Yep... I played the Jose... Yep

[romanianreaper]

This amp sounds like so many of my favorite albums from the 80s. It reminds me of hearing Lay it down or Dr. Feelgood for the first time. I'll definitely be getting one of these.

Yeah me too. It had that tone i remember hearing. I've been trying since the early 2000s to get a Jose modded amp. Tried buying from two friends and they wouldn't budge. I'll have to save up but this is my dream sound.

 

[67mike]

Dave said in one of the NAMM videos it would be $3799.

Ok, might grab 3 then.

 

[thegame]

Formerly very smooth Friedman finally gets hairy. Welcome to puberty!

 

[DanTravis62]

Formerly very smooth Friedman finally gets hairy. Welcome to puberty!

i'm very pleasantly surprised at this, at least from the clips

normally friedmans don't appeal to me at all, but this amp sounds quite good from what i can tell

 

[skoora]

It. Is. GOOOOOOOD!!!

Really damn good amp! A lot of fun to play. NAMM is what it is as far as volume goes but for the time I had with it, I really enjoyed it. Dave gave good hangs as well.

That Fortin module was sounding pretty fucking good by the way.

 

[Ryan990]

i'm very pleasantly surprised at this, at least from the clips

normally friedmans don't appeal to me at all, but this amp sounds quite good from what i can tell

It's the main reason I've ended up selling every friedman I've ever owned. They just sounded too smooth and polished, but this one sounds like it has a rawness to it that the others have lacked.

 

[TheGreatGreen]

Holy crap that sounds great, even through phone video.

Hair and articulation for days. Damn.

 

[DanTravis62]

It's the main reason I've ended up selling every friedman I've ever owned. They just sounded too smooth and polished, but this one sounds like it has a rawness to it that the others have lacked.

I've never owned one for this reason

I've played a handful, and they certainly have their place

The smoothness and compression lends itself well to lead tones, certainly

But if i'm being real here, lead tones are easy. You can get a bitchin lead tone with a god damn rockman, so 5 grand for a BE100 seems excessive

The best one IMO that i've played is the dirty shirley, but I haven't played the butterslax or steve stevens or the JEL - just the runt, small box, BE100, PT20, etc

In the clips the Jose definitely has more grunt and aggression than the BE circuit, which is definitely way more up my alley

 

[thegame]

i'm very pleasantly surprised at this, at least from the clips

normally friedmans don't appeal to me at all, but this amp sounds quite good from what i can tell

I’ve only played 1 Friedman, about 15 years ago, I guess before the company blew up in popularity. It was a very early model, fully feature loaded and still decorated with label maker stickers. Probably a revamped Metro kit build. Yes it was on the darker side but still organic and real. The best way to describe it was it still had an old, raw Marshall character but purposely smoothed out to taste by circuit component choices, and could be restored to full kerrang ability with relative ease by revising said component values. The rawness was lurking in the background, whereas on many modern amps there’s absolutely no trace of it whatsoever. I don’t know whether later HBE 100s were smoothed out further.

 

[DanTravis62]

I’ve only played 1 Friedman, about 15 years ago, I guess before the company blew up in popularity. It was a very early model, fully feature loaded and still decorated with label maker stickers. Probably a revamped Metro kit build. Yes it was on the darker side but still organic and real. The best way to describe it was it still had an old, raw Marshall character but purposely smoothed out to taste by circuit component choices, and could be restored to full kerrang ability with relative ease by revising said component values. The rawness was lurking in the background, whereas on many modern amps there’s absolutely no trace of it whatsoever. I don’t know whether later HBE 100s were smoothed out further.

Oh they definitely are. It's a defining characteristic of them - you'll notice that everyone, even the people who like them, are going to say that over and over again.

I assume Dave builds them that way because that's what his customer base (boomer bitchpickers with penny loafers, too much money, no talent, and the gain maxed out) want

I'm sure he could build amps however he wants, he just found something that worked for a wide customer base

 

[SQUAREHEAD]

$5K

Hey Dan,
Is that official, Bro?

 

[killertone]

I spent a good 20 minutes on it with Dave. Can verify it sounds great. Better than the Marshalls that is for sure.

 

[SQUAREHEAD]

So, Dave mentions it’s a single channel amplifier.
Someone on another forum, (can’t find it now) said you could ftswtch between two of your set sounds, but this must be wrong as Dave hasn’t mentioned it anywhere.

I guess you just set up what you want and play, nothing switchable via foot switch.

Great amp for the studio.

 

[JerEvil]

Sorry all. Wanted to reply to all the comments but fuck that! Lol!

No, the amp is NOT polite! For those that feel the Friedman stuff is too refined/smooth, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s got lots of hair and aggression.

Me and Frankhouser went back later, hung with Dave, drank some fantastic tequila, the Dave walked Jason through the amp (with no delay) and after that Jason and I both left floored. It was hilarious to watch @killertone start ripping out Ratt riffs and he was just as chuffed with the amp as I was.

Maybe you guys should tell Dave to get me and Jason on the rounds to demo this fucker proper when it goes out?

 

[JerEvil]

Dave said in one of the NAMM videos it would be $3799.

Yep. That was my understanding.

 

[JerEvil]

That Fortin module was sounding pretty fucking good by the way.

Yeah man, it’s the best high gain module they’ve done, no doubt.

 

[Bram576]

Seems bad ass. Excited to hear a micd clip of this when it makes the rounds. I can’t take too much away from the phone audio, but everyone who plays it is showing a look on their face that they’re blown away.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

It's the main reason I've ended up selling every friedman I've ever owned. They just sounded too smooth and polished, but this one sounds like it has a rawness to it that the others have lacked.

That's the thing with Friedman, you can't tell with room clips or recordings, it is when you get your fingers involved and hear it in your space. Those mids are round but also hollow and I want some teeth.

 

[braintheory]

Formerly very smooth Friedman finally gets hairy. Welcome to puberty!

Better late than never. Still need to head in person to fully believe it though

 

[braintheory]

I’ve only played 1 Friedman, about 15 years ago, I guess before the company blew up in popularity. It was a very early model, fully feature loaded and still decorated with label maker stickers. Probably a revamped Metro kit build. Yes it was on the darker side but still organic and real. The best way to describe it was it still had an old, raw Marshall character but purposely smoothed out to taste by circuit component choices, and could be restored to full kerrang ability with relative ease by revising said component values. The rawness was lurking in the background, whereas on many modern amps there’s absolutely no trace of it whatsoever. I don’t know whether later HBE 100s were smoothed out further.

This sounds a lot like the Friedman Marsha I had. Way better than any other Friedman I’ve played