PRODUCT REVIEW
HIPKITTY Kitty Box BY STEVE OUIMETTE
I love magic. Ever since I was a little tyke, I
went out of my way to see a great trick. From
watching magicians on late-night talk shows
and prime-time specials to hanging out at the
magic shop at amusement parks and bug-ging the store owner for hours on end, there
was a level of fascination that never let up,
even to this day. There’s just something about
somebody making the unbelievable believable
that is so entertaining, awesome and inspiring.
Anyway, one day not too long ago a strange
new amp arrived on my doorstep from a company called HipKitty Products. Since I’d never
heard of them, I had no preconceived notion
of what to expect. What did this amp have
in store for my ears… what kind of magic?
Would it be a cheesy card trick, or was it
gonna saw the lady in half?
The Kitty Box
The Kitty Box looks a whole lot like a blackface Fender Bassman head right down to the
head box design and simple control layout (Hi/
Low input, Bright switch, Volume, Treble, Mid,
Bass, Master). The main physical difference is
that you can choose just about any color you’d
like to complement the red control panel with
white knobs. The amp is made right here in
the USA and is a fully hand-wired, 50-watt
all-tube design. Unlike the classic Fenders,
the Kitty Box comes with a pair of EL34s, but
it can also accommodate 6L6s or 5881s with
simple user-serviceable bias adjustment points
on the back panel. There are three 12AX7
preamp tubes and a switchable tube (5AR4) or
solid-state rectifier that toggles into a standby
position between them… nice addition!
Completing the back panel is a pair of speaker
outputs (speaker, ext) and a 3A fuse.
Magical Tone
Spoiler Alert: You cannot dial up a bad
tone no matter how hard you try with
the Kitty Box head.
With the combination of Fender-ish looks,
Marshall-like tube choices and Mesa-styled
switchable rectifiers, it was anyone’s guess as
to how the Kitty Box was going to sound, and
the suspense was killing me. I opted to start
with my ’ 74 Les Paul Custom plugged directly
into the Hi input and blast it out through a
Krank 1x12” cab with an Eminence Legend
V12. All controls were set to five, with the
exception of the Master Volume, which was
turned off so I could listen to the changes as
it increased in volume. The rectifier was set
to solid state, and the bright switch was off.
Slowly bringing up the master while playing
revealed that this amp has a very unique voic-ing… somewhere in the Marshall 2204 camp,
but with more clarity and a notably different
midrange focus. It was hard to tell if the mids
were voiced lower or higher than a Marshall,
but they were definitely present and super
articulate yet somehow forgiving in the way
they handled the pick response. Marshalls
can be very hard on some players in the way
they reveal nuances both good and bad. The
amount of grind produced with the volume
halfway up was plenty enough to bring the Les
Paul into AC/DC territory and then some in
terms of gain. Backing off the volume knob on
the guitar easily exposed the clean tone many
of us look for in a single-channel amp. Digging
into the strings harder produced more gain
without any tonal collapsing, and it opened up
an onslaught of harmonic overtones that were
pure ear candy. Wanting to see how far the
amp’s gain could go, I pushed the volume to
10 (master was still around 5) and once again
was treated to sonic heaven. So much clarity
and gain at once isn’t easy to come by in my
experience… you usually lose something in
the process, but not in this case. Sustain went
on for days and the amp held its own without
collapsing or bottoming out on low notes. It’s
got both a killer lead and rhythm tone simulta-neously… and that is a good trick!
Now that I’d had a chance to hit the higher
gain territory, it was time to back the gain
down a bit and listen to the tone circuit. I
