I
indespise
Active member
Well, actually it landed last week, but I just bought some batteries for my camera last night....
I still haven't had it loud due to my drummer being out of state (I'll get to crank it Saturday), but right now I'm getting some great tones from it. Very aggressive, very thick and articulate, lots of bite if you want it (and I don't mean "bite" as in a 5150ish bee assault), way more than enough gain for anything (and this is coming from a death metal guy- if you look at that picture you can see that the channel 2 gain knob is just past 1:00.... without the gain boost switch flipped, and the amp was being played at low volume). The depth and damping controls are quite effective- I'm eager to see how they react with different power tube types. The hiss seems incredibly quiet for an amp with this kind of gain, but as I said,I haven't had it really loud yet.
It took me a couple of days to get the feel for the EL34 power section (this is the first EL34 amp I've owned), and obviously I had to get a feel for the controls, but I'm quite thrilled with the sound I'm getting at the moment.
The clean channel (the Polaris) is excellent, as expected, but I didn't buy the amp for the clean channel, so I won't go on about that. I'm sure I'll mess with it more soon, but right now my focus has been getting a feel for tweaking the high gain channel.
Sound aside, The external biasing, easy tube access, and wide power tube compatibility are features I'm particularly exited about. Maintaining and experimenting with tubes will be extremely easy on the Chimera.
As I'm sure most of you know, James' build quality is top notch, no cheap-ass corner cutting here.
I'll give a further update after I've had it loud.
I still haven't had it loud due to my drummer being out of state (I'll get to crank it Saturday), but right now I'm getting some great tones from it. Very aggressive, very thick and articulate, lots of bite if you want it (and I don't mean "bite" as in a 5150ish bee assault), way more than enough gain for anything (and this is coming from a death metal guy- if you look at that picture you can see that the channel 2 gain knob is just past 1:00.... without the gain boost switch flipped, and the amp was being played at low volume). The depth and damping controls are quite effective- I'm eager to see how they react with different power tube types. The hiss seems incredibly quiet for an amp with this kind of gain, but as I said,I haven't had it really loud yet.
It took me a couple of days to get the feel for the EL34 power section (this is the first EL34 amp I've owned), and obviously I had to get a feel for the controls, but I'm quite thrilled with the sound I'm getting at the moment.
The clean channel (the Polaris) is excellent, as expected, but I didn't buy the amp for the clean channel, so I won't go on about that. I'm sure I'll mess with it more soon, but right now my focus has been getting a feel for tweaking the high gain channel.
Sound aside, The external biasing, easy tube access, and wide power tube compatibility are features I'm particularly exited about. Maintaining and experimenting with tubes will be extremely easy on the Chimera.
As I'm sure most of you know, James' build quality is top notch, no cheap-ass corner cutting here.
I'll give a further update after I've had it loud.