Tone King Amplifier

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Well I went out and made the big boutique amp plunge. I took a drive
to check out the Matchless amps, especially the Chieftan. I really
really like the Chieftan. It was very responsive and the reverb was
good. However, I also tried out the Tone King Continental - and I
absolutely loved it.

I ended up buying the Tone King Continental because it sounded better
than the Matchless Chieftan. Now understand where I am coming from
amp wise. I've been playing a Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue with both
a PRS CE and a Bonnie Raitt Strat. Sometimes I'd put a distortion
pedal in front of it.

There were times when gigging where the Deluxe would not have enough
horsepower for me. When you are playing in a loud band you can't get
loud and clean on a Deluxe. There were also times where even at 10 it
couldn't quite keep up with a high energy band. To solve this problem
I would play a Mesa DC3 (35 watts) which had enough juice to play
louder both clean and dirty.

I am always concerned about my hearing so I don't want an amp that has
too much wattage because I'll probably use it if it is there. Plus I
think lower wattage amps sound better. The Deluxe on about 3-4 is
just gorgeous. The Mesa never sounded as good as the Deluxe on any
settings, but it did the trick volume wise.

What I needed was an amp that would sound like a Deluxe Reverb, only
louder for the times I wanted to play clean and sweet (reverb is an
absolute must in my book). I also needed an amp that could play nasty
at the appropriate volume (I like to play in a mid 70's Hot Tuna style
which is basically an aggressive psychedelic trio sound).

When I played the Matchless I realized that it wasn't accomplishing
either of my objectives. It did have a very good clean sound, but it
wasn't like a Deluxe Reverb. Nice in it's own right, but not quite
what I was looking for. The fully cranked lead sounds I could get
were very articulate and good sounding, but not quite the Hot Tuna
type sound I was looking for. Then I tried the Tone King Continental.

Oh my God, what an experience. It had what I was looking for. For
those of you who don't know, one of the things that make a Deluxe
sound so good is the 6v6 tube (it uses two of them). IMHO this is the
best tube for a guitar amp. The two in the Deluxe put out about 20
watts, hence the lack of clean headroom. The Tone King Continental
uses 4 6v6 tubes in a unique circuit. It has TWO output transformers
so that their are two independent pairs of 6v6's (cathode bias) wired
in parallel at the speaker jack so it is Class A amp.

On the clean channel you really have the Deluxe Reverb sound except
louder. It is a treat to be able to loud and clean without the low E
string farting out. And when you push the clean channel hard it
sounds just excellent. Lots of touchy feely with a rock and roll
edge.

There are just three knobs on the clean channel; volume, treble, and
bass. There are also reverb, speed, and intensity controls which work
on BOTH channels. The lead channel has only three controls; volume,
tone, and mid-bite. If you’ve been counting, that is the same number
of knobs as the Deluxe Reverb. The lead channel is where the normal
channel is located on a Deluxe. The whole front panel feels real
familiar. There is only one input at the far left. There is a
channel changing toggle switch between the lead and rhythm channels.

The mid-bite control on the lead channel has a very pronounced effect
on the tone of the amp. On 2 -3 it makes the channel sound like a
cranked Blackface Deluxe Reverb. This is pretty cool because you can
have a loud and clean Deluxe sound on the rhythm channel and
footswitch over to a cranked Deluxe sound. The further up you turn
the mid-bite control the more pronounced the mid-range gets. As you
get close to all the way up the gain increases and you get into
cranking Marshall territory. But it doesn’t lose the Fender vibe
until most of the way up on the mid-bite control.

The rear panel is a lot like the back of the Deluxe with some
exceptions. There is a removable power cord, one speaker output (4
ohms), a standby and power switch located exactly where you’d expect
them on a Deluxe, a footswitch jack (controls the channel switch and
the tremelo.) I really like to be able to footswitch the tremelo on
and off. I don’t need it to do reverb because it is always on. There
are quarter inch reverb in and out jacks. And last but not least a
half power switch for the lead channel only.

This half power switch disables one pair of the 6v6s in lead mode
only. This way you can have 40 watts of clean power on the rhythm
channel, and only 20 watts of cranked lead. It helps balance things
nicely in a small room. I prefer the full power lead mode though.

The Tone King Continental head looks absolutely stunning. It is
covered in expensive naugahyde in a choice of colors. I got the red
and white. It looks like it could be the front panel of an early 60’s
water ski boat. I didn’t have enough scratch to buy the matching 2x12
cabinet but that will be my next purchase. It is also gorgeous.
Until then I’m playing through a high quality Ampeq 2x12 cabinet with
Vintage 30’s. I took the port off the back to make it an open cabinet
because the Tone King cabinet uses an open back design (based around
Vintage 25’s).

I took the Tone King Continental out the day after I bought it and
gigged with it. It did everything I thought it would and people kept
coming up to touch it because it looks so good. Guitarists are a
conservative lot at times. I had some comments that people thought
the red was a little too much. I just told them that everything
doesn’t have to be in black tolex or tweed.

The footswitch doesn’t come as part of the amp. You have to buy it
separately for about $80. It is worth getting because of how it
looks. It is made of cast aluminum and has the color scheme of your
amp choice printed onto the top.

As you can see I am very happy with my new amp. It took months to
decide what to buy because there is so much out there to choose from.
That’s enough of this essay. On to practice and smiling.

TubeBlaster

> I ended up buying the Tone King Continental ...