gringopig's guitars
Two Rock Classic Reverb Signature
Inspired by Alexander Dumble's creations, Two rock amplifiers have since 1999 been an aspirational brand of amplifier. There are many makes of amplifier that claim to inherit the Dumble sound: Ceriatone, Amplified Nation, Bludotone and Fuchs to name a few but Two Rock have transcended their roots and a great number of highly influential players have picked up on them.
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Making amplifiers for Robben Ford, David Lindley and the like, Alexander Dumble created a whole genre of amp design. Dumble clones are made, often by small builders and have a tone that is described as being both fat and warm when clean and harmonically rich when overdriven.
Listen to David Lindley's lap steel playing with Jackson Browne and you will hear the Dumble Overdrive Special at full tilt. Listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan and you will hear the sound of a souped up Fender circuit; covered in trademark Dumble 'goop' to fruitlessly protect the circuit from being copied.
Copy them they did, even though each amplifier was reportedly unique and Dumble using deliberately out of spec components to try and fool would-be copyists.
Two rock were started by Bill Krinard and Joe Mloganoski in 1999 and produced amplifiers until they were purchased in 2010 by the Premier Builder's Guild, a company which housed the manufacturing for Friedman, Tone King and others. After the demise of this conglomeration of makers and builders, the current owners Mac Skinner and Eli Lester bought the company and invited the founder and designer Bill Krinard back and a new era of Two Rock started.
They became synonymous with high end boutique amplifiers used by John Mayer, Matt Scofield and others and continued making big powerful amplifiers with a reputation for great clean tone and articulate overdrive. They still maintain the Dumble heritage but I think they have gone past that into their own territory.
So, my story is that I bought a Classic Reverb 100/50 Watt head and 2x12" cabinet plus Tone King Ironman II from Coda in the UK, Not cheap I have to say but I was inspired to buy by my pal Brian who bought a Bloomfield 40/20 head and 1x12" cabinet. It sounded pretty fantastic really, so I sold a great guitar and amp to fund the purchase and the head and cabinet duly arrived.
However, all was not good. On the second day in, I noticed some weird crackling and sizzle on notes and swapped out all the pre amp valves and then the JJ 5881 valves that had been fitted. Very odd, as the 5881 is a 23 Watt valve as opposed to the 6L6GC which is 30W. It's a lower power 6L6 basically and most people assume the 6L6GC to be 25W and bias at 50-70% of that at idle. Not sure how you would get 100W out of 4 588a valves to be honest without cranking the bias way up - and the bias was set at 100mV according to the test points on the back. The recommendation for 6V6 was 100mV and 6L6GC was 120-124mV so the bias was at the level of 6V6 straight from the factory.
Anyway, back it went and a new one arrived which made a loud pop and hum as soon as I switched it on. Plus it sounded dreadful with a grunty gnarly grinding sound to every note. That one went back too but to their credit, Coda then told me a new delivery had arrived and I stuck with it and got a third replacement.
This one had TAD 6L6WGC-STR Redbase valves installed and I know these are good. Great valves from the PSVane factory in China.
No help was forthcoming from the Two Rock people though. So much for their customer service.
So far so good! Works fine and sounds tremendous. Check out my Les Paul demo of the amp below!
Thanks to Coda for helping me out. Big recommendation from me for their customer service.
