"Honestly, when people say 'You don't need all that stuff,' my response is, 'No shit! I want all this stuff,'" he proudly states. "Necessity is the dumbest argument in rock 'n' roll. For me, it has nothing to do with utility—playing guitar and using all of this [gear] gives me pleasure [laughs]."
And with that spirited passion, he's been Whores' ringleader since 2010 when he formed the swaggering, strutting power trio with bassist Jack Schultz and drummer Travis Owen. The band has released a pair of blistering EPs (2011's Ruiner and 2013's Clean) that were followed by a refined, groovier, raucous sound for the full-length debut (2016's Gold) that featured the current lineup of bassist Casey Maxwell and drummer Douglas Barrett.Carrying on the brash, boisterous tradition from '90s underground slobberknockers like the Melvins, Shellac, Swans, and Jesus Lizard, Whores churns out the loudest, most obnoxious (yet infectious) rock 'n' roll you won't hear on your dad's airwaves. "When rock music gets too fancy, it gets ruined. I know I'm not the world's greatest guitar player. I don't want to be," admits Lembach. "I just wanna play guitar, in a band—I just love fuzz pedals and big, loud music so much—nothing else on earth makes me feel like that."
Recently, Whores entered producer/engineer and longtime collaborator Ryan Boesch's Candor Recording to track their second album. During the process, Lembach virtually welcomed PG's Chris Kies to go over his simplistic-but-intense guitarsenal. Plus, we admire his plentiful pedal paradise (rivaling your favorite guitar store's inventory) that delivers both "flavor crystals" and "fire-breathing craziness," and he shares the two-pedal combination that "is the reason this band exists."
[Brought to you by D'Addario Auto-Lock Straps: https://ddar.io/AutoLockRR]Mid-2000s Fender Classic Series ’50s Esquire
You might not believe it (especially if you take a gander down at his feet and the three pedalboards), but Whores' ringmaster Christian Lembach likes to keep it simple … at least with guitars. His longtime No. 1 is this mid-2000s Fender Classic Series '50s Esquire (MIM). However, that wasn't always the case. He originally pulled the trigger on this reissue to serve as a backup for his then go-to axe (a Fender American Standard Telecaster). Before he trusted the Classic Series for the road, he had to replace the anemic stock single-coil. A friend offered a solution by way of a spare Schecter F520T. Christian wired it into the T and, wham-o, the Esquire instantly became his Excalibur. (Because of the F520Ts being out of production (it's connected with Mark Knopfler in the "Walk of Life" video), Christian has since opted for obtainable F520T recreations—wound and wired by German pickup maker Harry Häussel, and aptly called Walk of Life—in his stage guitars.)
In the Rundown, Christian breaks down the pickup's special DNA: "It's basically an overwound single-coil that has half of the winds in one direction and the other half of the winds in the opposite direction, so you could coil-tap if you want. I don't have it tapped. I have it on full blast, all the time."
He also revels in the Esquire's often misunderstood switching setup. (Why in the hell is there a 3-way switch for a one pickup guitar?!) In the back position, it's just the standard Tele bridge sound that bypasses the tone circuit. The middle slot is your standard Tele bridge setting that brings back in the tone control. And the "neck" or third position removes the tone circuit again and activates a bass boost. He loves how dark and loud that last setting is because, when smeared with fuzz, it balances out for a lively, laser-like tone. Other repairs, upgrades, and switches include an Amazon-purchased, 6-saddle brass bridge, a Mighty Mite maple T-style neck, Hipshot locking tuners, and a bone nut.
The band usually lives in drop-C tuning (CGCFAD), and he plays with light picks (.60 mm) paired with heavy strings (.013–.056). That sort of imbalance allows Christian to hammer on the strings without walloping them out of tune.MJT Musikraft VTM Telemaster
This Fullerton knockoff features all of the same ingredients as the T (Amazon bridge, Mighty Mite neck, Hipshot locking tuners, bone nut, Esquire circuitry, Häussel Walk of Life pickup), but with a MJT Musikraft VTM body. He admits that this one is closing in on the No. 1 slot, because the beveled body is easier on his picking-hand forearm, which gets shredded by the slab-bodied Esquire.
Acrylic B.C. Rich Mockingbird
During one of Whores' Canadian tours, Christian blew out his knee. (In true rock 'n' roll fashion, he continued the tour and performed sitting down.) While at home recovering from surgery, he was browsing online and came across this acrylic B.C. Rich Mockingbird. He screenshot the bodacious instrument and shared it on his social media because it was that cool. Well, friend and fan John Cooper bought the guitar and contacted Lembach, who appreciated the sentiment but said he had no spare cash for the instrument because of the surgery. Christian didn't realize that Cooper bought it for him as a gift. The below guitar might not see a lot of stage time (our necks hurt just looking at it), but it will always have a special spot in Lembach's boat.
1960s Marshall 100W Super Lead
For his auditory assault, Christian packs a one-two Marshall punch. Below is a late 1960s (or possibly early '70s) 100W Super Lead. He runs that through a Marshall JCM800 1960A Slant 4x12 cabinet filled with Celestion G12T-75s.
2000s Marshall 1959SLP 100W Plexi Reissue
The second part of the amp equation is this 2000s Marshall 1959SLP 100W plexi reissue. This one hits a Marshall JCM800 1960B straight 4x12 cabinet that's also loaded with Celestion G12T-75s. Both of the heads have lower gain than stock plexis, because Lembach put in 12AU7 preamp tubes. To give himself even more headroom, he plugs into the low inputs and both heads have been upgraded with Mullard or Tung-Sol EL34s. (He plugs into channel 1 of the original Super Lead, which is internally jumpered, while he plugs into the low-input channel 2 of the reissue.)
1960s Silvertone 1484
His latest gear acquisition before entering the studio was this 1960s Silvertone 1484 head and cab.
Christian Lembach's Pedalboard #1
We were lucky enough to swoop in to producer/engineer Ryan Boesch's Candor Recording while Whores tracked their new album. (Lembach does admit to traveling with a lot of pedals, but this amount is insane and for studio shenanigans.)
To try to make sense of this plethora of pedals, let's start at the end. Christian divides his pedalboards into two paths. The A loop is everything except what's in loop B. The B loop is the always-on, menacing combination of the ZVEX Super Hard On ("SHO" as Lembach calls it) and the green, tall "bubble font" Russian Big Muff. "That combination is literally on every song we've ever recorded and is used on every song we perform. It's the reason this band exists," he says.
Lembach has it set up this way so he can go from any sound conjured in the A loop to the aforementioned destructive duo on a dime. (In the next photo, you'll see a small, non-descript gray box in the lower-right corner that switches between A and B loops.) Everything else on this board (lower right) includes a pair of Devi Ever FX stompbox (a Soda Meiser and a Bit: Legend of Fuzz), a ZVEX Box of Metal, signature IdiotBox Effects Whores Fuzz/Filter, and an original Electro-Harmonix POG. A Morley ABY box switcher commands the Marshalls.
Enter to win Christian's signature IdiotBox Effects Whores Fuzz/Filter!
Christian Lembach's Pedalboard #2
Moving left, the pedal parade continues (bottom right) with a ZVEX Fuzz Factory, Jext Telez White Pedal (fuzz/overdrive), Spaceman Effects Sputnik III, and Chase Bliss Audio Automatone MKII Preamp. (Those last two pedals were both presents from his better half.) The middle row consists of a Caroline Guitar Company Somersault, EHX Micro POG, Boss NF-1 Noise Gate (because of Steve Albini), Keeley Nova Wah, and an Xotic AC Booster. And the top row starts with a Cusack More Louder clean boost, TC Electronic Ditto Looper, EarthQuaker Devices Hummingbird, Hungry Robot Pedals Stargazer (V1), Catalinbread Echorec, Dr. Scientist BitQuest, Alexander Pedals Radical Delay II Plus, JHS Stutter (small black box), an EHX Freeze, and an AMT Electronics Japanese Girl Wah. A Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner keeps his guitars in check. While he doesn't claim to have Eric Johnson's hear-the-difference-in-9V ears, Lembach does claim to distinguish differences between all his fuzzes and filters.
Christian Lembach's Pedalboard #3
This last board is specific to studio experimentation. It has an IdiotBox Effects Power Drive, Spiral Effects Yellow LM741 Overdrive, Bondi Effects Sick As Overdrive, Beetronics Swarm, seahagFX Zonk (clone), Jext Telez Dizzy Tone (OC44 transistors, for pedal nerds), and a Montreal Assembly Your and You're (fuzzy synth).
RatingsPros:Delicious Vox-to-Fender range of tones. Expansive tone controls. Dynamic, lively, and responsive. Huge range in tremolo and reverb textures. Quality construction. Cons: Loud enough to leave you wanting an attenuator, at times. Street: $1,999 Balthazar Cabaret 13 balthazaramps.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value:  |
Guitarists can be a stubborn lot when it comes to amplifiers. Switching a new pedal or guitar into a rig? That's no kookier than ordering Szechuan on pizza night. But switch an amplifier and you can profoundly screw with the sound and feel of everything in a signal chain. Not surprisingly, a lot of players pick something familiar and stick with it. And when you consider that collective experimental reticence, and the ample R&D required to develop a truly unique new amp, it's little wonder the amplifier gene pool sometimes feels small.
The fundamentally appealing essence of the Balthazar Cabaret 13 is the way it sounds new, fresh, and unusual while feeling like something you've known before. It's alive, immediate, sparkling, and responsive—a main line to your fingers and guitar. And while it's built around many Vox-y components like EL84 power tubes and a Celestion Gold speaker, it will feel like an old friend to anyone who has hung a Princeton or Deluxe out on its bleeding edge, or dove deep with a black-panel Fender combo in seas of reverb and tremolo. It also might be the loudest 13-watt combo you'll play in this lifetime.
Carving the Cornwall Pipeline
The Cabaret began as Balthazar de Ley's attempt to build a better Vox Cambridge—a sleeper 17-watt Thomas Organ-era Vox combo designed to go mano a mano with the Fender Princeton (if the borrowed collegiate naming scheme hadn't already tipped you off).
The Cambridge met a lot of de Ley's conceptual design objectives: Princeton dimensions and power, an EL84 power section to add a Vox-y edge to the voice, and reverb and tremolo that would make the Cabaret the perfect “small-stage British surf amp," in de Ley's words. But as he dissected the Cambridge, de Ley found much of the magic came from an unusual Rola alnico speaker and transformers with few modern equivalents.
So de Ley started from scratch, with the Cambridge as an ideal rather than a template, and insisting only on retaining its bias tremolo. Capturing the intangibles of the Cambridge tremolo wasn't easy. De Ley ran into ticking sounds, hum, and unpredictable interactions with the rest of the circuit that made development a protracted affair. To make a long story short, de Ley determined that reproducing the capacitance of the Cambridge tremolo's footswitch within the Cabaret circuit itself was the bizarre fix that made it all work. But de Ley's exhaustive efforts to reduce noise elsewhere in the circuit resulted in two big, additional dividends: the Cabaret was now super-efficient and lively, and the tremolo circuit could be made even more intense and rangy.
By the way, lest any of you are inclined to dismiss the Cabaret's snakeskin-pattern vinyl and gold details as flashy, keep in mind that the amp (like its cousin, the Film Noir 50) honors the livery of mid-'60s Selmers—contenders for the baddest-looking amps of the time. De Ley nods to another great British amp builder with the Hiwatt-style nameplate. But I can't help but think the name “Balthazar" in gold, Selmer-style, Old-English letters would look positively spectacular.
Your Round-Trip Ticket to Waikiki, 007
When Balthazar de Ley talks about a “small-stage British surf amp" as a design ideal, I know exactly what he means. Conceptually speaking, the combination of a Fender combo's animation and air combined with a Vox's toppy bite is enough to get me twitchy. But the Cabaret is more than an AC15 with extra-potent reverb and tremolo. And the ease with which it blurs the lines between the Fender and Vox divide are a testament to the complexity and sophistication of its many voices.
I don't have a Princeton, AC15 or Cambridge to compare to the Cabaret. But I do have a black-panel Vibrolux with particularly strong tremolo and reverb, and the 13-watt Cabaret's ability to sound every bit as rich and loud as the bigger, 35-watt Vibrolux is impressive. It's surprisingly easy to dial in near-approximate and very rich Vibrolux tones. Doubly impressive, given that I started with the Cabaret in a very biting, Vox-like setting. How do the surfy sounds of the Cabaret 13 compare to a vintage Fender combo? Interestingly, the Cabaret's top-end has a little more weight and darkness around the edges than the sparkly Fender in these clean-ish settings. There's a bit more ballast on the bottom end. The Cabaret was also noticeably louder at equivalent volumes and less compressed as saturation sets in.
Some of these attributes are no doubt down to the beautiful alnico Celestion Gold 10" speaker. Compared to the well-worn original Oxfords in the Vibrolux, the Celestion Gold has more of the bass response and mass you would hear from a 12". But I'd bet that even a lot of dyed-in-the-wool Fenderphiles would dig—and even prefer—the extra bottom end and the softness in the treble tones.
The Cabaret's intrinsic Voxiness becomes more apparent at higher volumes. Natural overdrive tones are complex and growling sounds that turn feral and AC30-explosive as you add treble from the extra-rangy tone controls.
And about that tremolo: To say it's a feature attraction would be an understatement. At its maximum settings, which are more potent than any amp tremolo I can recall, it flirts with Vox Repeat Percussion levels of intensity and flutter. But its bias design also means that more sedate settings produce incredibly lush, smooth, and contoured throbs that you can live in for hours on end—especially when you add in reverb from the powerful, 12AT7-driven Accutronics reverb tank.
The Verdict
The Cabaret 13's capacity to walk the line between vintage Vox and Fender tones—and cross over with ease—is enough to merit investigation of this very interesting, original circuit. But with its surprisingly high headroom and volume, rangy and effective tone controls, and bias tremolo and spring reverb effects that move from subtle-to-surreal, this super-dynamic, high-quality, 13-watt amp is positively addictive—and the kind of amp that might find you keeping your pedalboard under wraps for a good long while.
Watch John Bohlinger test out the Balthazar Cabaret 13:
