It’s a beautifully built box too. The Buffalo FX Ram’s Head uses the same enclosure as Painter’s last fuzz, the Germanium. It’s taller than most pedals, which may take some getting used to. One reason for the unusual enclosure is a quick-release 9-volt battery drawer, which might remind Muff fanatics of Pete Cornish’s famous clones. No need to fuss with wires or connectors—just slide the battery into place. (You can also power the pedal with a center-negative 9-volt barrel adaptor.)
The straightforward controls mirror the original: sustain, level, and tone. Input and output jacks are at the crown of the box, and there’s a small blue power indicator LED next to the footswitch.
Ratings
Pros:
Excellent Muff-style leads with extra midrange to cut through the mix.
Cons:
Enclosure can be a bit awkward/blocky on a crowded pedalboard.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build:
Value:
Street:
$205
Buffalo FX Ram's Head
buffalofx.com
Stepping Out of the Shadows Because the original Ram’s Head is so closely associated with David Gilmour’s tones from Animals and The Wall, I hooked up a Stratocaster and an Orange OR50 with EL34s to approximate Gilmour’s classic rig. Running a clean output on the amp, I engaged the Ram’s Head with sustain maxed. This setting was a bit aggressive for most of Gilmour’s leads, but dialing back the gain to 3 o’clock let me nail the sustained bends from “Dogs.” However, the maximum-sustain setting proved excellent for mining Tony Iommi’s Vol. 4 lead tones, especially after adding a slight tone bump and switching to a Les Paul with humbuckers. The extra dirt lends a gritty bite to metal-tinged solos without inducing overwhelming feedback.
In a full-band setting, the Buffalo was a revelation. You sometimes need an extra overdrive or EQ pedal to make a Muff heard within a raging band, but not with the Ram’s Head. Painter’s tweaks provide a hot edge that cuts through dense band arrangements with output to spare. Even paired with a dark, reverb-drenched Fender Twin Reverb, the Ram’s Head easily finds a toehold for lead work or rhythm riffing. I performed an A/B test between the Buffalo and several other Muff-style pedals lurking around my rehearsal space, and the advantages of Painter’s mods shone brightly. The Buffalo usually sounded slightly cleaner, with greater midrange clarity.
The Verdict This is the second Buffalo FX fuzz box I’ve reviewed, and my expectations were high. Steve Painter hand-wires, assembles, tests and screen-prints each box, and his dedication shows. The Buffalo FX Ram’s Head’s added midrange presence increases the circuit’s versatility without sacrificing the power you want from a Muff. It’s equally happy with single-coils and humbuckers, and sounds great through both American- and British-style amps. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a rig this Ram’s Head won’t work with.
Unlike a lot of acoustic amps, the Humphrey’s control array isn’t cluttered with parametric EQ knobs, pads, or effects. In fact, any half-wit barbarian rocker who can figure out a Twin Reverb is likely to be at ease operating the Espresso 15. Knobs include input volume (or gain), master volume, treble, mid, and bass, and two small toggles activate a horn tweeter and a bright circuit. The control layout isn’t the only aspect of the Espresso 15’s construction that would be as familiar to an electric player as an acoustic specialist: The tube selection wouldn’t be out of place in a small electric-guitar combo amp—it includes the power section’s dual EL84s, two 12AU7 preamp tubes, and a 5Y3 rectifier tube. Perhaps the one area where the Espresso has something significantly in common with other acoustic amps is its driver—it’s loaded with a light, 10" neodymium-magnet speaker.
True Colors
Acoustic amps can be confusing tools for
the uninitiated, primarily because they’re
sensitive and prone to feedback. But that’s
less the fault of the amp than an inevitable
trade off that comes from balancing output
and the natural resonance of an acoustic’s
hollow body. But the Espresso 15, apart
from a tendency to have a strong resonance in the low end if you’re not judicious with
the bass control, is very forgiving and good
sounds are easy to get.
With a Martin D-18 outfitted with a passive L.R. Baggs M1 magnetic soundhole pickup and a Martin 00-15 with an active L.R. Baggs Element at the opposite end of the lead, the Espresso tended to sound most natural with the tweeter horn on, the bright switch off, and all three EQ controls down in the lower half of their range. And it’s wonderful that some of the finest sounds are available down this far in the EQ controls’ ranges, leaving lots of room to tailor your sound to a room, song arrangement, or band.
The best analogy or corollary for the Espresso 15’s sonic signature is a high-end tube stereo amplifier, which uses the headroom and warmth of tubes to reproduce the signal from a recorded source. The warm fidelity that you associate with audiophile hi-fi gear is something you hear very clearly in the Espresso 15. It’s not necessarily a transparent amp (a quality that’s of subjective worth anyway, depending on how you play), but it definitely retains the vocal essence of a given guitar.
Turning the horn off enables you to play it safe with regard to feedback. The tone becomes more concise, though you’ll lose a little bit of range, too. Strummers will likely want to keep the bright switch off because, although the amp definitely has the headroom to handle high end without feeding back—and it is way more forgiving than many solid-state models under similar circumstances—it can sound brash with heavy strumming. But the world of extra headroom you get by disengaging the bright switch and manipulating the very effective treble control gives you flexibility enough to create a cool strumming tone.
Running the D-18 through a few fingerstyle workouts and employing a gentle touch yielded sweet, soft, and bell-like clarity that made the Humphrey and magnetic pickups seem like a very natural match—enabling everything from a pure, distinct dread tone to muscular, husky, and crystalline sounds to rounder, mellower Gábor Szab—-style jazz tones when you manipulate the tone controls.
Ratings
Pros:
Looks so good! Superbly built. Fascinating and fantastic balance of color and transparency.
Cons:
Price might be a bit rich for some.
Tones:
Playability/Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$2,795 street ($3,235 as configured here with balanced line out and matching stand)
Company
humphreyamps.com
Tuning down to double drop D and running through a propulsive take on Neil Young’s “The Loner” found the Humphrey willing and able to generate ample low end with a heavy but cool compression—and not a hint of bottom-end feedback.
My smaller, all-mahogany 00-15, with its more concise and bell-like sound, was the better match for generating true acoustic detail. In intimate settings—the kind you’d get in a coffee house, small club, or gallery—the Humphrey imparted a beguiling sense of dimension and space, adding soft contours to the undersaddle pickup’s output without trimming harmonic content.
The Verdict
With looks that would be at home in a
fine design retrospective at the Whitney
Museum of American Art in New York,
the Humphrey Espresso 15 is as close to an
heirloom-level piece of gear you’re going to
get—at least on the amplification side of
the equation. Some of that design elegance
translates into ease of operation, particularly
if you’re an electric-minded player—for the Espresso just isn’t much different than a
blackface Fender. It’s only the sensitivity of
the controls that takes some getting used to,
like any acoustic amp.
It’s the sound of the Espresso, however, that tips it from the category of a looker to a performer. Acoustic players who treasure absolute transparency above all may not savor the subtle mood and shading that the Humphrey and its tube complement add to just about every guitar. But apart from that trace of color, it retains and enhances the essential voice of every acoustic you put out in front. A lot of open-minded players will savor the Humphrey’s capacity to expand their guitar’s vocabulary in subtle ways. And no matter how lightly or heavily you use the Humphrey to color your sound, you’ll look unquestionably dashing with it onstage. In fact, we’d guess the only hassle that comes with owning the Humphrey is having to upgrade your wardrobe. I mean, you wouldn’t take the Rolls out for a spin in sweatpants, would you?
Watch our video demo:
Playability and intonation are both exceptional and pronouncedly better than what you typically see at this price. It’s also one of those guitars where the dimensions feel just about ideal, especially if you’re more likely to have been picking a Telecaster all day. Given these dimensions, switching back and forth between acoustic and electric just feels more natural.
Shiny Blues
The Gibson L-00 and its cousins the L-1 and Nick Lucas model were always favored by blues hounds and folkies, and the Epiphone version captures much of the barking, husky sonic appeal that grabbed the ears of everyone from Robert Johnson to Bob Dylan.
The primary difference between the Epiphone and one of its forebears is a pronounced high-mid sheen. Hard strummers will probably find the EL-00 too brash in the midrange, and really attacking the guitar with a flatpick generates some of the strident high-mid blur that can belie an inexpensive guitar’s pedigree—this definitely isn’t the guitar you’ll want to use to capture your version of “Pinball Wizard.” That doesn’t mean that the strong high-mid tendencies in the Epiphone’s DNA are a liability, however. In fact, when properly applied, they can be a real strength onstage and in the studio.
Ratings
Pros: Inexpensive, but looks expensive. Stable tuning. Nice high-mids.
Cons: Strident, blurry high-mids in strumming situations.
Tones:
Playability:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street: $299
epiphone.com
That high-end definition doesn’t come in quite as handy in the country-blues settings you’d most likely associate with a Gibson 00, which is bound to disappoint anyone hoping to get instant Dylan for 300 bucks. But fingerstyle phrasings that gain articulation from more high-mid melodic content—think British folk fingerstylists—are a natural fit for the Epiphone’s strengths. The high end has a crystalline, glassy, bell-like quality. Notes are concise and defined, but resonate nicely. And you get a very surprising amount of sustain that enhances slow, lingering finger vibrato and legato work. Offering enhanced low-end horsepower, hybrid or thumb-picking techniques work well also, as long as you don’t thump too aggressively. And with the right touch, you can generate that husky, bluesy quality alongside the clear, ringing, and resonant trebles to create a very balanced voice for recording.
The onboard Fishman Sonitone undersaddle pickup doesn’t exactly enhance any particular merits of the EL-00. In fact, the guitar’s limitations in hard strumming situations are compounded if you’re using the guitar with a PA or amp. But in the light fingerstyle and folk-oriented applications where an unplugged EL-00 Pro shines best, the electronics work well enough to communicate the guitar’s ample charms—particularly given the price of the whole package.
Watch our video demo:
Read the rest of the reviews in the roundup:
- Epiphone EL-00 Pro
- Simon & Patrick Woodland Pro Parlor
- Guild M-120
- Loar LO-215
- Martin 000X1AE