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Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
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Stunning clean, crunch and lead sounds that cover a good range of stuff and definitely leans on the smoother side of stuff but whilst retaining an nice aggressive side, too, and if you want it.
IMHO, probably the most complete amp under one hood that I've come across but I haven't tried the Suhr PT-15
You can hear Ian Thornley from Big Wreck with one here in this Anderton's interview
Will see how it stacks up against the Two Rock and winner will stay on.
It's a different amp to the CRS, but you can definitely hear the lineage they share.
I've not fully A/B'd them yet, and I've still to give the clean sounds a thorough going over.
That said, the Hedgehog:
Build is impeccable. Runs very cool. Looks sharp in the blacked out headshell.
The thing that strikes me the most I think, is the feel under the fingers. It's chewy and squashy. The Two-Rock seems a bit more strident until you add a drive pedal with some squish/compression, and then you're in the same ballpark-ish. It comes more naturally to the Hedgehog.
The amp has a lot of gain, but due to the feel and compression (with the boost enabled), you don't need to wrap the dial around too much to get a satisfying sustain out of it.
It's got a bit more of that upper mid-range Marshally krang to it, which for me is excellent, and crucially, it seems comfortable doing that. The Two-Rock is less happy doing that bright crunch that you'd associate more with British sounding amps. Understandable, I guess.
On the overdrive mode (no boost), with the drive at 3/4's, all EQ controls at noon and the bright switch in, you get a nice fat dirty rhythm tone that's really nice to play. Seems to have a nice top end.
It produces a ton of low end, the two stage deep switch only emphasises this.
You can really "brown out" the preamp. Run the boost control high, and the amp does that kind of fuzzy, compressy, neck pickup thing where the notes kind of blur into each other. The pick attack is reduced. When you get higher into the register, the notes pop more.
This could be the settings and the cascading nature of the EQ circuit - I.e. the bass control wrapped round feeds more into the preamp. It's not quite as interactive as what you'd find in a Two Rock, but it's probably less finicky and slightly easier to use at the same time.
I find myself hardly using the boosts on my pedalboard with this amp. The amp just doesn't really seem to need them. The footswitching is really nice, too. Easy to store presets and you can get a variety of sounds from the amp's fairly simple set of controls.
Make no mistake, it's not a Marshall, and it's definitely based around that smoother Dumble drive sound with a really thick and vocal midrange should you desire it, but I think it covers more ground than just that. I've been finding some real nice classic rock rhythm tones, absolutely singing lead sounds, squeaky cleans, Edge of break up, glassy Strat sounds, etc. Seems a bit of a swiss army knife. Don't want to call it a Jack of all trades, because I think that's a bit unfair. It does everything better than merely "Jack" level.
Crucially:
The Hedgehog seems to me to be the amp that provides the sound people search for in the Two-Rock but can't find until they add the FET gain and some drive pedals/boosts etc.
The Hedgehog just seems to be that right out of the gate, with the addition of a great clean channel.
With the Classic Reverb Sig, I find myself tweaking knobs and wondering whether my sound is "boutique" or "Two-Rock" or "befitting of the name on the front panel" enough or whether I can get more juice out of it, or find that special setting. The Hedgehog, I've been jamming, playing riffs, writing a few things.
I think that may speak volumes...
I also have a couple of shows this weekend so I may do a gig with each and see how I feel afterwards.
Either way, one (or both should another crazy idea strike me in the meantime) will be going. I cannot keep both.
More to come....
I've just done more A/B-ing.
The Hedgehog can sound really quite close to a JCM 800. The low end is in a slightly different place - The 800 seems to have some shove in the lower 80-100 Hz, nearly subby frequencies, and the HH has probably more push in the 150Hz ish region but the mids and highs can get eerily similar. Like, really close. Nice and present and crunchy.
Where you stand in the room can massively change your perception of the low end between the two amps, though.
Impressive.
The Two-Rock will be going up for sale in the near future, I believe, although I've not assessed the cleans yet. The 2 mins I've spent on the clean on the HH has yielded what you would expect, really. Great clean sounds. Like, clean is clean is clean to me, really. Scoop it a bit and most clean sounds sound pretty similar i.e. "boring" to me. Fortunately the HH seems to enjoy gain.
I often find myself playing feature parts of songs that don’t necessarily need a full on solo volume boost, because it’s too much, but they do require a bit of a bump, so being able to create “variations on a theme” with your switching is a godsend.
How loud does it need to be cranked?