From tubeblaste–(at)–pcnet.com Fri May 24 09:47:09 CDT 1996
Article: 10135 of rec.audio.tubes
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Subject: Tone King Amplifier
Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 12:16:06 GMT
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Well I went out and made the big boutique amp plunge. I took a drive
to check out the Matchless amps, especially the Chieftan. I really
really like the Chieftan. It was very responsive and the reverb was
good. However, I also tried out the Tone King Continental – and I
absolutely loved it.

I ended up buying the Tone King Continental because it sounded better
than the Matchless Chieftan. Now understand where I am coming from
amp wise. I’ve been playing a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue with both
a PRS CE and a Bonnie Raitt Strat. Sometimes I’d put a distortion
pedal in front of it.

There were times when gigging where the Deluxe would not have enough
horsepower for me. When you are playing in a loud band you can’t get
loud and clean on a Deluxe. There were also times where even at 10 it
couldn’t quite keep up with a high energy band. To solve this problem
I would play a Mesa DC3 (35 watts) which had enough juice to play
louder both clean and dirty.

I am always concerned about my hearing so I don’t want an amp that has
too much wattage because I’ll probably use it if it is there. Plus I
think lower wattage amps sound better. The Deluxe on about 3-4 is
just gorgeous. The Mesa never sounded as good as the Deluxe on any
settings, but it did the trick volume wise.

What I needed was an amp that would sound like a Deluxe Reverb, only
louder for the times I wanted to play clean and sweet (reverb is an
absolute must in my book). I also needed an amp that could play nasty
at the appropriate volume (I like to play in a mid 70’s Hot Tuna style
which is basically an aggressive psychedelic trio sound).

When I played the Matchless I realized that it wasn’t accomplishing
either of my objectives. It did have a very good clean sound, but it
wasn’t like a Deluxe Reverb. Nice in it’s own right, but not quite
what I was looking for. The fully cranked lead sounds I could get
were very articulate and good sounding, but not quite the Hot Tuna
type sound I was looking for. Then I tried the Tone King Continental.

Oh my God, what an experience. It had what I was looking for. For
those of you who don’t know, one of the things that make a Deluxe
sound so good is the 6v6 tube (it uses two of them). IMHO this is the
best tube for a guitar amp. The two in the Deluxe put out about 20
watts, hence the lack of clean headroom. The Tone King Continental
uses 4 6v6 tubes in a unique circuit. It has TWO output transformers
so that their are two independent pairs of 6v6’s (cathode bias) wired
in parallel at the speaker jack so it is Class A amp.

On the clean channel you really have the Deluxe Reverb sound except
louder. It is a treat to be able to loud and clean without the low E
string farting out. And when you push the clean channel hard it
sounds just excellent. Lots of touchy feely with a rock and roll
edge.

There are just three knobs on the clean channel; volume, treble, and
bass. There are also reverb, speed, and intensity controls which work
on BOTH channels. The lead channel has only three controls; volume,
tone, and mid-bite. If you

 

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