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I have 2 amps that I have recently purchased and have had time to get a feel for. the fender tonemaster, and the THD univalve. I ran them through a marshall 4x12 with 2 celestion v30s and 2 celestion gt75's. I was trying to mimic the bogner uberschall cab. I used a Les Paul with a seth in the bridge and a 59 in the neck, and the strat you see below with a JB, cool rails, hot rails.

First I'll review the tonemaster. The amp is a 2 channel 100w with 4 6550s and 3 12ax7s. First I'll cover the negative points as I see them. The amp is tube picky. I have now found out that the amp was designed to use 2 different types of tubes. One tube is a thin wafer 6550 and I forget the other, but my amp guy knows, so oh well, I think it is a short barrel 6550. Originally i bought jj 6l6s to use in it. NO GO. Then some short barrel 6l6's NO GO. the amp worked at low volume with the 6l6's. At loud volumes (3 or better) the amp was making funky scratchy clipping noises. The fellow who works on my amps thought there was a problem in the grid length, or possible the tranny. Randy (the amp guy) did some investigating and e-mailed Bruce Zinky (a story for another time) and found out the amp was designed to run on 2 specific tubes. Come to find out, the amp is a non bias amp, which leads to the prob with the other tubes. Another thing is that amp likes to be played loud. It opens up with the volume on 3. The richness of tone really develops at 3 (which is getting loud)

Anyway channel A is a nice clean non-master channel, that will overdrive when pushed with any overdrive pedal. (I used 3 different StratDeluxer specials and a rumble mod, and a maxon ROD880) the channel goes anywhere from nice fender clean to olderstyle zz-topish overdrive. the channel has it's own effects loop. I want to try a fender tube reverb unit on this channel.

channel B picks up were A leaves off. Actually the distortion tones can overlap a bit when using a boost on channel A. Again this channel likes to be played at 3 or over. this channel has a master volume. i initially dimed out the master and dialed up the gain. very rich distortion tone, but.....LOUD when run this way. I then ran the master from 40%-60% and dialed in the gain for anywhere from led zep to super heavy style distortion. this channel is very dynamic. The volume knob goes a long way. rolls of to clean very easily. once again this channel has it's own effects loop.

Another interesting feature. the amp doesn't have an standard impediance switch. the switch says lo-med-hi. the owners manual describes it as a kind of 1/2- 1/4 power switch. if functions differently with different impediance cabinets.

Overall I really like the amp. It's a keeper. I want to try different cabs in the future. 2x12 and such.



the Univalve is next.

Pro's and Con's

this amp has few detractors overall. The bottom end can be week in certain circumstance. I used it with a 2x12 with gt-75s and that yielded weak bottom end with certain tube combonations. the cure was to hook it up to a 4x12 (v30s and gt75s). the other issue is you can't A/B the channels. Once plugged into the low input channel the hot channel is over rode. this being said if one were to gig with this amp one may need to a\b with another amp. One clean to slight overdrive, and another that is more aggressively dialed in. I would love to see this amp with an effects loop, and changed so the inputs could be switched. (a feature found on the flexi-50)

Pro's: Overall the amp is much louder than I expected. I think I could gig with this amp. the thing is an open tone pallet. I can't even begin to describe all of the tube combos. By using this amp I have learned more about tubes and tube amp function than I ever could by just reading and playing a conventional amp. This amp is non-master power amp distortion all of the way, and that is a beautiful thing. It amazes me what one minimal tube change can have to the over all function and sensitivity of the amp. EX. switching from a 12au7 to a 12at7. I really can't say more that to say that the amp has many stunning sounds in it. I really want to start trying different speaker cab combonations especially a 2x12 with celestion alnico blues. Randy (the amp guy) gave me a bunch of NOS and vintage tubes. Some of them had the guide on the bottom broke off, but they still worked. Just had to be careful for to plug them in. My fav so far is a old CBS short barrel 6l6. I love this amp!! pics to follow

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