jimmarchi1's Amp Rig

Single speaker Showman model, used 8 ohm iron versus the dual showman's 4 ohm twin output tranformer. This was my cleaner of the 2 showmans and it was pretty much stock versus the hacked one but I preferred the dual for some reason although when recording one particular album the single saw a whole lot of use on guitar while the dual did a lot of bass through an SVT 8x10. I feel like this one really only saw heavy use because with 2 tubes pulled it would overdrive at double impedance thus it could puh a vintage marshall cab at 16 ohms or soemthing like that. Live I really always used the older dual, I just thought it sounded better even though it wasn't as original.

I owned a hacked (by a moron) and then restored (by me and my buddy) '63 Fender Electrical Instruments first-run Dual Showman. Didn't say Dual on it yet, guys, but it was 4 ohms to drive a 2x15 instead of a 1x12 or 1x15 with the 'tone ring'.... Mine was really similar to the ones Dick Dale still tours with. I know this because he and I were comparing notes one time at the Northstar in Philly. I'll say this for my Showman, it had a big, punchy clean tone. Almost too big and too punchy. A twin by any other name is just as stiff....

I dock ceriatone's 18 watt a star for the transformers. I blew the OTs in my friends and in mine and I wasn't abusing them in anyway, just playing them all the way up as god intended. These amps are really some of the finest 18 att based amps going. The TMB channel is fun but I always just played a strat or LP jr into the normal input with the tone and volume wide open. If you want clean headroom try the 20 watt head. These amps have voxiness and plexiness in one box and can win the folgers taste test against any ac15 made since the JMI era. I really think the ceriatone is the best sounding 18 watt I've played, but you might as well buy a classic tone output transformer right out of the gate and put that in because the stock one is going to melt down, it sounds fine, but its a piece of shit.

These early, rebranded Magantones are generally seen with an 8" speaker and a champ like SE amp featuring a 6SJ7 pentode, 6V6 and 5Y3 rectifier, just a Magantone varsity jammed in there.... mine had the same cab dimensions but with a 110" jammed in powered by a push-pall amp. Sort of like a melodier amp, but all octal and with one of the inputs driven by a 6SJ7 gain stage.... similar to a Gibson GA20 leatherette on paper. This amp broke up early. It wasn't quite as loud as a 5E3 even through ane xtrenal cab with efficient speakers. It had a very, very distinctive sound, particularly when playing into the microphone input that was powered by the pentode. It actually was loaned to me for about a year by a very close friend and I used this amp extensively for 'color' parts with a tele or LP jr when recording the UYB record. This was one of the 'tiny music' amps as we called them on the sessions. We were inspired by the most-hated but most-toneful of STP records to use a lot of little, oddball amps like this to balance out the plexis, showmans and V4s... they wound up taking over a lot f the tracks. This was without a doubt my favorite little guy besides the marshall 18 and 20, but they have more of a little-big-amp sound. The more common single ended Leillani palm tree amps are sweet too (and dead similar in sound to an early Gibson GA5), but this is the one. This little guy has its own thing going on. I'm always looking for these because my buddy won't sell it to me.