Kendrick Black Gold 15 210 Combo

Amp was made 05/03
This amp is a tone monster. Solid pine construction, oxblood tolex absolutely gorgeous.
Has 4 channels two normal and two lead which can be jumpered to create a multitude of diffent sounds. I use KT88 and EL34 output tubes. The preamps are NOS 12AX7's. Amp is used primarily for home use. Amp is a class A with one output transformer per channel, therefore to get the full effect of the stereo you need to JUMPER the inputs. Amp doesn't come with a tube rectifier, but it really doesn't need one since the it's cathode biased. A really cool feature is the automatic biasing no matter what output tube you use.

The sound for a 15 watt class A which is actually 30 when you jump the inputs, has incredible versatility. You can go from Marshall to Fender to Vox to Texas crunch by just adjusting the volume on your guitar. I play blues and classic rock and this amp more than delivers.
The 3 knob reverb is the best I've ever heard, and when you're after a little distortion, the attack can get as dirty as a vintage Marshall. Clean is real clean, if you like to play a little jazz. The amp has it all! Now, if you only know how to play 5 chords and you want to sound like some grunge band, then this amp is not for you. Get some 200 watt transitor amp for a lot cheaper.

Built like a tank. YOu take care of it, and it will last longer than you will. I wasn't getting reverb for a bit. Emailed Gerald, he got right back to me, and told me to replace the cable and bingo it was fixed. Cost me 4 bucks!

Mr. Weber is one class dude. He will bend over backwards for you. I have never had one problem, but I've asked him about his other amps and I know people who have had custom stuff done by Kendrick and they are the best. I hear people bitchin about having to pay shipping charges to and fro. For what you get back after the repair the shipping is nothing price-wise. For the price, the warranty could be a little longer than a year.

I've been playing off and on for about 30 years. I've had many amps and liked them all. Marshall, Fender, Vox, Peavey...they are all really good amps. The Kendrick, however, is in a class by itself. Yea it aint cheap, but neither is a Hummer. These amps are in a class by themselves. They are not for everybody. If you're just starting out, a Kendrick is not for you. You probably won't appreciate the subtleties. If I lost this amp or it was stolen, I would go out and by a Kendrick Signature Amp!

Don't know what year it was made.
Two discrete channels. (Stereo).
Both Class A.
Two power tubes EL-34 and 5881.
Very loud 15 watts.
Non master volume/gain.
Very nice reverb.

My main guitar is a Guild Blues 90 with P-90 pickups.
This is much like a Les Paul.
At low/mid volumes it has a good clean.
Up to 4 on the volume.
After that it starts to distort.
As volume increases distortion increases.
I find it to be a very versatile amp.
But you have to work with the controls to get the sound you like.
I put the lead volume on 10 and controled volume and gain with the guitar.
When cranked the distortion will rival anything out there.
No hiss or hum.

Seems to be well built.

Don't know

I needed an amp mostly for rehearsals and small/medium gigs.
My Marshall half stack it just too hard to get up and down stairs.
I had no intention on buying a boutique amp but I liked the idea of being able to switch power tubes and I wanted 15-20 watts.
This is by no means your tiny typical 15 watt amp.
It weighs over 50 pounds and is close in size to a Twin Reverb.
I have only gigged with it once and there is a vast tone variation.
Clean is excellent.
Distortion can be brutal!
I played jazz, blues and rock through it.
It is something that will take time to get optimal tones from.
For the price I can't beat it.
I'm looking forward to gigging with it again next week.
I have been playing for 40 years.

Just the basics here. This amp is designed to be a true vintage tone amplifier. Bells and whistles that take additionally circuitry only detract from tone so there are no bells or whistles here just ton of tone. This amp has four inputs. 2 - lead channel and 2 - clean channel, one tone knob that basically works as a treble cut and the most lush, true tube driven three knob reverb you have ever heard. There is NO better reverb than Kendrick?s!! There is 1 preamp tube, 3 reverb tubes and 2 power tubes. WILL TAKE ANY OCTAL BASED POWER TUBE WITHOUT REBIASING!!! Ya gotta love that!! This provides an infinite array of tonal variations with power tube changes. The power amp is actually 2 single ended, class A power amps generating 15 or so watts in stereo through 2 - 10?s. So you don't even have to use matched pairs in the power section. I use a Phillips NOS 7581 and a Genelex KT66 in the power section and Amperex ECC83's in the preamp and reverb drivers. For my taste this combo is just killer. My particular amplifier came with 2 Kendrick Black frame 10's. I love the sound. But I am considering trying either a set of Fane's or Weber's just to see if it can get any better!! Oh yeah, it also has a line out that can be used for direct to the board recording or for slaving a big amp if you want to blow away your buddies 100 watt stack!

Ok, here we go. I have seen various very good amps getting awful reviews from people who didn?t know what they were looking for when they bought their amp. This amp is about vintage tone! Killer vintage overdrive and killer hot rod Fender tones. So if you are looking Korn or Mega Death buy a cheap production amp. I have a Kendrick Black Gold 50 that I use when I want to blow windows out across town. I use the BG15 to nail that tone at a studio, home or practice volume and it does it amazingly well. Here is the beautiful thing. If you want sweet, chimmey Fender clean tones at low volume this amp does it very well. If you want to crank it to compete with your drummer then don?t expect it to stay ?black face? clean. It is only 15 watts!! If you want that cranked Fender tone, that grows hair when you dig into it at a volume you can use, it?s all here. That?s the clean channel. The overdrive channel is really nice also. The tone of this channel is very vintage Marshall feeling. Incredibly responsive and touch sensitive. As are all Kendrick?s. Play light or back off the guitar volume and it?s chucky almost clean. Crank the guitar or just dig in with the pick a little and hang on. This little baby turns on. Sounds like your playing a flute through your amp!! That is all about straight into the amp tones. Now if you think this is a one trick pony, then try a few of your favorite high-end pedals. This amp responds so well to pedals and is so transparent that it will knock your socks off!! I use various pedals from time to time. Everything from a Soldano Supercharger GTO, Kendrick Buffalo Phuz, a Vintage Marshall Guvnor to a Tech 21 GT-2 or original just to name a few. With the right pedal I defy anyone to tell me there is a sound I can?t get. And best of all, they all still have the focus, dynamic responsiveness, harmonic complexity and clarity of the Kendrick!! One trick pony just became Swiss army knife of tone!!

Built like a tank. And if you have a problem Gerald and the boys at Kendrick will go out of their way to make you happy. Great bunch of people!

Just give them a call. You can't find a more helpful and friendly bunch of people. It feels good to be part of the Kendrick family.

I have been playing longer than most current pop artist have been alive. I have a very eclectic taste in music. But most of all I have an insatiable appetite for tone. I love the Kendrick tone and feel. They are more dynamic, touch sensitive and tonally complex than just about any amp out there. This amp sounds like a 10 foot stack cranked balls to the wall?. BUT at a volume that is perfect for home, practice or studio recording applications. It will provide true, smooth power amp overdrive ( not buzzy transistor like preamp fuzz ) with all the dynamics of a true vintage tube amp without the bleeding ears. I am not saying this is the best amp on the planet. Just the best 15 watt vintage tube combo amp on the planet!

The amp was made to order in spring of 2001 and is a dual channel combo amp with separate output transformers, 2x10 Fane ceramic spkrs.Cab is made of antique pine and covered in black Tolex. Came stock with a GT 6V6 and GT EL34 in the power section. The tubes are self-biasing so I can run any combination of power tubes I want to get a truly personalized tone and split the signal to an outboard cab for extra beef.Rated at 15 watts with both Clean and Lead channels operating, 3-knob reverb, line out. I run a Y cord from my guitar into both channel High inputs, then run a line out to a vintage EH PolyChorus into a 73 silverface Twin with 2x12 JBLs. Thsi gives me a nice blend of hair and sparkle and would be more than enough to fill any club. Sometimes I put my vintage Tube Screamer before the Kendrick for a real snarly tone. I rate the amp a 9 only because it is aimed at players wanting a specific type of sound. This amp is not intended to be the one-amp-fits-all kind of a deal. On it's own terms, I rate it an '11'. BEST combo amp reverb evr!

I have a '66 Tele and a 2000 Voodoo Strat (reverse neck and pickups)and I can absolutely nail SRV, early Trower, and Hendrix tones. I need to get a Kendrick switch box so I can get straight into my Twin when I want to go for ultra-clean rhythm stuff. The BG 15 yields very round, warm and rich overtones and I like the way I can clean up the sound by rolling the guitar volume down to 7 and then come in blazing by rolling up to ten. The amp is VERY responsive to picking techniques (I usually use mostly my fingers, no pick) and tones are well defined across the frequency spectrum. It is way cool to get such raging tone at living room volumes!The amp came stock with Jensen blue spkrs but I got a free upgrade to the Fane spkrs which put the Jensens to shame: much creamier, tighter overtones, and better definition btw different guitar settings.

I hadn't planned to play out with this amp but I am confident that it can take the stress and also completely confident that the fine folks at Kendrick will always take care of me if a problem arises. I can always plug straight into my Twin if I need to.

I am in a customer care-type job myself so I have high standards in this area. I have NEVER received better customer care and devoted attention from anyone, anywhere, anytime.When the amp arrived it soon developed an after-buzz so I took it to a guitar show where Gerald Weber and Jim Estep from Kendrick had a booth and they diagnosed it immediately as a fried capacitor (as I recall, I may be mistaken) and they took the amp back to Texas and took it all the way through button-up and burn-in, PLUS threw in upgrades and freebies worth several hundred dollars, paid for the return shipping and continue to follow up with pohone calls to make sure I am happy. Who else does THAT? I was patient and fair with them and I was repaid a hundred-fold. I find in my own job that people who have a chip on their shoulder and expect to have a bad experience usually have their expectations fulfilled. See other Harmony Central BG 15 review!

I have been playing 35 years, though I no longer play professionally. I am a Fender kind of a guy, though I have owned Gibson and Guild guitars. I love and can play most kinds of music and wanted to move away from the cleaner sounds of my Tele/Twin rig and into the Class A realm in search of the guitar hero tone. I tend to overplay when I can't get good sustain, so I am relearning the electric guitar to some extent. How many amps make you want to do that? I took a chance ordering an amp by phone without playing it first but Kendrick has a solid reputation and this has worked out super for me in every way. $1795 is not cheap but it is nowhere near the high end for amps in this power rating from other boutique shops. I bought the Black Gold 15, a new Strat, a new P-bass, and a ton of accessories for far less than I would have spent for just the amp alone with other makers.
If you buy one, get the Fane spkr upgrade and don't even mess with the Jensens. FOLLOW the manual's directions in using the amp and you won't have any self-inflicted wounds to whine about. Also, I had a chance at the guitar show to play the Kendrick guitars and they sound and play like a dream.

Fifteen watt(allegedly)all tube amp with solid state rectifier. One tone, three knob reverb, 4 inputs (clean and lead, each with a high gain and low gain input). It is called "stereo" but does not produce a stereo output, i.e., it has a 10" speaker for each output tube. It comes stock with a 6L6 and 6V6. Changing to EL34, KT88, 5881,6CA7 or 6550 really made very little difference in the sound. I play blues and the amp was either too brittle or too dirty: there was no happy medium. Additionally, I used it to gig in small clubs and it could hardly keep up with the drummer. It is heavier than my Deluxe Reverb which gives me much more sound for the weight. The interactive volume controls decreased the muddiness of the sound, but with a decrease in output. In retrospect, a very expensive 15 watt amp which is sonically not worth it.

I used single coils (Grosh with Virtual Vintage Dimarzios), Grosh with P-90s, and an Explorer with Alnico humbuckers. The humbuckers pushed the amp more with associated mud. I have an old 50s amp that sounded similar to this one. I could not get anything but a brittle sound on the "clean" channel before the overdrive cut in at "5". Backing off the tone resulted in less brittleness at the expense of output and sound. The amp hummed like a bumble bee hive when I first got it. I was told by Kendrick that it was supposed to hum some. This was particularly annoying, especially through the line out. The line out is a very hot high impedence signal which is very trebly. I tried to daisy chain this amp to another so I could keep up with the drummer and had to cut the treble on the slave amp almost off. It was recommended in the owners manual to set the clean channel to three quarters and the lead channel to full and use a channel switching box to have two channels. This setup resulted in a very muddy and noisy output. Not very usable for me.

The amp ate a Genelec KT88 and GE6550 after less than 50 hours of use.
I talked to Gerald Weber who said the only time that had happened in the past, someone had disconnected a speaker while using the amp. Unfortunately, I had both speakers connected and the output transformer fried my tubes, anyway. The amp hummed way too much out of the box. When I talked to Gerald Weber when the amp blew up, he said that he would upgrade the power supply for free because it hummed too much. I found this interesting since I had been told that it was "normal" when I had previously notified Kendrick and expressed my displeasure with the humming. I had to remove the chassis from my amp (luckily I was mechanically inclined enough to do this) and send the amp back to Kendrick. I was told that it would be turned around immediately. As for the tubes that the amp ate-Too bad. Kendrick didn't warranty my tubes even though the amp ate them due to no fault of my own. I did get some satisfaction though(see Customer Support). For a $1300 amp, I was not too impressed with the reliability.

Very friendly on the phone when trying to sell the amp. Don't believe the reviews in Guitar Player or all the advertising hype. Try out any amp with your guitar before you EVER buy it, especially when spending this much money, and see for yourself. One person's idea of the ultimate tone may be another person's flatulence.

After I sent the amp in for repair, I was told it would be turned around immediately by Gerald Weber. A week and a half later, I called to check the progress. The answer was, "we haven't gotten to it yet." That was not such a big deal, but "writing a check that your butt can't cash", i.e., setting up an expectation that I would get it back quickly and not following through, was not too cool. I received a call a few days later that the amp was coming back and that I would pay shipping. This irritated me very much. I wrote an e-mail the day I got the amp back and asked for tube replacements and for Kendrick to cover the shipping for the warranty repair. They DID send me a used Fender labeled 6550A and a Svetlana 6550C. Not quite a Genelec KT88 or a GE 6550A, but some effort was expended to provide customer service. They also refunded my shipping cost back. Note that I had already payed shipping costs twice-from Kendrick originally and back to Kendrick after the tube digestion incident. Also, two preamp tubes (Sovtek 12AX7LPS) went bad soon after I received the repaired amp back and Gerald Weber shipped me two new ones within two weeks. I was lucky to have had two extras laying around. The warranty is for one year and is based on the purchase date of the amp. The amp didn't even have a serial number on it.

I have been playing almost 40 years. I sold a guitar to get this amp since I don't have a lot of spare cash. I own Grosh and Fender guitars, and Fender amps (from the 50s, 60s, and 90s). I would not buy any other products from Kendrick. The price is steep and my experience has been less than ideal. What didn't I like about this amp? I did not like the sound, weight/watt of the combo (I don't mind hauling a heavy 50 watt amp, but a heavy 15 watt amp?), the line out is noisy, trebly, hot and high impedence, the interactive volume controls or the two single ended amp design don't do it for tone, the amp blew up soon after receiving it and ate my expensive tubes, I had to bitch to get replacement output tubes (used and russian), to name a few things. I can't think of much I liked about it compared to my other amps. I chose this amp because of the versatility of using different tubes (which made no noticeable difference in reality), the rating in Guitar Player (do they ever give anything a bad rating?), and my conversation with Kendrick prior to the purchase. I wish the amp had more output, better and versatile tone (no brittle clean channel), better reliability, and a lower price for what you get. The best part of this story is that I traded the amp for one that I really like that has great tone. I took quite a loss. If you don't like it, expect 70% of list price (plus $45 for shipping) if you are lucky on a resale or trade. Other reviewers of Kendrick amps either love them or hate them from what I've read. Buyer beware!