T
Tone Jones
Member
I guess I never had a huge rig to begin with but I had been using heads into cabs forever and some sort of effects processor in the loop with a MIDI switcher to change patches and amp channels and an occasional pedal or two out front. Nothing fancy but I wanted to scale down even more from that. My hope was to find a do it all combo and limit my pedal board size to a Pedaltrain Junior.
My tonal interests are pretty straightforward. I wanted to have the ability to switch between an absolutely clean (and great) blackface clean sound and an equally great open Marshall overdrive with the option of switching to something hotter. I had tried the clean amp + pedals thing and while that had some cool aspects, I still preferred amp drive. I have also run through the gamut of channel switchers and while I had some good ones (Sig-X, PT50, SLO, Friedman Smallbox), I wanted a smaller form factor (combo) that didn’t come at the expense of tonal size.
I relocated to Arizona a couple years ago and in doing my research for combos that might fit what I was looking for, I came across the Red Plate website and remember them being Phoenix-based. They had a specific model named Magica that, based on the description, targeted my above mentioned wants. The video demo was also impressive though it was done by Mike Hermans who makes everything sound great. Nevertheless, their shop was 45 minutes away from me so I reached out to them to see if I could visit their shop which they happily agreed to.
Red Plate is a modest small shop with guys hand wiring amps one at a time. Henry and Keith were both super gracious with their time and took me through their lineup of amps. We literally spent hours talking gear and it was evident they were very knowledgeable and passionate about what they do. While they didn’t have a Magica available for me to try, they had other models that were examples of the clean and the overdrive section only of the Magica which I was able to sample. The voicing of their cleans and overdrives were just what I was looking for and I was able to determine I wanted one in no time. Just before my visit to their shop however, I happened to check online if there were any used Magica’s for sale and I happened to find a head version from a dealer of theirs who bought one from an amp show they did the previous year. I told them while I wanted one of their amps and I was grateful for the time they took with me, I had an opportunity to pick up a used one, although I wanted a combo, and they encouraged me to snag it and they would put it in a combo shell for me. I pulled the trigger on the used one, brought it into their shop and they made some updates to it to bring it to current spec at no charge. I bought the combo shell from them and initially had planned on using a 75 watt Creamback that I already had. They encouraged me to hear what a V30 sounded like and even set up two 1x12 cabinets for me to A/B between and sure enough, the V30 was better suited so I bought one from them at an amazing price and they installed my Tilt-A-Speaker and chassis into the combo shell. These guys made minimal money on me and treated me like I had been a customer of theirs for life.
As for the Magica itself, in addition to a typical EQ section, the clean channel has a mid toggle switch that essentially takes you from tweed, to super, to blackface. I found myself favoring the super setting most. The amp has tons of headroom at 50 watts and somehow manages to maintain those familiar clean sounds I love with an EL34 power section. The clean channel also has a bright switch and there are channel dependent rear panel switches to select between single coil/humbucker modes to voice the overall fatness of each channel. The overdrive section has two gains and masters with the first channel giving up a great old AC/DC-ish voicing and level of gain/bark with the preamp dimed. The second overdrive setting is hot rod Marshall heaven - gainier but still open and incredibly responsive to pickup, volume, and attack. The master volume sounds great at home playing levels and the effects loop gets along great with my pedals. There’s also a boost function with internal trimmers for the clean and dirty channels and the amp features Mercury Magnetics transformers. The combo cabinet is pine with an oval port on the back and sounds absolutely huge. I don’t miss my head/cabinets one bit.
The guys at Red Plate even helped me with my pedal board. The foot switch that comes with the amp has 3 buttons - clean, overdrive 1/2, and boost, and connects to the amp with a 5 pin DIN connector. Since I wanted to keep my pedal board small and I wasn’t going to use the internal boost of the amp (I wanted exterior control of boost levels), they built me a trick custom foot switch that took care of the channel switching only but also kicked my Suhr Koji Comp on automatically whenever I switched to the clean channel. They also built me a small interface box I could mount underneath my Pedaltrain Jr. that converted the 1/4” jacks on the foot switch to the 5 pin DIN connector for amp channel switching.
I am really digging the tones and portability of this rig and can’t give the guys at Red Plate enough praise for being so cool and accommodating and for making such quality products. I’d encourage anyone in the market for a new amp to give these guys a very serious look.
My tonal interests are pretty straightforward. I wanted to have the ability to switch between an absolutely clean (and great) blackface clean sound and an equally great open Marshall overdrive with the option of switching to something hotter. I had tried the clean amp + pedals thing and while that had some cool aspects, I still preferred amp drive. I have also run through the gamut of channel switchers and while I had some good ones (Sig-X, PT50, SLO, Friedman Smallbox), I wanted a smaller form factor (combo) that didn’t come at the expense of tonal size.
I relocated to Arizona a couple years ago and in doing my research for combos that might fit what I was looking for, I came across the Red Plate website and remember them being Phoenix-based. They had a specific model named Magica that, based on the description, targeted my above mentioned wants. The video demo was also impressive though it was done by Mike Hermans who makes everything sound great. Nevertheless, their shop was 45 minutes away from me so I reached out to them to see if I could visit their shop which they happily agreed to.
Red Plate is a modest small shop with guys hand wiring amps one at a time. Henry and Keith were both super gracious with their time and took me through their lineup of amps. We literally spent hours talking gear and it was evident they were very knowledgeable and passionate about what they do. While they didn’t have a Magica available for me to try, they had other models that were examples of the clean and the overdrive section only of the Magica which I was able to sample. The voicing of their cleans and overdrives were just what I was looking for and I was able to determine I wanted one in no time. Just before my visit to their shop however, I happened to check online if there were any used Magica’s for sale and I happened to find a head version from a dealer of theirs who bought one from an amp show they did the previous year. I told them while I wanted one of their amps and I was grateful for the time they took with me, I had an opportunity to pick up a used one, although I wanted a combo, and they encouraged me to snag it and they would put it in a combo shell for me. I pulled the trigger on the used one, brought it into their shop and they made some updates to it to bring it to current spec at no charge. I bought the combo shell from them and initially had planned on using a 75 watt Creamback that I already had. They encouraged me to hear what a V30 sounded like and even set up two 1x12 cabinets for me to A/B between and sure enough, the V30 was better suited so I bought one from them at an amazing price and they installed my Tilt-A-Speaker and chassis into the combo shell. These guys made minimal money on me and treated me like I had been a customer of theirs for life.
As for the Magica itself, in addition to a typical EQ section, the clean channel has a mid toggle switch that essentially takes you from tweed, to super, to blackface. I found myself favoring the super setting most. The amp has tons of headroom at 50 watts and somehow manages to maintain those familiar clean sounds I love with an EL34 power section. The clean channel also has a bright switch and there are channel dependent rear panel switches to select between single coil/humbucker modes to voice the overall fatness of each channel. The overdrive section has two gains and masters with the first channel giving up a great old AC/DC-ish voicing and level of gain/bark with the preamp dimed. The second overdrive setting is hot rod Marshall heaven - gainier but still open and incredibly responsive to pickup, volume, and attack. The master volume sounds great at home playing levels and the effects loop gets along great with my pedals. There’s also a boost function with internal trimmers for the clean and dirty channels and the amp features Mercury Magnetics transformers. The combo cabinet is pine with an oval port on the back and sounds absolutely huge. I don’t miss my head/cabinets one bit.
The guys at Red Plate even helped me with my pedal board. The foot switch that comes with the amp has 3 buttons - clean, overdrive 1/2, and boost, and connects to the amp with a 5 pin DIN connector. Since I wanted to keep my pedal board small and I wasn’t going to use the internal boost of the amp (I wanted exterior control of boost levels), they built me a trick custom foot switch that took care of the channel switching only but also kicked my Suhr Koji Comp on automatically whenever I switched to the clean channel. They also built me a small interface box I could mount underneath my Pedaltrain Jr. that converted the 1/4” jacks on the foot switch to the 5 pin DIN connector for amp channel switching.
I am really digging the tones and portability of this rig and can’t give the guys at Red Plate enough praise for being so cool and accommodating and for making such quality products. I’d encourage anyone in the market for a new amp to give these guys a very serious look.
Henry and Keith are first class all the way. Henry is from the old school and is schooled in electronics and has been working with amps for tens of years.