Bartel amps

thebreeze

This isn't a thread about whether they're worth the money or not.

I like the sound and tone quality that these amps can deliver and the build is impressive too.

I'd like to ask owners/users/"people in the know" how do you deal with the one channel thing?  Say you just want to have a great clean tone (which it does) and a great lead/break up tone (which it does) how do you manage?  Do you set a great clean sound and turn guitar volume up for lead and compromise on the lead sound (or vice versa maybe?) or do you use a drive pedal and which ones sound good/complement?  I can't seem to get a great lead tone with my Xotic BB Preamp which has always been completely reliable in the past with Fender and Tone King amps.  I use Teles and Strats.

It feels a bit frustrating not being able to get the lead sound I want knowing it's in there.  Maybe I haven't spent enough time tweaking though?

chris78

I set mine with the gain pretty high so it’s breaking up and use the guitar’s volume control to clean it up and then volume as a boost.
With a Strat or tele get your volume on 10 and get the amp driving. Take your volume down to 6/7 which should clean the amp up. 

It does absolutely love pedals, but with any amp, the pedals you use with a bartel will be different to the pedals you’d use with a Marshall or a two rock, for example.

Itll pair well with a host of great pedals, depending on your ears. I’ve loved the cornerstone Gladio, Kingsley jester and the Browne protein. My kingtone duellist which was my favourite drive before, on the other hand, I thought sounded horrid. 

thebreeze

Thanks @chris78 , I’ll give that a go.

fretfinder

I’ve owned a Sugarland and a Starwood and you’ve hit the nail on the head really in that you have to compromise either the clean or the lead tone if you want to be able to switch instantly between the two. Unless your ideal clean and ideal lead tones are both tweed, or both blackface, or both Marshall etc, in which case use the guitar volume as Chris has said. 

Both of my Bartels seemed to take whatever drive pedal I threw at them very well although I felt that was kind of a cop out when the amp on its own has got so many great overdriven sounds in it.

A Bartel is definitely not a one trick pony by any means, it’s a multi trick pony but the catch is that you can only really ride one pony at a time! 

StuartMac290

Fuggit, just buy two surely?

Kultschar

fretfinder said:

I’ve owned a Sugarland and a Starwood and you’ve hit the nail on the head really in that you have to compromise either the clean or the lead tone if you want to be able to switch instantly between the two. Unless your ideal clean and ideal lead tones are both tweed, or both blackface, or both Marshall etc, in which case use the guitar volume as Chris has said. 

Both of my Bartels seemed to take whatever drive pedal I threw at them very well although I felt that was kind of a cop out when the amp on its own has got so many great overdriven sounds in it.

A Bartel is definitely not a one trick pony by any means, it’s a multi trick pony but the catch is that you can only really ride one pony at a time! 

Which one did you prefer??

fretfinder

Kultschar said:

fretfinder said:

I’ve owned a Sugarland and a Starwood and you’ve hit the nail on the head really in that you have to compromise either the clean or the lead tone if you want to be able to switch instantly between the two. Unless your ideal clean and ideal lead tones are both tweed, or both blackface, or both Marshall etc, in which case use the guitar volume as Chris has said. 

Both of my Bartels seemed to take whatever drive pedal I threw at them very well although I felt that was kind of a cop out when the amp on its own has got so many great overdriven sounds in it.

A Bartel is definitely not a one trick pony by any means, it’s a multi trick pony but the catch is that you can only really ride one pony at a time! 

Which one did you prefer??

I liked the smaller size, lighter weight and lower cost of the Sugarland but then I missed having onboard reverb which I have in all my other amps. I loved the onboard two-knob reverb on the Starwood but thought the amp was oversized and rather heavy for what it is. Is the onboard reverb worth almost a grand extra at second hand prices? No it isn’t imho, unless you really need the extra watts and volume. If I was buying another Bartel for home use I’d get the Sugarland and use a reverb pedal. I don’t think I will buy another one though. As impressive as the different amp voicings are, you have to stop playing and fiddle to change the sound to a different amp type and I found myself only really using one or two sounds max, and then it’s kind of a waste having such an expensive amp. I got a Lazy J10LC and a Rift PR18 for about the cost of a used Starwood and I can footswitch between them, or have them both on, and they both have reverb and tremolo. Suits my needs better, for what it’s worth.

mburekenge

They look amazing, but I'd never get one of these when for the same money you could get two insanely good boutique amps (or more).

Look forward to trying one though

idiotwindow

mburekenge said:

They look amazing, but I'd never get one of these when for the same money you could get two insanely good boutique amps (or more).

Look forward to trying one though

They seem to come up for sale in the classifieds quite regularly – often at quite compelling discounts to the new price – which strikes me as odd for a product that sells in comparatively low numbers and is usually touted as the only amp you'll ever need and/or the greatest sounding amp for home and gigging, blah blah. 

chris78

I have to say, that’s a poorly thought through statement when you consider the classifieds at the moment.
In them, we have at least 3 Dale Wilson masterbuilts, a John Cruz, a 59 Les Paul special, a vintage thinline tele and a Murphy lab, all one page one. 

Are you going to suggest that these aren’t world class instruments because gas has struck and people want to move them on, or given the financial climate, they’re moving them on for financial reasons? 

I’ve agreed to buy a castedosa this week used- the seller is having quite acute financial difficulty and is gutted about having to get rid of the guitar.

What’s amazing for me is how rarely Bartel amps actually come up for sale, considering they’ve been in production now since 2018. Even though Mark doesn’t build them by the hatful (they take a whole week per amp to build), that means there would be a quite sizeable amount in circulation in the UK. Way more owners of bartel amps are keeping them than are moving them
on.

Voxsupertwin

chris78 said:

I have to say, that’s a poorly thought through statement when you consider the classifieds at the moment.
In them, we have at least 3 Dale Wilson masterbuilts, a John Cruz, a 59 Les Paul special, a vintage thinline tele and a Murphy lab, all one page one. 

Are you going to suggest that these aren’t world class instruments because gas has struck and people want to move them on, or given the financial climate, they’re moving them on for financial reasons? 

I’ve agreed to buy a castedosa this week used- the seller is having quite acute financial difficulty and is gutted about having to get rid of the guitar.

What’s amazing for me is how rarely Bartel amps actually come up for sale, considering they’ve been in production now since 2018. Even though Mark doesn’t build them by the hatful (they take a whole week per amp to build), that means there would be a quite sizeable amount in circulation in the UK. Way more owners of bartel amps are keeping them than are moving them
on.

Unlike the Fender Tonemaster range !

idiotwindow

chris78 said:

Are you going to suggest that these aren’t world class instruments because gas has struck and people want to move them on,

I'm not suggesting for a second that the Bartel amps aren't fantastic amps – far from it. I'm just pointing out that they are often for sale in the classifieds which I find slightly at odds with the reputation they have and the glowing reviews made (sometimes by the same people who are selling them). I guess I just don't understand the GAS that seems to drive some people to be forever unsatisfied with what they have and constantly churn through (or accumulate) guitars and amps.

Alex2678

I’d think that this forum is likely to have a high concentration of Bartel amp owners, and therefore of Bartel amps for sale

Th4fonz

The more people spend on the gear the more picky you become.  If you spend £5k+ on something it better tick allllllllll the boxes hence that’s why stuff gets moved on.  Whilst it may be fantastic there might be a niggling issue that don’t jel with you.  Plus if you can afford big money items losing money to move it on isn't  much of an issue either. If it’s a cheapy amp or guitar then there’s nothing to really be that concerned about.  It is what it is and it does the job it does.  

thinline72

For the last ~8 months I've been setting my Sugarland solely for clean sound. In fact, I even followed Mark's advice from the manual and put some 12AU7s in it, replacing 12AX7 in the V1. I usually run it with Master at max and Volume at ~2, depending on other pre-amp settings: yet another great advice on clean tone from the manual btw. All that gives it a very full and thick clean tones at a bedroom level.

I mainly play fingerpicking stuff, so I'm usually not in a need for lead tones (not that helpful for OP, sorry!  ). But it works amazing with Effectrode Tube Drive for mid/high gain stuff. I sometimes get lost for a while having fun playing riffs and leads with Tube Drive and I start question my pursuit of gentle fingerpicking  I haven't found a good low gain combination just yet, but it's likely due to my tastes and other things tbh. I'm going to experiment more with valves in the Tube Drive and probably some other pedals like Lightspeed.

For me it's not a problem to stand up and change the settings as I don't do that often. In most cases I'd adjust them for a specific song, but sometimes just depending on my mood   But I think that one day I'll also put back 12AX7 and crank it up! Then I'll likely start complaining too. So I definitely see how having several channels or having programmable settings would be useful indeed. I guess it's just not what Bartel wanted to go with while building a very classical looking and sounding amp.


As per the prices on the used market, I've been following them for several years. So, FWIW, here are some of my obviously biased thoughts and observations:

• I don't think they come up used that much often tbh, especially smaller ones. I'd say Bartel are rarer to appear than other famous and popular boutique amps like say Two-Rock and Lazy J. I admit that the former has been produced for longer and in much more counts while the latter is locally build, so there is a natural skew in such a comparison.
• I agree with @chris78 re market state. Taking Lazy J as an example as I've been following them quite closely as well since I decided to keep Bartel over it. There have been a plenty of them on the market in the last few months which I cannot say was the case a year+ ago. They also dropped in prices quite significantly. And they are phenomenal amps and highly regarded by many. I shall admit that one could also say that Lazy J is similar to Bartel in terms of hype and other stuff though 
• I don't understand used price difference between Sugarland and Starwood. I haven't played Starwood, but £1k on top for the reverb and more wattage looks pretty odd and significant to me. I shall admit that I definitely don't need more wattage, quite the opposite. I also got very accustomed to UA Golden Reverberator and find myself using plate reverb more often than spring.

All that being said, the market is the market and it decides where the wind blows
I, for one, am really looking forward to his 3W amp which will have an option of built-in reverb. I'm hopeful to believe that it'll be a perfect home amp, maybe even better than Sugarland.

paulmapp8306

have to say, i use plate and room reverbs 99% of the time.  Im not a massive fan of the spring reverb sound - though really good ones sound more "atmospheric" rather than a specific "spring sound".  

As long as their is eithe renough headroom to run a reverb pedal in front OR it has a loop to run reverb post gain I have no need for an inbuilt reverb.  My issue with the small Bartel, is there isnt the headroom and theres no loop.   That means using a Fryette Power Station to add one pre speaker - which is fine, but your not "solely" hearing the Bartel then regardless of how good the Fryette is - and while its fine at home its just more kit to take when playing out.

fretfinder

paulmapp8306 said:

have to say, i use plate and room reverbs 99% of the time.  Im not a massive fan of the spring reverb sound - though really good ones sound more "atmospheric" rather than a specific "spring sound".  

As long as there is either enough headroom to run a reverb pedal in front OR it has a loop to run reverb post gain I have no need for an inbuilt reverb.  My issue with the small Bartel, is there isnt the headroom and theres no loop.  

Not sure I understand the headroom point - presume you're not only referring to plate and room reverbs? I used a Catalinbread Topanga spring reverb pedal into the front of my Sugarland and it worked really well to my ears, on everything except heavily overdriven settings.

I do like a spring reverb sound though, and personally I like to have onboard reverb in my home amps, which is one of the reasons I sold the Sugarland. The other reason being the need to fiddle to switch between the different amp voicings when I’d normally only use one or two different sounds for any length of time and just vary the amount of drive. That’s why I sold my Starwood too, plus the fact I thought it was over-heavy and over-sized for what it is and not particularly attractive looking as a result. I thought the smaller Sugarland was a good size for a home amp and looked great! 

thinline72 said:

For the last ~8 months I've been setting my Sugarland solely for clean sound. 

I, for one, am really looking forward to his 3W amp which will have an option of built-in reverb. I'm hopeful to believe that it'll be a perfect home amp, maybe even better than Sugarland.

Blimey, if I was only using one clean sound I don’t think I’d need to have an amp that cost so much money.   I’m not questioning your choice to play such a fantastic quality amp as a Bartel at all though!

I also agree it sounds like the new 3-watter will be the perfect home amp. Apparently it will have a voicing control with three core sounds (Princeton, tweed Deluxe and overdriven Plexi) so arguably it will be less fiddly, plus it’ll have the reverb and it will still have a master volume. I doubt I’ll buy a new one though as I suspect it will be chuffing expensive!

thinline72

Blimey, if I was only using one clean sound I don’t think I’d need to have an amp that cost so much money.   I’m not questioning your choice to play such a fantastic quality amp as a Bartel at all though!

@fretfinder haha, if you think about it, that's quite an interesting turn of the events indeed  
Well, in all honesty, I didn't buy Bartel for just clean tones back then. It's just how I ended up using it for the recent time due to what I play and prefer at the moment. Overall, my reasoning to buy Bartel included:

• Bartel's Master Volume. I play at home in a pretty small room, so I need something that would sound great and not overwhelming. Mark was already famous by his Tone King Iron Man, so I had some confidence in that.
• Versatility and ease of use. I had both Bartel and Lazy J with me at that time. There is my Lazy J FS thread that contains more details why I kept Bartel. Nothing groundbreaking there, Bartel is just a bit better fit for me and my environment.
  
• Build quality and support. Mark is very approachable and answers pretty quickly. He doesn't seem to care where and how you bought the amp.

Re clean tones: the cool thing is that this "hyped" versatility of doing "Marshal, Tweed, Vox, Brownface, Blackface etc. etc." applies to the clean tones as well. There is literally a myriad of them. Bartel has the most usable pre-amp EQ I've seen. There are no bad settings and even after a lot of time I still find some new sounds.

 BTW, I put classical tone names into "" because I believe that this marketing does more harm than good. Folks are getting too focused on this and come up with arguments like "does it do the best Tweed/Plexi/you_name_it sound? No!", "it'd be cheaper to get one blackface and one vox amp instead!", "it's jack of all trades, and master of none", etc. And I should say that yeah, if you look at the amp from this point of view only, these are all valid arguments indeed!

I think though that Bartel has its own unique sound and voicing, which is very flexible via its highly interactive EQ.
Disclaimer: I don't have a broad experience with all types of amps. I never played Vox or Brownface and my experience with others has been quite limited. I've never sought to get "that Plexi sound" or "those Blackface clean tones", I just want to get a great sound that I love in my room. So for me these words have always been high-level tone descriptors. I believe Bartel wanted to put a very similar meaning in that advertisement. I think he just wanted to explain what his amps can give in familiar to everyone words. But not state that he recreated the best possible tones from each of that group. Naturally, it didn't play well with many well-experienced folks who have much stronger associations developed for these tone descriptors.

Re cost: Before Bartel, I had Fender Princeton Reverb 64 HWRI, which is a great amp! But I always struggled to make it sound good in my environment, even for clean sound! It was too bassy and overwhelming. I tried putting smaller gain tubes to tame it like folks suggested here. At the end I got UA OX and used it as an attenuator. Now if we add a price of a similar Princeton 64 and UA OX it'd be quite close to an used Bartel Sugarland. Obvious disclaimer: there are cheaper and likely better attenuators than UA OX and Princeton also have reverb (didn't like) + tremolo (like a lot) in it. Anyway, in my case it wasn't really a huge investment on top.

Now, could I get the same or even better sounds with other amps in my environment? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It could be, yes. But that would require quite a bit trying and failing which might end up loosing some money anyway. And what will happen when I'd like to get a nice amp breakup and crunch? I might have to find another amp or attenuator again. Yes, It might still cost less than Sugarland, but would it worth the hassle really? It could be a cool learning journey and experience I guess. But at the end it'll be yet another gear distraction which will pull me away from focusing on how to play. Which I guess we all can agree matters the most   

P.S. Sorry for another long read. There is just no much information about Bartel out there from the owners. No much videos either. So I just hope that my very subjective thoughts and experiences will help someone to see if it's a good fit for them.

Nerine

If I was looking for something broadly similar, I’d look at the Morgan MVP23. 

Wazmeister

Brilliants amps. Full stop.

YMMV.

chris78

Nerine said:

If I was looking for something broadly similar, I’d look at the Morgan MVP23. 

I’ve owned a Morgan mvp23, which are amazing bang for the buck and I’m a huge fan.
They aren’t similar