Hey, long time no hear... Just got this amp and thought I'd like to put my thoughts on record and share with those interested in this series of amps.
I've been playing the amp with a Micsis blackguard Tele with 5 way switch. So far, I'm very impressed. I can approach Blackface-type tones by zeroing out the mids, maxing the bass and bumping the highs. But tweed (bumped mids) is there by default and gets more tweedy (dirty in a musical kind of way) the more you crank it. But you can do that with many amps. The sound is tubey to my ears but, again, many will claim that about other amps.
More importantly, and this is why I bothered to write and post here, is that this is the first non-tube amp I've played that behaved and felt like a tube amp:
- cranking the MV and using low attenuation (0.5 or 5 watts) allowed for power stage saturation (at higher wattage, you have more loud clean headroom, obviously). of course, increasing the Volume with the MV maxed starts to introduce preamp gain but in a nice way that complemented but did not overpower the power amp (unlike on some Marshall MV tube amps)
- roll back the guitar's vol and it cleans up (ok, i admit lots of amps and even modelers can do this)
- increasing mids introduced more gain/distortion along with the mid freqs -- which i think is not often the case with SS/digital amps
- i could almost feel the amp's sound throbbing from the power section (or the cab), like it might break down. i used to have an SFPR, Supro, tweed Blues Jr and played other small tube amps that seemed about to explode.
- the bass starts to become flabby when you crank the amp (very common on small to medium-sized Fender tube amps, from PR to SR). don't think it's the speaker since it is not a low-wattage spkr.
These were done with the Boost and Tone switch off, as I liked the amp's tone without them engaged.
Also, I realized that even 0.5 watts can be too loud for some rooms! I was interested in the Blues Stage or Artist model for the Crunch channel and extra features but they might be too powerful to behave like this small amp did.
Wala lang...