NAQ - Redplate BluesMachine 66

Keefy

The Q stands for quarter, as I’ve had the amp at least 3 months but haven’t had a lot of time with it until recently. I took it in trade against a guitar from a local guitarist who is a member on here.

My main gigging amp is a Matchless Lightning Reverb - 1 channel, 5 controls, and a power switch. The Redplate has 9 knobs and 8 switchable options as well as a choice of output valves. That's more than I'm used to, and way more than I feel like I need. The build quality is excellent, with Mercury Magnetics transformers and tag board construction. I took out the KT66s it came with and put in 6L6s. The instructions specify the voltage ranges to shoot for when biasing for different valves, but that's based on 470V on the plates - I measured 506V so I adjusted accordingly. Previous owners have made some modifications - longer reverb tank, nice old Celestion speaker, and the original knobs replaced with big shiny silver ‘Dumble’-style ones.

I got it out this week with a view to selling, but (predictably) got some great sounds out of it and decided to keep it. The cascading gain channel has a couple of hi-cut switches to tame top-end fizz when the gain is wound up and is consequently capable of going full Dad-rock. That’s not my thing but it will also do nice edge-of-breakup. After some trial and error with component values, I made up a dual foot switch for Overdrive and Boost. The latter bypasses the tone circuit for a usable and not OTT mid-pushed volume lift. It sits before the Overdrive channel, giving you another drive level. This is an amp that I could gig without pedals, were it not for the fact that I just have to have some analog delay to hand!

I currently have it set in Black-panel mode in a way that flatters a Strat or Tele nicely. I think the trick with this amp is to set-and-forget for a particular guitar, and use the switches if changing model. I decided I didn’t much care for the ‘Dumble’ knobs so I replaced them with black cup-cakes.

I've only done one gig and one rehearsal with this amp so I really need to live with it a bit longer to properly get to know it.