WANT!!!!!!

[Toe-Knee]

nope, it has no headroom, it's a growly chewy f****r. which is exactly what i love about it.

Not a fan of metalcore at all, but nice to see a 20W amp that can get to those kind of gain levels.

I love Cantrells early tones and that what this puts me in mind of, Kerry King too

Thinking it'd a nice counterpoint to the Soldano. Soldano's rely on preamp gain, they were designed that way, to almost have a Hifi power section.

Whilst correct the friedmans  from what ive seen also rely heavily on preamp gain caused by jose style diode clipping.

I could be wrong thought but that is the general buzz around his line of amps.

Yep, the Jose mod (am I right thinking that's based off the S.I.R #39?) does increase preamp gain, however if you watch the second vid, he has the master up high and the gain down low, so there is a certain amount of poweramp breakup going on.

It looks and sounds like a Marshal yep, but i don't know any i know @22w. Not even the 1W manage that.

Guys you know me, I'll be the first to tell you to go buy Route 808 or Joyo instead of a current production TS9 or a keeley modded thing, And I'll be the first to call hype on some pseudo boutique scam, or tell you you get great value for money out of a Mexican or Squire Classic Vibe strat etc. I'm not dumb for over hyped stuff.

In my eyes this fills a niche i'd like to fill, and there's nothing else i know of that at that wattage, built like that, that sounds like that. And to me, to anyone infact, how it sounds is the most important thing. And i love how that sounds ;)

Show me a distortion pedal sounds like that and i'll have it.

Oh i wasnt trying to put you off it. The Jose circuit is actually one of the more popular jcm800 & plexi mods from the 80s. A lot of hair metal bands used it and even james hetfield its the amp that got stolen on tour.

Ceriatone do fuller featured jose style amps but theyre 50w minimum.

Look up the yeti & chupacabra.

Also for a little extra info its what marshall were trying to achieve somewhat with the jcm900 series

[Lew]

Yea, certainly no poopooing of it just honest banter. It sounds great and I'd like to try one. Just my opinion that Marshall style amps sound best with alot less gain going through them than builders tend to put in them. Same deal as my Morgan which is basically a Plexi with more gain. I don't take the gain over 70%ish 'cause it looses some of what I like about the tone. Whereas an SLO100 for example seems to be able to take alot more punishment and keep the core tone intact.

[tekbow]

No no, maybe that came across confrontational, wasn't meant that way though, just responding to a couple points raised.

I don't consider preamp gain to be a bad thing, not at all, but i wouldn't be running this with even as much gain as these guys do. The PK is a designed as a little sister(?) to the BE100, so it's a Plexi voiced amp at heart that can do the HBE/S.I.R#39/jose mod thing, or alternatively and additionally attempts the brown sound via preamp rather than a variac'd cranked NMV amp.

The second clip low preamp/high master volume tells me there's a component of poweramp breakup going on, which is great for blending with fuzzes and OD's.

Good info Toeknee, i believe they did the 900 did that with a partial SS preamp section, or some form of solid state clipping in addition to the preamp tubes? though? saying that, this amp only has 3 preamp valves, now, i know 5 preamp valves doesn't = 5 gain stages just as 3 preamp valves doesn't = 3 gain stages, so i could be misinterpreting thru lack of knowledge what 3 valves mean, would be good to hear your info on that.

Gordiji, yep liking the middle demo on the first video, i think its great this thing cleans up with volume.

I could buy the steve stevens and get the dedicated clean channel, or the BE and get all the options etc, but all i really want is a little low wattage amp to rock out with, and mess around with pedals.

The soldano takes pedals great, but as it has a "hifi" power section (which has drawn comparison with old Hiwatts), it combines differently with amps that have power amp breakup

[Lew]

Heard this one? Sounds amazing. Helps that he's a great player ofc  8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T9uzDasXag

[tekbow]

Yep thats the BE100, the PK is the little sister to it. Awesome sounding amp

[Philly Q]

I was reading a review of the Brown Eye in Guitar Player this morning, sounds interesting - but very expensive!

[tekbow]

yep, still cheaper than a new SLO100 in europe though, although no-ones saying that cheap either  :lol: but I think when it comes to amps like that people are more likely to say something like "ah well yeah, fair enough"

[Philly Q]

but I think when it comes to amps like that people are more likely to say something like "ah well yeah, fair enough"

True, we all have things that we'll just shell out for, regardless of price (assuming we have the money!)

[gordiji]

This is a great video of a great amp & a great player. They want ££2850 or something for it !
Now if philly x was playing my ceriatone yeti in the same situation he could pretty much get those tones.
Maybe they have better quality trannies but the yeti costs about £1000 and thats after being carted from the other side of the planet !
If you crave the sound but not the price ceriatone's the place to go.   

[Dmoney]

This is a great video of a great amp & a great player. They want ££2850 or something for it !
Now if philly x was playing my ceriatone yeti in the same situation he could pretty much get those tones.
Maybe they have better quality trannies but the yeti costs about £1000 and thats after being carted from the other side of the planet !
If you crave the sound but not the price ceriatone's the place to go.

There is nothing mindblowing about the quality of parts in any of the friedman amps I've seen. Certainly not in that gut shot of the amp that is in that video. Not bad quality stuff mind. I doubt the transformers are bad quality or a really good set of iron doesn't cost the earth either. It's just a price people are willing to pay.

EL84's don't take 'much' drive to get them to break up. Using my attenuator I can get my Jet City 22H to break up in the power section. It's a different tone to the preamp breakup as has been said. I'd wonder if this amp isn't based on the JCA20H that friedman offers mods on. Which is basically a JCM800 circuit topology into a 2x EL84 power amp, although the PK is cathode bias? Interesting anyway.

I've read that the BE doesn't have as much gain as one might think?

[Philly Q]

I've read that the BE doesn't have as much gain as one might think?

Of course I can't speak from experience, but according to the Guitar Player review the BE channel has "gain to spare" but in "HBE Mode" it's "akin to kicking a great boost in the front end which produces searing distortion and terrifying sustain".  Overall they say the amp is suitable for "classic rock, pop, country, blues and all but the most brutal forms of metal".

So yeah, probably not one for the death metallers.  I like the sound of it though.

[Dmoney]

sounds reasonable. I played a splawn nitro and quickrod a while ago and they didn't have the gain I expected. Heavy enough for me though. They had less of that preamp saturation than the SLO, which in turn has less than a 5150 or Uberschall or something. I imagine the BE to be on that Splawn kind of level. Still cool.

I actually got a little tempted to pick one up a while ago. I was tempted by that or a Diezel Hagen/Herbert. Thing is, I feel pretty sure I could build something very very close to the BE for much less money given the info that is around the internet about it (and on Jose Arrendondo mods in general). I've put together stuff that is sort of similar but never done anything with diode clipping which I believe is what the saturation switch adds? But if i wanted to put effort into building a high gain amp now I couldn't be bothered copying this route. I actually got tempted to buy one just to reverse engineer it to build copies from. But then meh... why bother! Maybe one day.

[tekbow]

Funny thing you say that, I think amps CAN have to much gain. Aggression to me isn't all about how much saturation you can get in there. Listen to someone like Cantrell and you've got a remarkable amount of string separation and clarity for such an all out crunchy tone. Another guy that springs to mind for awesome crunch is the dude from Stone Temple Pilots.

This idea that Heavy = Gain sometimes suprises me. I think there's a point at which the saturation and compression of preamp gain is actually detrimental to an aggresive tone