These are designed and custom built by Bill Young (yesco at shore.net). There are four models: 4, 5, 20, and 40 watts.
Review by Marc Kuppens, Professional Engineer and Amp Builder. This review was performed with a 4x12 vintage 30 Celestion cab.
This 5-watt amp sounds really wonderful. From what I can hear from the .wav file, it has a really crisp overdrive sound. It is not as tight-sounding as the previous .wav file you sent me. The sound comes pretty close to a Plexi as I heard them. The overall tone is very good. Personally, I would reduce the highs a little bit -- but, as I said, that's just my personal preference. The amp has a very nice ratio between attack and (tube) compression. This is the hard sought-after sound one likes from a tube amp. Usually you would have to max out your Marshall stack, creating very high volumes. A 5-watt amp that creates this sound must be *the* studio amp for rock recording. As far as I know, this amp sounds way different than, for instance, a tweed Deluxe or Champ. Personally, I like the Marshall rock sound better then the glassy (in my ears, almost fragile) overdiven tones from the tweed amps. You've really created yourself a gem here!
The Studio Plex can also produce very nice overdriven Tweedish sounds, using vintage Jensen speakers in an open-back cabinet. Bill plans to send some of these speakers to Marc so he can hear the broad tonal palette of this amp.
Also available: 20-watt head with plexi panels, covered with black leather. Standard four-input, with 2 6V6's. EL-84s available, like in the original.
Wave files are available.
[No web page yet.]
Picture of the prototype 5-watt StudioPlex amp covered in black leather, with Plexi panels:
Amptone.com ultra gear-search page