FARGEN
RETRO CLASSIC
BY JORDAN WAGNER
Ben Fargen knows great tone. For 10 years, his company (which is, for all
practical purposes, Ben and himself) has
built some of the best amps on the boutique
market—amps that have found their way
into the highly talented hands of players like
Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Michael Landau.
Fargen is a lover of all things vintage,
but his admiration for the luscious tones
produced by vintage Marshall amps is
among his strongest affinities. With that
in mind, he set out to create the Retro
Classic—a handwired, 25-watt powerhouse
that enables you to explore the tones of
two classic Marshall circuits, as well as
the Tweed-style flavor that inspired Jim
Marshall’s earliest efforts.
traditional, the Retro Classic is distinctly
Fargen with its white piping, 16-gauge aluminum chassis, and big, bold Fargen logo.
The Marshall heritage goes more than
skin-deep, even if the Retro Classic is not
a down-to-the-letter clone of a Marshall
circuit. It’s a single-channel, all-tube design
that’s fueled by a trio of Tung-Sol reissue
12AX7 preamp tubes, a pair of Tung-Sol
KT66 power tubes that top out at 25 watts,
and a GZ34 rectifier tube that lends vintage response and sag. Component-wise,
to watch a video review of the amp at
premierguitar.com/may2012
CLICKHere…
mid, and treble knobs, as well as a post-phase master volume. The significant difference is Fargen’s signature Decade switch,
which allows the Retro Classic to shift in
shade from a late ’50s Tweed Bassman (Jim
Marshall’s inspiration for the first JTM45)
to the vintage snap of a Bluesbreaker-style
JTM45, and to the gained-out, raunchy sag
The black head’s shell harkens back to a time when the
Marshall Super Bass and Super Leads ruled the Earth.
Say Hello To My Little Friend
One look at the Retro Classic will tell all
you need to know about Fargen’s love of
classic Marshall style. The black head’s
shell harkens back to a time when the
Marshall Super Bass and Super Leads ruled
the Earth. And while looking familiar and
the handwired circuit board is populated
with SoZo Vintage signal caps and Fargen
Custom Shop carbon-composition resistors,
along with custom vintage-replica trans-
formers from Mercury Magnetics.
