All right! Further to my previous thread about finding a replacement to th defunct crunchbox, I finally got myself to Glasgow to do gear testing. As this type of sessions goes, the outcome is never quite what you'd expected.
First, I was at Merchant city music, checking out the Blackstar material.
The HT-& was quite impressive: good sound, the gain swipe is very broad, going from pristin clean to full on disto at the tunr of a knob and the flick of a switch. The ISF knob was quite impressive in the way it does very convincingly get you from one side of the atlantic to the other. I finally understood what I was missing to get the tele sound I was after for the past couple of year... an american sounding amp! The middle position on the ISF, though, didn't strike me as particularly pleasant sound, but maybe it is a sound that grows on you, and after a bit of experimenting, you can find a use for it. Fairly good response to your attack, it might not all valve circuitry but certainly retain loads of the response of a vlave amp.
I also tried the distortion pedal from Blackstar, which latest iteration goes under the name of valve filth. It is pretty much the same as the amp with added 3 band EQ, for additional versatility. With the gain at 0, it almost doesn't add any grit, and if the amp is set pristin clean, you can get add a good american flavour, getting a not so pristin clean sound, other a british sounding amp 5did the test with the HT-1 set to british and the pedal set to american). From there, you can crank the gain and go very high up the gain scale. Loads of sounds to be have.
When I left this shop, I was quite please with what I heared and thinking the amp would be a good neighbour friendly new rig, replacing the Laney. By the way, I did bring my favourite OD pedal along and it sounded quite nice, plugged in this amp. The guy from the shop said that he expected the amp to take pedal fairly well as long as you were not trying to feed it much high gain. From what I have experienced this seem to be true. The only gruge I have with this amp, was the lack of a bright switch. That is the thing I thought was missing. The pedal could be exactly what I set myself to seek in the first place, that is a replacement of the crunchbox with added soundscape at my disposal.
So that was me thinking I had strong contenders in the run for my rig overhaul... well, that was until I passed the door of the guitarguitar... Today is, there is no doubt about it, an historic day as far as my gear is concerned.
So I went there to try the Vox Ice 9. Fortunately enough, they had a second hand unit kicking around. So they show me to the testing room, and there I see the egnater tweaker head, plugged in its accompanying cabinet. I had spotted this little monster on my previous visit and was thinking I needed to try it one day... well, there was the day. So with a Les Paul traditional, I set myself to test those 2 items. Fairly quickly I realised that the Ice 9 was not doing it for me. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a good pedal, with loads of interesting sound, but it was more or less covering about the same ground as the Demeter FOD does, which is my beloved OD pedal, and it is doing it in a way that pleased me less than the latter.
But, and that is a big but, I was litterally blown away by the amp. Lovely cleans, lovely break up sound, lovely crunch, and all coming in different flavours. For those who never came across the tweaker, you need to know that on top of the usual master, gain, bass, mid and trebble knobs, it comes with no less than 4 mini switches that just set the amp apart from the rest of the scene: 1) vintage / modern; 2) american / AC / British; 3) bright / normal; 4) tight / deep. The possibilities are endless and everything was just sweetly singing to my hear. The only thing missing was a reverb.
After thinking it over at lunchtime, I came to the conclusion that the piece of kit I needed to have was the tweaker. I know it doesn't actually fit the original bill, which was to incorporate a more gainy OD sound to my rig, but it was just one of these moments where once you've heard the sound, you know that's the one you have to have. Now that is going to come at a price, and I seriously need to work out the financing of this little beast, but I will get it (eventually).
So in today's confrontation, the Egnater Tweaker wins by KO.
