CARR AMPLIFIERS
SPORTSMAN
BY DIMITRI SIDERIADIS
Imagine a musician that has achieved venerable status and sophistication
with age, but has lost none of the style
and irreverence that made him or her part
of a cultural revolution decades ago. Carr
amplifiers are, in many ways, a wire-and-tube manifestation of this persona. And
through a deep respect for design heritage,
a unique spin on vintage styling, and an
effort to develop more usable tone-shaping
features—they’ve refined some the most
revered amplifier templates into modern
classics.
The Sportsman is the latest creation out
of Steve Carr’s Pittsboro, NC shop. This
6V6-powered, class-A combo is based to
some extent on smaller, US-made, reverb-equipped amplifiers from the ’60s like the
Fender Princeton. But it’s also built around
an expanded array of controls, bound to
please guitarists across a greater variety of
musical settings.
sections, offering control of the amplifier’s
breakup point at differing volume levels. A
speaker output jack enables use of an extension cabinet.
Call of the Wild
It’s hard not to think blackface Fender
when you play the Sportsman. And set-
ting the Headroom knob to 3 o’clock and
the EQ knobs to a slightly scooped setting
immediately found me in recognizable
blackface territory. The tone from my Les
Paul’s bridge humbucker was full, sweet,
and complex. And the signal from the
Carr was brimming with detail—from the
taught, metallic zing of the wound strings
to the sounds of the contours on the edge
of the pick. Turning up the Treble knob
didn’t simply tilt the tone towards bright,
but added increasingly airy harmonics to
the sound without becoming piercing or
fatiguing—perfect for some high-fret, funk
action and folk arpeggios. The clean sustain
was also particularly impressive, and letting
the simplest chords ring out and fill the
room was a delight.
Headroom knob
Mid control
Sportsmanlike Conduct
At 16-watts clean, 19 watts maxed, the
Sportsman sits somewhere between the
Fender Princeton Reverb and Fender
Deluxe Reverb, in terms of output. Our
review specimen came equipped with an
Eminence Red White and Blues 12" speaker and rock-solid pine cabinet. The amp
weighs in at 42 pounds.
Carr offers a range of custom colors for
the cabinet, including a handsome hunter
green, but our review unit came in black
and looked great with the cool, black
and tan grille cloth. The handstitched,
leather handle and antique logo make this
a refined, luxurious vehicle to take through
the woods—more vintage Land Rover than
Jeep. Under the hood hide two 12AX7
and two 12AT7 preamp tubes, and a pair
of 6V6 power tubes, which, conveniently,
do not require biasing upon replacement.
The control panel sports Volume, Treble,
Mid, Bass, Reverb, and Headroom knobs.
The latter functions as an interface between
the Sportsman’s preamp and power amp
