Re: Custom amp ordered
Posted: Fri Oct 04, 2013 5:19 am
Amp got delivered yesterday, after I put my son to bed I loaded it into two of those blue Ikea plastic bags (I doubled up as I wasn't sure they were designed for carrying amps), and rode the kilometer from my apartment to the rehearsal room with a 20 kg amp on the handlebars. It's nothing I really want to do again in a hurry, but the amp arrived unscathed, and I only managed to crash the bike once (it was impossible to steer!).
Chucked it on top of the terminally ill Lab Series head and plugged in a 2x12 with Eminence Texas Heats. As soon as the other guitarist gets his life together and buys a cab I'll be running it together with my other 2x12. At the moment it's got V30s in it, but I will probably change them out for something else - maybe Swamp Thangs or something.
Will have to put a mic onto it to try and be a bit more objective about the sound, so this description is definitely coloured by the newness of it all, but... everything about the amp is awesome. Everything at 12 o clock yields a nice starting sound. All of the controls are massively powerful. As the amp is standing in the corner of a concrete room and things get boomy really quickly, I cut back the depth to a fairly low level. Depth control is great, the amp still stays relatively tight with the depth up, and it doesn't get boomy. That said, there is waaaaay more bass than I will ever need in this thing. It is crazy. Bright switch yields some fantastic cleans, but is too much for distorted sounds, so I leave the bright switch off and wind up the treble. Engaging the fuzz and I realise that I need to ease up on the presence - when clean you could easily leave the presence fairly well cranked and have a nice sound, but with the added harmonic content of fuzz it's too much. So I wind that back.
Next thing is to test the mids. As I max the mids the amp gets ear splittingly loud. It's great
I'm no expert at this sort of stuff, but to me it sounds like the mid frequency has a relatively broad Q, and it is super useable. Clean or with fuzz it doesn't ever get honky, it just gets massive, and progressively stands out more. As most of you dudes agree, mids are so important for your sound in a band, and for once I really feel that it doens't matter where I set the mids, as the overall tone is nice through the whole sweep. I haven't really experienced this with an amp before - either you get a mid knob that doesn't do much (I'm looking at you Marshall) or you run the risk of getting that tubescreamer-y honky blues rock sound. But nope, such is not the case here. I have to give massive props to Arnaud for designing things this way - we spent a fair while talking about what tone I wanted, and I sent a heap of YT clips with comments about the tone. And given how perfectly the mids suit my sound ideal he's done a great job of turning that babble into reality. I'm not into scooped mids, but you can scoop the mids to a stupid degree. As the Q is pretty broad if I was going for that Dimebag sound I'd probably want to scoop things with a parametric EQ instead, so that you can maintain some punch. But who cares, scooped mids can eat a dick.
Bass control - again, goes from quite thin sounding on max to elephantine levels of bass. Because of the aforementioned concrete room I've got to be careful here, and as much as it is tempting to go nuts on the bass it is way more important for me to leave room for a bassist so yeah. But man... the bass on this thing is like the apple in the garden of Eden. I know I shouldn't... but...
Output is at 60 watts sparkly clean, around 85 with some distortion, as mentioned. So of course I had to test this. The volume is clean around 75% of the sweep of the volume knob. With the volume on 75% and with some judicious mids, there is not a chance I could hear anyone else in the band, so it has spades of volume. On max it lands in a fantastic sort of proto-metal distorted tone. I have absolutely no use for this sound as I don't dig power tube distortion at all, but if I started a Blue Öyster Cult cover band I'd hit it. And of course the amp doesn't sound decent until you get to ear bleeding volumes - just the way it should
- I guess around 25% of the travel of the volume knob. Running at normal volume levels (didn't measure with the dB meter, but typical stupidly loud metal band levels) it didn't really break up a whole lot even when I hit it with a truck load of boost, which was also nice, as I wanted this thing to be clean.
I'm no bassist, but in a pinch I'm sure this thing could work as a bass amp. Running octave effects into it sounded great - the Octasynth and the Mantis II both produce stupendous amounts of bass, and the amp was just as loud and clean as it was with regular guitar signals. Palm muting with The Elements (another litmus test) was tight and addictive.
Visually it is everything I wanted. The finish is superb and as far as I can tell the construction is good as. On the other hand I know nothing about amp construction and really shouldn't say anything (it always shits me when I read reviews of pedals and dudes are like "the construction is top notch" - when in reality the reviewer wouldn't know a cold solder joint if it hit them in the face) - but what the hell, it's my amp and in my uneducated opinion it will survive WWIII.
This has been an unmitigated positive experience. Great communication, clear timeline for the whole process, and a finished product that is better than I had even hoped. More photos after the break, and a demo will be done soonish. Buggered if I know how to demo an amp, but it shall be done.
In summary - if you are in Europe and wanting an amp you would be stupid not to at least hit up A-Wai Custom and see what they can do for you. My amp, including shipping to Sweden, ended up less than a second hand Dual Rec would've cost. You guys in North America are spoilt with choice when it comes to rad builders, but man, my experience has been so good that even with the risk for taking a hit on shipping and taxes you should totally check A-Wai out.
Chucked it on top of the terminally ill Lab Series head and plugged in a 2x12 with Eminence Texas Heats. As soon as the other guitarist gets his life together and buys a cab I'll be running it together with my other 2x12. At the moment it's got V30s in it, but I will probably change them out for something else - maybe Swamp Thangs or something.
Will have to put a mic onto it to try and be a bit more objective about the sound, so this description is definitely coloured by the newness of it all, but... everything about the amp is awesome. Everything at 12 o clock yields a nice starting sound. All of the controls are massively powerful. As the amp is standing in the corner of a concrete room and things get boomy really quickly, I cut back the depth to a fairly low level. Depth control is great, the amp still stays relatively tight with the depth up, and it doesn't get boomy. That said, there is waaaaay more bass than I will ever need in this thing. It is crazy. Bright switch yields some fantastic cleans, but is too much for distorted sounds, so I leave the bright switch off and wind up the treble. Engaging the fuzz and I realise that I need to ease up on the presence - when clean you could easily leave the presence fairly well cranked and have a nice sound, but with the added harmonic content of fuzz it's too much. So I wind that back.
Next thing is to test the mids. As I max the mids the amp gets ear splittingly loud. It's great
I'm no expert at this sort of stuff, but to me it sounds like the mid frequency has a relatively broad Q, and it is super useable. Clean or with fuzz it doesn't ever get honky, it just gets massive, and progressively stands out more. As most of you dudes agree, mids are so important for your sound in a band, and for once I really feel that it doens't matter where I set the mids, as the overall tone is nice through the whole sweep. I haven't really experienced this with an amp before - either you get a mid knob that doesn't do much (I'm looking at you Marshall) or you run the risk of getting that tubescreamer-y honky blues rock sound. But nope, such is not the case here. I have to give massive props to Arnaud for designing things this way - we spent a fair while talking about what tone I wanted, and I sent a heap of YT clips with comments about the tone. And given how perfectly the mids suit my sound ideal he's done a great job of turning that babble into reality. I'm not into scooped mids, but you can scoop the mids to a stupid degree. As the Q is pretty broad if I was going for that Dimebag sound I'd probably want to scoop things with a parametric EQ instead, so that you can maintain some punch. But who cares, scooped mids can eat a dick. Bass control - again, goes from quite thin sounding on max to elephantine levels of bass. Because of the aforementioned concrete room I've got to be careful here, and as much as it is tempting to go nuts on the bass it is way more important for me to leave room for a bassist so yeah. But man... the bass on this thing is like the apple in the garden of Eden. I know I shouldn't... but...
Output is at 60 watts sparkly clean, around 85 with some distortion, as mentioned. So of course I had to test this. The volume is clean around 75% of the sweep of the volume knob. With the volume on 75% and with some judicious mids, there is not a chance I could hear anyone else in the band, so it has spades of volume. On max it lands in a fantastic sort of proto-metal distorted tone. I have absolutely no use for this sound as I don't dig power tube distortion at all, but if I started a Blue Öyster Cult cover band I'd hit it. And of course the amp doesn't sound decent until you get to ear bleeding volumes - just the way it should
- I guess around 25% of the travel of the volume knob. Running at normal volume levels (didn't measure with the dB meter, but typical stupidly loud metal band levels) it didn't really break up a whole lot even when I hit it with a truck load of boost, which was also nice, as I wanted this thing to be clean. I'm no bassist, but in a pinch I'm sure this thing could work as a bass amp. Running octave effects into it sounded great - the Octasynth and the Mantis II both produce stupendous amounts of bass, and the amp was just as loud and clean as it was with regular guitar signals. Palm muting with The Elements (another litmus test) was tight and addictive.
Visually it is everything I wanted. The finish is superb and as far as I can tell the construction is good as. On the other hand I know nothing about amp construction and really shouldn't say anything (it always shits me when I read reviews of pedals and dudes are like "the construction is top notch" - when in reality the reviewer wouldn't know a cold solder joint if it hit them in the face) - but what the hell, it's my amp and in my uneducated opinion it will survive WWIII.
This has been an unmitigated positive experience. Great communication, clear timeline for the whole process, and a finished product that is better than I had even hoped. More photos after the break, and a demo will be done soonish. Buggered if I know how to demo an amp, but it shall be done.
In summary - if you are in Europe and wanting an amp you would be stupid not to at least hit up A-Wai Custom and see what they can do for you. My amp, including shipping to Sweden, ended up less than a second hand Dual Rec would've cost. You guys in North America are spoilt with choice when it comes to rad builders, but man, my experience has been so good that even with the risk for taking a hit on shipping and taxes you should totally check A-Wai out.
KT88 amps are all I use now 
so very definitely worth it.
