Industrial Amps Blues 60

Ok, here is a story about my experience with a little known amp that made me rethink what high-gain boutique amplification could do.

What caught my eye about this amp at first was the white tolex and glass display of tubes (you'll get it in a minute). This particular amp I tried out was a half-stack. It is a head and matching cab in white tolex. The head has a glass on the front with Industrials Amps laser-etched into it. Behind the glass you can cleary see the two 6L6 power tubes, a 5Y3 rectifier tube, and a row of five preamp tubes, as well as the chromed-out Mercury Magnetics transformers.

As far as features go, this amp has two non-switchable channels. The clean channel has controls for Level, Treble, Mid, and Bass. There is also a reverb control on the back, but it only works on this clean channel. I was checking this amp out in a store so I was not able to check what kind of headroom this amp has.

Now onto the heavy channel. There are controls for Gain, Treble, Mid, Bass, Prescence, and Master volume.

Check out http://www.industrialamps.com/index.htm for more info.

The clean channel is nice, warm, and open, with lots of dynamics. With proper tweaking of the EQ settings, you can produce tight compressed sounds or more open, loose sounds, and anything in between.

The heavy channel is what this thing was made for. With the gain knob anywhere in the first third of its sweep, there is a mild, smouldering crunch that befits the name of this amp. Lots of dynamics here.

I will give this amp a 9 because it is one of the best amps I have ever played.

Turn the gain up about halfway and you get a good overdriven sound, like a Marshall JMP or JCM800 (but without the Marshall punch and girth). As you turn the gain up, you get more smoothly saturated tones reminiscent of a Soldano's crunch channel.

With the gain dimed, this amp really shines, where it becomes a soloists paradise. This amp has sustain, sustain, and more sustain. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it has sustain too. Catch my drift? It also has a lot of dynamics, which gets rid of the over-compressed feel of many other high-gain amps.

One feature of interest is how it emphasizes notes in the upper registers of the guitar. It makes very high notes lush and fat instead of thin and weak. Combine this with the sustain I mentioned (as well as the dynamics), and you get a very good head for a solo voice.

Using a late 80s Fender Strat with EMG pickups and a Floyd Rose I was able to pull off very convincing solos from David Gilmour. If you like slow solos with sustain and feeling, this is the amp for you.

This amp is built using premium military-grade components and hand-wiring on glass turret board construction. I think that speaks for itself.

Never dealt with them, but I'm sure they're great.

Overall, I was very impressed with this amp, although the head alone costs more than a car. One can be purchased factory direct for only $1750, which is a steal for an amp of this caliber. Go to http://www.industrialamps.com/index.htm for more info.