Allen Brown Sugar 112 Combo

Kit, 2007. Versatile amp - country, blues, '60s rock, jazz, rockabilly, punkabilly. Single channel, single input. Main and Aux speaker jacks. 4 or 8 ohm. Brown cabinet. About the size of a deluxe reverb. T, M, B tone stack with bright switch and presence control. Also has Allen's RAW control - very useful. This is a cathod biased amp, 6V6 (5Y3) or 6L6(GZ34). Red, white and blues speaker. About 30 watts with 6L6.

If you are patient you can get this amp to produce a high quality
sound for any genre. This is a real good amp.

Use it with single coil (strat and tele) and with humbuckers(archtop).

Very quiet amp.

I built it, it better be good.

I have other amps Mr. Allen has built - never a problem.

David Allen is simply the best at customer support. He responds to questions immediately. He has lot's of good advice on getting the sound you want.

I get to play a number of vintage amps from a large collection. Allen amps have certain features that are similar to the classic 1960s fender amps. But I think Allen amps are better - they sound great, they are reliable, the speaker selection is good, cabinets are well made, they look nice, they are not overpriced because of non-playing collectors.
In twenty years from now, these will be the amps everyone is trying to collect.

If you like the 1960s fender sound - get an Allen amp!

Amp is brand new although I did wait until I played it out in several different clubs before writing this review. I also had the amp assembled by Allen Amps and did not put it together myself from the kit version. I am wanting to buy an Accomplice kit next however. It takes a little while to get use to the way the controls work on this amp or at least it did for me. If you have ever played through a Brown Fender amp it will help. For example the treble doesn't really get going until you are past 6 or so, but there is plenty there once you get the knob in this range. This is a single channel cathode biased, hand wired amp. It has reverb "with" a tone control. A raw control that gradually by-passes the tone stack resulting in more mids and a lot of gain potential. David Allen told me this was the first 1X12 Brown Sugar he has made and that he really liked the sound of the combo with the single 12" Emminence Red White and Blues speaker. I do too. I'm playing in Blues clubs in the Dallas area, a lot of Blues jams in clubs which are very popular and common here now. Even though it's Texas and we are playing Blues most places don't want you super loud. Maybe later on in the evening to a point. Anyway, being cathode biased you can put a variety of power tubes in the amp without having to mess about with adjusting the bias: 6V6's, EL34's 5881's, 6L6's. So you can tune the power output some by just changing tube types. I've found the "raw" control to be very useful in that you can pretty much tune the amp to the room with it in my opinion unless you are having to play very, very quietly then I use a Tube Screamer(see below). Yes, I have a KOT, OCD and a KLON and a bunch of other OD peadals but I like this one TS5 that I modded. It's unpretenious and sounds great. Back to the RAW control: It can add so much body and fullness in such a controlled way. When you find your volume level and the amp is too clean for solos you can turn up the raw knob some and get a lot fatter, rawer sound. Once you have that you can just turn down your guitar a little for rhythm parts and you are in there. The more simple things are the better for me so I like this a lot. The amp also has a bright switch, bass, mid, presence, treble. See more at the allenamps website. The thing you don't really see on the website however is the fact that these amps have an incredible amount of attention to detail going on. In 37 years of playing I've never seen anything like it. For example the reverb bag not only has a overlapping cover flap but there is a loop of Tolex to tuck the flap into! The wood bracket pieces that the back panels screws into are completely and neatly covered in Tolex...even the tops! This thing is ready for an inspection from anybody. Lots of little touches like that. The chassis is stainless steel. I'm giving this amp a 10 here because it has everything I need in a very clever and well thought out package.

For Blues this amp sounds absolutely great. Well beyond a few words of explanation really. I'm using a Reverend Slingshot with P90's. I have 6L6's in the amp right now and may try 6V6's here pretty soon because right now the amp has a lot of extra power that I don't really need for Blues clubs. It is nice to have that clean headroom for western swing licks which I'm trying to get better at though. I used a Tube Screamer with it last night to get around this because we started out super quiet and I have to say the amp sounded terrific with the TS. I finally had enough harmonics on the low strings using the neck pickup. That's a fun sound to play with.

Too soon to say but with the high quality compents and extreme attention to detail I'm not worried. Everything is new and should last a long, long time. The layout is very clean and easy to work on and troubleshoot if that time should come. Please see other reviews for this subject.

Outstanding response to emails and questions. I think David must check his email often because he tends to get right back to you. Very nice on the phone as well.

I own several amps and some are vintage Fender, etc: There you have an old tube amp that you kind of worry about even if it's been checked out and had a lot caps, etc. changed. Here you have a point to point amp where everything is new and clean. The transformers are very high quality. Everything is high quality. The amp isn't cheap but you are getting something made in the vintage way but it is new. I don't mean to repeat myself and be redundant but it's nice to have the best of both worlds.