Synchro
November 12th, 2011, 10:18 PM
I will readily admit to being a stick-in-the-mud in many ways. I'm a creature of habit and it's served me well over the years but today I made an exception and discovered something good as a result.
While preparing for a road test (http://www.gretsch-talk.com/forum/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=54693) writeup I was playing a G 6119-1962 HT at Rainbow Guitars. I was encouraged by the salesman to plug into a Winfield Cyclone (http://www.winfieldamps.com/cyclone.html) amp. This is a small piggyback amp with a simple control panel and a basic feature set. Plugging into it with a light-footed Tennessee Rose equipped with Hilotron pickups I was expecting a mis-match of epic proportion but I quickly learned otherwise. This amp has a strong mid range without being muddy or overly dark sounding. The specs are far afield from my usual tastes, a Deluxe Reverb, but the sound is fantastic.
Let's start with basics, this is a simple, simple amp. There are 5 tubes and 4 control knobs. Other than setting the volume and turing the tone control up to about 80% of full value I had little reason to twiddle knobs. The sound was clear and strong, much more open sounding than I would have expected for an amp with EL-84s in the power section.
Whenever I see a boutique amp my first assumption is that it will be an unruly gain monster that is meant expressly for the purpose of overdriving any time the power switch is on. That certainly was not the case with this amp, it's exceptionally tractable. There's a master volume which only works when the knob is pulled out. In this configuration the amp can be overdriven at very low volumes and the sound is creamy and smooth without a hint of nastiness. It sort of reminded me of Santana's sound but with a little less gain.
The front end of this amp is somewhat unusual in that it uses an EF86 for the preamp section. This is a pentode tube, very HiFi and unlike the twin triode 12AX7, it does its magic with but one stage of pre-amplification. It's quite different from the approach used in my beloved Blackface Fenders. I'm not much of a consumer of overdrive but I have to say that this amp would be high on my list if I wanted a lot of O/D and it's high on my list in clean configuration.
And Now, for Something Really Amazing . . .
As I mentioned before, I played this amp while test playing a Hilotron Tenny. When I road test a guitar I usually start with both pickups selected, then try the pickups individually. When I test the bridge pickup one of the things I try is some Surf music which gives me a good idea of the highs coming out of the guitar. During this particular test I was moving between a DRRI and the Cyclone. When I tried the Surf music through the Cyclone I wasn't really expecting much in view of the fact that there's no onboard reverb. Amazingly, it still sounded quite good sans reverb; the sonic depth of the amp kept the sound quite interesting.
And Now, for Something Really Relaxing . . .
Being a Jazz guitarist at heart I'm always interested in that facet of any guitar or amp I play. One of my biggest gripes with Jazz amps is that it's easy to lose clarity in the pursuit of mellow timbre. For years, many Jazz guitarists sounded like they had thrown a blanket over their amplifiers, playing along with the tone control dialed way back. I suspect that this is an attempt to prevent harshness but it can result in sonic mush.
The Cyclone comported itself very well indeed as a Jazz amp requiring not even an adjustment to the tone control. all I had to do was shift to the neck pickup, dial out some highs at the guitar end of the equation and I had my sound. It really impressed me for that purpose.
As boutique amps go, the price is quite firmly rooted in reality. They are $1,395.00 including a matching 2x10" speaker cabinet with Eminence Legend speakers. That's really an amazing amount of amp for the money if you compare it with the Marshall 1974x and IMHO it leaves that noted Marshall in the dust sonically.
While preparing for a road test (http://www.gretsch-talk.com/forum/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=54693) writeup I was playing a G 6119-1962 HT at Rainbow Guitars. I was encouraged by the salesman to plug into a Winfield Cyclone (http://www.winfieldamps.com/cyclone.html) amp. This is a small piggyback amp with a simple control panel and a basic feature set. Plugging into it with a light-footed Tennessee Rose equipped with Hilotron pickups I was expecting a mis-match of epic proportion but I quickly learned otherwise. This amp has a strong mid range without being muddy or overly dark sounding. The specs are far afield from my usual tastes, a Deluxe Reverb, but the sound is fantastic.
Let's start with basics, this is a simple, simple amp. There are 5 tubes and 4 control knobs. Other than setting the volume and turing the tone control up to about 80% of full value I had little reason to twiddle knobs. The sound was clear and strong, much more open sounding than I would have expected for an amp with EL-84s in the power section.
Whenever I see a boutique amp my first assumption is that it will be an unruly gain monster that is meant expressly for the purpose of overdriving any time the power switch is on. That certainly was not the case with this amp, it's exceptionally tractable. There's a master volume which only works when the knob is pulled out. In this configuration the amp can be overdriven at very low volumes and the sound is creamy and smooth without a hint of nastiness. It sort of reminded me of Santana's sound but with a little less gain.
The front end of this amp is somewhat unusual in that it uses an EF86 for the preamp section. This is a pentode tube, very HiFi and unlike the twin triode 12AX7, it does its magic with but one stage of pre-amplification. It's quite different from the approach used in my beloved Blackface Fenders. I'm not much of a consumer of overdrive but I have to say that this amp would be high on my list if I wanted a lot of O/D and it's high on my list in clean configuration.
And Now, for Something Really Amazing . . .
As I mentioned before, I played this amp while test playing a Hilotron Tenny. When I road test a guitar I usually start with both pickups selected, then try the pickups individually. When I test the bridge pickup one of the things I try is some Surf music which gives me a good idea of the highs coming out of the guitar. During this particular test I was moving between a DRRI and the Cyclone. When I tried the Surf music through the Cyclone I wasn't really expecting much in view of the fact that there's no onboard reverb. Amazingly, it still sounded quite good sans reverb; the sonic depth of the amp kept the sound quite interesting.
And Now, for Something Really Relaxing . . .
Being a Jazz guitarist at heart I'm always interested in that facet of any guitar or amp I play. One of my biggest gripes with Jazz amps is that it's easy to lose clarity in the pursuit of mellow timbre. For years, many Jazz guitarists sounded like they had thrown a blanket over their amplifiers, playing along with the tone control dialed way back. I suspect that this is an attempt to prevent harshness but it can result in sonic mush.
The Cyclone comported itself very well indeed as a Jazz amp requiring not even an adjustment to the tone control. all I had to do was shift to the neck pickup, dial out some highs at the guitar end of the equation and I had my sound. It really impressed me for that purpose.
As boutique amps go, the price is quite firmly rooted in reality. They are $1,395.00 including a matching 2x10" speaker cabinet with Eminence Legend speakers. That's really an amazing amount of amp for the money if you compare it with the Marshall 1974x and IMHO it leaves that noted Marshall in the dust sonically.