BLACKJACK PACK

One of the early boutique amp builders, Jim Kelley created some amazing amps used by Vince Gill, Bonnie Raitt, Lee Ritenour, and others.  There were only about 600 made so they're still pretty rare and though they don't fetch Dumble prices yet, they are amazing amps and built to last forever.  I profiled this tan 210 combo.

With all the pull knobs and two channels and proprietary power attenuator, there are a lot of possible settings and I couldn't possibly get to them all, but I tried to get some great usable tones from clean to crunch to saturated solo sounds.

The Heritage Amp company sprang from the Heritage Guitar Company and was based in Brentwood, TN, just around the corner from where I live.  Paul Cochrane, the designer and builder of the Tim and Timmy pedals (one of my faves if you haven't already noticed) was the amp designer and builder at Heritage amps and came up with some incredible-sounding amps.  In an effort to put all of his favorite Marshall-type flavors into one amp, he came up with the Colonial.

With switches for changing the preamp section, tone stack, rectifier section, and a knob to change the negative feedback, he could accurately capture the sounds of a '59 Bassman, JTM45, Super Bass, and Plexi.  I really don't know what took me so long to get one of these amps other than they're not on every corner.  For the money, they are hands-down the best deal on the planet if you want amazing tone.

I've never been a huge fan of a Marshall clean sound but with the US/UK switches I was able to find amazing clean sounds that bridge the gap between American and British amps.  Once you get it cranking and setting the switches to the Plexi mode it gets an amazing, creamy, bouncy, smooth overdrive.  But this thing is LOUD.  It is the loudest 50 watts I've ever heard and it's nice to be able to "tame" it by getting it into my Kemper.  I included profiles using my trusty Timmy, Archer, and Red (Col. Angus) homemade od pedal as well as a few different cabs for some tonal variety.  This amp is fast becoming one of my all-time favorites.

Colonial Pack requires 3.3 firmware and while most profiles were made using my trusty 3rd Power cabinet, the new separation algorithms make it easier to get more great sounds by switching to your favorite cabs as well.  These clips were recording into ProTools 10 using a Propellerhead Balance interface with no plug-ins or processing using my red Tom Anderson Cobra with 3 P90s.  Check out the soundclips below and as usual please excuse the sloppy playing...

D-Pack is my collection of D*mble and D*mble-inspired amps for the Kemper Profiling Amplifier.  For reference, using an original Overdrive Special along with other great D-inspired amps like Fuchs, Ceriatone, and Two Rock, I've gathered some of my favorite tones from these iconic amps.  60 profiles wasn't enough to fully capture the full panorama of these great amps, but I tried to get some usable and (hopefully) inspiring tones to play--everything from the glassy cleans to the over-saturated, smooth, singing lead tones.

As with any amp that is capable of such tonal variation due to the mini-toggle switch settings, and different inputs, etc., these profiles are not meant to capture every setting of the amps, but are merely snapshots of my favorite settings.  The clips below highlight how subtle the differences are between the different amps and even different settings within the same amp.  This pack may not be for everyone, but hopefully some of you may find some joy in playing the dynamic D-Pack as much as I do.

The Diaz CD100 is one of those amps you don't see every day.  The CD100 is a 100w beast based (a little) on the high powered tweed twins but with added reverb and some pull knob options for getting unique higher gain tones.  It stays bluesy no matter where it is (since Cesar Diaz was SRV's guitar tech), but can cover a great range of tones from country cleans to searing lead tones.  You can see why this is one of Warren Haynes' go-to amps.  I had a CD100 for many years on the road and eventually parted ways but I found another recently to bring those tones back to my KPA.  These profiles cover many of the amp settings along with some gain pedals in front.

Diaz Pack requires 3.0 firmware and while most amps were profiled using my trusty 3rd Power cabinet, the new separation algorithms make it easier to get more great sounds by switching to your favorite cabs as well.  These clips were recording into ProTools 10 using a Propellerhead Balance interface with no plug-ins or processing using my red Tom Anderson Cobra with 3 P90s (pictured above).  Check out the soundclips below and as usual please excuse the sloppy playing...