The Ganesha 1->100 guitar amplifier: Tell Me all about it?

Spam spam spam spam SPAMMMMM, wonderful SPAMMMMM!!

Great amp, if'n you happen to be into big cool Marshall tones.

There's also another recent thread in the Product Reviews section.

 

I had the Tusk and was a bit disapointed with the amp. I bought it thinking it would be essentially a plexi with the ability to sound cranked at any volume. IMO, it fell short in this area. Had some nice clean and "pushed" tones but definitely not plexi-type gain. I have a Voodoo V-Plex now and in comparison the MP was "flubby" and "muffled". No sparkle on tap.

Maybe a great amp for some but to call it "plexi" based definitely is misleading. I've played plexis and Marshalls for 15 years and I have never owned one that sounded like the MP Tusk.

 

Well I don't agree with the previous post. Been playing Marshalls since 1967 and the Ganesha does a great job. But and there is always a but it is much more complicated and sensitive to how it is set up way more control which allows you get some poor tones as well as great ones. If you want a plug and play two knob amp this isn't it. I have had my Ganesha since they first came out actually I had a prototype and then bought the production version about ten months ago. Still love it I don't see it going anywhere.

 

Well, we had mine next to a particularly good sounding 71 Marshall, and they were very close in tone. I did have to have the wattage control up to about 7 or 8 (of 12) to get a comparable tone, however. It was very loud.

Muffled?? wow , that amp can be really bright if you want...

I do have to agree that the bass is not as tight as I would like.

 

I gigged with a Ganesha for a year and loved everything
about it. I thought its cleans one-up'ed Plexi cleans,
in that they had more hi-end sparkle and detail (I used
open back 2x12's). I always found the Ganesha's bass
response to be well defined, even pummelling on higher
settings of the Sag control. The bass tightness of the amp
is purpose engineered to be very dialable. You can make
it spongy as an old tweed by dialing the Sag to '12' and
pulling the Bass knob out ('loose' setting).

I thought the Ganesha had the tonal flexibility to nail
Plexi, Superlead, Superbass, metal panel, and JCM800
tones with high accuracy. I played every Marshall in
existence in my misspent Rock 'n Roll youth. I'd take
a 100W Ganesha over the best of them. Of the dozens
of amps I've owned, the Ganesha was the most "me".
Just nailed what I wanted to hear. YMMV.

 

I'm glad to hear the positive posts, I've got a Tuskadaro being shipped to me Monday and I'm reallylooking for a 4 holer non mv Superlead vibe and hopefully at reasonable volumes.

 

Wow, my Tusk was broken. It was nothing like these reviews.

Unfortunately, we need to go by word of mouth on some of these small builder's amps and for some reason, there never is a negative thing to be said about them. The guy I sold my Tusk to put it on ebay two weeks later.

 

Not necessarily. It may just not have been your thing. Certainly no one amp works for everyone.

 

I will seldom say anything really negative about a piece of small-builder gear, even if it doesn't work for me. I've had some highly praised stuff from the board that I found to be unusable for me, but I haven't trashed any of it publicly. With that being said, I never say anything positive unless I really mean it. And I think there are others on the board who are pretty much the same way.

If you read positive reviews about the Tusk or the Ganesha or whatever else, there's a pretty good chance they were written in good faith by people who really loved them.

Not all gear works for all players, so maybe the Tusk wasn't your thing. Fine, and you're welcome to tell people that if you feel like it. But please don't imply that everyone else hypes gear, no matter how bad it is, just to suck unwary buyers in.

 

Why? Do you think that only large companies deserve to be criticized?

 

No, but I hang out with some small-company gear guys, and I've seen the damage even thoughtfully written negative statements can do.

I'm not going to potentially screw up a little guy's business just because I didn't personally dig the pedal or amp. Words on the internet take on a life of their own. You say a pedal doesn't work for you, soon it's being read as the pedal's over-rated, sucks, just hype, whatever.

Not to mention, WWIII suddenly breaks out when you say that you don't particularly like AmpX, and the president of the AmpX fan club jumps in and tells you you don't have ears, your amp's a POS, etc. I just choose not to get into any pissing matches. So sue me.

When trying to decide on new gear, I look for people who seem to have the same kinds of likes and dislikes as I do based on the history of their posts, and I look for the new stuff that they like. Or if someone whose taste doesn't coincide with mine loves something, I know I can pretty much write it off. But if someone slags gear, it just turns me off and I ignore the rest of the message.

 

Man, I guess I agree but that's sad. Maybe it would be a good idea to not allow builders on this forum. I know it's nice to banter back and forth with them but when it comes down to me dropping a lot of jack on an amp, I could care less about hurting someone's feelings--I'd like to hear honest evaluations.

I just got an email from Dave Zimmerman asking whether I was out to get him. Now, Dave is a truly nice guy who I do not believe would ever mislead anyone. He was helpful with my questions after I got the amp. But it wasn't the amp for me. Not his fault, but I was a bit peeved at the lack of constructive criticism on the musician's forums. By reading the reviews, the amp was perfect. It was not. For me.

We all get annoyed at guitar magazine reviews as they are all pretty soft on products/companies because of the advertising dollars involved. But aren't we just essentially doing the same?

 

And one more thing, at least with a "pissing contest" two views are being expressed. I welcome that over one sided gushing...

 

If people can't accept this, they're too thin-skinned. That's hardly a harsh criticism. It's an admission of your preferences more than anything. Whenever someone says this of my amps (and it's happened more than once), I don't run to a corner and cry or start blaming people for ruining my business. However if they say things like "this amp was total garbage" (and that has happened a couple times to me), I do take exception to that. It's hardly appropriate and it's definitely untrue. Much more objective (and even subjective!) terms can be used to describe something without resorting to all-out "trash talk".

 

I don't write negative reviews for another reason. What if I play an amp, and it turns out to be something I don't like. I can imagine a scenario where some player who that amp is dialed in for puts out clips or records a CD with absolutely glorious tones, I'd feel like quite a chump if I slagged the tone on a forum when clearly the kind of player who's style is the right match is getting god like tones from it.

Also, one thing to consider with much care, there is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to tone. Period. You can only say that you were unable to get the tones you like from it, you cant say it doesn't have good tone. If it were possible to be objective about tone, then you would be able to say it doesn't have good tone, but the onus would then be on you to prove it.

Here's an example. I can be as happy with a plexi Marshall as a Super Reverb, these amps are worlds apart but I'm very comfortable with either, but put me with a Vox AC30 or derivative, and I'm just not a happy camper. Subjectively, for my playing style, an AC30 sucks. But some of my favorite players sound like God through them, just listen to Brian May, Jimmy Page, Richie Blackmore, and many others. So the last thing my ego is going to let me do is say an AC30 doesn't have good tone, all it does is make me look like I can't play.

Now you can be objective if you are discussing non-tone related issues with an amp, like it's faulty, cuts in and out, buzzes, runs too hot then dies, bad customer support, but all those things are issues other than tone.

I updated the above to clarify my point.

 

I think that it's safe to say everyone agrees that, "it sucks" is NOT constructive criticism.

 

Were we seperated at birth? Like you, I loved AC30's just not with me playing through them - I was like that for over thirty years. Then my epiphany occurred whilst playing a Chapin thru a v.good vintage example. Wow, so that's what it is about? Now a convert.

Oh, back to the Ganesha. One of my top two amps at the NYCTF. Thunderous intensity (read glorious) at volume. Truly visceral - which is what it should be like. Tone beautiful until the speakers lay flat (but probably Dave Z. is working on that). Very easily biased, correctly.

My criticism of the amp is that it is too big (I really am an old fart with a bad back and no roadies)!
However I did say that to David's face and he still offered me an evil smelling cheroot. Youngsters shouldn't be discouraged by this, why, when I was young I could carry a 4x12 under each arm and still touch up the nearest blond bimbo (well, it was the sixties........)

Best, Pete.

 

I purchased a Ganesha from Maven Peal this past April based on the recommendation of yes, James Peters of all people. For those of you who don’t already know, James is not only my former roommate, but a friend. James also heard the Ganesha that Dave Zimmerman had brought to the New York Tone Fest and was really impressed with it. He felt that it was exactly what I was looking for as far as plexi-tones go.

I received the amp in mid-May and really took some time to familiarize myself with all the tones that the amp had to offer. I must say that the Genesha has a lot more tonal flexibility than one would guess. Bottom line – the Genesha flat out nails the old Marshall plexi and metal panel tones. Many yeas ago, I used to have an old plexi Marshall, which either sounded like it was going to burst into flames or was actually bursting into flames. I ended up selling that amp about 5 years ago and along with it my love of old non-master volume Marshalls. I replaced that old Marshall unique high gain, master volume Marshall-esq amp built by a small boutique builder based out of Brea, CA (hint, hint, nudge, nudge). That old love for classic plexi-tones was rekindled with the Ganesha.

The Genesha is a great amp in the vein of the classic Marshall amps of yesterday. The DualQuadFX loop, SAG and Wattage controls are truly what makes this amp one of a kind. I’ve always been a fan of really saggy amps, but really, there are not a lot of good sounding amps out there with useful amounts of sag. The Wattage control does exactly what it claims - lowers the volume with no significant change in tone. The cleans on the amp are the best plexi cleans that I have ever experienced. They were very clear and bell like. Strat quack with the amp set clean was just to die for. Distorted tones were warm, round and inviting. I tried a few pedals (MJM London Fuzz and a Hot Chili Tubester) in front of the Genesha and the amp responded to them very well, but this amp begs to be played straight through. Overall, I was impressed by the tones the Ganesha elicited. The amp sounds exactly like good old Marshall, but with added functionality.

Shortly after I received the amp, I got a phone call from Dave Zimmerman. Dave and I chatted for about half an hour regarding my initial impressions of the amp, the New York Tone Fest and James Peters’ amps. I told Dave how James Peters referred me to him and that James was my old roommate. Dave expressed a mutual admiration for James’ amps. All in all, it was a nice chat and the phone call was greatly appreciated.

Now here is where my experience goes from wonderful to very disturbing. I've been toiling over sharing my Maven Peal experience for about a week and have been hesitant to do so until now. People really need to hear about some of the unprofessional conduct of this company.

After a month with the amp, the honeymoon was over and I while I still had the same opinions of the Ganesha, I kept on coming back to my high gain amps. This is where I insert the familiar “I found that the amp just wasn’t for me” phrase. With that, I decided to throw the amp up on eBay. When the amp sold, I was dumbfounded to receive the following message from the winner of the auction:

Hi Kevin, I just got back to the office today and saw that I had won the auction for the Maven Peal. I also got a message from the Maven Peal office regarding this particular amp stating that you were some competitor of theirs and that you probably had the amp disassembled quite a bit studying their patents. Is this true? Has the amp been apart and reassembled? Please respond to me as soon as possible. Thank you

Upon further conversations with the winner of my auction, I learned that Maven Peal had sent him an unsolicited email informing him that I was a competitor of theirs who “had disassembled the amp to study and steal their patents”. They added that they would not honor any warrantee or support the amp in any way.

I’m still confused as to what Dave and Kathy have based their claims on. I’m a competitor of Maven Peal because I’m a friend of James Peters or because I sell an amp on eBay? I must have disassembled the amp for the purpose of reverse engineering Maven Peal’s circuit designs because I only had the amp for a month? Unprofessional conduct such as this is so inexcusable, it’s on another level. To concoct claims like this based on pure innuendo borders on paranoia. It’s as if “you are either with us or against us” in Maven Peal’s eyes.

I have repeatedly tried to contact Dave Zimmerman regarding this whole ordeal, but have yet to receive any response from him. Phone calls to Maven Peal have been met with an answering machine message informing callers that their phone is not in service, to leave a message and that messages will be returned. No calls were ever returned. I did receive several audacious emails from Kathy Bizzoco at Maven Peal that offered no explanations, just vague suggestions that “only time will now tell what everyone's intentions are”.

And so what are Maven Peal’s intentions? I really don’t know. They have a great product that is fast becoming marred by dubious business tactics. I can only postulate after my experience that it is their intent to alienate all of their customers, past, present or future, because this is exactly what they are doing.

Dave, if you are reading this, I’d really like to hear your explanation for all of this.

 

Apparently Mr Zimmerman is a bit paranoid. After I mentioned that his amp "wasn't for me" it took him about a minute to shoot me an (personal) email letting me know that "he was watching me".

Maybe you are the reason he is paranoid, I have no idea. But I do know that I will always continue to post my honest opinions of guitar gear--both good and bad.

Whether he "is watching me" or not.