Hansoloist’s Ultimate Amp Review II: Triumphs of a Man Called Han

[hansoloist]

It has been a long time since my last Ultimate Amp Review. Years. Seems like yesterday though, don’t it? My infamous trip to Ultrasound. The one that inspired this tone-hungry heart and soul of mine to craft the single greatest review the Gear Page has ever seen. Rife with purple prose, unabashed hyperbole, profoundly nebulous diction, and epicurean analogies that made your mouth water (can you still taste it, boys), that little piece of evaluative genius brought me from nameless tone-chaser, to overlord of the laudatory, if slightly unintelligible, amplifier critique. Well, I’m back. And I have for you a whole new set of sesquipedalian gems, and worthless metaphors for your enjoyment.

This Saturday I found myself braving my way through another onslaught of tone machines armed only with my trusty Heatley Tradition, and flanked by a LawnGuyland boy with a knack for turning the most well-mannered amplifier into a sizzling swampy grime factory, and a wisecracking Brit with a pair of golden ears and aviators. We came. We saw. We ate, we drank. We kicked a little ass here, a little there…not so much over there. It was a hell of a ride.

A hell of a ride and worthy of documenting. At least that’s what I think. I probably played a dozen amps or so, but I’m just going to focus on my top 5. I can’t very well do the food gimmick again (mimicking oneself is just so weak), so I’ve decided to take another avenue of analogy. I’m going to compare each amp with a woman I’ve dated. I have, of course, abbreviated the last names for a measure of anonymity. But all else is exactly how it was.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you my experiences, my thoughts, my feelings, the critical fruition of my whopping headache.

Komet Concorde:

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been a huge Komet/Trainwreck fan. I’ve played the 60, played and heard a few Trainwrecks, heard the Constellation, and while I’ve dug them all to an extent, I’ve never found anything that merited the surrounding hype and mystique. Needless to say, when I sat down to play the Concorde, I wasn’t expecting anything extraordinary.

My first sentiments echoed those of my review of the 60 years ago—I thought it’d be bigger. It’s actually smaller than the 60, which is nice. I like compact. I don’t, however, like bad cosmetics. Aesthetically, the blend of hardwood and tolex just doesn’t work for me. It’s the equivalent of wearing a jacket and tie with a pit-stained t-shirt and acid washed jeans. And the huge aluminum logo looks like it’d be more at home on one of Ace Frehley’s codpieces. Fortunately, the adage about books and their covers rings oh-so-true with the Concorde.

This amp patrols. And by patrols I mean complete f*cking unmitigated monopoly over rock patrols. The tones out of this amp are off the hook. It has perhaps the fullest, broadest, snarliest, punchiest, churning, roaring, level you like a bull with a boner midrange I’ve ever heard. Gobs of mids. Mids up the but and out the ass. Most amps with this much happening in the mids would be cold and honky. But these mids are warm. Warmth across the spectrum...and out the ass. The highs are perfect. It has none of the brightness of the 60, yet all of the clarity. They’re fat. Fat as a pair of thighs on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights, NJ. And smooth. Unlike a pair of thighs on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights, NJ. But with bite. Smoothness and biteness—it’s a very cool thing. And get this—it has bass. Imagine that. A Komet with big thudding lows. Full, round, tight lows. Boy, it’s got a host of them. Top to bottom it’s eq’d perfectly.

Gain. Man, the gain is out of control. It doesn’t have quite the harmonic content of the 60, but what it lacks in that area it makes up for in gain, girth, punch, sweetness, sustain, wallop, chunka chunka chug, scream, howl and growl. Damn, what a tone. Gain comes on sumthin’ fierce at 9:00 and by the time you hit 12:00 you’ve turned your immediate atmosphere into a whirlwind of adrenalized sonic brouhaha. Overdriven heaven. Every friggin’ note swelling into the realm of the out-of-control feedback octaves and octaves up until your eardrums are sitting in pools of their own stink. And yet it remains very sensitive to touch and style. At 2:00, things compress. Things like eyeballs, brains, walls, the tires on the cars in the parking lot. The amp starts to do this envelope-like cave-in-on-itself then open up thing. Very chewy and smooth, lending itself to fluid, floating solos with a very sweet, if understated, attack. Chords have this insanely cool suck-up then explode quality. Beyond 2:00, it will easily clean the sand out of a vagina. Yes, this amp could favorably alter the disposition of every female on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights, NJ. And being that Ken Fischer was a denizen of the Garden State himself, I would not be surprised if this was the impetus behind the inception of this masterpiece.

Some people have said this amp is not too loud, and if their definition of too loud is a meteor the size of Baton Rouge, Louisiana careening at 20,000 mph into Beaver Stadium at touchdown time then I agree with them wholeheartedly. But if like me you find a 50 watt Marshall to be too loud for your needs, then this is not the amp for you. Yes, it’s voiced extremely well and is not rough on the ears frequency-wise, but it is indeed prohibitively loud. The Komet Airbrake did a nice job of cutting the volume, but it really robbed the amp of its magic. Kinda’ like driving a Ferrari in 1st gear, having sex with a condom, putting turd sauce on your filet mignon.

I love this amp. Would I pay $3800+ for it? Not a chance. I think the price point is stupid high, given that it’s a one channel amp that does one thing really well. My only other gripe with the amp is the name. This amp is the most impressive testament to Ken’s ears and ability that I have encountered. I would think it much more appropriate for it to share the eponym of its hardwood brethren—the KF50. Bless you, Ken. And thanks for the experience.

This amp is Wendy P. — The embodiment of immoderation, brimming with fire and intensity, alive like no other chick I’d ever known, electrified me to the core with a kiss, gave me everything I needed all the time, but in the end she was champagne taste and I was all beer pockets.

Sommatone Slick 18:

What’s cooler than plugging in and cranking up Jimmy Somma’s ode to auditory damnation? Kicking back and watching the amp’s namesake plug in, crank up, and lay low every wanker on the scene. Many of us that morning (especially those of us who spent the previous night in Barry’s Room) had Grey Goose oozing from our pores that afternoon. Some oozed lager. Some oozed cold cuts, which was extremely charming. As for Earl Slick—he oozed rock. I think Pete put it best when he turned to me and said—it goes to show, you don’t need widdly widdly to make rock and roll. Phenomenal player. Mesmerizing even. And a hell of a nice guy.

Now to the amp. Jimmy’s got something really special here. Don’t let the name fool you—it isn’t an 18 watt Marshall clone. This takes everything an 18 watter does well and improves upon it while taking it in a direction that ultimately secures its place on its own little island of tonal bliss.

Cosmetically the amp is very tasteful—blends the best of the Marshall catalog and a little of its own thing into an attractive, and compact package. Functionally, it’s delightfully simple. Plug in, twist a couple of knobs, and you’re good to go. And man it sounds good no matter where they’re pointing. The cleans have a lovely Voxy thing happening—great emphasis in the upper mids, but not overly so to where things thin out or get overly bright. It’s just right. But clean isn’t where this little monster likes to dwell. This f*cker is way more at home presiding over the land of wicked overdrive.

Wow, this amp smokes. The gain comes on pretty quick, and keeps cascading into take your head off territory after that. Beautiful highs—thick and with enough sizzle to cut through without being painful. The lows are big, but never overwhelming. Turn the gain up all the way, and you still won’t lose definition in the ass end. The magic, though, is in the mids. I think Barry summed it up with this—they’re snotty. Not nasal. But snotty. The upper mid emphasis makes for a tone that’s grainy, complex, and seriously raw. Unrefined. Throaty. Snotty. And it’s a wonderful thing. Chords have great cut and clarity. Single notes have a wonderful vocal quality—they sing, ring out, smoothly transform into a glorious crescendo of feedback. Rock never sounded so gnarly. So bitchin’. I dug it as much as the KF50, different as they are.

To top it all off, it’s affordable. In the $1500 range—well under a lot of boutique amps that can’t even approach what this thing can do. I think Jimmy has a real winner on his hands—one that I hope rewards him with the wider recognition his talent and ingenuity deserve.

This amp is Sasha C. — Eleven tons of vigor and verve in a 5’0” 92lb frame, wild and edgy and whimsical, a siren in a sea of rocks I gladly crossed again and again, only at home in the spur of the moment, faultlessly walking that fine line between delightfully dirty and frighteningly freaky, so crass, but so damn cool.

continued below

[hansoloist]

Reinhardt 50 Watt w/KT66s:

I love meeting new people. Especially new people who are as cool and kind as Bob Reinhardt. So hospitable. Walking into Bob’s suite felt like walking into his living room (a living room filled with amps, that is). And his family was in attendance, which only added to the hominess of it all.

Bob’s amps look as good as they sound. The cosmetics are a killer melding of classic amp and classic car. Crash a ’70 Chevelle or 442 into a wall of Marshalls and you’ve got Reinhardt Amps. The tolex work is tasteful and very tight, courtesy of Bob’s wife.

Tonally, this amp is all vintage Marshall with some really nice things happening that a lot of old Marshalls seem to lack. The cleans are gorgeous—very thick and full with a bassiness throughout that keeps everything extremely warm. The mids are prominent but not overwhelming—also warm—and the highs are very sweet. Lovely stuff. But, like most amps I play, they always want me to turn them up. I can even hear them—their little voices in my head. Turn me up, Han. Turn me up. So I obliged. It really would have been rude not to.

Dress me up in grandma’s mu’umu’u and beat me with a leg of lamb this thing sounded good. So fat and warm. Great gain and harmonic content. Huge mids and lows and just the sweetest top end around. And so damn warm. Buttery. Have I mentioned the warmth? Perhaps one of the best neck pickup LP tones I’ve ever heard. I loved the vocal quality, and the sustain, even at reasonable volumes, was incredible. Definitely some serious sweetness going on in the attack too. What was especially surprising was the volume—it was the friendliest 50 watts I’ve ever heard. I could have played it for hours and not been bothered by the volume.

This amp does a really sweet job of copping some of those classic rock tones may of us have been chasing for years. And with an OD in front, I’m sure you could bring it into high gain territory very nicely. Congrats to Bob for building a real winner.

This amp is Veronica S. — Big and full and full of compassion, a paradise of the curviest of curves, and dear lord when she walked she let the world know she was proud of ‘em, sweet and sexy, kind and secretly devilish, with a pair of arms in which I’d have happily spent a lifetime.

Ken Fischer Tribute Amp:

Ah, the amp that launched a thousand ships. Or so it would seem. There’s certainly been enough discussion about it. Some positive. Some negative. Most of it pretty silly. In the end it’s an amp. And a seriously fine amp at that.

It’s quite understated at a glance, really. The wood isn’t rippling with flame or quilt or birdseye. The cabinet work is superb—the dovetail joints about as tight as you can get. I’m a big fan of hardwood cases and there is something attractive about this one. Something about its subtlety. I dug it.

Firing up this amp was a real treat. I immediately recognized a lot of the qualities of the Wreck I played years ago at Ultrasound. The harmonic content was all there, the upper mid grind, the effortless sustain, the sensitivity. The roar, the richness, the trademark holy hell this amp is about to frippin’ explode vibe. It sure sounded like a Wreck to me. Then I tweaked the knobs a bit, cranked the volume way up, and was very surprised to find that it sounded remarkably similar to the KF50 I played earlier that day. The broad, full mids were there. That unique compression and sweetness was there. Even the bass was there to a point. Makes sense, right? Both designs are from the same dude. Also makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be checking out Express clones, especially if they can get me that close to a KF50.

If I wasn’t a fan of Ken Fischer’s stuff before Saturday, I certainly am now. The guy certainly knew how to make an amp scream.

This amp is Sandy S. — It wasn’t the first glance that got me, or the second, but the third and I was glad I stuck around and got to know this wild little minx, a soul-stirring muse beneath a veneer of plainness, an unbridled beast within, untamed and untamable, and when she let me in all I could do was hang on and hope I returned in one piece…if at all.

Tube Wonder:

And now for something completely different: the Tube Wonder. Alex, the maker of this sonic wonderland and a hell of a nice guy, is coming from a place that…well…I can’t really say for sure where it is, but it’s far and away different from any amp builder I’ve ever encountered. Alex isn’t building upon an existing platform. He’s not drawing from an existing tonal palate. He’s not mimicking or modifying. He’s doing his own thing altogether.

Listening to Alex run through the features on his amp, and the philosophies and science behind them, was mind-blowing. To get an idea of what it was like, imagine all of the girls from the first three Girls Gone Wild DVDs at a nanotechnology seminar. That was the look on most of our faces. Occasionally I’d grasp a concept here or there, but in the end I was lost. I only know that this amp is a tweaker’s paradise, and is very special.

The cosmetics are interesting--raw wood cabinet with some antique radio designs routed into the front, black face panel, and some very cool round knobs with white tips. Very different from a lot of what's out there. There are so many knobs and toggles on this thing that it’s really hard to figure out where to start. To make things more interesting, get this: they all do something. In a world of boutique amps where most knobs allow one to tailor a given sound, without severely altering that sound, this amp allows you to sculpt its tonal characteristics to a degree I have never experienced. With Barry working his way through the knobs and toggles, we were able to coax a seemingly endless variety of tones from the amp. I simply cannot emphasize enough the extent to which we were able to dial in and out frequencies, sculpt distortion characteristics, add and cut sustain, alter harmonic content…every facet of the tonal spectrum could be toyed with. Some of the tones we discovered were familiar (fender, vox, marshall, dumble, wreck all can be had to an extent). Some were wholly original. Some were flat out bizarre. All were very cool.

Alex is really on to something with this Tube Wonder of his. It’s an amp that forces you to reconsider existing notions about tone. About the connection between amp and player. About finding one’s sound. I do not think it too bold to say that it represents an evolution in amplifier building. Kudos to you, Alex. And best of luck.

This amp is Candice R. — A house with many mansions, a host of players, all of them fighting for center stage, unnervingly unpredictable, Miss Sweet one day, Miss Sultry the next, and every day misunderstood, and damn if I couldn’t help but revel and marvel in her aura of otherworldliness that sprung from a well the nature of which I can only ponder, without any hope or need to grasp.

Fin.

[shallbe]

Wonderful reviews. Enjoyable, well-written, full of great images.

You have only built upon your status as legendary amp review guy!

Thanks for the effort.

[Greggy]

You dated Sasha Cohen! Wow, I didn't know that. I hope you made her take her skates off before coming to bed.

[todd richman]

Great reviews and brings back memories of the tones I heard on Saturday in Piscataway at the Amp Show. I am curious how the Slick 18 would fare in a live situation. I heard and watched Earl Slick demoing the head with an Avatar 1x10 Celestion loaded cab in the Celestion room and it did sound exactly as described here but was not very loud. I would love to hear it with a bigger cab. The price is great and it is a true snotty, gritty, rock and roll amp for sure though. I was told by someone at the show that the Slick 18 is meant to be a recording only amp and thus does not need to have gobs of volume. With 18 watts that makes sense. Kinda wish Jimmy would chime in here! I also heard Earl playing through a Komet and 4x12 in the same room and it was ripping too-I think it was the Komet 80 that Gene of Ultrasound brought along-his personal amp which is rumored to have been tweaked by Ken Fischer.

[mprvise]

Man, that was a fun read! THANKS!

My thoughts exactly on the Concorde - GREAT amp, but way too loud for 90% of my gigging purposes, and that makes the price of admission too high for me, at least for now...

[ChickenLover]

You dated Sasha Cohen! Wow, I didn't know that.

If he did then this was all just a thinly veiled brag post.

[Distortion]

Originally Posted by hansoloist

Komet Concorde:


My first sentiments echoed those of my review of the 60 years ago—I thought it’d be bigger. It’s actually smaller than the 60, which is nice. I like compact.
This amp patrols. And by patrols I mean complete f*cking unmitigated monopoly over rock patrols. The tones out of this amp are off the hook. It has perhaps the fullest, broadest, snarliest, punchiest, churning, roaring, level you like a bull with a boner midrange I’ve ever heard. Gobs of mids. Mids up the but and out the ass. Most amps with this much happening in the mids would be cold and honky. But these mids are warm. Warmth across the spectrum...and out the ass. appropriate for it to share the eponym of its hardwood brethren—the KF50. Bless you, Ken. And thanks for the experience.

I have to wonder if you were reading a Porn magazine when you wrote this..

By the way, the KF 50's chassis is exactly the same size as the 60...

[riker4208]

Fun read about some amps I'll probably won't play anytime too soon.

[bluesdoc]

Great, great post leaving me laughing and drooling at the same time. And, as always, I love you're writing, hs.

Perhaps you could add what speakers/cabs you were listening to?

jon

[Hamertoe]

Thanks for taking the time to write. Rather than grumble about not having any pics to look at I'll thank you for not posting any. It would just add to the pain of wanting one of these amps! :AOK

[A440]

Originally Posted by todd richman

Great reviews and brings back memories of the tones I heard on Saturday in Piscataway at the Amp Show. I am curious how the Slick 18 would fare in a live situation. I heard and watched Earl Slick demoing the head with an Avatar 1x10 Celestion loaded cab in the Celestion room and it did sound exactly as described here but was not very loud. I would love to hear it with a bigger cab. The price is great and it is a true snotty, gritty, rock and roll amp for sure though. I was told by someone at the show that the Slick 18 is meant to be a recording only amp and thus does not need to have gobs of volume. With 18 watts that makes sense. Kinda wish Jimmy would chime in here! I also heard Earl playing through a Komet and 4x12 in the same room and it was ripping too-I think it was the Komet 80 that Gene of Ultrasound brought along-his personal amp which is rumored to have been tweaked by Ken Fischer.

when I stopped by, Jimmy had it going thru a 2x12 cab, and I thought it sounded great. IMO, enough cut for gigs methinks (guess it depends on what kind of music you play)

Jimmy had the presence dailed back a bit with a PRS SE plugged in.
meaty rock tone spoken here.

I may have to plunk down for one of these heads (and an attenuator)

[jeffnmoe]

Damn, for a second there I thought I had been transported back to TGP circa 2002, instead of the uptown Harmony Central. Thanks for the memories, Han!

[r9player]

Thanks for the reviews! Makes me feel like I was there just a little.

[Jimmy Somma]

Originally Posted by todd richman

The price is great and it is a true snotty, gritty, rock and roll amp for sure though. I was told by someone at the show that the Slick 18 is meant to be a recording only amp and thus does not need to have gobs of volume. With 18 watts that makes sense. Kinda wish Jimmy would chime in here!

The amp was designed for Earl as studio amp but it's plenty loud for small to medium sized gigs. Earl ran it through three different cabs in the Celestion room - single 10" Greenback, single Gold and a 4X12 cab with Golds. The Slick-18 through the 1X10 sounded good but very small, compressed, dark and not very loud (maybe this is what you heard). It sounded much more open, loud and punchy through the single Gold.... and through the 4X12... holy *@%&$! it sounded huge!!!