Retro look, Retro sound and simply Cool Tube Amps
Any guitar player will tell you that the quest for that signature tone typically never ends. Once you find one, it's only a matter of time before you start looking for another. For about a year I was checking EBay for an amp that Epiphone made called a "Galaxy 25".Now maybe some one out there can tell me why these little beauties were never released in Canada? The series came in 10 and 20 watt versions with Celestion speakers and all tubes, with a cool retro look. Then just as these were taking off Epiphone cancels the line and replaces it with a lower end version of a Valve Jr. I suspect it is because Gibson wanted back into the amplifier scene, and of course big brother gets the top of the line stuff. These amps were selling for about $800.00 here in Canada if your music store could boot leg one in for you, where as the new Gibson amps are starting at about $1400. (they sound cool as well!)Maybe some one can let me know the story with this?So finally one day I notice an auction and long story short I won this thing.
So first weekend out it was awesome! I also hooked up an external speaker cabinet I got from
www.lopoline.com These guys also do a killer job on cabinets with all the detail you will ever want. This cabinet was made to work with my Fender Deluxe reissue and these guys custom sized it so I could stack this on stage. I am going to get them to make me a matching cabinet for this as well, and try to keep the look of the face the same.
I ended up with that "sweet Sound" I was after, the kind that gets broke up when you lean into it, but clean enough for rhythm.
The cool thing about a 20 watt amp is that you can crank it up enough to let the eq work. With my Fender I found I was lucky to turn it past 1.5 as this thing was 40watts of monster tone, but I could not get the eq to work due to the low setting.
The Epiphone is a Class A amp and once you catch the difference you may never go back to the push - pull over drive sound from pre amps.