Seems like an awesome amp. I really dig low wattage el84 amps
Please email me at jus10catrett at yahoo.com
Thanks!
Komet 19
Moderators: pompeiisneaks, Colossal
Re: Komet 19
Not much on that amp. Here is some thing people have said.
The article says this amp has a 2nd gain stage, so it seems it may be closer to a SuperLite TMB, with the TMB tone stack. The saturation control/2nd gain stage. It appears to be the same thing as the SuperLite TMB's first volume control, which I prefer to be called its Gain control. I guess "Saturation" maybe makes it sound a bit more exotic.
Being cathode-biased it will inevitable have some degree of compression. If they use a huge cathode cap (which we don't know if they are or not), that will help reduce the compression and make the amp stiffer. However, they are using SS rectifiers, rather than a vacuum rectifier, which will also make the amp stiffer.
In particular the sentence, "The amp responded to the pick with an explosive attack and didn’t compress the way I’m used to with EL84-based amps", makes me think the reviewer is probably more used to Vox/Matchless type amps which usually have a choke in their screen supply. The choke makes these amps compress a lot more, giving that well-known looser/softer feel these amps have, compared to a Marshall 18W.
I also don't believe that compression is a pre-requisite for touch-sensitivity, as touch sensitivity is more about being able to move between clean and distorted tones depending on pick attack. This is a separate thing from compression IMO. In fact in my experience amps with a lot of compression generally tend to have poorer touch-sensitivity.
I haven't check out the clips yet, due to some driver issues on my laptop. However, I wonder if at least some of the compression you may be hearing is coming from the preamp, as the review basically says that's how they most liked to run the amp. Or it may just be the cathode-biased character coming through.
As I recall, it was a really clean build - sort of like a PtP in the Hiwatt style or something.
The article says this amp has a 2nd gain stage, so it seems it may be closer to a SuperLite TMB, with the TMB tone stack. The saturation control/2nd gain stage. It appears to be the same thing as the SuperLite TMB's first volume control, which I prefer to be called its Gain control. I guess "Saturation" maybe makes it sound a bit more exotic.
Being cathode-biased it will inevitable have some degree of compression. If they use a huge cathode cap (which we don't know if they are or not), that will help reduce the compression and make the amp stiffer. However, they are using SS rectifiers, rather than a vacuum rectifier, which will also make the amp stiffer.
In particular the sentence, "The amp responded to the pick with an explosive attack and didn’t compress the way I’m used to with EL84-based amps", makes me think the reviewer is probably more used to Vox/Matchless type amps which usually have a choke in their screen supply. The choke makes these amps compress a lot more, giving that well-known looser/softer feel these amps have, compared to a Marshall 18W.
I also don't believe that compression is a pre-requisite for touch-sensitivity, as touch sensitivity is more about being able to move between clean and distorted tones depending on pick attack. This is a separate thing from compression IMO. In fact in my experience amps with a lot of compression generally tend to have poorer touch-sensitivity.
I haven't check out the clips yet, due to some driver issues on my laptop. However, I wonder if at least some of the compression you may be hearing is coming from the preamp, as the review basically says that's how they most liked to run the amp. Or it may just be the cathode-biased character coming through.
As I recall, it was a really clean build - sort of like a PtP in the Hiwatt style or something.
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