T“Sh
yea
videUe may h
r. The T
s the toBave won
ubewon
nal flexEthe
der is
ibilitWaward for u
basically
y to give thOnder-st
a blank
e playerNatemen
canvas
what tDt of the
that pr
hey wanE
o-t…” R
Afterburner cab, attached the included
footswitch, plugged in my trusty Nocaster
and powered up. The only thing between
my guitar and the amp was ten feet of
George L’s. Looking down at the footswitch
indicated that the reverb was engaged, so I
glanced over at the chassis to find that the
Reverb, Dwell and Tone controls were all at
noon. In fact, all of the controls happened
to be at noon, per the manual’s suggestion: “Set all the knobs at 12 o’clock; try
different footswitch combinations. Twiddle
the knobs to FREE YOUR TONE. Forget
the amp and just make music!”
I should mention that my wife was in the
room with me as I went about all of this.
She was telling me about how she wanted
to buy a Vincent Black Lightning for my
birthday this year, or that we should move
to Jamaica or something about winning
the lottery. I’m not entirely sure, because
as soon as I hit a chord through the amp
her lips continued to move but I didn’t
hear a word. All I could hear was my guitar: no hokum, no trickery, no mid-humps
or smiley-face EQs – just my guitar with
full, slightly compressed, glass-like sustain. Imagine plugging a guitar into an
old McIntosh mono-block tube amp to
grasp how this amp sounds clean. Thick
yet defined, articulate and unified, all with
that glorious touch of compression delivering a seemingly inordinate, yet still natu-ral-sounding, amount of sustain. “Do you
hear that?” I asked. “Sure,” she replied. I
threw her another question: “Is it messing
with your head, too?” “Yeah,” she offered
with a half grin and a twinkle in her eye.
“It sounds amazing.”
She may have won the award for understatement of the year. The Tubewonder
is basically a blank canvas that provides
the tonal flexibility to give the player what
they want – not what Leo Fender envisioned, or Jim Marshall or Dick Denney,
but what you want – delivered at all times
with impeccable tone. But the bonus is
that with everything set flat, the amp still
sounds phenomenal.
Kicking in the reverb via the footswitch
delivered even more smiles with the
Tubewonder’s take on what full, lush
reverb should sound like, although the
post-EQ Reverb mix starts robbing
volume past six, due to the interaction
between preamp Level and reverb Dwell
controls when Level is set low. How do
I know all this? The user manual, natch.
Featuring a “Description of Controls” that
looks more like the signal flow of an I/O
from a vintage Neve console, it speaks
directly to the amp’s design ethos – give
the user control from the moment they
plug in. Reverb controls the proportion
between dry and delayed signal from
the reverb recovery amplifier. The Dwell
control adjusts the reverb signal’s intensity
and Tone offers up EQ options for the
delayed signal, which isn’t affected by the
amp’s EQ, because the signal is split off
before the EQ.
The Low/High Sensitivity switch at the
amp’s Input sets the tone for the amp’s
layout – switches offer multiple capabilities for recognizable controls. The Level
control offers Bright, Normal and Boost
modes, offering + 4 dB of boost at 4k,
no boost and a + 4 dB full-range boost,
respectively. The Drive control features
a switch to choose from mostly even or
mostly odd order harmonics, offering a
glimpse into this amp’s flexibility, as well
as illustrating how this amp can handle
most anything. If you will recall, the
Tubewonder distributor had some apprehension about the Mills cabinet, and as it
turns out, the concerns weren’t completely misplaced. The Mills delivers enough
bottom-end to make a Texan envious and
the resulting lows were somewhat overpowering. Simply kick in the high-pass filter – centered at 125Hz with a 12dB drop
– via the switch below the Bass control,
then add a little bass, which is centered
around 150Hz, to tighten things up. After
the tweaks, the Tubewonder delivered
plenty of punch without boominess.
Just for grins, I decided to create a
huge blackface tone – imagine James
Burton on a high-end, Swedish amp jag.
I started by engaging the Bass control’s
high-pass filter and boosting the Bass
EQ control to one. It should be noted
www.premierguitar.com
