SPLAWN AMPS NOW IN STOCK!

[CustomAudioBoutique]

The initial shipment of Splawn amps has arrived! In stock are one Quick Rod and one Pro Mod.

After a quick trip up to Clarry at 34 Audio for a “once-over”, I’ve had a couple of days to spend testing the amps out, and I’m blown away by just how good they really are!

Having tried modified Marshalls (Voodoo etc) and other amps based on the JCM800 (Bogner Ecstasy, Roccaforte HG100 etc), I can honestly say that Scott Splawn builds some of the finest amps in this style ever!

To put it succinctly, these amps are where Marshall should have gone after the JCM800 series.

The sheer power and volume of these amps is amazing – anyone who’s ever cranked the power section of a JCM800 2203 will know what I mean. That massive power section makes everything tight and articulate, no matter how much gain you’re using.
Case in point: last night, while demoing the amp to a friend, suddenly the amp cutout – we checked the connections everywhere, to discover that the palm-muted powerchords he’d been playing had actually blown the speaker lead right out of the back of the Matamp 4x12 cabinet!

Where Splawn’s own sound comes into play is the preamp section. Smooth and almost “liquid”, with incredible sustain, and yet no sign of the buzzy, raspy gain that many high-gain amps exhibit. When you combine this with the classic JCM800-style poweramp section, it’s absolutely amazing: clear, tight and defined, with great sustain and chord definition. No ugly frequencies or buzzy preamp gain, just a perfect interaction between the pre and power stages.


FEATURES: Some people love ‘em, so people don’t. For those that do, the Splawns have plenty, but each one is a genuinely useful feature – no buttons or switches to scoop the mids etc – just genuinely useful features that Scott Splawn has adapted from his years of experience modding Marshalls. I’ll touch on a couple of the more useful features:

“Mode” Switch – a 3-notch click switch on the front panel which selects 3 “gears”. Gear 1 is “modded-Plexi”, which is very convincing – less gain and bottom-end, more of the classic upper-mids and a nice top-end bite. Gear 2 is my favourite – classic JCM800 with smoother gain and thick, sustaining chords. Gear 3 is “hot-rodded” JCM800 territory, with more gain and bite on the top-end, still retaining full definition. Even at max gain settings, the gain never gets over the top – Scott Splawn is a guitarist himself and knows that a lot of modern high-gain amps have gain controls that get pretty unusable when turned up over halfway – not so with the Splawns!

Half-Power Switch: Not a pentode/triode switch, but a more classic arrangement of simply cutting out 2 power valves, which is a very effective way of slightly reducing the volume and aggression, and increasing your ability to wind the power section up.

Other features include a clean channel, footswitchable gain boost, footswitchable volume boost (labeled “Solo”), bypassable FX loop.


So what’s the difference between the 2 models? Power valve type, and nothing more – other than that, the circuits are identical.

The Quick Rod uses EL34s, which is a sound that most of us are very familiar with. For a standard mids-rich Marshall-esque rock sound, the Quick Rod is the way to go. The Quick Rod is rated at 100w, though measurements taken by Clarry proved the 100w rating to be rather conservative.

The Pro Mod uses KT88s, which increases the output, and also adds more top-end and bottom-end. The KT88s make the amp louder, and more aggressive. The Pro Mod is rated at 120w … I’m not going to post here what the max output Clarry measured on this one was, but the figure was enough to make him utter an expletive.


As we’re currently running a sale, prices until 31/01/2007 are:
Quick Rod: $2965
Pro Mod: $3325

For those that don’t need a clean channel, you can save money with the Pro Stock model:
Pro Stock EL34: $2675
Pro Stock KT88: $2765


I’d really like to encourage anyone who can make it out here to come out and experience these amps. I’m not concerned in the slightest about whether you’re a “serious buyer” or not – I’d just like anyone who’s keen to try them to come out and have some high-volume fun!

PM me or email me on ryan@customaudioboutique.co.nz if you’d like to try a Splawn!

Cheers!

[CustomAudioBoutique]

TOP: Pro Mod
BOTTOM: Quick Rod










Four JJ KT88s in the Pro Mod:



Four "Mullard" EL34s in the Quick Rod: