Matamp GTO 6550 Head

The price listed above was with a cabinet, in a half stack order, so it was discounted. Actual price on the amp is more around $1800.

This is a custom built, hand made, hand wired masterpiece built by the fellas over at Matamp in England. If you don't know who they are, check out their website. Basically, they have been building beautiful amplifiers for about 50 years. They manufactured "Orange" amps back in the day.

You can custom order your amp in a variety of colors and other options, including chassis color, faceplate color and graphics, tube types, etc. When they say hand made for YOU, they mean you.

Mine is a brand new 2004 "Black" GTO 6550 "bass" amp. It is a non-master volume "all tube" (solid state rectifier) amp. it has 3 or 4 (not 100% sure) pre amp tubes and 4 JJ 6550 power tubes. It has outputs for 4, 8 or 16 ohm cabinets, a "half power" switch (which you cannot just "use", it has to be re-biased first) , and one channel. It is supposed to have a "slave" output for driving another amp, but for some reason mine does not have that. But man, what a channel!

My guess would be it puts out somewhere around 140-180 watts. This is plenty of headroom for most bands, but to be honest if you are really loud you may not get a clean sound at high levels. More on that later.

Front panel has input, Depth, Drive, Bass, Treble, Presence, Boost, and volume. Depth is a 6 position switch that goes from gut-moving bass-bass-bass to a mid-high nasal sound. The two lowest settings will really push all but the biggest of speakers, so I use the 3rd setting, which is almost flat with a little extra bass. The rest of the knobs are not as easy to figure out, but have a DRAMATIC effect on the tone, and on each other. They all do pretty much what they imply, but are so effected by each other that you can literally spend hours getting "That" tone. But it is soooo worth it in the end.

The only reason this gets a 9 is that it may not have enough "clean" power for a very loud band (if that's your thing) and out of the box it is not very easy to use or understand. Also, the price is pretty high, but you have to look at it this way: you will own this amp forever.

If there was a 1-100 rating for sound, it would be a 1000.

I use only passive P-basses usually, and have this plugged into an Ampeg 610HLF Cabinet, which is a deep, even toned decent cabinet IMHO.

Now, here's the thing with this amp: It can go from whisper quiet to PAINFULLY loud with just your fingers. It responds to your touch and input so sensitively that you really have to think about how you play, more like an acoustic instrument. If you mess up, everyone hears it. If you love a super-tight, compressed sound, this may not be for you. If you want to go from sweet, chimey piano-like double-stops to RAGING bass distortion in a split second without pedals and with REAL tone, this is IT.

The amp does have a tiny but of hum/hiss to it, but this is just due to the environment. You won't notice or care. It is very sensitive to bad cables, bad sheilding, flourescent lights, etc.

The variety of sounds that come out of those few knobs is mind-blowing. Seriously, you can get almost anything you want, from spearkling clean at decent volume to BRAIN ALTERING DISTORION at UN-GODLY volumes. Sure, it's only "140 watts" but it is, when full on, louder than my old 350 watt solid state ampeg.

How brutal is the distortion? lol.... unimaginable.

How sweet is the clean? mind-boggling, life-changing.

I would gig without a backup if I was not on tour. Being as it is tubes, it would be stupid to not have a backup (or at least a set of tubes) on the road. That said, it is probably the most sturdy, well built thing I have ever owned, EVER. PEROID. The word "Tank" is thrown around a lot, but this is truely a tank.

Matamp could quite possibly be the best customer service ever. The stories of there devotion to customer servce are far and wide, so check out some other reviews. I mean jeez, they called me up to make sure my name was spelled correctly for the engraving. ( yes, they engrave your name on your amp, usually. Take that, big boys!)

I would not hesitate to call them just to ask a simple question, or anything else. Seriously, A++ guys all the way.

Overall rating: I couldn't be happier. If you have the money, are serious about your sound and tone, do not have an extremely loud band (or even if you do and don't mind a little fuzz... ) you cannot do better than this. Sure, it does not have all the "Pro" features of modern compu.. i mean, amps, but when you play it and hear it, you'll either "get it" or not. I would suggest trying out an old Orange non-master volume amp to get an idea of what you are going to get, or if you are really interested i can email you some sound clips too. Hell, if you don't like it it will re-sell for close to the same amount!

If it were lost or stolen... I would hunt it down until my last day.