Product: Garnet R90-4 Ram Head
Price Paid: 125 (CDN) used
Submitted
03/03/2001
at
09:41pm
by
A Drake
Email: jettek at quintenet<dot>com
Features
:
5
35 Watt Tube head with 2 6V6GT, 12ax7A, 12au7 tubes.4 channels with independent gain, volume, bass, treble and power switch. There is a jumper wire on the rear of the chassis to select 4 or 8 ohm operation. I'm not sure of the exact year of the amp but I believe it to be early to mid 70's. I use the amp mainly for practice but it has enough stink to run with the dogs during a free for all jam.
Sound Quality
:
8
I use a Les Paul and pipe the amp into a Marshall JCM800 1960A Cab. The amp sounds nice and warm with the bass up, the treble is very good when turned up, never icepick. I wouldn't say the bottom end is super tight, but it is still decent. Turning the gain up gives a nice raunchy overdrive, at low volumes there is little sustain, but as you bring the volume up to band levels the tubes bloom into a wonderful creamy overdrive with a nice bite and good sustain. Clean sounds are decent and can go from near transparent to twangy to bluesy. Since I don't have the option to run loud at home I dial up a nice clean tone and pipe in a Line 6 MD-4 distortion modeller, the amp can give you some decent headroom for effect pedals sounds beautiful. The amp gets a little hissy at high volumes, but hum is low. Overall the amp has very good tone and excellent dynamics with a very good feel, you can play clean to raunchy just by adjusting your pick attack. For a great vintage tone I give it a well deserved 8
Reliability
:
10
The amp is handwired point to point and looks very easy to repair in case of breakdown, the power tubes appear to be cathode biased and therefor the circuit biases itself, which makes tube changes easier. The head cabinet seems to be built tough enough and the steel chassis and hand wiring job have stood the test of time. I keep spare tubes handy just in case, but I haven't needed them yet.
Customer Support
:
No Opinion
Garnet has been out of business for a while, information is hard to find about this amp, and good luck finding a set of schematics.
Overall Rating
:
8
For the cash I paid, this amp owes me nothing, it gives vintage raunch at a salvation army price. If it were stolen I doubt I could ever find another one, this puppy seems to be as rare as a snowball in hell.
