Product: Danelectro Coral Californian 100W Head
Price Paid: 100 (euro) used
Submitted
03/27/2004
at
09:18am
by
Jan Willem Eckhardt
Features
:
8
Couldnt find any information on this thing on the internet. Guess it's made between 1960 and 1970.
Has 4 6L6 tubes, 1 hughe transformer and two smaller transformers.
12AX7 - preamp
2 mystery-tubes do something too... No type-numbers available. Same size als EL84's
2 channels, each with Bass/Treble/Volume
1 reverb spring, but possible to turn on/off for each channel seperatly. Reverb has depth/drive settings.
Tremolo on channel 2, not overextrem. Depth/speed settings.
Built in tuner, but this thing has a manual of it's own! It is in fact a sine-wave generator wich can be set to a specific frequency. Set it once, and then tune by ear. Has settings for frequency (fine/broad) and volume. Very good for irritating everybody on stage.
It's old, so no channel switching or distortion.
Sound Quality
:
8
I play mostly with a Gibson Sonex 180 custom. Heavy body guitar, dual humbucker (zebra pickups). Sounds comparable to Gibson LP
I play heavy metal, nu-metal, blues and some acoustic ballads. Suits these quite fine.
Amp has a massive low-end, good high, but lacks in the middle. For metal/rock that's fine, but acoustic on my Sonex does lose some of it's "sparkle". I have another EQ before the input to boost the mids.
Reverb only start working at higher volumes. When using it at home, it has NO reverb at all. On stage, the reverb is nice.
I don't use the tremolo that often, since it doesn't suit my playing style.
For a tube-amp, the noise isnt that high. Gives a slight hiss at higher volumes.
This amp can go loud, but not extremely loud (compared to other 100W tube heads). Way louder then any transistorcombo around.
Clean channel get's a bit compressed at higher volumes, but no distortion.
I use a Mesa Boogie V-twin as a pre-amp, since it has no distortion of it's own. Sounds good at about any setting I tried so far, what in itself is a small miracle. My other amp is a Peavey Bravo, and it requiers some work to get comparable nice sounds out of that combination.
Reliability
:
8
It survived for the last 40 years, so I guess it's reliable... Don't have it that long...
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Overall Rating
:
No Opinion
I play for 12 years. I bought this amp because I just couldn't resist the idea of a working tube head for 100 euro's (90 dollars)
Price vs. quality is incredible good!!! Maybe not the best amp in the world, but it sounds good and has a lot of power.
I hate the fact that the pots start crackling and that I don't have the original front. Yet I keep amazing everyone with the sounds I get out of this thing.
If it was lost/stolen I would be pissed, but I wouldn't try to buy the same. I think I have the last one in the Netherlands, and maybe one of the last ones in the world...
I really would have liked it to have inbuild channel-switching
