Spent 2-3 hours in Coda yesterday with various amps I'd been wanting to try for ages. An entirely positive experience (thanks Doug).
A few brief reflections follow which might or might not help anyone curious about these particular amps.
For context, at home I have a couple of Two Rocks and two silverface Fenders and have in the past had various Carrs, Cornells, Voxes, Fenders, Cornfords, Marshalls and others I cannot immediately recall.
I went to Coda after a tweed or tweed-style that would sound great at reasonably loud home volumes (i.e. somewhere between bedroom and gig levels).
The RedPlate Tweedydrive was top of my list but I discounted it fairly swiftly. It had a beautiful blackface-style clean tone. I was far less convinced by the tweed sound and disliked it when driven on any setting, blackface, brown or tweed. It's a small amp and sounds like it when dirty, oddly smaller-sounding than when set clean. Doug at Coda reckons it's a different beast when cranked at a gig. Fair enough, but it wasn't for me.
The Tone King Falcon was nice enough but i need a few more bells and whistles and its core sound didn't strike me as anything exceptional.
The Swart AST master combo was stunning. I have read much about Swarts since first hearing one in the States four years ago and it is interesting how polarising they are. Plenty of folk wouldn't touch another amp. Plenty equally dislike them. I loved this thing. It sounds huge and the tremolo is the best i've ever heard on any amp or pedal (though my Kingsley Bard is close). I had sworn I would only listen to the amp's sound itself, and not its seductive effects, but by God that trem is addictive. The AST master is an AST in a big box with an added master volume, so you can crank it at reasonable levels. It's not a versatile amp, basically one sound with varying levels of dirt but the boxiness i have heard the AST and even AST Pro are guilty of is all gone in that big cab. Lovely thing but at two grand a little pricey IMHO.
Next up was a 1x12 Carr Sportsman, the Princeton-style amp so beloved of
@Wazmeister (until he suddenly sold it to
@Smogfalls!). I have a lovely 1972 Princeton. The Sportsman is possibly nicer, sweeter and warmer, and has the master volume allowing for a little dirt when you wind the volume up. Lovely amp, beautifully made, as Carrs always are, but ultimately too similar to my Princeton to be worth spending big bucks on. It's not tweedy (though can be, with the volume and mids cranked) but what the hell. If I didn't have an original I really wouldn't have hesitated.
So that's that.
Finally I tried a Bad Cat Black Cat 15, a twin-channel el84-type, and decided to buy it almost instantly. It was the most inspiring amp I played yesterday afternoon and scratched a Matchless/BadCat itch I had pretty much forgotten I had got. Today at home, after a tube swap, it is glorious. Fantastic chime and grunt.
Not a tweed though. So I'll keep looking. Maybe
@smogfalls can be persuaded to sell me his Lazy J20. Maybe I'll raid the piggy bank and go back for that Swart, which is tweedy enough.
All of which goes to show that you can read/research as much as you like but there is just no substitute for driving a few hours to try these buggers out. You might just set off intending to buy a tweedy 6v6/6L6 RedPlate and return with a BadCat.
Comments
John,
A fantastic and insightful post !
You know, I say this about many areas of our lives; until we try things, we don't know do we ?
I too visited Coda in the past few weeks. I became (suddenly) aware of the weight of my Jim Kelley Reverb,
and also how much I had potentially financially invested in ONE amp. So off I trotted to the excellent Coda, and the excellent and accommodating Doug. I consider Coda my favourite dealership.
More to follow.
Ringleader of the Cambridge cartel, pedal champ and king of the dirt boxes (down to 21)
As I type this, I'm trying to remember why I sold it....
Interested in experimenting with mine.
(formerly miserneil)
The ONLY criticism is that the 2x12 Black Cat is so bloody heavy!
(formerly miserneil)
If not that will cause a mismatch and alter the tone.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Your post was an interesting read and very useful.
I only went in for a few picks.......
Ringleader of the Cambridge cartel, pedal champ and king of the dirt boxes (down to 21)
(formerly miserneil)