Egnater Tourmaster 4212

I believe this amp was made in 08'. Yes, it is manufactured in China, but don't let that deture you. It is designed by Bruce Egnater, and I am sure that they have American supervision at the plant where they make them.

This amp is the most versatile amp I have ever owned. I play anything thing from finger picked classical to 80s metal to thrash, and it covers it all with ease.

It has four channels, all with their own eq knobs. Each channel is switchable either by the fromt panel or the included foot switch.
It also has a switchable effects loop which can either be in parallel or series.
The only thing that I think could be better is the reverb. It is rather weak.

I actually use every feature it has. Especially the power grid. At home in the living room I have it set to half power and the power grid set to 10 watts! Yes I said 10 watts. With the voluem and master voluem set to about 3/4. With the the two overdrive channels the tone is amazing. Playing with friends in a garage all that was needed was half power with the power grid set to 20 watts.

I am playing a Heritage H150 20th anniversary, more Gibson Les Paul than the new Gibsons IMHO, (made at the old Gibson plant in Kalamazoo Michigan). It has a Dimarzio Tone Zone in the bridge and a Dimarzio PAF Pro in the neck. It also has a vintage electronic upgrade kit in it from RS Guitar Works. Makes a huge difference, check them out.

This amp suits my style to a T. I play a lot of Bucketheads music. Some of it is more mellow stuff like whats on his Colma and Electric Tears CDs. This amps Clean/Vintage channels are awesome for this.

For the heavier stuff that I play, like 80s metal, Metallica, Ozzy, Dio, ect, and more modern stuff like Buckethead, Slipknot, Megadeth, ect. This amp nails it whitout problem.

I can't figure out why the guy below me can't get a good sound out of his. If he would have actuall read the manual, he would have learned how to get a great tone. And I don't mean the sample knob settings.

For example, when using the effects loop. When using a delay pedal the manual tells you that the best way to do it, the pedals mix knob MUST be all the way up, and run the loop in parallel, which mixes your dry signal with the pedals wet signal.
This does NOT affect your tone. You then mix in the desired amount of the effect with the Return/Level/Mix knob on the back of the amp. When using the effects loop set to series, it totally makes my tone sound like crap.
What the manual tells you is, that when using the loop in parallel, your whole signal is not going through the pedal, rather it is mixed with it. It says that if you don't have the mix knob on the pedal all the way up, it causes the wet signal to become out of phase and it mixes that out of phase wet signal with your dry signal.

People are saying that the Contour feature on this amp is useless. I have to disagree here. It really gives you way more varitey in tone.

This amp is a little noisy in high gain setting, but what amp isn't. Nothing an ISP Decimator can't tame. But as long as you are not standing to close to it with your guitar, it isn't noisy.
Whan I play at home, I am 8 to 10 feet away from it. I need the Decimator to keep it quite. But when playing with a band 20 feet away with my back to the amp its quiet.

This amp can make any type of tone I want and do it better than any amp I have ever owned. I have been playing guitar for 25 years, and I have owned many Marshalls, Peaveys, Diezels, Mesas and Bogners.
I would say that this amp is more versitle and sounds better to my ears then any of them. I would have to say that the abilty to run this amp at 10 and 20 watts makes all the difference. At 10 watts, playing in the living room, there is more voluem that I need, and its loud as hell. Playing with a band, 20 watts is all I need.
I think the problem with most other amps, is that when you play them in these situations, you really cant crank them, because its just to loud. We all know that a 100 or 120 watt amp needs to be cranked up to get the best sound out of it. These wattages are really meant to be used at a stadium. For playing in a garge band or in your living room, they are just over kill and you can't get good tone out of them at reasonable voluems.

The clean channels on this amp only distorts at high voluems if you crank the gain knob. The manual tells you to turn the master voluem and channel voluem up high and adjust the voluem using the gain knob.
This, in my opinion get you the best clean sound.

The distortion on the two overdrive channels can be very brutal.
I run a BBE Green Screamer in front of the amp to boots it a little.
For a real heavy tones the Green Screamer really thickens the tone.

I have only had it a couple of weeks. No problems yet.

As I said above, I haven't had any problems yet.
I did talk with John in California, Egnaters amp tech.
I was on the fence about buying this amp, but after speaking with John, my mind was made up.
He did recommend that you don't want to have the voluem past 2 o'clock, as you may have power tube problems.

Been playing 25 years. I also own a Peavey JSX combo.

If it was lost or stolen, I would definatley buy another.

I love it's versatility, and the power grid.

I am not so fond of the reverb. But I don't think I have ever been fond of any reverb of any amp. I usually use a reverb pedal or a rack unit.

I was thinking of buying a Marshall JVM combo before I bought this amp. I chose this amp because of the power grid, and the fact that it was about $500.00 cheaper. I once owned a Marshall JVM 410H 100 watt head, and to be honest, it sounded good, but seemed to sound somewhat sterile compared to the Egnater.

It really is a botique amp at an affordable price.

Tons of features and knobs to tweak. Not that it's all necessarily useful. I found the contour switches seemed to make the amp sound muddy. The "power grid" is just a gimmick as far as I'm concerned. Doesn't work as advertised. It is a nice LOOKING amp.

This amp can be compared directly against a Fender Twin Amp. Both are 100 amp 2 x 12 and both are currently selling for $1500. And when you make that direct comparison you'll find this amp is the loser. Marshall also has amps in the same $1500 range that will blow this Egnater completely out of the water. It's VERY hard to dial in any good sounds on this amp. To me this amp is loaded with hype and sexy looks but it just doesn't deliver in the sound department. With the Fender Twin you can't NOT get a good sound out of it. Same with Marshall amps. That's the way it should be. And the switch that drops it to 25 watts on the Fender actually WORKS! Fender Twins actually have useful features unlike this amp. Some people in the earlier reviews were a bit "irrationally exuberant" about this amp if you ask me. I think it was excitement about a new product coming out. I personally found more arse coming out of this amp than anything else. And I don't feel I should have to "hunt" for tone by endlessly twisting knobs. The settings shown in the manual are supposed to be the "good" sounds? Others have mentioned the noise levels with these amps. I can confirm that these are excessively noisy amps. Do yourself a favor and look into another amp.

It seems solidly built. Those toroidal transformers are known to be very reliable. It's made in China though. And it has a slew of tubes in it that WILL be needing replacing.

Egnater's support is notoriously unreliable. It's the typical case of a small, over-scheduled, understaffed company.

I spent fair amount of time in the store with this amp TRYING to coax some good sound out of it. I read through the manual and tested the recommended settings. You see this amp across the room and you say "Ooooh I gotta go check that out!" And at first you feel like a kid in a candy store with all those knobs and switches thinking there must be an endless variety of sounds. But then you go to one channel after another and come to the conclusion there's nothing worth hearing there and move on. And then you run out of channels and walk away in disgust. Disappointment with this amp seems to be a common experience. People have been getting excited and buying these amps only to return them within 30 days out of frustration. The guy in my local Guitar Center told me they are having that problem. For the exact same money you can get an industry standard and FAR better sounding amp from Fender or Marshall that actually sounds good and is easy to dial in killer tone. "Boutique?" I don't think so. Look past the hype and marketing gimmicks and see that this amp just doesn't cut it.

I am rating this at a 6 because I found some of the features in this amp to be of little use.

The voicing switches are nice and I liked the affect they had on the sound.

The footswitch is nice and lets you go directly to any of the 4 channels. You can plug a pedal jumper cord into the effects loop and use it as a solo boost if you don't want to use it for effects. Once jumpered the loop switch on the footswitch becomes a boos switch.

Two features that I found really useless are the Contour control and the Power Grid. These are two features that they are really touting and I found them to be poor at best. I will add more detail about these in the sound quality category.

this gets a lower rating (5) because this is the category that made me decide to send the amp back.

I was able to get some good sounds out of the amp. I was really on the fence with whether to keep it or not. I will discuss the deal breaker in a bit.

I was comparing this amp to a Peavey JSX212 and a Peavey Triple XXX 112, both of which I own. The JSX is my main gigging amp and the Triple XXX is my practice amp. I was able to dial the Egnater in to a lot of the same sounds that I get from the JSX. I wanted a 4 channel amp so I could have a really clean channel then one that was slightly driven to breaking up then a classic rock type of distortion then a distortion channel that was a bit heavier. I was able to get these sounds with the Egnater for the most part. I had both the Egnater and the JSX running at the same time and had an A/B switch in my feed line to switch between the two amps to really get the feel for them side by side. I was also able to adjust the JSX and get nearly all of the sounds out of it that I got out of the Egnater.

The two features that I mentioned above that I thought to be useless were the contour control and the power grid. I will start with the contour control. This thing is a MAJOR tone sucker. I couldn't find any practicle use for this on any of the 4 channels. I ended up turning them all off and setting the knobs back to 0. It is basically a mid sweep control. The problem is that you can hear as soon as you press the switch to activate it, the channle looses a ton of volume and tone. Turning the knob doesn't get you anywhere back in the neighborhood of where you started.

The next feature I found useless is the power grid. They are really pushing this like it is the best thing since sliced bread. I will say that the only switch that I heard any difference in the sound was the full/half power switch. That was noticeable. The others, not so much. I talked to the manufacturer about it and they said that when you have a channel set to 10 watts, you won't hear a difference until you have used up the 10 watts worth of volume. I tested this at quite loud volumes and I found the difference to be minimal and not the best thing since sliced bread. In fact it led me to the issue that broke the deal for me.

My deal breaker is the noisy distortion channels in this amp. I talked to the manufacturer about this as well. They said that they have heard this complaint before. They said they took their amp in a store to a quiet room and took a couple other brands along with it. They admitted that theirs hums a little more than the others did but said it wasn't much louder. I can tell you that the two amps I compared it to had hardly any hum in them at all on the high gain channels and they were all plugged into the same power in the same room. The Egnater hums way too much in my opinion for it to be a gigging amp, which is what I wanted it for. My JSX has a noise gate on it for the distortion channels. A little of that and it was completely quiet. The Triple XXX had a very minimal amount of hum in it. There is definitely something different between them that is causing noise, too much for me to keep.

The rumors are true. The amp is made in China. I would say it appeared to be built rather well in construction. I was told by the manufacturer that they unpack every amp that comes from China and they play them to make sure things are right. They also said that at the factory in China they run them through a number of sound tests, they have a number of recorded sounds that they run through the amps after they are built to test them.

I really didn't have the amp long enough to give a good assessment of how it will hold up. I think only time will tell.

The customer support seems to be pretty good at this point. I was able to get emails returned within a day or two. To some that will be too slow but for me and the questions I was asking at the time it was okay. I did have a little more urgency when I wanted to discuss the power grid and the humming so I called them. I happened to end up with the person that I was emailing with on the phone. He was helpful and kind.

Overal I am giving this amp a 5. I think it is a step in the right direction but there is more work to do. I wouldn't be surprised to see a second versoin of this amp come out with the hum issue reduced. I think a lot of gigging musicians will not accept this and will either not buy the amp in the first place or will return it after they play their first gig with it or play with it for a couple of days.

If you are not a gigging musician and are using this amp in your home or in a garage band, it may work for you. The bottom line for me is it cost me $140.00 in shipping charges to find out about the humming issue and returning it. I am hoping to save one of you from going through the same thing and spendig the money I lost.

I would offer to better choices over this amp. If you are looking in this price range and you can live with a 3 channel amp and the 4 channel is not a must, buy the Peavey JSX 212 ($1550.00). If you can afford to spend a little more go for the Mesa Boogie Roadster ($1999.00). It has 4 channels and more voicing options than the Egnater. I personally am probably going to buy the Roadster. I plan on checking one out soon and getting my order in if I don't find anything about that one that I can't stand. All of the reviews on it so far are very positive.

Egnater Tourmaster 4212 all tube amp. 100w with power grid on the back so you can change it to 50w, 20w, and 10w to get better overdrive sounds. Has 4 channels Clean 1 / 2, Overdrive 1 / 2 with contour control and vintage and modern toggle switches, both serial and parallel effects loop, and line out.

This amp is very versatile and sounds good even without effects. The clean channels are pristine and have the best clean sounds / tones that I have ever heard on any amps before. Overdrive 1 channel is good for AC/DC type sounding rhythm. Overdrive 2 channel is not too bad but I found out the way to get a very good Mesa or Marshall distortion sound is just to use one of the clean channels and use a Metal Muff Nano distortion pedal or the one with Top Boost (I have both) and use it with a good EQ like the MXR 10 Band that I use. When you do this it totally nails down the overdriven sounds of the upper end Mesas (Road King, Roadster, Triple Rec, etc...)that I've tested and also sounds very good on leads if you use a little delay.

I use this amp for both home use and at my local church. It is plenty loud enough to use onstage, believe me.

I use Fender Strats (modified with HS3 and YJM pickups), Gibson Les Paul Standard, and an Ibanez RG series guitar with Breed pickups.

The amp works very well for my playing style and think it will do very well in every gendre with the exception of hardcore metal enthuists. If you use the Metal Muff with Top Boost and and EQ you can get a sound that works pretty well with metal.

Make sure you use guitar cables of good quality with this amp as it can get a little noisy if you stand close to your amp. Since I switched over to higher quality cables I haven't had any problems

The clean channels are silky smooth. There is more than enough distortion on the Overdrive 2 channel, however, I prefer to use the clean channel and use a distortion pedal to get more of a Marshall or Mesa sound and I do. When I bought this amp I went out and tested many Marshalls and Mesas including Triple Recs, Stilettos, Roadsters, Road Kings, Lone Star Specials, and the Express series. The problem with the Mesas is they don't do clean sounds as well as I would like them. With the Egnater I was able to get the best of both worlds.

My favorite amps used to be Mesas and Marshalls. Not anymore. If you read bad reviews about the Egnaters, they probably didn't sit down and work with the amp much. For me the "base" sound / tone has to be excellent to build on. If you have that, everything else comes easy.

So far no problems, however, you may need to invest in a back brace for this thing. It weights 95 lbs and you can feel it everytime you lug it up and down the stairs. I think they made need to make heavier duty handles on the side and top because this amp is one heavy mother...

Warranty is 3 years parts and labor; 90 days on the tubes.
No experience with customer service.

I give this amp a good 9 1/2. I've been playing for about 30 years now and own a Rivera Slavemaster but have owned a Marshall AVT275 and JCM800 before.

I'd buy another one after I caught up with the guy who stole it and would just drop it on him. That would be plenty of justice.

I love the look and layout of the amp as well as the power grid feature. The only things I hate about this amp is that it's sooo heavy and that it gets a little noisy if you stand too close to the amp.

I compared this amp to LOTS of Mesas before I bought it. Thought the Mesas have superb distortion by themselves, their cleans just arent' the best for me.

I do wish they would copy some of Line 6's ideas about being able to save different sounds (sort of like marrying a rack effect / Pod and an amplifier) and be able to operate it via a midi controller otherwise it has great "tone".

I have owned plenty of amps - Boogies, Marshalls, H&K... what this amp excels in is flexibility. I try not to use pedals, so the amp's circuitry is very important. With other amps, switching between channels often sounds like the same amp with more or less gain, or slightly different eq. This amp's 4 channels really could be four different amps.

Each channel has its own sound, and is flexible. Plus, with the ability to assign different wattages per channel, you can go from totally clean, to preamp distortion to transformer sag distortion easily.

Brand new - no idea.

No idea

I've only had it a few weeks, but this may become my workhorse.

Just bought my second one for the studio!! One for the road and one for gigs!!! I'm good to go anywhere.
Awesome amplifier!! I've owned Boogie's i.e. Triaxis, 2:90 rigs, Tremoverb Combo, Heartbreaker Combo, DC-10 Combo, Nomad 100 Combo, and the Road King. However, the Egnater Tourmaster is the most awesome sounding amp I've ever heard. It's flexibility is totally tonal. From super clean to dirt, this amp is ready for any kind of work!!

Second one is the same look below!:
The sound is incredible. Every nuance is heard as the controls are tweaked on the clean channels and the lead channels. I'm using a Tom Anderson Hollow Drop Top with single-single-Hum pickup configuration, a custom made Tom Anderson Drop Top Classic with M1-M1-M3 pickup configuration and it sounds absolutely amazing with both of these guitars along with my Martin Electric acoustic, and an Ibanez Jazz box. The distortion along with a great guiitar offers great harmonic textures during lead lines. The reverb is incredible and the contour control does amazing things to your tone!! I've been playing for 37 years and I've owned my own recording studio for 22 years so I've become a tone addict!

Just got the second one and haven't had any trouble this far!

Spoke with them and Bruce on the phone! Excellent people!!

If these amps were stole my insurance company would replace them

Awesome amplifier!! I've owned Boogie's i.e. Triaxis, 2:90 rigs, Tremoverb Combo, Heartbreaker Combo, DC-10 Combo, Nomad 100 Combo, and the Road King. However, the Egnater Tourmaster is the most awesome sounding amp I've ever heard. It's flexibility is totally tonal. From super clean to dirt, this amp is ready for any kind of work!!
MAIN FEATURES
* 100-Watt All-Tube Combo
* 2x12" Custom-Voiced Egnater??? Elite-80
Speakers by Celestion???
* Four Channels with Selectable voicing
* Power Grid: Set Wattage for
Each Channel from 10w up to 100w
* Tube-driven Assignable Effects Loop
* Tube Driven Reverb
* Rugged Six-Button Footswitch
* Heavy Duty Casters & Side Handles
* Powered by Groovetubes???
FRONT PANEL
* Four independent channels each with:
??? Gain control
??? Master control
??? Treble, middle, bass
??? Classic/modern voicing switch
* Tube driven reverb
* Master Presence/Density

The sound is incredible. Every nuance is heard as the controls are tweaked on the clean channels and the lead channels. I'm using a Tom Anderson Hollow Drop Top with single-single-Hum pickup configuration, a custom made Tom Anderson Drop Top Classic with M1-M1-M3 pickup configuration and it sounds absolutely amazing with both of these guitars along with my Martin Electric acoustic, and an Ibanez Jazz box. The distortion along with a great guiitar offers great harmonic textures during lead lines. The reverb is incredible and the contour control does amazing things to your tone!! I've been playing for 37 years and I've owned my own recording studio for 22 years so I've become a tone addict!

Just got it and haven't had any trouble this far!

Just got it and haven't had any trouble this far!

This is the amp of the years!!!! In my book!!!!