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:
Let me share a tale about a very enjoyable and educational gear purchase. It involves a celebrity-owned vintage Fender amp, and tonal disappointments followed by experimentation. It’s about how I turned a disappointing purchase into what became—and still is—my main gigging amp. Having used this amp on approximately 100 gigs, I’ve really gotten a return for the initial $1,195 investment, not even counting the valuable learning it has given me. So, this is the story of my Linda Ronstadt Deluxe Reverb.
In 2010, I found a vintage Fender amp on eBay that really caught my eye. It was a celebrity-owned ’71 silver-panel Deluxe Reverb with 6L6GCs that had been modded and sported a powerful and heavy JBL D120F speaker. It came with a vintage, blue, road-worn flight case that looked like it had been around the globe a dozen times. The amp circuit had been entirely re-wired to AB763 black-panel specs, with all caps replaced with newer orange drops and about half of the resistors replaced. (I later swapped out the silver control panel to match.) You could see by the component leg twisting, soldering, and cutting that the work was done properly. The plastic wires were even replaced with high quality BF-style cloth-covered wires.
The number 13 was sprayed on the blue flight case, and the amp had “Ronstadt 18” sprayed on the its upper and lower back panels, indicating that the amp belonged to a band with a crew that handled the backline equipment. It seemed to have been a working musician’s instrument and had been well looked after. The whole package was promising. After a short bidding round, I ended up paying $1,195 to its owner, an acquaintance of the Linda Ronstadt band.
Six weeks later, the amp arrived safely at my house in a flight case that smelled bad but looked fantastic. I immediately swapped the original 110V power transformer for a Mercury Magnetics 230V version. My first impression was that it sounded firm and mean, with a harsh attack and gritty treble. But it was too sensitive on the treble pot to my liking, and my Jimi Strat with Fender CS69 pickups didn’t sound good thorough it. The tone was cold and shrill at both lower and higher volumes. I wasn’t able to tame it with the EQ knobs on my guitar, pedals, or the amp. It was either too muddy or too bright. Maybe this was the reason the amp was sold? I spent days playing around with it, trying different guitars and pedals. I managed to find satisfying tone only at loud volumes with a Tube Screamer, which removes both the upper treble and lower bass (the SRV trick).
A backside view of the Ronstadt Deluxe Reverb, with its lineage tattooed in white paint.
I wanted more. I wanted to play this amp without a Tube Screamer and find a more balanced tone. There was no point in keeping a bad-sounding celebrity amp. My goal was to make it smoother and warmer, with less attack. I started by disengaging the bright cap on the vibrato channel, which tamed the upper treble and allowed me to turn the treble pot beyond 4. All reissue Deluxe Reverb owners with newer Jensen C12N speakers should try disengaging the bright cap. Second, I installed a mid switch on the back, instead of the no-longer-relevant ground switch. This mid switch acts as a fat boost and selects between the stock 6.8k resistor and a fatter 22k resistor, to offer more mids. Immediately, there were improvements. The added mids pushed the power amp circuitry into more warmth, crunch, and distortion. I could’ve also installed a 25k pot instead of the mid switch, to have endless mid levels to choose from. But simplicity is king. Having only two choices makes life easier.
Some other mods to reduce the clean headroom followed. I inserted a 5U4GB rectifier tube instead of the GZ34, for less attack and more sag and compression, and pulled out the V1 preamp tube to increase the preamp signal level, pushing the preamp and power amp sections harder.
This road case, which arrived in stinky but durable condition, was part of the eBay deal that brought the Deluxe into Jens Mosbergvik’s collection of Fenders.
The results were rewarding! The shrill treble was tamed and my pick attack was smooth and just snappy and responsive enough. The treble was balanced by punchy lower mids, improving the overall EQ balance. Now the amp was more sympathetic and supported more and different kinds of guitars. No boost or overdrive pedal was needed. With these mods, the Deluxe became a perfect player’s amp, and definitely a keeper. A punchy Deluxe Reverb with 6L6s delivers approximately 30 to 35 watts, so can cope with larger stages and settings.
In the ensuing years, I’ve done further experiments with this amp—most significantly inserting a larger 8 ohm output transformer from a Vibroverb, and a power transformer from a Super Reverb, as well as upgrading the big DC and filter caps to support the higher plate voltage. Together with an EVM12L speaker, this amp gave me a superb Stevie Ray Texas Flood tone. Right now, I use an Eminence Maverick speaker with an inbuilt 9 dB attenuator that can turn the volume down to a Princeton Reverb level, while still achieving full tube breakup. Yes, I know. It’s awesome!