The Retro V

The Retro V has a pair of 6V6 output tubes, which gives it a silky blues at low volumes and crunchy rock when turned up. It has a single tone knob, which you set and forget. The amp is very transparent to guitar tone. It sounds clean with the neck and dirty with the bridge pickup.

A great tube amp is much harder to play, primarily because you hear everything so clearly. Players will often sound terrible at first, and get better as they listen and learn. A great player will quickly sound awesome as they access the amps unique tonal capabilities.

The circuit is built with true point-to-point, which results in better tone and lower noise. Those yellow caps are Mallory 150's.

I've been modifying the amp for better tone. Currently it has paper-in-oil capacitors (they are silver instead of yellow in color).

Here are some sound samples recorded with a Boss BR8 and a Samick Les Paul with DiMarzio Tone Zone and PAF Pro pickups. I start with the neck pickup in single-coil, switch to double-coil, and end with the bridge pickup.

• RetroV1.mp3 Volume on 2 for blues clean and crunch
• RetroV2.mp3 Volume on 4 for distortion.

I really like this amp because it has that Fender chime, but it's got extra gain for blues crunch and rock. It's loud and really distorts pretty easily, which is fun.

My latest mod was to put in paper-in-oil caps, which really makes the amp sparkle. I did change the cap values (to improve the tone), which makes this an unfair comparison.

• RetroV_PIO1.mp3 Volume on 2 for blues clean and crunch
• RetroV_PIO2.mp3 Volume on 4 for distortion.

You can see the yellow Mallory caps in the chassis photo above. Although most say that these give the same tone as the paper-in-oil caps, I can hear a distinct difference, especially in the high end.