Durham Electronics is a small pedal company based in Austin, Texas.
They originally began building pedals for Charlie Sexton, the Grammy-award winning producer and musician. Their goal was to create pedals that sounded great and had all the tone Sexton needed without being huge and unwieldy. While their catalog of pedals may be fairly small, each and every pedal created by Durham Electronics is designed with the player in mind.
The Crazy Horse pedal is one of the most versatile fuzz/distortion pedals you’ll find. It features controls for drive, fuzz, tone, volts, and level, plus it has true bypass and is completely hand built and wired.
The Sex Drive pedal was designed to provide nothing but clean boost while still providing some extra sustain and bottom end. This pedal’s boost doesn’t affect the amp’s natural tone at all, nor does it add any of that nasal-like tone that some clean boost pedals cause.
The Mucho Boosto pedal is based on the same circuit used in the Sex Drive, but it features a more active tone control. It has both thin and fat controls and can create an amazing compressed overdriven sound. The Mucho Boosto is now available in a smaller version that provides more level and gain. (more...)
The DNA Analogic VT-1 Virtual Tube Overdrive Pedal is a great overdrive effects pedal that is capable of providing that classic overdrive that is associated with vintage tube amps.
The pedal recreates the sound with amazing clarity and realism, but it can do more than that. It also adds warmth and fatness to your tone and can even function as a drive channel for a clean amp. The pedal does more—it can work as a booster to work high gain amps. How does it do this? First of all, it uses the JRC2043 IC op amp, which is of a higher quality than the standard JRC4558 IC that most pedals use. Second, it uses hand-selected germanium diodes. These diodes actually distort at the lower voltage, which in turn creates a more dynamic and more natural overdrive effect. These diodes let the pedal go from fuzzy to very clean by simply changing your guitar’s volume. It also flawlessly responds picking dynamics. (more...)
65 Amps is a small amp company located in North Hollywood, California.
All of their amps are hand-wired and built with only the highest quality parts. In fact, because the first amps produced by the company were for players to use in concert and not as products, these amps truly are built for players. They use more than just the same types of circuits and parts that other amps use—they have come up with some very innovative ideas that have led to some of the most versatile and unique amps in the industry. One of the keys to their amazing amps is the transformers they created with Mercury Magnetics. These hand wound transformers give their amps the ability to handle much more than amps that use machine would transformers can. (more...)
The Richter Amp 5E3 is one of Richter’s top selling amps.
It’s a version of the Fender 5E3, but it has Ricther’s special touch that makes it so much more than just a 5E3 clone. It doesn’t include many advanced features that other, fancy amps have—there’s no reverb, no channel switching, no effects looping, but you do get three control knobs, two different input channels, and more. The two input channel volume knobs can be used together to get some great tone variations, so the 5E3 can create some amazing sounds. The amp was pretty much designed to put out some amazing tweed tones.
The Richter Amp 5E3 is great for many different types of music, and it works very well in the studio, at home, or at venues. For those smaller venues, the 15 watts this amp produces is more than what you’ll need. At low volumes, it puts out some very clean tones, but when you crank it up, it really shows you what it can do. It goes from clean to edgy and back. (more...)
The Savage Rohr 15 Boutique Amp is a Class A amp that includes many of the features and control of larger Savage amps while still having its own, unique sound.
It has a specially designed tone section that makes the Rohr 15 stand out, and it is perfect for use on stage, in the studio, and while practicing at home. It is, of course, all hand-wired and uses only the best transformers and components. It’s an all tube amp as well that pulls 15 watts of power and can carry a 4, 8, or 16 Ohm load.
The Rohr 15 is a 1x12 combo amp and is powered by 2-EL-84/6BQ5 tubes. It has two input channels and four input savage designs. The controls include reverb, tone, master volume, treble, middle, bass, and volume for both the normal and bright channels. One of the best things about this little amp is that it is fairly light and easy to take on the road with you. Its various options give you a lot of control over your tone, something you don’t often find in a smaller amp. The only downside to the Savage Rohr 15 is that it is fairly expensive—you may pay upwards of $2,500 to $3,000 for one. (more...)
The Matchless Custom 212 boutique amp is made out of only the best materials, and the entire amp is handwired by the professionals at Matchless to insure quality.
If you’re looking for a great amp that has all the power you need, this is it. The Custom 212 is driven by a pair of EL84 tubes that give it a nice classic Vox-like tone. The tone controls are very interactive, and the tube driven tremolo and reverb channels sound fantastic. It’s even possible to make the Custom 212 sound like a vintage super reverb amp if you push it hard enough.
The Custom 212 comes in a solid cabinet that features a Jensen P12N and the Vintage 30 speaker combination which work very well together. The boutique amp features a half power switch so you can change between 15 watts or 30 watts. You also have high and low inputs and controls for treble, bass, master, volume, reverb, speed, and intensity. The only downside to the Matchless Custom 212 is its weight. At almost 85 pounds, this is one of the heavier amps out there, and it can be quite a chore lugging it around from place to place. If you’re using it only at home, that might not be an issue, but if you’re taking it on the road or to the studio, the weight may become a problem. (more...)