Ever seen the inside of a Tone King Sky King?

If you look at a regular circuit board, it has eyelets/turrets running along each side with the resistors/capacitors spanning the width of the board. One side is for the tube connections and the other side is for the pots. It is laid out tube-by-tube so the wires are short but since everything is adjacent it looks continuous.

So just chop up that regular circuit board tube-by-tube and then for each section, 'fold' one side up and over so it is upside down and the caps/resistors are standing straight up. The wires to the pots stay the same but the wires to the tubes are ....well its mounted on the tube so no wires. It's kind of like that.

It looks cool af but I have no experience with working on it.
 
Reminds me of the 1940's style "TinkerToy / Cordwood Modules" used by the military.

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SpiderWars said:
If you look at a regular circuit board, it has eyelets/turrets running along each side with the resistors/capacitors spanning the width of the board. One side is for the tube connections and the other side is for the pots. It is laid out tube-by-tube so the wires are short but since everything is adjacent it looks continuous.

So just chop up that regular circuit board tube-by-tube and then for each section, 'fold' one side up and over so it is upside down and the caps/resistors are standing straight up. The wires to the pots stay the same but the wires to the tubes are ....well its mounted on the tube so no wires. It's kind of like that.

It looks cool af but I have no experience with working on it.
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Yeah I can see that it makes sense, but it’s surprising to me that they would go with such an unorthodox implementation considering this is an amp at least presumably based on the Fender Deluxe. I wonder what made them want to design it that way and also if the Imperial MKII is the same? I’m interested in that amp and as far as I can tell the only real difference between the two is the Sky King has switchable pentode/ultra-linear(???) power modes.
 
Nice amp....but 3k? That's a little steep. Probably would cover a lot of bases for me. Looks like some top flight build quality. Thanks for sharing the video, I enjoyed that.
 
VonBonfire said:
Nice amp....but 3k? That's a little steep. Probably would cover a lot of bases for me. Looks like some top flight build quality. Thanks for sharing the video, I enjoyed that.
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I agree, looks cool, but i personally cant justify anywhere near that type of money for a fendery type tone

Maybe its just me, but you can get a drip edge vintage bassman or bandmaster for like 800 bucks, and as long as the caps and electrolytics are good its gonna kill for cleans
 
DanTravis62 said:
I agree, looks cool, but i personally cant justify anywhere near that type of money for a fendery type tone

Maybe its just me, but you can get a drip edge vintage bassman or bandmaster for like 800 bucks, and as long as the caps and electrolytics are good its gonna kill for cleans
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Good post and some real good points. I guess if you are really into Fender tones it might be worth it USED somewhere in the 2k range. It's more wattage than a Deluxe so would have better cleans in a loud band situation. It has a high quality attenuator built in so it's pretty versatile though I don't care for attenuators. Still, how much can you get a vibrolux for since it too is in the 35 watt range? Seems like at that price the speaker should be alnico, not ceramic. Probably why I've never seen one in the wild, a blues lawyer amp for that PRS ten top.
 
VonBonfire said:
Good post and some real good points. I guess if you are really into Fender tones it might be worth it USED somewhere in the 2k range. It's more wattage than a Deluxe so would have better cleans in a loud band situation. It has a high quality attenuator built in so it's pretty versatile though I don't care for attenuators. Still, how much can you get a vibrolux for since it too is in the 35 watt range? Seems like at that price the speaker should be alnico, not ceramic. Probably why I've never seen one in the wild, a blues lawyer amp for that PRS ten top.
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Agreed. I've literally never seen one in the wild, and I gig literally all the time.

I only see tone king amps on youtube tbh.

From the clips they sound good and everything? It just seems like wayyyyy too much money for a tone you can cop EXACTLY for 1/3 as much.
 
I’ve seen the Imperial MKII come up used for less than 2K recently in my area. I’m more interested in that than the Sky King. They both are essentially attempts to offer Tweed and Blackface tones together along with a lot of extra features like the built-in attenuation. I’d use that for a lot more than just a clean tone. I probably have my Deluxe Reverb on edge of breakup to overdriven more than I have it running purely clean.
 
Bardagh said:
I’ve seen the Imperial MKII come up used for less than 2K recently in my area. I’m more interested in that than the Sky King. They both are essentially attempts to offer Tweed and Blackface tones together along with a lot of extra features like the built-in attenuation. I’d use that for a lot more than just a clean tone. I probably gave my Deluxe Reverb on edge of breakup to overdriven more than I have it running purely clean.
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Even for 2k, you can get a cali tweed for half that, attenuator and all :dunno:
 
DanTravis62 said:
Agreed. I've literally never seen one in the wild, and I gig literally all the time.

I only see tone king amps on youtube tbh.

From the clips they sound good and everything? It just seems like wayyyyy too much money for a tone you can cop EXACTLY for 1/3 as much.
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I gig frequently as well. Seems like the Fender BF style amps are easily the most popular, especially the Deluxe and Supers. Hot Rods and Blues juniors are pretty popular as well. It's pretty funny the disconnect between TGP TDPRI forum guitar dweeb amps and the working world sometimes. I use Twins cause they are cheap since nobody wants to lug them. But they are reliable and loud, so, win. Other dude in my band usually brings a Morgan, which is a high dollar rig that sounds great, but he actually traded a tweed cab blues junior for it, figure that one out LOL! Maybe I can get a sky king in a straight trade for a used Hot Rod HAHAHAHA.....
 
DanTravis62 said:
Even for 2k, you can get a cali tweed for half that, attenuator and all :dunno:
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I don’t know where you’re pulling these price ideas from but OK. If I ever see a Cali Tweed around here for $1k I might bite. A Cali Tweed is still a single channel Tweed take. If that’s all I was looking for I would probably buy or build a simple 5e3 clone.

The point of the Imperial and Sky King are dedicated Tweed and Blackface channels in a single package, which I would be interested in at some point primarily for getting back into playing live.

Personally I don’t really get the Sky King myself, it only seems to offer the power mode switching (pentode/ultra-linear, whatever that means) over the less expensive Imperial. The amp design is interesting either way. It might actually make me less likely to buy one though, as I just imagine it might be hard to get them worked on (video notwithstanding) other than sending them to BAD.
 
VonBonfire said:
I gig frequently as well. Seems like the Fender BF style amps are easily the most popular, especially the Deluxe and Supers. Hot Rods and Blues juniors are pretty popular as well. It's pretty funny the disconnect between TGP TDPRI forum guitar dweeb amps and the working world sometimes. I use Twins cause they are cheap since nobody wants to lug them. But they are reliable and loud, so, win. Other dude in my band usually brings a Morgan, which is a high dollar rig that sounds great, but he actually traded a tweed cab blues junior for it, figure that one out LOL! Maybe I can get a sky king in a straight trade for a used Hot Rod HAHAHAHA.....
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The only decent deals I ever see on older Fenders are Twins and Super Reverbs, for exactly that reason. Long gone are the days of 70’s Deluxes and Princetons being a bargain.
 
Bardagh said:
The only decent deals I ever see on older Fenders are Twins and Super Reverbs, for exactly that reason. Long gone are the days of 70’s Deluxes and Princetons being a bargain.
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TBH I don't think that much of Deluxes and a Princeton is a 70's child's practice amp so none of those hold any interest to me. I don't have a drummer that hits like a bitch so they don't work. No clean headroom on those amps at all and relying on a soundman to feed the signal at the right volume in a multi band date sucks and never rworks out right. I need to be on top of the band not digging in with all my might just to be sort of heard.

The Supers around here seem to hold more value than the Twin cuz Stevie. Even though Stevie used a Twin as well. My last Twin cost me $500 in '18, lol.
 
I don't think you "get" the cali tweed thing - it's only a single channel in the loosest sense

The power scaling is so good, its like having a 5E3, a blackface DRRI, a bassman, and a super in one amp
 
The price analysis are quite a funny, especially here on Rig-talk, where biggest hits are modded Marshall clones for 5000$ or 10k boogies :)

I had a Sky king from Bartel era and it is an excellent amp. Very spacey, deep clean sound, fantastic reverb and tremolo. Sounds big for a 1x12 combo amp. Tweed channel can be Marshall-like with dimed mid-bite knob. My only issue was absence of effect loop or second master volume for volume boost in two guitar band.
 
bubucci said:
The price analysis are quite a funny, especially here on Rig-talk, where biggest hits are modded Marshall clones for 5000$ or 10k boogies :)

I had a Sky king from Bartel era and it is an excellent amp. Very spacey, deep clean sound, fantastic reverb and tremolo. Sounds big for a 1x12 combo amp. Tweed channel can be Marshall-like with dimed mid-bite knob. My only issue was absence of effect loop or second master volume for volume boost in two guitar band.
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I think the one in the OP video must be from the pre-BAD era. This video from Psionic Audio shows the inside of a more recent revision, and the implementation is entirely different and more run-of-the-mill:

 
Bardagh said:
I think the one in the OP video must be from the pre-BAD era. This video from Psionic Audio shows the inside of a more recent revision, and the implementation is entirely different and more run-of-the-mill:
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I wondered about that because I doubted that BAD would be comfortable with that construction style.
 
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