton Digi-Log and a real mechanical spring unit. I really like Belton-based digital reverbs in general, and often use a Belton Brick-driven Death By Audio Reverberation Machine with reverb-less amps for its reliably vintage-like sounds. But the Kingston’s reverb is definitely less splashy and spacious than a Fender amp’s spring unit. Next to the ’65 Deluxe Reverb, the Magnatone had to run at about 80 percent to come close to the dimensionality of the Fender’s real spring reverb at just short of 6 on the dial. The Kingston’s reverb also sounds more hall-like than a spring imitation. Did this difference bother me while I was immersed in the otherwise fat, beautiful tones coming from the Kingston? Maybe here and there when I thought about it, but not often. For the most part, the Kingston’s reverb just sounded like icing on a very big, rich, and buttery cake.
The Verdict
Magnatone’s Kingston adroitly and gracefully walks several fine lines: between big and small, between headroom and natural gain and compression, between lightweight and solid. It also inhabits an interesting rung on the price ladder. The Kingston costs $2,349. Fender’s handwired ’64 Custom Princeton Reverb with a 10" speaker is $3,149. A PCB-based ’65 Princeton Reverb is $1,579. So, while the Kingston is a sizable investment—and probably out of reach for some—it delivers very boutique sounds at a price that’s more accessible than many boutique competitors (as well as some big-name rivals) by several hundred, if not a thousand-plus, more dollars. Is the still-considerable price worth it? Given its superb balance, I’d venture that the Kingston is a pretty solid investment—particularly if sweet sounds are the ultimate measure of return.
Fryette Amplification has launched the Valvulator Mini, a high voltage, vacuum tube–based buffer for guitarists who utilize modelers, digital amps and long pedal chains. It’s designed to preserve and enhance your guitar’s tone by converting the signal from high to low impedance – eliminating high-frequency loss and signal degradation caused by cable capacitance, impedance mismatches, phase / ground loops and the use of effects pedals.
The tube buffer also acts as a tone sweetener, cleaning up and enriching your sound while unveiling subtle harmonics, dynamics and the touch sensitivity normally associated with plugging directly into an amp.
Housed in a compact steel chassis and utilizing a JJ 12AX7/ECC83 vacuum tube, the Valvulator Mini is powered by 120-volt AC and includes an AC adapter.
It provides four different two-position toggle switches:
Two impedance switches - gets the most tone out of your pickups, by eliminating high-frequency loss and signal degradation caused by cable capacitance and the use of effects pedals
Phase switch - keeps you in phase, ensure full tone
Ground loop switch – helps eliminate hum
It provides the following I/O:
A ¼” input
An unbalanced low-impedance ¼” output
An unbalanced transformer isolated ¼” output
A balanced XLR output, making it a versatile solution as a tube direct box for both pedalboards and studio use
“The Valvulator Mini is the long-awaited evolution of one of our most popular rig solutions, the Valvulator 1 Vacuum Tube Buffer. The Mini features increased headroom and dynamic range, together with significantly lower noise. As always, I wanted a solution for myself that I knew would be a welcome tool for players, especially those who really appreciate the tone and feel of plugging directly into an amp” commented Steve Fryette.
The Fryette Valvulator Mini carries a street price of $199. For more information visit fryette.com.
