PRODUCT REVIEW
KOMET
19BY STEVE OUIMETTE
When I was growing up, my parents told me
to eat my vegetables and that good things
came in small packages. To me it sounded
more like a public service announcement for
boring food and crummy gifts than good
advice. Like many things your parents teach
you that don’t sound so good at first, over
time you realize there is more than a grain
of truth to them—like when broccoli actually started tasting pretty decent, and carting around heavy stacks of amps became a
drag. Mom and dad were on the right track!
In the spirit of good things coming in small
packages, the company responsible for giving us the Komet 60 and Constellation 30
brings us the Komet 19.
custom-designed output and power transformers, a laser-cut chassis made with solid
1/8” welded aircraft grade aluminum and mil-itary-grade 2W potentiometers. The relatively
simple front panel consists of an input, a
3-way Bright Switch, Volume, Saturation and
Tone controls followed by a jewel pilot light
and Standby and Power switches. On the
back, there’s an IEC power input, mains and
HT fuses, a 4/8/16-ohm impedance selector
and two speaker outputs. The Komet 19 is
cathode biased and comes stock with Sovtek
tubes, 2 EL84s and a pair of 12AX7s.
The Package
Looking a lot like the little brother of the
Komet 60, the Komet 19 head measures
a compact 17”x9”x8” and weighs just 25
pounds. It comes in a wide variety of col-
ors, including Black, Baltic Blue, Emerald
Green, Purple and Red, and it features the
same high-quality components and con-
struction as all Komet products. That means
What’s Inside
Pulling the chassis out of the head box
revealed some pretty astonishing workmanship. I was expecting to see a neatly wired turret board on par with most high-end modern
amps, but instead the entire assembly is literally point-to-point construction: the components are directly mounted to the pots, jacks
and tube sockets. There is no circuit board
at all, which makes it clear that the folks at
Komet spent a great deal of attention on the
layout and design. It’s really a work of art.
Are you the little guy making
that big noise?
Even though 19 watts doesn’t sound like
that much power, it actually can produce a
lot more volume that most people expect.
Since the Komet 19 lacks a Master Volume, I
contacted Komet and asked for a little background on their design philosophy to better
understand what they were trying to achieve.
According to Michael Kennedy and Holger
Notzel, “Komet makes amps that are intended
for live use. The amp must be capable of
delivering a full range of tones from clean to
singing leads, all controllable from the guitar
via guitar volume control settings and pick
attack, in a band setting. Master volume controls can be useful in achieving one (
overdriven) sound at a given volume level, but they
limit the highly dynamic interaction between
guitar and amp that we strive for. Master
volume amps just don’t clean up as well
from the guitar, and when they do the clean
volume is too low. In limiting the amount of
drive delivered from the preamp to the power
amp, the distortion now has to be created in
