TotallyRadGuitars
Well-known member
Hey everyone. Been waiting on this one for a while. Bought this at Guitar Center over 3 weeks ago - they sent me the wrong amp (lol) which I then had to mail back, and they wouldn't ship the correct amp until they received the wrong amp back. Ugh. The plus side is I got to play a 20th Anniversay Shiva for a weekend, free. Nice amp.
Anyway, here's the Ecstasy.
First things first I suppose - I've never had an Ecstasy of any kind before. I'm hesitant to make any sweeping statements, I just got it after all and the "honeymoon phase" makes fools of us all. But wow, I get the hype - this thing sounds absolutely incredible. All three channels are just top tier, and I could dial in a tone I loved in seconds - and I've barely even touched the EQ so far. The bright switches that can be set per channel, switchable presence/excursion controls are great - I actually love the excursion control, more than I would a resonance or NFB knob. It reminds me a bit of my Ceriatone King Kong, the "character" switch tied to the deep control on that amp has an enormous effect on the "pants shaking" element of playing the amp - but it also changes the feel of playing it quite a bit too. It's a little loose, but I prefer it in the "L" position right now, and it really shakes the room.
I know the blue channel is the "famous" one, but I'm really enjoying the red channel a lot as well. Both channels, at least on this version of the amp, can be made to sound very similar, and with the green channel also capable of a little bit of dirt if desired, there's so many cool ways to make this amp work. I don't have to do green-clean blue-crunch red-lead, even if that's the easiest way to look at it. For example, I can put red into plexi mode (cuts out two gain stages) and use that as my clean, then green with the gain maxed and bright on as my crunch, and then use blue as my lead - still plenty of gain on that channel with the gain boost turned on, and with the bright I can easily go from a smooth lead to a raunchy one that still sounds like it makes sense coming from the green channel set to crunch. And that's without assigning the second presence control to another channel, another powerful feature!
I'm really just blown away at how great it sounds - I can hardly find a bad sound in it. Amazing. I need to sit on it for a bit and play with it more, but this absolutely might upset my Top 5 amps list.
Oh, and count me a big fan of the class A mode.
The only major drawback so far is that it didn't include the footswitch, which makes it kind of a pain to use. I'm glad I can switch channels from the back panel but if anyone has a footswitch for one of these laying around, let me know. A guy local to me has a spare XTC footswitch but I haven't gotten a response yet.
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Now here's the odd thing about it. The serial sign is 033, which is a very low number, and it has Mercury transformers. However, the caps inside date to 2001, and the transformer itself has a sticker dated to 2002. I thought they stopped using Mercury transformers far before 2002? I did some digging through old Reverb listings and recorded the serial signs of a lot of Ecstasy's, and I noticed there are some other examples of very low serial numbers existing with the same 00's style back panel as this one. So why would the serial numbers be in the 100's/200's/300's, then suddenly drop back to 000 for a bit? More confusingly, there are others around the same time frame (2000-2004 year) with higher SN's (one I found from 2001 had an SN 825). 2004 and later amps had numbered SN's, instead of signs.
So, anyone who has been down the Ecstasy rabbit hole, why does an amp from 2002 have a lower SN than earlier amps + Mercury transformers? And yes, I'm aware I can email Bogner and plan to, so I'll share whatever information I get from them as well.
Here's a pic of the SN and transformer:
Anyway, here's the Ecstasy.
First things first I suppose - I've never had an Ecstasy of any kind before. I'm hesitant to make any sweeping statements, I just got it after all and the "honeymoon phase" makes fools of us all. But wow, I get the hype - this thing sounds absolutely incredible. All three channels are just top tier, and I could dial in a tone I loved in seconds - and I've barely even touched the EQ so far. The bright switches that can be set per channel, switchable presence/excursion controls are great - I actually love the excursion control, more than I would a resonance or NFB knob. It reminds me a bit of my Ceriatone King Kong, the "character" switch tied to the deep control on that amp has an enormous effect on the "pants shaking" element of playing the amp - but it also changes the feel of playing it quite a bit too. It's a little loose, but I prefer it in the "L" position right now, and it really shakes the room.
I know the blue channel is the "famous" one, but I'm really enjoying the red channel a lot as well. Both channels, at least on this version of the amp, can be made to sound very similar, and with the green channel also capable of a little bit of dirt if desired, there's so many cool ways to make this amp work. I don't have to do green-clean blue-crunch red-lead, even if that's the easiest way to look at it. For example, I can put red into plexi mode (cuts out two gain stages) and use that as my clean, then green with the gain maxed and bright on as my crunch, and then use blue as my lead - still plenty of gain on that channel with the gain boost turned on, and with the bright I can easily go from a smooth lead to a raunchy one that still sounds like it makes sense coming from the green channel set to crunch. And that's without assigning the second presence control to another channel, another powerful feature!
I'm really just blown away at how great it sounds - I can hardly find a bad sound in it. Amazing. I need to sit on it for a bit and play with it more, but this absolutely might upset my Top 5 amps list.
Oh, and count me a big fan of the class A mode.
The only major drawback so far is that it didn't include the footswitch, which makes it kind of a pain to use. I'm glad I can switch channels from the back panel but if anyone has a footswitch for one of these laying around, let me know. A guy local to me has a spare XTC footswitch but I haven't gotten a response yet.
---
Now here's the odd thing about it. The serial sign is 033, which is a very low number, and it has Mercury transformers. However, the caps inside date to 2001, and the transformer itself has a sticker dated to 2002. I thought they stopped using Mercury transformers far before 2002? I did some digging through old Reverb listings and recorded the serial signs of a lot of Ecstasy's, and I noticed there are some other examples of very low serial numbers existing with the same 00's style back panel as this one. So why would the serial numbers be in the 100's/200's/300's, then suddenly drop back to 000 for a bit? More confusingly, there are others around the same time frame (2000-2004 year) with higher SN's (one I found from 2001 had an SN 825). 2004 and later amps had numbered SN's, instead of signs.
So, anyone who has been down the Ecstasy rabbit hole, why does an amp from 2002 have a lower SN than earlier amps + Mercury transformers? And yes, I'm aware I can email Bogner and plan to, so I'll share whatever information I get from them as well.
Here's a pic of the SN and transformer:
