Well, tonight I came full circle to a decision I made about 10 years ago -- to own a Blue Angel.
With a new job and some other major life changes I decided that I'd treat myself with some new music gear. I lurked here and around the internet and reaffirmed my Blue Angel quest.
Tonight I received PUCKBOY99's 4x10 BA. 8)
As an aside and a plug -- I must say that the deal with PUCKBOY99 went very well and was quite easy. He was upfront with the product that I was purchasing. It was packed quite well and arrived here fine. I'd give him the proverbial eBay A+++++.
I got to play with it tonight a little bit. First off -- it can be quite loud. I expected this, but still was a bit surprised at what ~30W class A can do. I had to roll back to volume tonight so my first evaluation is a bit limited.
I like the different voicings with the different tubes. There is a difference in headroom between both modes, and the Progressive Link thing does add something.
Clean is clean and melodic. I can push it to break up in a very musical way. I also understand what people have meant with how this amp articualtes each note. It does just that. I think I got that 'not-quite-Deluxe-not-quite-Bassman-clean-Mesa-Blue-Angel-tone'. Nice. I think I'll have to crank it a bit to get that 'not-quite-british-tone'.
I played around with the eBow too - the eBow does something really neat to power tubes. You can crescendo a long sustained note and go from crystal clean to a very creamy, songful, melodic breakup. Drool. I'm probably the first person to post this, but the eBow and this amp were made for each other.
The tone controls actually do something. In my Torres Traynor amp, for instance, tone controls only seem to work at the extremes of dial settings and the tone really depends on use of presence control and pull bright/pull fat switchs to get anything sound worthy.
The reverb is sweet with a fairly lenghty dwell time.
I'm going to futz with this some more and eventually play around with some tube substitutions. I have a box of NOS tubes that I saved from the garbage some time ago. I've got a lot of uninteresting RCAs for TVs, but also got a couple gems. There are a few decent power tubes from Mullard, Amperex and GE (but none are matched so I doubt I'll do anything with them)...some Sylvania, TungSol, Ei, and 'Made in Russia' 12AX7s as well as a number of 12AU7s. And here's the best find -- a TeleFunKen 12AX7 that currently resides in my VibroChamp and a TeleFunKen 12AU7 that lives in my RealTube overdrive. OK, I'm digressing...but I'll probably get some JJ's EL84s for the BA after I've learned it a bit more. Maybe I'll do the 6L6 substitution too.
I think I have to invest in an amp cover -- my 2 year old discovered all the cool knobs and switches in front. She seems to like the Blue Angel too. :lol:
Now to buy that Wine Red Les Paul Standard that I've had my eye on for 10 years...
Rock on!
