Impact 60 Watt Head

Don't know much about this amp save what I found on google.

Features are just two channels with treble, bass and volume. Switchable impedance (8 and 16 close enough), and 2 speaker outs at the back.

It's a Loud Loud beast though it's remarkable clean for an old valve beast right up to 75% on the volume - the treble and bass channels seem to serves as gain boost, which gives great control

Play a standard strat through this, and have been pushing it through the 2x12 Celestion Vintage 30 box that's part of my Ashdown PM60.

It has the original Mullard (I think) EL34 valves in it (transfers well worn though)

The sound is remarkable - real touch of Early Green era Fleetwood Mac with a bit of crunch, and a real rich Quo sound when cranked.

With Treble and Bass set at 0, the volume can be cranked for a glorious warm and deep clean sound, tweaking these up a bit gives a roar at either end. The Bass rarely goes over halfway though, or the sound loses all definition.

Built like a tank - a wee earth hum on the first channel

A great amp, with a great classic sound. Love it to bits!!!

This amp is beautiful. Military build quality ,two channels,and a world-class sound. That's pretty high on my list of features!

Ok,let me put something straight: some of the reviews here,are strange. One guy says that this amp is 'identical' to the Sound City 50 Plus.
Excuse me? The Impact is less noisy than the Sound City,and also,it sounds like a class AB amp to me,like a Marshall.
The Sound City is a class A tube amp. It has a warmer tone,while the Impact has a meaner,tougher sound,like a Marshall.

The most ridicolous review I have read,is from a guy who wrote below that the Impact sounds like a transistor amp.
Gimme a break,you are out of your mind!!!!! Your Impact must not be working well,my Impact gives me a very harmonic,ultra-smooth,non-harsh,mean,sweet,killer overdrive.

I own many amps: a 2204, a Vox AC50,a Fender Bassman. The Impact is now my favourite amp,it far exceeded all my expectations and there's no way I am going to sell it!!!
I also love it's look,reminds me of things 60's !

But seriously,you'll get the best tone you can think of,with these fantastic amps. If you can find one!
My vote is a 11 out of 10 ! And I am pretty picky about amps and guitar tone!

fantastic build quality,from an era where it was more common. Now this is not common anymore

Mine is an "Impact by Status".Dead mint with the original mullards(EL34) In the early 70's Dallas Arbiter bought impact.As one reviewer mentions...Sound City! Thats because it is a Sound City 50+ in an Impact cab. Indentical in every way...same chassis too. Amp features two channels with high and low inputs for each. EQ is active and the higher you turn each knob the more gain.Can croos patch the two channels to blend. Sensitivity swicth just like the 50+.
Simple but effective!

Sound...well everyone gives it a 10 but one unhappy dude...the dude must have had one in need of service because the way he descibes the amp does not make sense. These are great tone machines that lean more the direction of Hiwatt with a voice of thier own. They are not high gain and stay clean until you crank it! Great power tube saturation!Sweat singing sound fron SRV blues to Black Crows Rock grind!Classic brit Amp will plenty of balls!
The only thing different between this and my SC 50+ is for some reason the Impact does not have the hum issue that the SC has...it may be that the grounding was changed...have not looked yet.
For more reviews...se Sound City 50+...it is exactly the same amp.

Great build on these things! Solid and all PTP wiring.I have owned a few SC amps and they will out last me!

N/A....learn to work on them yourself if need!

I am an amp nut and have owned most of the good ones over the years. Old school stuff works best for me and this one is just that! Grat amp and is a keeper for sure!

This Amp was made in the early 1970's and is very much of it's time:
Hand wired, heavy duty transformers, solid construction, 2 channels with Vol/Treble/Bass on each. No frills but great sounds

It seems to be very sensitive to which guitar I use and not all guitar pickups seem to work well with it but with a Gibson style twin humbucker guitar it delivers the goods. Big glassy 70's style distortion sound from around 50% on the treble channel. The bass channel is good for bass but a bit to big and bassy for guitar. It's similar to a SOund City and this is not surprising as the designs are not a million miles apart

My son brought this home from school. Someone had donated some old electronic kit to the school Young Engineers Club and he volunteered to give it a good home. It was broken and some valves were missing. We got it fixed by a very good repairer - John Chambers (Chambonino) in Nottingham England. The fault was probably down to it being powered up with no speaker attached - no fault of the amp. It has clearly had a tough life and the case is battered but it will last another 30 years with the occasional service. My son will still be playing this when he is my age.....

Long Gone - Dallas Arbiter have probably not supported these amps since the late 70's

Chambonino repaired it very well and even found and rectified a defect in the original build!

Not a versatile multi-channel monster but what it does it does superbly. Ideal for 70's hard rock - e.g. Led Zep, Humble Pie, etc.

Mine's a 60's model that I got on the ebay. (I live in Denmark) Controls are as described elsewhere. It's a 60 watt all-?valve amp so it's pretty loud. the controls and layout are all I need in an amp and are remarkably versatile.

I play it through some mid-60's Marshall P.A cabinets and it sounds fantastic. I had a mint 1965 JTM45 that I sold because I preferred the Impact. It's a classic British rock sound when played loud and it sounds fantastic clean too.

I just have mine in my home studio but I would definitely play live with it as it seems very solidly built.

company disappeared many moons ago

I've been playing since Elvis died and have a shameful amount of equipment. I would buy another Impact for sure if this one died or got nicked. I do understand the vintage equipment fetishism thing but there is still fantastic stuff out there for peanuts if you don't mind what the label says.

This amp is a 60's model it has all the sounds for playing 60' and 70's rock music and other styles as well , two channels both with two inputs, just bass/treble and volume on each channel and away you go absolute power and as before plenty of variation of sound the 'old' way( try using the treble bass and your guitar for the sounds) this is plenty powerful and beats most other valve amps in my opinion , if you haven't the power get your output transformer checked as i did on my carlsbro 50 top . The impact has two el 34's and 3 ECC 83's .

I use aa Gibson Les Paul with 2 x humbuckers and a Fender 'big apple' strat with 2 x seymour duncans, I play mainly Free / the Who/ Lynard Skynard /Searchers Etc , and this amp really rocks through a 2 x 12 cabinet with Fane 16 Ohm speakers.The amp is quite for a valve amp with the normal background hum there is no crackling on the volume bas and treble knobs and there is all the variety you can imagine in my opinion.the dsound is from glassy cleans to a cutting overdrive at over half volume and channel one is brighter and lower volume than channel two which is darker / meatier and louder in my opinion.I would say there is a beautiful clipping on the amp and no real fuzzy distortion just a good old british cutting overdrive which cuts through evertning and everbody in our band (even thew drummer).

How dependable this amp is I would not like to state as i have only had it for 2 weeks but as it is over 35 years old and still in good nick that to me says it all . I would use this and will use this to gig with , I have a carlsbro 50 Top combo which I love as well and would use it as a backup to the Impact and vice versa.

This company like many other British amp companies have long time gone , it's such a shame and I would recommend budding guitarists to invest in these old Brirt amps and also to buy British valve amps new such as Carlsbro/Marshall and others , cos to me you can't beat it.Due to the disappearance of this company i have to grade it as no opinion.

I hasve been playing for 40 years and I also own a carlsbro 50 Top combo, I would hate to think what iwould do if this amp was stolen, I have had it only 2 weeks but cannot bear to be parted from it , I love the simplicity of this amp and the built 'like a brick outhouse ' approach , the workmanship inside of this amp is amazing, I have nothing to hate about this amp except it's a shame they don't make them anymore, I don't think I can compare this amp to any other as it appears to be in a class of it's own, and for me personally the simple control layout is great and it also ensures the power is so clean and punchy. I chose this amp due to other write ups on this site and after speaking to other Impact owners. If anyone out there wants a value foir money british valve amp get one of these before they start making silly money, I hope that anyone who gets one of these amps in the future is as happy as i am if not then get a valve tech to sort it out quickly Good Luck and good hunting

A vintage 60W valve head, two channels with bass, treble and volume controls for each. The thing is very simple, not exactly versatile in terms of control options. That's okay with me, because usually less knobs = more sound (not in this case though). Features like effects loop, headphone jack and such were probably never featured on any amp in the early 70's, so I won't bother either.

I've bought this thing on EBAY unheard because of two reasons: it was cheap and I've seen those reviews (just scroll down - everything's 10!). I thought to myself - it's vintage, it's tube, it's point-to-point wired, and people say it's sooo damn good!
Now here's what I think: don't try this at home. If you buy an amp, find a chance to hear it.
It's really hard to get a good sound out of Impact. I play mainly LP standard and LP special and it sounds muddy and unfocused on the "dark" channel and simply uninspiring on the "brighter" channel. Yes, I know, you're going to say change the tubes. I did. I've invested in a set of JJ eurotubes which had just a little bit of IMPACT on the sound. The overall feeling remained the same and I'm happy the amp uses standard tubes I could put in my other amps as well.
I usually set my amps clean - on the edge of breakup - and use Colorsound Fuzz or TubeScreamer for crunch. This amp's clean fairly reminds me of a solid state marchall's clean and when overdriven (hell loud!) it sounds just like my homegrown amp I've made out of grandma's tube radio back in the 80's. Hell of a sound if you need whacky lo-fi noise. I tend to play progressive rock and funk so for me it is plain useless.
I can still get some usable clean tunes out of the "bright" channel but really - you don't need such a heavy and big head for that, just buy a cheap solidstate amp and forget it.

It seems to be built with a boutique quality, point-to-point, layout is very clean. Seems durable - if it remains alive after 30+ years I'd say it's reliable. I was wondering if the crappy sound it produces is an original feature or it has been modified by an idiot (I could not believe those guys gave such a great reviews on a bad amp, I thought mine was broken). I took the amp apart and there were a couple of spots where a cap might have been changed, but I'm not sure. They all look old and if any repair was done it was at least 20 years ago so you cant see a difference between original and non-original parts. My amp was definitely very clean but I assume it simply wasn't played - it was probably gathering dust somewhere until the owner decided to get rid of it.

What support?

I assume it was my fault to buy something I've never seen and heard before. I also admit if someone gives it a 10 mark it worth it, so I'm not sure if my particular amp is so bad or is it my particular taste. I just think there's a reason why Impacts have no vintage value. If it costs 100 Euros (or 150 bucks) there's a very small chance it's a cool bargain. Usually it's a piece of junk.
Just take my advice - don't buy it over internet, buy it from a real person after you plugged a real guitar and heard a real sound it makes.
I don't want to say how many years I've been playing and what I'm going to do if it's stolen or lost. I can only thank this amp for making me a bit more experienced.

I couldn't let there be just one review for this classic Brit brand! Here's the review of my 60w head.

Well, as described above, it couldn't be simpler. Two channels, each with just Treble, Bass and Volume. Switchable output between 7.5 and 15 Ohms for connection to a range of cabs. Massive rugged Partridge transormers and choke. Quality hand wiring inside. Two EL34 output valves (the original Brimar ones in this baby!), and three ECC83 pramp tubes. Classic design, with nothing to get in the way of your tone!

I give it a 10 for simple, usable design and military-spec build quality. Loads of knobs and channels are the modern way, and that's not a bad thing, but I often find that most of the bells on whistles on modern amps sound rubbish, or don't work too well. So this amp gets 10 here, given what's on the unit, and how well it all works. I didn't feel like I was lacking anything when I played the amp.

I have Strats, Les Pauls and SGs mainly. This amp is great with both. by easy adjustment you can get vintage twang and crunch for all styles. Country, Beat-boom, early rock-n-roll. It's all here. Channel 1 is brighter, and channel 2 darker. You can patch the two together to mix. Crank the channels and you get that classic blues and rock sound. Everything from Free to AC/DC et al. The amp responds well to the use of quality stomp effects boxes, probably due to its minimal circuitry and full natural tone. I use a range of fuzz and overdrive pedals, and modulation FX such as chorus, in order to play in a diverse covers band. This amp makes me sound like a quality player!

The amp is very versatile, especially given the few controls! I am over the moon with it, and I'm probably gonna sell my Marshall 100w (late 1970s 2203) head, as this just beats it hands down.

Well, I haven't had it long enought to give my point of view, but all signs are good, and built quality is top notch. Built better than a modern boutique amp in many respects. Fingers crossed for the future - suspect a 10 here, as only expecting valve changes, and the odd component during servicing.

Impact aren't about any more, sadly. Status (who owned Impact) are still about, and make Bass guitars mostly.

I love 60s music, and classic blues/rock. I also love funk, indie, the Manchester bands, and a bit of jazz and country. Quite a diverse tonal mix, and this amp copes well with them all. It doesn't seem to lack for anything...I can't think of anything I'd want to add to this amp. Well worth a hundred quid! I'd get another when I find one.

This amp has two channels each with two inputs. Each channel has a volume,treble and bass control. It is all valve and although it may not sound versatile it's amazing how many sounds you can get out this thing! I play classic rock/blues, it is perfect for it!

I am using a Hondo two copy Les Paul (with dimarzio's) and a fender strat and the amp works well with both of them. You can get this amp to do the trebly twangy thing or the low bassy sound IT IS SO VESATILE!

Only had it a while but it is 30 years old and still going on strong!

The company died years ago!

I found this amp after digging about in my dads loft. I hasn't been used in 20 years. But it worked first time! no hum,no popping just a great sound! these amps have pratically no vintage value, i don't know why? they sound great!
you can find a picture of it on my site at: http://members.xoom.com/GuitarGear/Intro.htm