A new 30-watt with an unusual low-voltage, high-current design.
New Brunswick, Canada (May 16, 2016) -- Canadian pickup maker Sanford Magnetics has released its newest amplifier, the Aeronaut—a vintage-voiced, handbuilt head that follows on the heels of 2015’s Lead & Rhythm Professional.
The Aeronaut aims to make it easy to dial in classic EL34 sounds. However, the 30-watt head uses a low-voltage, high-current design that's somewhat counter-intuitive for an EL34-powered amp with cathode bias and a 5AR4 rectifier.
Stripping down the preamp to two 12AX7s keeps it simple. The gain staging was kept on the clean side of things to create a non-master volume amplifier that favors power-tube breakup, loves to be run wide open, and has a great balance between preamp- and power-section breakup, thanks to the right amount of voltage swing between stages. The anode-driven tone stack mates to a long-tail-pair phase inverter, driving the power section from thick, smoky cleans to classic EL34 breakup.
The stripped-down control set features volume, tone, and a unique camber control that moves the EQ slope from low to high and has settings from "sub-plexi" to "wreck." Meanwhile, the headroom switch allows control over the input signal with boost, normal, and cut settings.
$1,399 street
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Sanford Magnetics
