3rd Power CSR PACK – 60 Profiles

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 5150 came out in 1992 and it marked a departure for Eddie from the Marshalls he had used for years.  It was unlike any amp Peavey had made and had cascading gain stages that gave it more gain than any other amp on the market at the time.  Its cold biasing kept it from blowing itself up from all the power and saturation on tap.  Other high gain amps have come and gone over the years but there's still something really cool about these original models.

This particular specimen has seen a lot of work and probably melted a few faces in its lifetime.  It just goes to show how bulletproof this little beasts can be.  I profiled it my usual 3rd Power 212 cab as well as a matching, old 5150 412 with its original Sheffield speakers.  The two cabs give a nice bit of variety.  Not known for their clean tones, the 5150 is predominantly a rock beast.  The Crunch channel has more than enough gain for rock rhythms while the Lead channel goes more into the super-saturated metal world.  Even country(ish) guys like me can find some workable tones in it and it has a nice clarity that I've even used on some recordings already.

The 5150 Pack was creating using the latest 5.x firmware.  Please forgive the playing in the audio samples as many of these weren't exactly in my wheelhouse.  Thanks!

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...

Profile Pack 3 is a collection of 60 profiles based on the amp sounds* of 18 different amps including a recreation of a 50's tweed deluxe, some great California boutique high gain monsters, a couple of JTM45-based amps, a 15-watt British Invasion amp, a CA wicker monster by way of TX, and some other cool, hard-to-find amps.

In keeping with the tradition of packs 1 & 2, I wanted to provide an assortment of gain levels, from clean to heavily overdriven tones.  I also wanted to capture a few old-school R&R tones like the JTM45 type amps for the Classic Rock sounds of the 70's and 80's.  There's even some authentic Boston tones just for fun.

Although not widely known, these amps are loved by the few that stumble upon them, including Jon Herrington, from Steely Dan's band.  They are truly unique in that they use two complete sets of power tubes (el84 & el34) in series.  This gives the amp it's unique tone and lots of options for tone tailoring.

The two-channel amp has basic controls for each channel (gain, volume, and tone) and then the 100w el34 power section has an entire eq section, not just a master volume and presence knob.  I highly recommend you check them out in person if you can.  Graydon at Guytron was kind enough to get mine up and running after the 2010 Nashville flood to which it fell victim.  I think it sounds better than ever now.  I tried to get a variety of tones from shimmering cleans to over-saturated lead tones.  Check them out.