Epiphone So Cal 50 Watt Head

Mine is a 2007 model. 50/25 watt pentode/triode all tube signal path amp.
The amp is extremely versatile for an amp of this type.
I use it for classic rock and 80's 90's metal.
I use it for music like UFO, Saxon, Halford etc.
It's a two channel amp with a shared tone stack. It also has a type of tone control on the gain channel called a contour. More on that below. It has a reverb which I didn't think I'd ever use but I rather like a bit mixed in now that it's there. No effects loop though. I'd WAY rather have that than the reverb!! I knew that before I bought it though. Nether of those features were what I was after.
I needed a decent gigging amp with enough power - this will do fine.
Right now it's here at home getting broke-in on a Marshall 1960 slant. Hasn't been out yet.
Again - extremely tweekable tone-wise. If you can't get a nice tone out of the box quick than I don't know what to say. I dinged it two points for reverb and no effects loop.

The clean is as others here say - "nothing spectacular" but certainly usable! The overdrive channel is what you want this amp for. You can certainly get some overdrive from the clean channel but the gain channel is where this amp shines. It's not in the neo metal category though. It's more of a 70's, 80's amount of gain. To be fair, some gain is still on tap by cranking the amp. Not everyone with this amp will care to do that though. Think modded jcm 800 with a nice second channel and a ton of extra tone shaping possibilities.
Also, I've used a compressor in front of all my amps over the years. This amp "loved" having that little extra bit of boost. Remember that. I tried a tube screamer in front but I didn't care for it. To me it became muddy. Besides, with just the tiny bit of boost the amp's own gain sent the amp completely into all the classic metal I bought it for. I could almost get the tube screamer tone by setting the controls correctly. Also, the amp has loads of bass on tap. Loads! A lot for 50 watts anyway. With the contour control fully counter clockwise and a speck of front-end boost you now have a modern metal amp. The contour either boosts or scoops mids dramatically. Just a simple turn dramatically changes the amp from old style overdrive to the new scooped stuff. I found myself using that one for sure. The other folks here who say there's no gain or it has no volume didn't know how to set it I think. Here's why. It has a tone stack feature which will confuse long-time marshall users. If the tone stack is set to independent, each tone control will add or subtrack to the mix. That means that if the bass/mid/treb are all turned low then very-very little will come out of the amp. Did that make sence? You can add exactly how much of each you want. They are not mixed. They act like small volume controls? It threw me off at first. When set to interactive it works the same way as a Marshall. That simple little feature gives the user unbelievable flexibility in shaping tone. Yeah I know, lots of amps have that but I'm a dinosaur and have stuck to the old stuff for a long time.
The amp is currently noisy in the gain channel. Really noisy, and microphonic! That means there's a 12ax7 that's gonna have to go. Maybe a few.
What can you say?,-cheap Chinese junk tubes. I have several nice oem's to put in it that'll fix that asap.
For a simple, all tube signal path amp of this type - "amazing" versatility. I dinged it one point for using sub-par tubes. Nothing gets a 10 anyway.

To soon to say. I have many years of working on tube equipment and have built amps. I can honestly say that the overall construction is very nice. I haven't had a look at the board yet though. However, since you can see right through the vents easily everything looks surprisingly well made and heavy duty. All pots and switches are very smooth. The tolex looks cheap though as do cab corner hardware. Obviously there had to be some cost cutting here and there to make the amp so affordable. Case in point - preamp tubes. BTW, output tubes sound good. I was going to replace those before I even plugged it in but think I'll keep them there for now.
I dinged the amp once for subpar preamp tubes and once for cheap tolex cab corners.

No idea. Never contacted them before.

I've been playing over 35 years - yup, I'm a geezer. I've got three other amps. I needed something a bit bigger for gigging. I haven't had a larger amp for several years now. I've got a few older guitars, one new one and several old pedals. One 4x12 marshall cab. As I stated above, I've worked on tube amps for many years off/on. Still have a huge tube stock pile and test equipment. I only mention this because if I were reading these posts, I'd want to hear from as many folks as possible. That's what led me to this amp in the first place.
I guess this is a tough market. There are so many great amps out there. What makes this amp stand out a bit from the crowd is that it costs under $500 bucks and gets all those great sounds. Easy to work on and well made. If stolen, you're not out much money.
No amp is perfect for all things - it's a set of trade-offs. No way around that. This amp has flaws and has strengths.

Pros; it does really good classic metal if you know how to set it up which is really easy. It is very-very tweekable in a very easy to set up way. It has a usable second channel. It has loads of bass for an amp this size. It looks to be built like a tank. Pure tube signal path. I've seen the schematic. No solid state anywhere in the signal chain. Only the usual diode rectification in the power supply - that's it. Circuit is faily simple. Pentode/triode switch - 50/25 watt. Another nice feature I failed to mention above. Cuts some volume and changes character of amp slightly.

Cons; no effects loop. Would have been nice instead of reverb maybe. Reverb tends to sound a bit dark if turned up too much. If used at all, best to keep it turned down. Regular channel is just ok. Cheaper looking tolex/cab corners. IMHO.
A nice gigging amp. That's what I bought it for. A few new tubes and it should be great! BTW, I blasted everything from UFO to Halford through it the day after receiving it. On a couple of songs it sent shivers through me. That doesn't happen too often. I will admit it was running at least 70% so yes - loud! Very nice. A good purchase.

I've owned many valve amps Marshalls, Laney, Fender as well as solidstates and FX/Racks.

This review is for the UK Grainger range of amp heads and cabs (rebadged Epiphones). I tested the So-Cal 50H (or Hammerhead) head at reasonable volume. Overall the head has a very dull sound, like a solidstate poweramp. You can hear a great clean and crunch coming from the preamp, but the poweramp seems to deaden the sound and take away all the harmonics. The presence and treble seemed to control the high mids but not the extreme harmonic high end (some call fizz). I tried it through the matching 4x12 with Lady Luck speakers, and then through a 6505 and Valveking cab. If you ignore that the poweramp seemed to take away all the harmonics and clarity, you can hear that the character of the distortion is very nice. The bass end is distorted like an old marshall without a tubescreamer/boost pedal being used to smooth it out. I think this adds to the versatility because some amps, like the 5150, sound like they have a OD pedal built in to smooth out the bottom end by default.

Finally, the reverb did sound totally disconnected from the amp. It sounds nothing like a modern hall reverb you hear on any album of the past 20 years. The reverb tail is dark and long which just muddies up the sound. If only the amp had an fx loop instead.

The matching 4x12 was unpleasantly cheap looking and had a thin sound with not much bass. I tried an Orange Tiny Terror through the cab and it sounded much more authentic than the Grainger head. It had clarity, but the cab still made it a little on the thin and harsh side.

I know that valves can make a huge difference, maybe the powertubes were toasted? If so I would take all my comments back, the amp would be fantastic both clean and distorted - so long as you could live with reverb. If you could just remove that damn blanket from the overall sound! However I would not recommend the 4x12 when you can get much higher quality cabs (even the Behringer BG412V) for around the same price (stereo and castors built in).

This amp sounds great but there aren't a lot of features. Only one set of EQ knobs shared by both channels, you can add or remove midrange from the dirty channel with the contour knob. The eq in interactive mode is a little strange, you roll of the highs a little but you hear a bass boost, it can sound good in the interactive mode but it's a little confusing, small eq changes can sound drastic, I prefer the independent mode. The 25/50 watt switch is cool although not exactly what I expected. I used to have a 100 watt marshall that was modified with a switch to shut off 2 tubes, it would sound exactly the same but get softer. This head dosen't seem to get much softer but it totaly changes the sound. In 25 watt it reminds me of a Fender Bassman, the bottom end gets that over saturated sound if you drive it too hard, then in 50 watt mode it sounds more like a marshall. The clean channel sound's great too, especially if you play it loud, If it's loud you get just a bit of tube break up, but this is all Power tube break up and not the pre-amp tube. Even though I wish there were seperate EQs for the 2 channels, I still gave this a 9 because I've always played through old Marshalls and I love having 2 channels and a reverb

Ok maybe my Jose modified '71 Marshall sounded a little better than this amp but this amp sounds way better than the stock 78 Marshall MKII lead that I had, and a clean channel too! This amp sounds "all tube"! This amp easily sounds as good as amps of twice the price.

These amps haven't been out that long so we'll have to see but it seems to be well built.

I haven't tried to get any support but I can't find a manual anywhere online for download

I hadn't really played for several years (except at home) and had lent my marshalls out and have had trouble tracking them down so I bought a Hughes & Kettner Warp 7 just to start playing again. That's the best sounding solid state amp I'd ever played through but I really wanted a tube amp. I've been watching EBAY but tube amps all seem to be pretty pricey. I'd almost given up until I saw this amp and it really sounds great. This has got to be the best value out there

specs:
* Designed and engineered in the USA by Gibson
* 50W or 25W Class AB switchable
* All-tube circuitry
* 2 channels
* Solid state rectifier
* Presence control
* Contour knob and gain control for channel 2
* Tube-powered reverb
* Independent/interactive EQ switch
* Standby switch
* Shared 3-band EQ
* Master volume
* Dual 4 ohm, dual 8 ohm, and 16 ohm speaker outs
* 12AX7 preamp tubes with DC powered filaments
* EL34 power tubes
* Footswitch jack (switch not included)
* High-tension fuse
* 16-gauge bent and spot-welded chassis
* 11-ply plywood cab construction
* 26"W x 10-3/4"D x 10-3/4"H
* 42 lbs

First Impressions:
I bought this from Music123 online as a B-Stock item with a 10% additional off and free shipping (no truck!): $350 total instead of $500 retail with the warranty and everything. The only thing that warrents the B-Stock is the dent to the grill on back, which adds no damage to functionality and no one will see it or care for that matter (see pic 2). The ooutside is built like a tank, but not as heavy as peavey products can be. This thing doesn't have individual 3-band EQ for each channel as it either shares the EQ settings or you can just have it responsible for the clean channel and the dirt is control just by the Contour option, nor does it have an FX Loop- but I don't care much for either at the moment as I have other things doing the job and needs. It's heavy, but that's expected. I put it on the 25watt Class A mode and plugged it into my Pevaey 112sx cab with an 8ohm Eminence Texas Heat speaker.

Clean Channel:
I dialed in the 3 band option as in my Bandit and founda suitable room volume at 9 o'clock- like my Bandit. First immediate thing I noticed was the damn WARMTH from this thing. Great warmth and I can finally hear some all around tone and articulation in my playing as well as a tight response from harmonics and overall playing. I played just the clean for quite a while and realised that this is a step into a new frontier for me. I then noticed a high pitched noise when I was playing (while all 9 stompboxes are connected up front) and it isn't very annoying, but noticable. I thought it was the effects up front and then I tried the amp with just the guitar in the input without any effects. CLEAN without ANY noise at 9o'clock. Brilliant tone as before with the effects, but without any sort of noise whatsoever. I'll check out the missing link in my effect setup and work around the small noise issue later.

Dirty Channel:
Having forgotten the high gain noisy dirt on the Peavey Bandit, I wasn't a fan of amp distortion for years: until now. I modified the levels to match each other and dialed the gain at 3 o'clock and contour at 3 o'clock. This thing cooks for my type of tone. Smashing Pumpkin's Gish and Radiohead distortion a plenty- but with warmth. I haven't tried out the shared EQ option, as the levels both drop dramaticlly for some reason- plus my EQ pedal takes care of that. The smooth distortion is great and something I am appreciating slowly. Response is great with my Stratocaster and the tone options just burst through from my Bandit's ability. Sustain is pretty good, as my strings are month or two old and aren't bright as it could be for gigs. I hear that this amp is based on a Saldano type, but I have no idea what one sounds like for comparison. Contour and Presence add a lot of modification for sound and I enjoy the warmth with the presence all the way up. Great addition to my stompbox arsonal.

Stompboxes usage:
This is also a positive outlook for those who enjoy the usage of FX Loops: my effects sound great- dirt, ods, fuzz, delay, tremolo, modulations, chorus, etc. All my effects up fron work better than how they sounded with the peavey, and they are much more inviting. OD sounds great as well as the fuzz. The biggest delight was when I played my Marshall Guv'nor II+ on the clean channel. It was finally ballsy and sounded like a Marshall. It handles lows and highs great with stompaboxes and with both channels as well. While I use the boxes on my clean channel mostly, they work great with the distortion channel too. I had issues with competing color tones when doing so in the past, but the amount of proper transparency with sound is great to my ears.

I just got it.
Built great though.

n/a

Other Things:
I played this for 30minutes straight and the two power tubes weren't too bright (see pic 3) but were brighter than the picture. The heat given out was more than the Bandit does (but also expected I think). Nothing sounds out of the ordinary. I can't test the Reverb as I need to get the switch to turn it on (sold seperatly). I found it familiar to my Bandit but a lot warmer due to tubes and the repsonse was incredible in comparison to the Bandit. The instructions are very skimpy and don't tell you much as other manuals I've seen. For tube amp beginners: Read up on tube amp usage and care! I've done some research and made my descion based on specs, small amount of reviews, and effecient cost comparisons.


Finally:

PROS:
warm tube amp that is smooth to my touch.
responsive
both channels are great for hard rock, and standard rock'n roll afairs by themselves
Very inexpensive for how much I got it for.
works great with pedals up front in semi-large numbers.

CONS:
no FX Loop.
shared EQ- which is a pain unless you have EQ pedals or other means to do so.
doesn't come with footswitch
SS recifier- if that means anything to you...
No combo versions yet availible for room playing.

OVERALL: 9/10 Perfect so far for my needs.

This head has become my main gigging amp since it's so bad ass. It includes shared presence and reverb controls, shared EQ with an interactive versus independant mode, level, gain, and contour on the drive channel, and clean volume. There are outputs for 16, 8, and 4 ohm cabs. The channels and reverb are footswitchable. No footswitch is included. The amp is switchable between 25 or 50 watt, triode versus pentode modes. The amp uses 5 12AX7 preamp tubes (comes with Sovtek branded) and 2 EL34 power tubes (comes with Electro-Harmonix). It has a Belton reverb tank and is housed in an sturdy 11 ply birch cab. The amp is loud enough to keep up in all the bars/clubs we've played. It was a bit deceiving initially, before the speakers had broken in.

I have added an effects loop to this amp. I don't honestly even use it that often, however, when recording with a line 6 pod (used once in a while), i run its output through the power section and mic the amp for a much more realistic tone. I have also retubed and biased this amp using JJ KT77 output tubes, and JJ 12AX7s in the preamp, including a gold pin 12AX7 in V1 and a balanced in V4. I run it through the SoCal cab loaded with Eminence Lady Luck drivers.

This amp sounds absolutely beautiful. With very minimal tweaking (mainly eliminating things that were intended to becost savings), this thing just rocks! I play in a rock band, and sometimes we'll bring it on home with some bluesy stuff, but I'm all about strait up modern rock. This thing delivers. The clean channel starts to breakup around 1:00, though this is largely due to the warm bias in the output section; it was closer to 4:00 until breakup as received. The clean channel is nice and fat, and sounds beautiful for anything you can think of, including a nice ballsy blues tone when aggravated by my marshall bluesbreaker overdrive. (English version)

The drive channel is extremely versatile due to the contour control. Since the EQ section is shared, the contour offers an independant shaping of the midrange. Counterclockwise drops the mids and offers a more Boogie-ish tone. Clockwise offers a more traditional EL34 tone with a projected mids; more Marshall-ish. I play with it right around 10:00. The sound is very responsive to volume knob position and pick attack. Again, the Bluesbreaker is used to give a boost for solos.

The amp tends to be rather harsh. I keep the presence knob backed way off, around 8:00. This helps immensely. The reverb is also rather dark sounding, and i do find it useful in certain settings, but it isn't the best sounding reverb i've used.

The independant EQ mode sounds lifeless and gives an extreme drop in vlume. I never use it. The half power mode is not that different in volume; i use it in class a mode for recording and for getting an earlier breakup on the clean channel for some blues.

I have gigged without backup for over a year, with no problems. I've never had a problem. It is very sturdily constructed.

I dealt with Gibson briefly to request a schematic so that i could add the aforementioned FX loop. They were quick in response and helpful.

I've been playing for 10 years now, and this is my first 4X12. It is very well priced, and sounds loads better than most amps i've played costing up to 3 times as much. If it were lost, another one would be purchased immediately.

I play both an american standard strat with a dimarzio humbucher in the bridge and a 57 reissue les paul. The amp sounds amazing with both. If you would like to hear the thing in action, you can have a listen at myspace<dot>com slash theoneandonlycounterpoint.

I actually like the simplicity of the front panel: volumes for each channel, EQ (shared), channel 2 contour, reverb etc. It has dual speaker outs for 3 different ohms (4,8,16)which is fantastic. Once of the sweet things about this head is the 25/50w switch. Another review stated that it wasn't very loud, but I disagree. Plug it in to your favorite cab, and you could easily match the drums in practice in the 25watt mode. Wish it had come with a footswitch though, no big deal though, they kept the price nice and low.

Lets start with the clean channel. It breaks up fairly fast, which is convenient for my style, may not be for others. Actually has sort of a bluesy feel sometimes, and ALWAYS warm. The but EQ in it's independent mode does some amazing things. I love this clean channel.

Okay, channel 2, the dirty dirty business. It's fairly muddy sometimes, definitely no good for an old school lead guitarist. I can tell what Epiphone was going for, and they really did a good job. This amp is very modern, looks/feel/sound and all. If you play modern rock of any sorts, you'll love it. Heavy power chords, or lower single notes sound fat. Higher notes shimmer with some delay.

The only thing some people might hate is the reverb. It's no good if you ask me, but I never planned on using it. It sounds so separate from what you are playing, like it's a different track layered on top of the notes. I personally think reverb should never be built in anyways.

Overall it's really LOUD, it's the same volume as my old 100W Marshall solid state head.

I play through it with a '72 Telecaster reissue. Best match ever! Not sure what this head sounds like with single coils though. Might be interesting.

I have had it for a few months, no issues so far. Looks to be built very solidly. I did swap the front and back grills though, didn't want people to judge it by the Epiphone logo! But seriously it's rugged. Epiphone has made some solid amps recently. I've had the 5watt Valve JR for a while now and it's been the best bedroom amp ever. You can count on Epi's tube line.

Never had to.

I know you are going to read a lot of reviews about how the So Cal lacks features or the tone is muddy and blah blah blah. But remember that you will never find a brand new all tube amp for this price. The little valve amps Epi came out with while ago are already renowned for their tone and uniqueness. The So Cal has A LOT of character. Get one of these and hold on to them, might be hard to find one day.

50 Watt tube amp, El34 tubes, multiple speaker outputs with various ohms settings, two channels (clean and distortion). Tone controls on clean channel only, distortion channel has variable contour knob. One reverb and presence control for both channels. Has two modes for tone controls. Runs in 50 watt or 25 watt (Pentode or Triode).

Clean channel is nice, lacks bass (typical of El34 tubes). Clean channel seems to break up early. Lots of reverb but if to much reverb is dialed in it's annoying when switching to distortion channel. Distortion is smooth, not spikey and not modern triple rectofier type, it's more old school style, it can be quite musical(it can be thin or fatter using contour control). However contour control is pretty bad and does not allow for vary desirable choices. Distortion channels falters when playing leads as it's not hot enough and you have to use a distortion stomp box to add boost to get leads to sing and sustain otherwise notes tend to drop off and die to early. The tone controls can be switched into different modes. Independent mode is tighter than interactive. Interacvtive sounds looser more like a classic style tube amp. The amp is also louder when using interactive.
For 50 watts it is not very loud. This is an Class A/B type amp but seems to have more of a Class A sound. The distortion can be very creamy and quite nice tonality wise but fails in comparison in output with the Epiphone Blues Custom. The Blues custom overdrive seems hotter and it has a MID range control that works much better than the S0-Cal 50's contour knob. Epiphone should have just made a version of the Blues Custom with El34 tubes, it would have performed better than the S0-Cal 50.

Not sure

Never used them

I owned both the S0-Cal 50 and the Blues Custom and found the Blues Custom the better amp in the distortion depatrment and the S0-cal 50 better in the clean (more clean head room). The So-Cal's distortion is lacking in drive and sustain, tone is nice. Over all power out put is low.