Three brawny, chiming British amp voices, and a million colors in between, shine in an immaculately conceived and constructed 16-watt, EL84 combo that roars and sweetly sings.
Oodles of Brit tones that sound fantastic at low, or shockingly loud, volumes. Built like an old Benz. Touch-responsive and dynamic. Deep, addictive tremolo.
Expensive!
$3,240
Carr Bel-Ray
carramps.com
Playing the 16-watt, EL84-driven Carr Bel-Ray is, at times, flat-out, ecstatic fun. It’s alive, reactive, responsive, dynamic, and barks and chimes with a voice that spans a siren’s song and a firecracker. It lends snap and top-end energy to humbuckers, can turn a Telecaster bridge pickup lethal, or make a Rickenbacker 12-string brash and beautiful at once. It can also make you forget stompboxes exist. Most of my time with the Bel-Ray was spent without a pedal in sight.
Carr Bel-Ray Amp Demo | First Look
As the EL84 power section suggests, the Bel-Ray offers many paths to British amp tonalities. Three different voices—V66, H73, and M68, accessed via a 3-way switch—approximate Vox, Hiwatt, and Marshall sounds, respectively, and each genuinely, sometimes uncannily, evokes its inspiration. The three voices are only jumping-off points, though. The superb onboard attenuator enables huge sounds at civilized volumes, and the creative preamp section and volume-taper toggle can recast each voice profoundly. So can the flexible EQ, which shifts and morphs the Bel-Ray’s many tone colors in elegant and painterly ways. The tremolo, by the way, is rich, thick, and luxurious.
The Bel-Ray’s delectable tone-tasting menu is high-end stuff. Prices start at $3,240 for the combo and $3,150 for the head. But the Bel-Ray’s bold palette is unusually expansive, which can make a lot of amps very redundant. Compact, handsome, lovingly crafted, multifaceted, and way louder than its dimensions suggest—the longer you delve into the Bel-Ray’s potential the more the price tag makes sense.
Immaculately Executed
The Bel-Ray isn’t expensive for its hip sounds alone. We’ve raved about Carr quality before in Premier Guitar, and the Bel-Ray suggests Steve Carr’s standards are as high as ever. I’ve seen pricey custom furniture put together much less exactingly. And the substantial amp chassis and the circuit, handwired on terminal strip, almost suggest a kind of virtuous overbuilding—the variety that makes old Volvo and Mercedes-Benz engines go a half-million miles.
The Bel-Ray’s tube complement is nearly identical to those found in 18-watt Marshalls, AC15s, and Watkins Dominators, which are the Bel-Ray’s most obvious design touchstones. But rather than use three 12AX7 preamp tubes like those circuits, the Bel-Ray trades one 12AX7 for a pentode EF86. It adds a lot of pop and kinetic energy to the basic voice. It also works with a partial master volume, situated just after it, to lighten the load on the power tubes when you use the amp in the volume-taper toggle’s less-aggressive low position. An EZ81-based tube rectifier adds a welcome touch of contour to the Bel-Ray’s often hot and toppy response and widens the amp’s touch responsiveness spectrum. The Fane F25 12" ceramic speaker also helps broadcast the Bel-Ray’s fiery side while smoothing the toppiest peaks. Carr’s excellent attenuator enables operation between zero and 2 watts, or you can use the wide-open 16-watt mode. In both modes, and at virtually any setting, the Bel-Ray dazzles with its power, many personalities, and electric presence.
Warning! Explosives on Board
If you’re accustomed to vintage Fender, Gibson, Ampeg, and other American amps in this low-mid-wattage power category, you might be startled at how loud and feral the Bel-Ray can be. At 16 watts, it sounds and feels as loud and feisty as some 30- and 50-watt combos. At 2 watts it sounds just as full bodied and full of fangs, just quieter. Only when you spin the attenuator to the noon position (presumably about 1 watt) does the amp start to sound considerably thinner.
“There aren’t many guitars the Bel-Ray won’t love or illuminate in the most flattering light.”
Each setting on the voice switch, which affects the EQ section only, effectively reroutes the tone stack through three completely different sets of circuit values, shifting frequency emphasis and pass-through gain. The individual voices vary in gain (the Vox-y V68 is lowest, the Marshall-y M66 is highest) and can sound completely distinctive with many, many tone shades between them. As a result, there aren’t many guitars the Bel-Ray won’t love or illuminate in the most flattering light. PAF humbuckers, and their thick overtone profile, predictably blur some differences between the voices, but also generate dynamite, white-hot, and throaty tones and push the Carr to bellowing volumes that sound nothing like 16 watts. Good humbuckers are also a great vehicle for exploring the Bel-Ray’s superb dynamism and touch sensitivity. I rarely used a pick with my SG and the Bel-Ray, because I could coax such clear-and-sweet-to-searing extremes via touch dynamics and my guitar’s volume knob alone.
Telecasters, which are a particularly tasty match for the Bel-Ray, come alive with the same dynamism, sensitivity, responsiveness to volume and tone attenuation techniques, and varied touch intensity—enabling travel between dew-drop-delicate bell tones and screaming, edgy Jimmy Page daggers. A Rickenbacker 12-string with toaster tops was among the most revelatory pairings. With a little extra midrange kick, overtones danced in kaleidoscopic light. Turn up the gain, though, and the Rick will roar.
While the Bel-Ray could happily live its long life without ever meeting a pedal, it sounds fantastic with them. There is plenty of air in the Bel-Ray’s many voices to accommodate and communicate overtone intricacies in reverbs and complex modulation effects. And fuzz paired with the Bel Ray is a psychotically hot combination that cannot be missed.
The Verdict
The Bel-Ray is an impressive and handsome piece of kit. It’s also a reminder that an amplifier is arguably the most important piece of your signal chain. Everything sounds awesome through this amp. Technical pickers will love its sharp precision, but it overflows with slashing punk energy and dynamism, has enough headroom to communicate the details of alternate tunings and odd effects, and sounds spectral, full, and fantastic at both ends of its impressive volume range. About the only thing you won’t get from the Bel-Ray is a wide range of blonde and black-panel Fender sounds, though you can get really close, if extra-zingy, approximations in a pinch.
The price is hefty. But depending on your music and the settings and spaces you create it in, the Bel-Ray opens up many more possibilities than any AC15 or 18-watt Marshall would offer on its own. Also, the sense of craft in this amp offers its own kind of enjoyment. It’s a thoughtful, clever, beautifully built thing to behold. It’s also fun. Fun enough to make you fall asleep at night smiling and giddy, grateful that electrified, amplified music exists.
Hear how the new Fireball pickups in the latest evolution of the offset unleash much more than flaming destruction.
A whimsically flipped and twisted Jag evolves into a minor classic on its own terms.
Slinky, fast playing feel. Balanced string-to-string response and output from pickups. High build quality. Great value. Show-stopping good looks.
Vibrato could be more tuning stable. Pickups can feel flattish in terms of headroom and dynamic response. Upper horn can be uncomfortable playing seated.
$429
Squier Paranormal Super-Sonic
fender.com
The 1990s marked a time when the eclectic electric guitar underground saw the sun again. When the punk/indie/art tidal wave that gathered momentum over the two previous decades finally crested and crashed, it didn't just smash guitar-rock templates. It also swept aside a collector mentality that regarded almost everything apart from a few pre-CBS Fenders and '50s Gibsons as junk. And by the time the big builders caught up to their newly liberated customer constituency, there were a lot of open-minded buyers willing to get weird.
Fender, with a long history of stylish and functional oddities, were in an advantageous position for exploring this new freedom. And Squier's Japan-built Vista series dropped in the mid-'90s in an effort to slake the thirst of players hooked on the budget allure and en vogue status of '60s oddballs. For many, the Super-Sonic, with its flipped-and-shrunk Jaguar profile, was the hit of the bunch, and over time it took on its own semi-legendary status. Fender even built a version of their own in 2013 as part of its Pawn Shop series—an unusual case of the parent brand borrowing from a Squier design. It doesn't take long playing the newest China-built, Paranormal-series iteration of the Super-Sonic to see and hear why it has persisted and endured. It's a comfortable, compact, and fleet-feeling instrument that still deviates from design dogma and inspires novel playing approaches.
Squier Super Sonic into TC Hall Of Fame reverb, black panel Fender Tremolux head, and Universal Audio OX tweed Deluxe cabinet emulation. Rhythm played on bridge pickup. Lead is bridge pickup first, followed by various combinations and guitar tone settings.
Sparkle Flip
Legend has it that the Super-Sonic was inspired by a picture of Jimi Hendrix playing a Jaguar. (Go ahead, do an internet search. You're in for a few treats.) The Super-Sonic isn't quite as curvaceous as a Jaguar and its waist is less pinched, like an original Duo-Sonic. The poplar body's dimensions are more compact, too—more like a Mustang. But the proportions give it an ultra-light, hot-rod feel that almost inevitably stokes snotty, punky, and irreverent playing approaches when you pick it up. If ever a guitar could inspire a riff before you even play it, this might be the one.
The design is not without quirks. And the extent to which those quirks become complications depends on your playing style. If you're seated, the stubby upper horn can feel blunt resting against the ribs. And when worn low with a strap, the heavier bass side of the guitar can tip away from you a touch. On the upside, the slightly contoured neck heel makes working the high side of the 22-fret neck a lot more comfortable.
The inclusion of no-cover humbuckers on the original Super-Sonic was almost certainly influenced by Kurt Cobain's Jaguar and Mustang modifying habits. On the '90s versions, the humbuckers were all black. Here, they're in the more stylish zebra configuration. But it's hard to avoid imagining how cool this guitar would look with chrome humbuckers gleaming against the sparkle blue finish.
Because each pickup has a dedicated volume knob, center-switch-position blends can yield many variations.
Airport Pickup Lines
For a player that favors vintage-y single-coils—especially the kind you'd find in an old Jaguar or Mustang, the Squier Super-Sonic's humbucking pickups can come off as hot and rather set in their agenda—an issue compounded by the lack of a tone control. But if the pickups themselves aren't super dimensional, they exhibit a nice, even output from string to string and produce scads of cool sounds.
Because each pickup has a dedicated volume knob, center-switch-position blends yield many variations: mellow soul-jazz chord tones with a little extra top-end pop, out-of-phase-y, almost cocked-wah-style lead tones, and throaty rhythm colors, to name just a few.
Setting up loud/quiet configurations between the respective pickups means you can effectively use your guitar switch as a boost, and common mellow neck/hot bridge pickup formulas can generate very emotive mood shifts punctuated by screaming lead sounds. But the more unorthodox inversion of that formula also yields copious dynamic possibilities (thin, trashy garage rock verse textures punctuated with sloppy, high-calorie, quasi-John McLaughlin lead flurries were a favorite). As far as streamlined control situations go, the two-volume design inspires a lot of cool tangents.
The Verdict
As its enduring appeal suggests, the Super-Sonic isn't a novelty or niche instrument. It's a high-quality guitar for the price. The sparkle finish lends a playful sense of flash, and it flat-out rips as a player. But it's also capable of subtlety. And its unique sense of balance and short scale encourage cool chord shapes and voicings and fast and fiery lead attitudes. Some aspects of the design—the toggle switch placement and upper horn, primarily—might find you longing, ironically, for traditional Fender design elements. But at just $429, you're much more likely to find inspiration than aggravation in this inverted amalgam of classic Fender curves