Hey guys,
I've been away for a while, I had to have a social life during the summer hehe :lol:
So here is my new amp :
It's a Koch Studiotone, 20w class A (most likely 18w because it gots 2 EL84). It gots a tons of features for such a small head (it's like half most heads):
- 3 channels, clean with a volume, OD wich is a crunch mode with gain and volume controle and OD+ which is a 3 modes boost to the OD channel.
- 2 voicing switches (mid-shift 2 way, bright 3 way)
- passive 3 bands EQ
- Accutronics three spring short model reverb (wich sounds horrible on anything but clean, and set very low at that, big let down here)
- direct out (after the power amp) with parametrable speaker simulator (1x12 or 4x12, in axis or off axis mic) and 25w dummy load (so you can record it full blast with the speaker sim without killing the neighbours)
- headphone out with speaker sim (not parametrable)
- a few slave outs with or without freq compensations to feed the signal to another guitar amp.
- 4 8 16 ohms speaker out
- stereo footswitch (clean/crunch and second button is the selection of the OD level between OD and OD+
I've had it for 3 weeks now and it's really good, feels like a boutique amp. the only things I didn't like was the reverb wich sounds bad and the fact they choose to put some TAD cr@p valves in there. Bass were really loose on palm-mutes so I changed v1 to a cryo Harma 7025, now it's far better, with a TS9 clone it's higain heaven :lol: I think I wont need the TS9 anymore with a full change of tubes.
The clean channel is warm and punchy, it distorts a bit too soon but nothing annoying.
The OD crunch channel is very rock & roll and with a TS9 it does some convincing older metal tones then OD+ is the same but with a 3 mode boost from hard rock to modern metal (again rolling off the gain and adding a TS9 give really good result).
The voicing switches are really interesting, the 2 modes mid switch change the sound from a bit Mesa to a bit Marshall (just comparison here, Kochs sound like themselves) and the 3 modes bright switch from very dark (very good for jazzy clean) to very bright (very good for modern metal tones on the OD+ channel)
The passive 3 bands EQ is nicely voiced and the fact it's common to all channels is not a problem, it seems Koch added some compenssation form channel to channel wich makes it works really good.
Some might think 20w is a bit low power but believe me, this thing is freakin' LOUD, at 1 on the volume it's already a bit too much for my neighbours, at 5 I'm deaf, insane :lol:
Well it costed me 840€ and it's certainly the best thing I've ever bought!
Now on the Framus 212CS, it's cheap but it doesn't sounds cheap at all. It gots great sound thanks to the V30 and have a really good projection. At first I though I'll have to tilt it but it works fine just sitting on the floor. For 300€ it's really nice :) The only thing I can complain about is the tolex is really thin so it'll rip with even the smallest hit.
That's about it :)
