Allen Encore 410 Combo

I don't know when this amp was made, I bought it second-hand. It has a silver face, so I know it's a little older than the current production. It is essentially the architecture from a blackface super with an added master volume, a 'raw' knob, and a tone control for the reverb. This master volume is the only one I've ever used that sounds great. On other amps it seems to suck a little life out of things. The 'raw' knob bypasses the tone stack and adds distortion, which gives it more of a tweed character. There are also tube bias adjustment jacks on the back of the amp. The reverb and tremolo sound very good. There is no channel switching, effects loop, or headphone jack but I don't miss them.

I use this amp with a G&L Legacy Tribute HB and an Ibanez 335 clone. I can't describe how good this amp sounds, but believe me it is amazing! I usually play it totally clean and it sounds something like the amp on SRV's song 'Lenny'. With the volume (gain) and raw knobs on 4 it can do a really good 'Pride and Joy' sound. Then with those knobs on 7 it sounds great playing Van Halen or ZZTop. One thing I didn't expect about the sound quality on this is that I can play pretty much any style with any amount of gain and it still sounds right. With the gain all the way up I can play a jazz chord and all the notes in the chord are well-defined with no mud.

So far so good. I'm a little worried about the wires that go to the footswitch because there seems to be something soldered directly to the side of the jack on the chassis and it looks like it could possibly break off when the amp is transported. The good thing about this amp, though, is that it's all point-to-point wiring and is very electronically similar to a Fender, so it should be pretty easy for an amp tech to fix.

I haven't ever dealt with them so I can't say. I've heard good things, though.

This amp ends my long, long search for great tone. I've been playing for 22 years and have owned tube amps by Fender, Traynor, Marshall, Hughes & Kettner, and Peavey as well as solid state and modeling amps. Those amps have their place but tone-wise, none can compete with this one. Of course, it's also much more expensive than those other amps. I may separate the amp into a head and two 2-10 cabinets because a 4-10 combo is a little much to handle. Overall, this amp just sounds right all the time and, even though it costs more, it's still a lot less than the total amount I've spent on other amps while looking for this tone.