Apollo Amplifiers 1

I bought the first one made serial #1
It has huge clean tones.
When I first heard of this amp it was touted as a
50 watt steel string singer style amp.
Those are large shoes to fill so I took a chance and bought this amp.
Ive never played a dumble sss but ive heard Ejs and Srvs many times and no other amp has reminded me so much of that roaring sound.....
Mine is rather tame untill you reach about 4 then its a whole diff ballgame..it becomes a monster.
Im still getting used to this amp im going to write more on this.

Im using strats, teles, les paul and some custom handmade instruments of my own..
I thought well im going to have to turn my bogner down to match this 50 watt amp...guess again folks I had to turn the bogner up....!
I thought this 50 would be straining to keep up with an esctacy not so..matter of fact in the neck position it really roars and with both amps on in conjunction that is where you hear both voices.
Ive never been able to get harmonics to leap of a guitar unless its in the bridge position not so with the apollo 1.
I can play sympathetic chime harmonics all over on the neck pup.
Unheard of chime and bell like ring..
Im wiring a 4 1 2 cab today with evm 12s @ 8 ohms..
The amp was voiced around those speakers im told..
So imagine the headroom with 4--300 watt rated speakers?
SRV jangle and roar and Giant EJ clean sparkle.
chord definition that rings True...
Im still working with this on distortion and diff pedals...
I might try the solid state rectifier in this to hear diff.
Its very loud past 4 and will shake the house....
GIANT HEADROOM

No problems with this amp..
ive been inside it and its wired beautifully.
Excellent materials and care were taken to make this amp...
no problems whatsoever as of yet...

I was fortunate enough to speak with Steve once I kept him on the phone untill the wee hours Sorry Steve about that I love your amps and want an apollo 2 I promise ill not keep you so long again
apollogies to yours on that..I am passionate about amps that send me over the moon and this one has....
Steve was kind and open and I was really trying to get an apollo 2
if anyone speaks to steve please let him know hes great and id
buy an apollo 2 in a russian second if he would consider it..
I dont have to speak he can just make it and charge me
I wont keep you on the phone just send me the bill and where to send
the money...ive lost contact most likely due to talking his ears off
Steve your a gem of a person and a genious amp builder
please dont let me scare you off im serious as a trainwreck
no pun intended towards Ken there who is a genious as well
I WANT AN APOLLO 2 STEVE MAY I BUY ONE WILL YOU MAKE IT FOR ME?????

Ive been playing since I was 11..im 43 now.
I play a 68 plexi marshall bogner esctacy first version
blackface twinns huges kettner tube 100..and the apollo
which im elated to own....
I need to spend more time with this amp to learn how to harness it
because it will get very loud quickly...blinky loud ok.
Which if i can manage is fine Im not used to it yet but im getting there nothing compares to the clean tones you hear the difference instantly and especially when say blasting with two amps on
2 or more voices it really stands out..
The cleanest amps ive seen inside were made by hiwatt.
The wiring in those amps was unsurpassed untill now
Steve Brewer is a genious I hope he knows how happy I am with his amp I talked his ears off on the phone and id promise to not speak so long if hed call me again...toneking@cableone.net
thanks Steve you make a fine amplifier and I want an apollo 2 please
I was not kidding !!!!!!!!!
bravo on a great amp

50w, tube rectifier, 2 12AX7`s 2.2 AT7`s and 2 5881`s,Controls:
Volume(pull gain),treble(pull bright),middle, bass(pull deep)
reverb level, reverb drive, thrust,presence and depth.
passive fx loop

I mainly play strats, and pretty much use a two amp setup, one for clean/crunch and the other for lead(old 67` Marshall). I kind of like Eric Johnson and use similar sounds. The Apollo 1 does the Dumble Steel String Singer sound extremely well! It has a HUGE clean sound, similar to SRV`s Texas Flood album(really!)I had the joy of using a Dumble ODS a few years ago, and the Apollo 1 give me the same feel.
You have to watch your picking on this amp,extremely revealing....
Has a great dynamic overdrive when pushed, and a lot of different sounds available when using the various boost functios.

It`s handbuildt, would be easy to service, seems bullet proof.

I also have a Apollo 2(one of the two ever buildt), and Steve Brewer was very helful when I purchased it.
He is out of the biz now, so there is no support to get.....

The nicest semi-clean amp I have ever used!
Will stay with me forever......
Kind of cool owning two of the seven Apollo Amplifiers ever buildt!!!!!

Built in July, 1999. Single channel, vacuum tube, 50 watt amp head with two knob reverb. Perfect for blues an R&B which is what I do. This amp has just enough control for you to achieve your tone without being over complicated. Apollo 1 is one mean tone machine!

I use both humbucker and single coil and have great results with this amp although I feel I can be a bit more expressive with single coils. This amp is LOUD with crystal clear clean sounds and a huge bottom end. Has great overdriven sounds which is controlled by the "thrust" (power section gain) control. I like to use a "rat" with this amp for distortion. Great reverb!

Built like a brick house, I can take this amp anywhere. I've only had the Apollo for a month or so.

Steve Brewer is very helpful. We spoke at length before I ordered the amp about tone, components, the way the amp is designed and constructed. He kept in touch throughout the building process, delivered it on time, and followed up to make sure I had received it and that it was what I expected. He still calls from time to time to make sure everything is ok. If I ever had a problem (which I doubt) I don't think I would have anything to worry about. I've got a world of confidence in Steve.

Been playing some 25 years and I finally found the amp I've been looking for, and I've owned plenty of them. Most were pretty good. I'll only be keeping two amps: my '64 black face deluxe reverb(Father bought it for me new) and the Apollo 1. I'd get another one if I lost it.

This is a fairly new amp on the market. Has amazing clean tones. It is a one channel beast that gets extremely loud if you want it to. As the other reviews state it has a very unique set of tone shaping controls.The reverb is as good as it gets. It is powered by 5881's and can get some nasty blues type tones. Alyhough it can get some nice distortion I use a pedal to get the heavier tones and use the amp for clean to mid gain stuff.

The sounds are spelled out in the other reviews so I will just say that this amp has great clean tones of any type and with the thrust and boost ghets great distorted tones as well. The amp does not sound like anything I have ever played.

Just got it, but Steve will take care of any problems. I am sure of that.

This guy is great to deal with and really cares about customer satisfaction.

Been playing 25 years. Currently have a Bogner Ecstasy, Guytron, Egnater TOL 100, Mesa Boogie Maverick, Anderson, G&L and Fender guitars. This amp does stuff none of the others do and vice versa. I love the Apollo 1 and the clean sounds are incredible. My other amps are probably more versatile but none beat the clean sounds of this.It is a great amp for country and blues and with a pedal or two can do anything great.The only thing that would make it better would be if it had the Apollo 2 in it as well so I could have a second channel for heavy rock stuff. Steve Brewer makes a great product and truly cares about his customers regardless of who they are.

You can read the previous reviews of this amp to get the features in detail. The especially unusual features here are the 3 pot controls for the power amp section: THRUST - PRESENCE - DEPTH. Presence does what a typical amp's presence does. The other two controls are quite interdependent and allow for unusual variotions in colo & distortion.

Sounds good with both passive single and double coils. Like many amps it does not like my Alembic active pickups that my Dumble amps love. Not too noisy. A good amp for blues, rock and fusion style tones. Very smooth distortion. Great warm and glassy clean tones. Sings well. Not too English. American in character. I have to say again how GREAT the clean tones are - difficult to describe. I use with both blue bulldogs and JBL speakers - the builder likes EVs with it - I have not tried that. This thing does sound way way "better" and more interesting than most new maps in its price range on the current market.

Not emough experience with it at gigs to determine reliability. Seems fine.

Steve Brewer is great and i'm sure he will do his best to please any customer.

I have too many great amps. Several Dumbles that I have owned for 20 years and a couple of Trainwrecks that I bought in the old days when they were "cheap". Several good Fenders. An excellent THD. I find the Apollo to be a useful amp in this stable. It does some things the other amps don't do and it has its own unique sounds. I think it's priced reasonbaly for a hand-built amp. I suggest you check it out and not be afraid to get one if you are tempted to do so. For the right person it's a good all-around amp. As a specialty amp it's fantastic at what it does.

The amp I played is a 50 watt reverb head which runs on 5881 power tubes and a tube rectifier; the mains transformer is a Super Reverb type, and the output transformer is a GREAT sounding Hoffman 50 watter (I have heard nothing but great things about these transformers, and the Apollo I is a good example of how good and balsy they sound). The amp has dual sensitivity inputs, a la Fender, and the following controls: volume (pull gain), treble, mid and bass for the preamp; drive and level for the reverb; thrust, presence and depth for the power section.
The preamp controls work pretty much like in a classic American amp, and the pull function on the volume control adds some balls and midrange to the sound. The two reverb controls allow to determine how hard the reverb circuitry is hit, and how much reverb is added to the dry sound. The presence and depth controls work in a conventional way, the depth control affecting the lower frequencies as found in some amps "resonance" control; lastly, the thrust control is a unique feature, and it adds more gain to the amp further down the signal path, increasing the beef and chunk.
Back panel features include power, standby, an impedance selector switch, passive FX loop (signal interrupt type), etc. For a picture of the amp and a few more details see http://www.apolloamps.com/theamps.htm

At lower settings of the volume control, with the gain boost pushed in and the thrust control dialed to 0, the Apollo I is very clean. The clean sound is very different from most other amps I'm familiar with (and I have played just about all there is to be played), in that it is very full-bodied, yet very glassy in the top end. Not in a harsh sense at all, and not in a Vox sense of the word either; it could be described as having a hint of clean Plexi in there, but that's just to give you an idea, actually, you have to hear it to understand what I mean. With the Strat, the clean sounds are very nice and the amp can get a good amount of SPLs before breakup occurs -- this is a loud 50 watter, especially considering that I played it through a small 1x12 EVM cabinet. The reverb is very nice and lush, and you can determine with how much decay it will have by tweaking the drive control.
When the volume control is set high enough, the amp begins to breakup in a very musical way, and pulling out the gain boost and increasing the thrust control take the overdrive to even higher levels. By playing with lower settings on the thrust and no gain boost, or vice versa, you can get different textures of fatness and breakup. At its maximum overdrive, the Apollo I is still more of a vintage sounding amp, there's not much compression and you do not get the typical 80's shredding distortion. Some amps are very stiff, some play themselves because they compress and sustain forever, and other amps are more like springboard, where it's up to you how it's going to sound. I'd say the Apollo I falls in the latter category.
With the Strat, the amp sounds very nice from clean to maximum gain, and I especially dug the way the bridge humbucker sounded. The tone is fat and defined, with good sensitivity to picking dynamics and with good overtones, but this is not really a "harmonics machine" though. You get some feedback happening, but it is not a singing amp a la Larry Carlton, to give you an example, like an Electroplex Rocket 35 would be.
Some have mentioned the Apollo I seems to have a Dumble characteristic to it, but that's a very tricky statement to make. Let me expand on this: two (IMHO) tone monsters, Larry Carlton and Robben Ford, both use Dumbles and, although they impart their individual tone through any amps, I think we can say that their amps are not really all that similar. Word has it that Dumbles vary quite a bit from amp to amp, and to state that something sounds like one of those amps could mean many things. I didn't believe the Apollo I sounds similar to LC's, but I could see how some may think it gets a little of that RF sound, although probably heavier on the lower midrange. If you listen to the real audio files at the Apollo Amps site, I think you may find that one of the tracks has a bit of Robben's tone to it.
With the 335 the Apollo I sounded very different, as expected. The bridge pickup sound somehow reminded me of early Clapton in the Cream days but perhaps a bit more midrangey. It was a pretty fat sound, and the lack of compression allowed me to really dig into the strings and get a pretty dynamic sound, something that doesn't hold true for amps with a lot of preamp gain. The 335's neck humbucker, my favorite sound out of that guitar with my own amps, sounded boomy though -- Steve Brewer told me that he can tweak the overall bass content of the amp. At that point, we decided to drop in a solid state rectifier, and the sound tightened up, much to my liking -- I personally like tight sounding amps, and I don't like farty amps. Although the Apollo I has, stock, a rectifier tube, I can't quite say that I missed the punch of a solid state power supply with the Strat or the 335 on the bridge pickup. However, if I were to use the Gibson on the neck pickup, I'd definitely have a solid state replacement installed in the socket -- easy enough to do, you just need to rebias when you're done and you're set.

I don't own an Apollo I, so I couldn't make a statement in this department. However, when straight ahead (no channel switching, no computers, etc.) amps are well built and use quality parts, little can go wrong with the electronics that can't be quickly fixed.

I know Steve Brewer personally and he's a very nice and kind person. He takes the time to follow up with his customers after they purchase an amp, which is a nice touch, so I am confident customer satisfaction would be guaranteed.

Definitely a very good sounding blues and classic rock amp, with very happening clean sounds too. Come to think of it, this would probably make a very good studio amp, because barring metal or Boogie fusion-type tones, the Apollo I can dial in a great many good sounds. Plenty loud and not too similar to anything else that I have heard out there, it has a character of its own.
I suspect the amp would sound simply HUGE through a 4x12 cabinet and would easily hang in there with many 100-watters. Not to imply any comparisons, but if you like the sounds of some of the "retro" modern amps (such as Top Hat, Budda, etc.), you will most likely enjoy the sounds you can get out of the Apollo I, but think of it as a beefier sounding amp though. Probably dropping in some EL34s (can do, the amp will accept these tubes if you just rebias it for them) would give this amp a little more of a British accent to it. The cost is $1,300, which I believe is competitive in today's market, considering the amps is hand made on a turret epoxy board -- one can't imagine just how much work goes into making a hand-built amp until one builds one -- and uses high-quality components.
There are many good choices for amps out there, and the Apollo I is an addition to the list. If you don't need channel switching or a master volume in your amp, you may want to look into the Apollo I if you're in the market for a very good sounding companion to your guitar collection.

The amp is a 50 watt reverb head. The front panel is laid out in four sections. Hi and Low inputs, Preamp, Reverb and Poweramp. Each section has its own set of controls. The preamp has Volume with a pull Boost, Treble with a pull Bright, Midrange and Bass with a pull Fat control. The Reverb section has a Level and a Drive control. The level control is like the regular reverb control on a Fender and the Drive contros how hard the springs are driven. The Poweramp section is what I like. It has a Unique set of conrols I've never seen on any amp. It's got a Thrust control (according the owner Steve Brewer) that controls the amount of signal into the poweramp. It's not a Master Volume but more of a Gain control. It allows me to go from totally clean to the best overdrive I've ever heard in an amp. Its got the standard Presence control but it also has a Depth control that brings the mids and the higher bass frequences forward like the Presence control does for the highs. The back of the amp has a passive FX loop, the reverb jacks, an impedance switch, the on/off and standby switches and 2 speaker outs. The tube configuration is 2-12AX7, 2-12AT7 preamp tubes and 2-5881WXT power tubes and a GZ-34 rectifier.

I had a pretty good idea of what the amp could do from the free demo tape that I got from Apollo, But I had no idea how many great sounds I can get from the amp. I got a totally clean sound thats cleaner than any tube amp I've ever owned at a loud volume just by backing the guitar volume down and leaving the Thrust control on 0. On this setting the amp stayed clean until the Volume was turned up to around 4 or 5. Using the Boost and Fat switches along with the Thrust control, I can get great jazz and blues tones. The sound was thick and solid. As I turned the amp up the overdrive got more and more amazing. At full blast I was amazed at how well the sound held together. It sounds much louder than any 50 watt amp I've owned. The amp is like owning 3 or 4 amps in one because I can get so many great sounds. I've owned Rivera, Dumbles and Groove Tube amps and I can get the sounds of those amps along with all the classic Fender sounds. The amp loves humbuckers as well as single coil pickups.

I've owned the amp for 6 months with no problems. I teach guitar on it as well as gig with it, so the amp has many hours it and it sounds as good as the first day I got it.

The owner, Steve Brewer, is very friendly, he called me to make sure my amp arrived in good condition and to find out what I thought of it. He calls me about every 2 months to make sure the amp is still playing great. Thats what I call great service. Apollo warranties their amps for 5 years.

I love the amp. I would buy it again if I had to. The quality of the sound and the versatility of this amp is whats so impressive about it. I've never played a one channel amp that does what this amp can do. Once word gets out about this amp the owner Steve wont have time to tie his shoes.