How the pursuit of an ideal amp setup led to a two-Carr garage/psych/roots sound.
For my debut Love and Sockets column (September 2019), I wrote about my 1964 Supro Tremo-Verb. Now, I’m returning to the Land of Me because I’ve finally found my dream amp setup. Again.
Sound familiar? I think many of us fall in love with an amp or amps, cherish and work those tones for years, and then as we evolve/devolve we start hearing a new palette of sounds beyond trusty Old Paint’s reach. Over the decades I’ve adored many setups. And I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with pedals that’s shuffled between some, none, a boatload, none, and my current two boatloads in search of the widest and wildest tones.
These birch-cabinet beauties hand-built from high-quality components always make my ears smile.
The sonic possibilities of pedals also led me to playing in stereo. And to look for a better and better core platform for those sounds. Now, for about the fifth or sixth time in my life, I’ve found my absolute killer, forever, all-time-best-and-favorite dream setup: a Carr Vincent and a Carr Telstar.
The Telstar’s simple control set.
These combos are built like little locomotives. The Vincent is the heaviest at about 44 pounds and the Telstar is roughly 39—Fender Deluxe weight class. While the Telstar is a new addition, I bought the Vincent used about five years ago at Carter Vintage here in Nashville, after spending months visiting and revisiting local shops in search of the perfect beast. Both have magnificent tones at all settings, simple controls that profoundly affect character, look retro-cool as hell, and are the loudest low-wattage circuits I’ve ever cranked. Both are power-selectable, which is handy for the wide variety of rooms and outdoor spaces I play. The Vincent flips between 7 and 33 watts, while the Telstar scales from 0 to 17.
The Vincent, which Steve Carr’s Pittsboro, North Carolina, shop has rechristened the Viceroy, blends a ’60s-style preamp circuit with a ’50s-inclined output section. It has three 12AX7s and one 12AT7 for the preamp and reverb, and two 6L6GC power tubes. The controls are (left to right) volume, treble, mid, bass, reverb, and drive. There’s much mojo in the mid and drive. The mid dial also engages a boost function that increases midrange and gain. This is where I live, because I love the depth, clarity, warmth, and growl available, with a lick of smooth compression. The boost partially bypasses the tone stack, so the EQ controls don’t do much when it’s activated. Honestly, they don’t need to. I tend to keep the other extra-sauce function, drive, up to about 4-to-5 o’clock. The drive is kinda like a clean boost and comes after the volume and tone-shaping sections. It pumps up response and punch, lending sparkle at low volumes and snarl at higher ones. All that voice comes out of a 12", 75-watt Eminence Red Coat Wizard.
The Vincent’s somewhat less simple controls.
As you’d guess from the name of my Vincent’s buddy, the Telstar has mojo straight out of the space age—plus a few innovations. The coolest is its tube array, which blends a 6L6 and an EL84 for remarkably detailed, complex, and fresh-sounding tones. It breathes. There’s a 12AX7 and 6SL7 octal for the preamp and a 12AT7 driving reverb. It has two other tricks in a pair of toggles. One shunts between “53” and “58” settings. The first sculpts the amp’s basic tone profile like an old tweed’s, while “58” summons up a classic JTM45 core. Toggle two jockeys between “lean” and “lush.” “Lean” is a low-cut and, with some adjusting of the tone dial, it allows Vox-like voices to emerge. “Lush” is exactly that—rich, full-range tone. I tend to live in the “58”/ “lush” zone and let the pedals do the tweaking onstage, but for cutting tight-sounding solos with hair, the “lean” setting helps maintain focus. The other knobs are volume and reverb, of course. And the speaker is an Eminence-made, 60-watt, 12" Carr Valiant. Among the boutique amps I’ve tried, I’ve not heard another that so simply and elegantly balances tradition and invention.
These birch-cabinet beauties hand-built from high-quality components always make my ears smile. Granted, it’s taken me ages to be able to afford a rig like this. But I love it with all my heart.
I’ve had some pretty terrific dream-amp setups in the past, too: a transition-era Twin, followed by that Twin run parallel with a 1972 Marshall Super Lead above a same-year Marshall 4x12, and then that Marshall and a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier Trem-o-Verb atop a pair of 4x12s. About a decade ago, when I was performing hardscrabble blues, I had a humble rig of an Epiphone Valve Standard and a Peavey combo that I’d named Igor. That rig was so juke-thentic you can hear the tubes rattle in Robert Mugge’s documentary BIG SHOES: Walking and Talking the Blues,about my then-band, Scissormen. But this time … this time … I know my dream setup is forever and for real. For now!
- Carr Mercury V Review - Premier Guitar ›
- Carr Amplifiers' Speaker Selection - Premier Guitar ›
- Carr Skylark Review - Premier Guitar ›
- Carr Bel-Ray: A First Look at the Latest Sensation in the Automotive World ›
- Discover the New Amp Driver Pedal by Human Technologies ›
Stompboxtober is finally here! Enter below for your chance to WIN today's featured pedal from Diamond Pedals! Come back each day during the month of October for more chances to win!
Diamond Pedals Dark Cloud
True to the Diamond design ethos of our dBBD’s hybrid analog architecture, Dark Cloud unlocks a new frontier in delay technology which was once deemed unobtainable by standard BBD circuit.
Powered by an embedded system, the Dark Cloud seamlessly blends input and output signals, crafting Tape, Harmonic, and Reverse delays with the organic warmth of analog companding and the meticulous precision of digital control.
Where analog warmth meets digital precision, the Dark Cloud redefines delay effects to create a pedal like no other
Wonderful array of weird and thrilling sounds can be instantly conjured. All three core settings are colorful, and simply twisting the time, span, and filter dials yields pleasing, controllable chaos. Low learning curve.
Not for the faint-hearted or unimaginative. Mode II is not as characterful as DBA and EQD settings.
$199
EarthQuaker Devices/Death By Audio Time Shadows
earthquakerdevices.com
This joyful noisemaker can quickly make you the ringmaster of your own psychedelic circus, via creative delays, raucous filtering, and easy-to-use, highly responsive controls.
I love guitar chaos, from the expressionist sound-painting of Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun” to the clean, clever skronk ’n’ melody of Derek Bailey to the slide guitar fantasias of Sonny Sharrock to the dark, molten eruptions of Sunn O))). When I was just getting a grip on guitar, my friends and I would spend eight-hour days exploring feedback and twisted riffage, to see what we might learn about pushing guitar tones past the conventional.
So, pedals that are Pandora’s boxes of weirdness appeal to me. My two current favorites are my Mantic Flex Pro, a series of filter controls linked to a low-frequency oscillator, and my Pigtronix Mothership 2, a stompbox analog synth. But the Time Shadows II Subharmonic Multi-Delay Resonator is threatening their favored status—or at least demanding a third chair. This collaboration between Death By Audio and EarthQuaker Devices is a wonderful, gnarly little box of noise and fun that—unlike the two pedals I just mentioned—is easy to dial in and adjust on the fly, creating appealing and odd sounds at every turn.
Behind the Wall of Sound
Unlike the Mantic Flex Pro, the Time Shadows is consistent. You can plug the Mantic into the same rig, and that rig into the same outlet, every day, and there are going to be slight—or big—differences in the sound. Those differences are even less predictable on different stages and in different rooms. The Time Shadows, besides its operating consistency, has six user-programmable presets. They write with a single touch of the button in the center of the device’s tough, aluminum 4 3/4" x 2 1/2" x 2 1/4" shell. Inside that shell live ghosts, wind, and unicorns that blow raspberries on cue and more or less on key. EQD and DBA explain these “presences” differently, relating that the Time Shadow’s circuitry combines three delay voices (EQD, II, and DBA) with filters, fuzz, phasing, shimmer, swell, and subharmonics. There’s also an input for an expression pedal, which is great for making the Time Shadows’ more radical sounds voice-like and lending dynamic control. But sustaining a tone sweeping the time, span, and filter dials manually is rewarding on its own, producing a Strickfaden lab’s worth of swirling, sweeping, and dipping sounds.
Guitar Tone from Roswell
Because of the wide variety of sounds, swirls, and shimmers the Time Shadows produces, I found it best to play through a pair of combos in stereo, so the full range of, say, high notes cascading downwards and dropping pitch as they repeat, could be appreciated in their full dimensionality. (That happens in DBA mode, with the time and span at 10 and 4 o’clock respectively, with the filter also at 4, and it’s magical.) The pedal also stands up well to fuzz and overdrives whether paired with humbucker, P-90, or single-coil guitars.
I loved all three modes, but the more radical EQD and DBA positions are especially excellent. The EQD side piles dirt on the incoming signal, adds sub-octave shimmer, and is delayed just before hitting the filters. Keeping the filter function low lends alligator growls to sustained barre chords, and single notes transform into orchestral strings or brass turf, with a soft attack. Pushing the span dial high creates kaleidoscopes of sound. The Death By Audio mode really hones in on the pedal’s delay characteristics, creating crisp repeats and clean sounds with a little less midrange in the filtering, but lending the ability to cut through a mix at volume. The II mode is comparatively clean, and the filter control becomes a mix dial for the delayed signal.
The Verdict
The closest delay I’ve found comparable to the Time Shadows is Red Panda’s function-rich Particle 2 granular delay and pitch-shifter, which also uses filtering, among other tricks. But that pedal has a very deep menu of functions, with a larger learning curve. If you like to expect the unexpected, and you want it now, the Time Shadows supports crafting a wide variety of cool, surprising sounds fast. And that’s fun. The challenge will be working the Time Shadows’ cascading aural whirlpools and dinosaur choirs into song arrangements, but I heard how the pedal could be used to create unique, wonderful pads or bellicose solos after just a few minutes of playing. If you’d like to easily sidestep the ordinary, you might find spelunking the Time Shadows’ cavernous possibilities worthwhile.
This little pedal offers three voices—analog, tape, and digital—and faithfully replicates the highlights of all three, with minimal drawbacks.
Faithful replications of analog and tape delays. Straightforward design.
Digital voice can feel sterile.
$119
Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay
fishman.com
As someone who was primarily an acoustic guitarist for the first 16 out of 17 years that I’ve been playing, I’m relatively new to the pedal game. That’s not saying I’m new to effects—I’ve employed a squadron of them generously on acoustic tracks in post-production, but rarely in performance. But I’m discovering that a pedalboard, particularly for my acoustic, offers the amenities and comforts of the hobbit hole I dream of architecting for myself one day in the distant future.
But by gosh, if delay—and its sister effect, reverb—haven’t always been perfect for the music I like to write and play. Which brings us to the Fishman EchoBack Mini Delay. The EchoBack, along with the standard delay controls of level, time, and repeats—as well as a tap tempo—has a toggle to alternate between analog, tape, and digital-delay voices.
I hooked up my Washburn Bella Tono Elegante to my Blues Junior to give the EchoBack a test run. We love a medium delay—my usual preference for delay settings is to have both level and repeats at 1 o’clock, and time at 11 o’clock. With the analog voice switched on, I heard some pillowy warmth in the processed signal, as well as a familiar degradation with each repeat—until their wake gave way to a gentle, distant, crinkly ticking. Staying on analog and adjusting delay time down to 8 o’clock and repeats to about 11:30, some cozy slapback enveloped my rendition of Johnny Marr’s part to “Back to the Old House,” conjuring up thoughts of Elvis trapped in a small chamber, but in a good way. It sounded indubitably authentic. The one drawback of analog delay for me, generally, is that its roundness can feel a bit under water at times.
Switching over to tape, that pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top. With the settings at the medium-length mode listed above, I could see the empty, glass hall the pedal sent my sound bouncing down. I heard several pronounced pings of repeats before the signal fully faded out. On slapback settings (time at 8 o’clock, repeats at 11:30), rather than Elvis, I heard something more along the lines of a honky-tonk mic in a glass bottle. Still relatively crystalline, which actually was not my favorite. I like a bit more crinkle—so maybe analog is my bag....“That pillowy warmth evaporated, and in its place came a very clear, pristine replication of my tone—but with just a bit of the highs shaved off the top.”
Next up, digital. Here we have the brightest voice, and as expected, the most faithful repeats. They ping just a few times before shifting to a smooth, single undulating wave. When putting its slapback hat on, I found that the effect was a bit less alluring than I’d observed for the analog and tape voices. This is where the digital delay felt a little too sterile, with the cleanly preserved signal feeling a bit unnatural.
All in all, I dig the EchoBack for its replications of analog and tape voices, and ultimately, lean towards tape. While it’s nice having the digital delay there as an option, it feels a bit too clean when meddling with time of any given length. Nonetheless, this is surely a handy stomp for any acoustic player looking to venture into the land of live effects, or for those who are already there.
A silicon Fuzz Face-inspired scorcher.
Hot silicon Fuzz Face tones with dimension and character. Sturdy build. Better clean tones than many silicon Fuzz Face clones.
Like all silicon Fuzz Faces, lacks dynamic potential relative to germanium versions.
$229
JAM Fuzz Phrase Si
jampedals.com
Everyone has records and artists they indelibly associate with a specific stompbox. But if the subject is the silicon Fuzz Face, my first thought is always of David Gilmour and the Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii film. What you hear in Live at Pompeii is probably shaped by a little studio sweetening. Even still, the fuzz you hear in “Echoes” and “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”—well, that is how a fuzz blaring through a wall of WEM cabinets in an ancient amphitheater should sound, like the sky shredded by the wail of banshees. I don’t go for sounds of such epic scale much lately, but the sound of Gilmour shaking those Roman columns remains my gold standard for hugeness.
JAM’s Fuzz Phrase Fuzz Face homage is well-known to collectors in its now very expensive and discontinued germanium version, but this silicon variation is a ripper. If you love Gilmour’s sustaining, wailing buzzsaw tone in Pompeii, you’ll dig this big time. But its ’66 acid-punk tones are killer, too, especially if you get resourceful with guitar volume and tone. And while it can’t match its germanium-transistor-equipped equivalent for dynamic response to guitar volume and tone settings or picking intensity, it does not have to operate full-tilt to sound cool. There are plenty of overdriven and near-clean tones you can get without ever touching the pedal itself.
Great Grape! It’s Purple JAM, Man!
Like any Fuzz Face-style stomp worth its fizz, the Fuzz Phrase Si is silly simple. The gain knob generally sounds best at maximum, though mellower settings make clean sounds easier to source. The output volume control ranges to speaker-busting zones. But there’s also a cool internal bias trimmer that can summon thicker or thin and raspy variations on the basic voice, which opens up the possibility of exploring more perverse fuzz textures. The Fuzz Phrase Si’s pedal-to-the-metal tones—with guitar volume and pedal gain wide open—bridge the gap between mid-’60s buzz and more contemporary-sounding silicon fuzzes like the Big Muff. And guitar volume attenuation summons many different personalities from the Fuzz Phrase Si—from vintage garage-psych tones with more note articulation and less sustain (great for sharp, punctuated riffs) as well as thick overdrive sounds.
If you’re curious about Fuzz Face-style circuits because of the dynamic response in germanium versions, the Fuzz Phrase Si performs better in this respect than many other silicon variations, though it won’t match the responsiveness of a good germanium incarnation. For starters, the travel you have to cover with a guitar volume knob to get tones approaching “clean” (a very relative term here) is significantly greater than that required by a good germanium Fuzz Face clone, which will clean up with very slight guitar volume adjustments. This makes precise gain management with guitar controls harder. And in situations where you have to move fast, you may be inclined to just switch the pedal off rather than attempt a dirty-to-clean shift with the guitar volume.
“The best clean-ish tones come via humbuckers and a high-headroom amp with not too much midrange, which makes a PAF-and-black-panel-Fender combination a great fit.”
The best clean-ish tones come via humbuckers and a high-headroom amp with not too much midrange, which makes a PAF-and-black-panel-Fender combination a great fit if you’re out to extract maximum dirty-to-clean range. You don’t need to attenuate your guitar volume as much with the PAF/black-panel tandem, and you can get pretty close to bypassed tone if you reduce picking intensity and/or switch from flatpick to fingers and nails. Single-coil pickups make such maneuvers more difficult. They tend to get thin in a less-than-ideal way before they shake the dirt, and they’re less responsive to the touch dynamics that yield so much range with PAFs. If you’re less interested in thick, clean tones, though, single-coils are a killer match for the Fuzz Phrase Si, yielding Yardbirds-y rasp, quirky lo-fi fuzz, and dirty overdrive that illuminates chord detail without sacrificing attitude. Pompeii tones are readily attainable via a Stratocaster and a high-headroom Fender amp, too, when you maximize guitar volume and pedal gain. And with British-style amps those same sounds turn feral and screaming, evoking Jimi’s nastiest.
The Verdict
Like every JAM pedal I’ve ever touched, the JAM Fuzz Phrase Si is built with care that makes the $229 price palatable. Cheaper silicon Fuzz Face clones may be easy to come by, but I’m hard-pressed to think they’ll last as long or as well as the Greece-made Fuzz Phrase Si. Like any silicon Fuzz Face-inspired design, what you gain in heat, you trade in dynamics. But the Si makes the best of this trade, opening a path to near-clean tones and many in-between gain textures, particularly if you put PAFs and a scooped black-panel Fender amp in the mix. And if streamlining is on your agenda, this fuzz’s combination of simplicity, swagger, and style means paring down pedals and controls doesn’t mean less fun.