Bogner Uberschall on the bench - Mini review
Thorny
Uberschall, and only the second bogner I had in. These things are
MEGA expensive.
The problem was it blew the 5A slow blo. It looks like two of the
tubes got hot. It is new and has just been on put on the floor at one
of the stores where I work. It had a quad of JJ EL34s, but all I have
are a quad of the new Svetlana (Slovlana, Sovlana) EL34s. I tested
surrounding components with no evidence of damage, as well as there is
no visual evidence of a problem other than with the tubes. I put the
new ones in since there was no evidence of any problem. The new
"Slovlanas" seem to be working fine. The amp pulls about 1.5 amps,
what is should, and does not seem to creep upwards. Both sides seem
balanced fairly well as far as the current passing through the tubes.
The stock EL34s seem to be way on the fringe hot running tubes. I had
to crank the bias over all the way down in order to get acceptable
current through these new design svetlanas. The other Bogner tubes
were the same way in the Shiva I worked on. I am not sure what the
store will do. They probably want to send the JJs back and get
another Quad from Bogner. I had better find out. The preamp tubes
on both amps were Chinese 12AX7s. The Uber has 5 of them.
The Uberschall has two channels, one with HUGE GAIN. As with the
other Bogner I played, the clean channel sounds good as well as the
mega gain channel. The Uberschall is a distortion MONSTER. Both
channels have a gain and a volume control, all feeding into a Master.
If I wanted this much gain, this would be the way to do it. It sounds
great - very vanhalenish, and even more into the current flavors.
Each channel lights up depending upon which is on - a good thing to
tell what channel you are on, but the gain is so much different
between these channels you won't have any trouble knowing. At first I
was wondering what the lights with the optic strands were for in the
amp, but the optic strands feed the light into the panel - a cool
thing so the light is very uniform and specificly directed, and bulbs
appear to be in an easy place to change them. I think the lighted
panel is a good idea for dim stages, because I don't see well in dim
light since my eye surgery - so I probably would rather see both
channels lit, so I could see how both were set in the dim light,
instead of just the active channel. That is a nitpick. Both
channels have good sounds. It does not have reverb (the Shiva has an
excellent sounding reverb). I ran it into a home-made closed back
2X12 V30 cabinet. It has switchable output from 4-8-16 ohms and two
outputs (clearly marked). It has a switchable effects loop and a
channel switch on the footswitch. The clean channel is very good, but
not as good as the shiva I played in my opinion. The shiva had an
awsome clean channel - and this one is probably a very good to
excellent. The clean channel stays fairly clean, even when cranking
it a bit. The lead channel gain is horrendous, but more focused than
a mushy/dark sounding mesa. It does have what appears to be
solid-state amplifier chips in it also - but I did not analyze their
function in the circuit.
The amp seems to be a very well-made circuit board model - as well as
one could be made. It has quality pots but they are board mounted
(sturdy, but a pain to clean if you had to). I would not hesitate to
buy one based upon the circuit board aspect - at least on the two I
have worked on (unless you planned on modifying one, and why would you
spend the $2-3000 on them just to do that?).
The Bogner Shiva that came in had svetlana EL34s (the traditional
"real" svetlanas). That amp had bad tubes too (the Svets were
microphonic, as well as nearly every Chinese preamp tube in the amp).
I REALLY liked that amp, even though it was hugely picky about the
tubes you put into it. I put a pair of 7581As in the power, and
replaced the preamp tubes with new Chinese and JJ/Teslas. That amp
sounds fantastic both in the clean channel and the gain. It can do
over the top gain too, maybe not as much as the Uberschall. The U is
just plain wicked gain - not the mush that comes out of a mesa.
The Uberschall is not my thing - the Shiva is more to my liking
because I feel it is more versatile and covers the bases that I am
interested in more. If you have to have the most gain you can get,
then consider the Uberschall - it is just that. It does it well, and
has a lot of good sounds inbetween. Don't expect the complexities of
the "in-between" settings. The clean channel is clean, with a little
bit of compression (in a good way). It won't make you sell your
fender or your marshall on the clean channel, but it does sound good.
The shiva has a prettier clean and the reverb is great, and I think
the clean ventures more into the light to medium gain realm on the
Shiva. A Shiva just might make you want to sell some of your other
amps. The Uber to me is a very well-made two trick pony - worth
getting if you want those tricks.
JTM50
jthor...@sigecom.net wrote on 9/28/03 3:59 PM:
Thanks for the review!
One question: You seem to have experience with both the "traditional Svets"
and now the "Newsensor Svets". How do they compare -especially the Newsensor
ones?
Lloyd