Dynacord Reference 500 112 Combo

I have bought my Reference 500 as a 19" Rack model, without the reverb-unit. All features are the same as described above. It has 16 channels which are available with a footswitch or with a midi-board or by hand at the frontside of the display-panel.

I'm playing Blues and have been trying in Jazz and Rock/Pop. For my styles of music I think it's a very good amp.

What I'm missing is a headphone jack.

I'm playing the most time at home. I'm using a 1x12 Marshall Box with the amp and the Dynacord MDL-10 for Delay, Chorus and Flanger.

When I bought the amp and try it at home, it sounded ok, not as good, as I wanted, but it was ok. But when I had to try play very loud with a Fender Strat it sounded very bad. All sounds were very high pitched and distorted, sounded bad, but nobody could tell me, what's the reason why it did.

So I startet to dig in the problem and found a lot of reasons. First: in Germany we had a long time 220V but today normaly 230-240V. So the heaters of the tubes got to much power, that's make the bad sound. We changed it to 240V. All tubes were very old and I changed all of them, using Rubytubes (2xEL34, 1xECC81, 1x7025Highgrade, 3xECC83). On the circuit board I had to re-solder all the connections.

After that operations, the amp sounds fantastic.

I'm playing an Ibanez SA260 fat-strat-style Guitar. It sounds clean very well with the dynacord reference 500.
The drive-Channel is very good, too.

I'm using the amp a short time, so I'm not able to say something to reliability.

I bought a brand new Footswitch from Dynacord in Germany. Very good service, and a lot of competence of the guy's there. A description of the amp were also sent without any costs to me. Excellent.

I have had heard Engl Tube-amps and some good Laney and Fender amps which provide the sound I like. So, if my amp were stolen or lost, I would buy a new other amp.

Today I like my amp and I will not sell it.

The amp was made sometime in the Eighties; has 16 programmable patches you can switch via MIDI + patch "OO" for normal use - you also use it to blend the sound you want and then store it in one of the patches; controls: "gain" - with a trick - all the way turned left, or, counterclockwise, there is a very clean preset, rather sharp, good for rhythm and the like; you can make it rounder with the EQ; turning it clockwise increases distortion, but starts at a rather low level - so, if you turn from the Clean preset there's a light "click" somewhere in the amp - loke a relais switch, that isn't heard in the speaker or anywhere else; then level is more or less down, and when it comes again, distortion is quite audible; but I like the sound - then, continually increasing to some severe amount of distortion; next, "Volume", the programmable output level of the preamp; then, three band ACTIVE EQ; you should know that; boostiing these tends to sounding a bit extreme, but is good sometimes; I prefer to set these rather low and find the balance between them on a low level - sounds a bit softer; but according to something I read once it's an all-tube amp ...; then reverb level, and extra fx level of the parralel fx loop (note further down); then four buttons for storing and changing patches and MIDI channels and stuff; then simple display showing large figures (patch you are using); then master volume, not programmable;
backside: what's all that?! parallel fx loop, serial ("MAster break") FX loop, reverb fx loop - if you use this the internal spring rev. is turned off; then, DI-out,- yes! and nicely filtered; but not available if the power amp is turned off; amd you know, the tubes need to pass on something, so don't pull the speaker plug (or you need at least a new fuse)! you can plug in eg the Rocktron Juice Extractor and only use the DI-OUT signal for a mixer or whatever; anyway, really sounds nice, you might want to do some EQing on that still; then there is a damping factor - control; mikes the amp a bit louder or more silent, mostly filters away some frequency that would be tending to hiss or make noise ...; then, MIDI IN and THROUGH; and a 5pole plug in which the spring reverb is plugged to. !No standby switch! oh yes, and the odd plug for an electric power cable; nice design, wooden chassis coloured bright red, nice grille on the front. electronics are in a 19"chassis screwed into the wooden chassis above the speaker, looking a bit upward; disadvantage: the knobs etc are not secure - not shaded ... I have damaged one or two a bit (only optically, but still..!)

the way I use it: after using the amp for years I finally found the secret to make it sing and dance; I turn the Master volume up all the way and control the overall level with the "Volume" control - remember, this controls the output level of the preamp; that way I get a much fatter, slightly compressed, and much finer sound :-)
problem: I should have to programm the master level for every occasion?! Well, no, I must admit, I stopped using the recording patches for the time being - when I discovered the "sound miracle" I was plaing some "softer" gigs and needed a nice clean sound mainly; and that was perfect - but it's the turn of, let's say one knob to get on to a heavier sound; and you could as well insert any kind of volume control to adjust the overall level - a pedal, whatever ....
and with the amp cranked up like that, the mystical space between clean and overdriven gets usable - and sounds really great! :-)
and so, yes! the amp sounds very nice, has lots of features; can be combined with all kinds of other equipment (fx, stereo systems, and so on); I used it with strats; first a Fenix - yes, sounded ok, now with some kind of Anderson strat (if it really was made by Tom Anderson, it was an earlier design - but eg the mini switches are the same, and it sounds great) with a neck thr

sorry, see that all above ..
ok; "HM Anderson" Strat, neck through body with three single coils, my style: bluesy, funky, jazzy stuff, but heavier stuff too sometimes
not noisy at all - when I turn the master vol up all the way as described, no hiss or anything, at least not from the amp; ok, full distortion and maybe active EQ used, obviously some noise; but alltogether not much.
Variety; yes, you can get a rather soft (also when distorted) or much harder sound and anything between, depending on the EQ, most of all; you can get a very sharp clean sound for a tube amp, if you want (that clean preset made me wonder a while if this was "all tube") - but you can also fine-tune it; FXloops work nicely; eg I used to put a Boss SE50 FX-unit between pre- and poweramp, serial, which didn't affect the sirect sound at all (and I went from the SE50 straight into the other Dynacord amp)- complements to BOSS AND Dynacord :-)
Still, a Marshall sounds different, and a Fender, or a Boogie sounds and feels different - so this is an individual, too!
THe clean preset will also distort, of course, if it gets much too much input - but it can take a bit! And distorting it doesn't sound nice (edgy and hard); but there's more elegant ways to distortion on that amp ... and it distorts if you sueeze much too much power into the power section of the amp - but this is normal, too ..
ANd the brutality of the distortion depends on the EQ-setting

very reliable - one of the amps fell off a wheeling cart shortly before a gig, but played without any complaining (but yes, that was when I damaged one or two of the control knobs - they aren't protected at all); broke down once with my embarrassaed brother playing a home session with it (suddenly smoking ..) - but these where the original tubes, and never since happened again

never tried that - even before buying it, I had found much information in an old German magazine (lots of details;-)

I've had thm for 10 years; I like them for the sound and flexibility; don't know if I'd try to get exactly the same thing; I have more than once played (as a bassist) together with guitarists who played old Fender stuff for clean sound and stomp boxes like Boss etc for distortion, and it sounded really great - wouldn't have believed that .. so, guess I don't care too much as long as it sounds nice; think I payed a bit too much for one of them, and the other one was a bargain, so it' ok!

Amp was made in the early to mid 80's It is MIDI controllable (the 16 Presets) Its a cool all-Tube Amp with 60 Watts RMS and a 12" Celestion 100Watts Speaker in a nice clear red wooden case Amp is built in top of the case as 19" Unit Spring reverb two effect break-point (one programmable instead of built-in reverb) foot-switch with program up/down MIDI-In/Out 2 x EL34 or 6L6GC 3 x ECC83 1 x ECC81 (Driver)

All Pickup Cominations sound good, but I prefer the bridge-Humbucker I use it for Hard-Rock action also some Fusion projects The clean channel sounds pretty clean until cranked up full to 10 You can program 16 sounds by easily turn the pots on the front panel and then --- Store it... Very Easy

Only tip is to use good sounding tubes in the preamp section

Support at Dynacord, Freising was very good one phonecall and after two days i got a complete copy of an service handbook

Im playing it nearly 10 years an still satisfied amp works/sounds much better than the new silicon shit in the racks with the 16 presets you beat all... what more? would never give it away