Rivera's

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BrentSSL

BrentSSL

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Ok so I've finally had some time with the original rivera knucklehead sounded awesome close to what I'm looking for. I noticed there is the knucklehead, the knucklehead 100, and the knucklehead2 then there is something called an M100. What are the differences? Besides the appearance of the knucklehead ii and it having 6l6 does it sound as good as the knucklehead. I've had trouble dialing these in to gething a tight marshall metal like tone in the past maybe it's the 6l6s? It usually sounds like a fat 6505 or something very rounded bottom end not very tight. Anyway just trying to learn thoughts and opinions please I'm also considering Splawn amps as well.
 
I had the Knucklehead Tre and found the bottom end looser than I like even at band volumes. I always boosted it to tighten it up. It had EL34's.
 
Sounds pretty tight to me. Might be a boost on the floor though.

 
MT uses his signature KR7, which is tighter than the Tre.
 
M100 is an amp that is similar to the TBR 1SL, which was used to record Saigon Kicks album 'Lizard' and Skid Row 'Slave to the Grind'. They hardwired certain settings of the TBR into the M100 if I remember correctly.
 
There are five different Knuckleheads. The original two-channel without reverb which doesn´t have the third high gain channel, the short-lived Knucklehead II, the current Knucklehead Reverb, the K-Tre and the Thompson signature KR-7. I suppose the Lukather Bonehead could be counted, too, so six in all. All the non-signature versions are available in 55 or 100W.

The M, S and TBR1SL lineage doesn´t really sound the same - they´re more 80s hot rod plexi. Hotter than the original Knucklehead and not as modern as all the others.
 
The original Knucklehead amps (K-55 and K-100) are more along the lines of a JCM800 with more gain and a stellar clean channel. Listen to Brother Cane's Seeds album to get a good listen to what they do.
 
Yeah, the original K55 has been my main amp for going on ten years now. A vastly underrated and undervalued amp, for sure. It´s not so much hotter than a JCM800 that you can skip all your boost pedals if you want metal, but it has a nice sing and sustain to it for rock and hard rock applications.

Also, with all these Riveras you simply have to get the channel masters up to 3.5 to get any properly good tone out of the overdrive channels, and then they suddenly sound enormous. It´s weird like that, but I think anyone who doesn´t like the Knuckleheads simply haven´t used them like they were supposed to. 3.5 is the golden number here, definitely, and you don´t have to push them past 4 either.
 
That´s the one of these I´ve never played. I think it´s supposed to be a hotter and more modern version of the original, but they went over to the Reverb configuration with three channels pretty quick instead. I´d probably go with a Reverb to get the same lead channel from the original with an additional higher gain channel instead of replacing the whole thing with something hotter. Depends on your application, though! I think you will find that most guys prefer the original or the Reverb, the II didn´t catch on quite the same for some reason.

Each generation gets more gain and bigger bottom; non-reverb, II, Reverb, KR7, Tre. The Bonehead is really the odd man out, not even the clean channel is the same there and the lead is way more compressed.
 
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