This page is a "food for thought" page. It's a little long. It has a lot of opinions (mine). If you don't like reading you'll probably hate this page. If you like to stretch your imagination we hope you'll enjoy it.
Is a "Club" right for you? Club Amps are cartainly not right for everyone. Because they are hand crafted in the USA with only high quality materials they are not cheap! Sorry about that. We think our prices are very fair! Take a look at a hand wired Marshall 2061 20W head. We know you'll find that our 20W hand-wired head costs less. More important, we believe you'll find our 20W hand-wired head sounds better. Take a look at our prices vs. other hand-crafted products and you'll see we are not overpriced.
There is a continuum of pricing from downright cheap to extremely expensive in todays amplifier market. There are some worthy (or at least acceptable) instruments and amps available at very affordable prices. The least expensive take advantage of skilled but inexpensive labor and materials in China and Korea and Indonesia, and automated manufacturing using auto-assembled PCBs for the amps CNC machines to make the guitars. And, if you just want to be loud you can buy high powered solid state products with inexpensive 4x12 stacks. To be sure, if you are a struggling musician then there are more economical choices than a Club Amp. If you are a successful professional working the studio or club scene, with need for high quality yet compact equipment with a big punch and/or a unique sonic signature, consider a Club. If you are a successful professional who is dedicated to the "right sound" for every recording session and live performance, then a Club might be right for you. That said, I know that some who own Club Amps aren't working pros. They are just passionate about their music.
Do you want to sound just like your favorite guitar hero? If the answer is "yes" Club Amps may not be for you. You should probably play what they play. We don't try to clone Fender or Marshall or Vox or anyone else. If you are a talented musician with a clear concept of the sound that's really right for you then you may be a our kind of musician. If you want to sound like you and not someone else a Club may be just what you need.
When you play, what does your audience hear? Our opinion (starting at the ears):
the sonic signature of your speaker or speakers
the sonic signature of your amplifier
the sonic signature of your pickups (single coil/humbucker, hot/clean)
pedals and effects
the sonic signature of you, the musician
These are the most important factors. Room or studio acoustics, and subtle things like tube choice and tube bias, even temperature and humididy all come into play. If you haven't optimized the five major contributors to your sound then you won't sound your best. We can't help you with the last three items. We can help with the first two. We think the speakers are particularly important so we've created some very special customs; especially 15s. And, our transformers really set Club Amps apart from almost every other amp on the market.
So, why a Club Amp? Quality. Fine tuning your sound. And, we do have products that are different than the "other guys". One thing that distinguishes our combos, we make very, very compact product. If you work clubs with little space for the band, or if you pack your own gear, take a careful look at our combos with a possible 1x15 inch extension cab. We have combos that only take up about one square foot of stage space. You can load our 1x10 or 1x12 combo, a 1x15 extension cab, your Strat and your Les Paul in the front seat of your car. Try that with a half stack. That wouldn't be worth much if you didn't sound great, but you will!
We actually recommend our amps in head format. That way you can tailor the sound by your choice of speakers. Different rooms with different acoustics can call for different speakers. Maybe the most important thing, doubling the power of your amp should give you a perceptible doubling of volume (assuming the same speakers). But, doubling the speaker cone area will also double the volume (keeping the power constant). A 35-50W head with a 1x12 cab may perfect for a small room, while the same head with a 1x15, 2x12 or two 1x15 cabs (or two 2x12 cabs for that matter) will rock a larger room. Those of you who like to play with their amp at a level that's starting to compress (rich in even harmonics) will really benefit from volume control by speaker area. You can always keep your amp set near that sweet spot that you really want. For musicians who play different styles (maybe blues during the week and jazz on the weekends) or different size gigs a head with a selection of speaker cabs will give them lots of options.
We've done demos at the most recent NY and LA Amp Shows, at the Summer NAMM and at the Dallas International Guitar Festival where we would change speakers to shape the tone. The audience was, to put it mildly, AMAZED. First they were amazed by how good the Club Amps sound, generating comments like "Gem of the show", but many were simply amazed how the same amp could sound SO!!! different with a change of speakers. An "ice pick" sharp country amp could become a smooth jazz performer or a "raunchy" roadhouse amp could become an earthy blues performer. If you can make it to one of the Amp Shows, check us out.
One of Don's many opinions and comments: A Club Amplifier won't make you a better musician. If it could then I'd sound good. I'd like to share an analogy. It's not about guitars or amps. You may want to skip it if you find my comments boring, but there is a point. I learned to ski in the '70s. I worked really hard the first year, and could ski intermediate runs with confidence by the end of the year. Between seasons I convinced myself that if I had "the best gear" I'd be a better skier. I went out and bought myself new Olin Mark IV skis and Nordica GT boots. That's what the really hot skiers were using. What I found out was that these skis and boots were really good. Every move I made was instantly turned into a response by the skis and the boots. Did they make me a better skier? Heck no! Every time I made a tiny mistake (that my old skis and boots wouldn't even notice) my new skis and boots took it to be an instruction. I got thrown on my butt! One of the reasons a Club Amp isn't right for everyone is that it is possible that the Club Amp will respond to your every mistake thinking it's something you wanted your audience to hear. With your old amp it might get lost in the blur. YOUR AUDIENCE WILL HEAR EVERYTHING, INCLUDING MISTAKES! Understand the analogy? While an amp that sounds better may not make you a better musician, it may make your ears happy. If you just love the sound of electric guitar we are pretty confident you will hear the subtle articulate sonic difference that a Club Amp makes.
Another one of Don's many opinions: You know the drill. Skip this paragraph if I'm boring you. Have you ever seen an ad or a product review for a guitar amp that read like, "A real tone monster, like no amp you've ever played before". Or, "I've never heard anything like the new Belchgrunge". That's just not the way it's going to work if you buy a Club Amp. We do sound like other amps you've heard or played. We think you'll notice a beautiful difference. But we're honest here at Club Amps. We make amplifiers that are distinguished, but we have not reinvented the wheel. High quality components, personalized features and very careful construction and testing will give you a beautiful product that will last for decades. Compare your choice to own a Club Amp with the decision to buy a custom shop guitar from Gibson or Fender. An Epiphone Les Paul will do the same job as a "Custom Shop" Gibson and a Mexican-made "Standard" Stratocaster will do the same job as the American-made version. They're all guitars, right? And, a talented musician will make all of them sound good. The differences would be lost on some and simply not important to others, but if you're the "Club Amp" kind of musician the little things matter.
To sound best your Club Amp will probably need to have tubes changed from time to time. After a decade or two of use the electrolyte in the filter capacitors will probably be drying up. The capacitors will need to be replaced by a competent technician. That should be done with most any amp that lasts decades. But, 50 years from now your son or daughter should be able to power up your Club Amp and say to their kids, "this is the amp your granddad/mother used when he/she recorded his/her first platinum CD". They'll say "wow, that really sounds knarflink" and ask you what the heck a CD is.
Until recently each Club Amp was built to the criteria of the musician. Until 2006 every Club was a true custom (built on a really ugly chassis, hand made by me...here you see an old chassis sitting on top of a new Series II). We've standardized the Classic Series chassis (built to extremely high standards by a precision manufacturer) to offer many of the most requested features, so I guess you could say we are now semi-custom. We are now offering "standard" products. But, we will still build to order. As you've read, we actually encourage heads with separate speaker cabinets. If you find yourself playing blues during the week, but jazz on the weekend, we can set you up with speaker cabs that will let you really sound your best for each gig. Choosing expensive gear can be tough. We'll try to make it as easy as possible. We want you to sound great.
We can make 100W and 120W product, but what we do best is amps for
the studio or club. That's how we came to be called "Club
Amps". With the right speakers a small amp can sound really powerful. With a small amp you can really manage the subtle aspects of your sound, even if your style is very loud. Read on and I'll explain.
The Right Speaker!
If we're building a combo for you then you choose the speakers. While our real business is the amplifier, we know the amp won't help you sound your best without the right speakers. We use Weber speakers extensively for four reasons; they have great speakers for use with 20W-50W amps (they are constantly adding higher power options, too), they work with us on "the right sound", the late Ted Weber put a lot of work into creating some classic vintage sounds but with better workmanship, quality, reliability than the "oldies" and they're made in the USA. Three of our favorite specialty 15s are from Weber. We also use a lot of Eminence. We have great custom 15s from Eminence that gives us the best of all worlds, really solid lows, clean mids and more highs than you could hope for, and with the volume potential of a 15. Our "standard" 15 is from Eminence. You can move a heck of a lot of air with a very small cab. Again, they're made in the USA. We are happy to build with any of the standard Eminence speakers if that's your choice. If we're building a high(er) power amp then Eminence is often a good choice. We know that many of you want Celestions. We can do that. With many of the Celestions made in China these days we have a preference for Weber (we think some of the contemporary Webers sound more like vintage Celestions than Celestions) and we have a special supplier who specializes in US made Celestion clones made with genuine Mueller (British made) cones. But, if you want Celestions we will build what you want. That's what's most important.
If you work the studio, often what's commercially available is really not what you need. In this age of 100W overdrive amps and 4x12 stacks (which I like, by the way, for live performances with big crowds) it can be very hard to find a really intimate amp. Consider the possibility of a 20W or 35W Club combo with 2 x 8 inch Weber AlNiCo speakers. They are incredibly articulate. We can build you a 20W combo that's only 16"x19"x9". Think how cool it would be to cruise into the studio with that little baby and blow everyone away with some seriously sweet sounds. But, you could hook up an extension cab with a 1 x 15 Weber AlNiCo speaker (chosen for low power operation) and really rock a medium size club with just 20W. And, we do a 1x15 combo that can be built with any of our chassis. Using our standard 15" speaker with a 20W chassis gives a REALLY BIG full sound for smaller gigs or the studio. Flip that thought around. If you normally play a Marshall Major through a monster array of 4x12 cabs, take a 35W or 50W Club Classic head with EL34s and a British voiced Weber custom 15 or our standard custom Eminence 15 into the studio. Your recording engineer will love you. If you've got an imagination, let it run wild. I'm not talking crazy. Just imagine what you "can't" do now. Maybe you need a Club Amplifier.
Until recently each Club Amp was built to the criteria of the musician. Until 2006 every Club was a true custom (built on a really ugly chassis, hand made by me...here you see an old chassis sitting on top of a new Series II). We've standardized the Classic Series chassis (built to extremely high standards by a precision manufacturer) to offer many of the most requested features, so I guess you could say we are now semi-custom. We are now offering "standard" products. But, we will still build to order. As you've read, we actually encourage heads with separate speaker cabinets. If you find yourself playing blues during the week, but jazz on the weekend, we can set you up with speaker cabs that will let you really sound your best for each gig. Choosing expensive gear can be tough. We'll try to make it as easy as possible. We want you to sound great.
