Product: Kingsley Deluxe 50 112 Combo
Price Paid: N/A
Submitted
07/21/2004
at
03:31am
by
Frank
Features
:
9
I recieved the amp in January 2004 and it has basically the same features as found in the excellent description of the Deluxe 50 head. Mine is a 1x12 combo that came with a Celestion Vintage 30 speaker. It is very heavy! As I was basically looking for a clean amp, I would give the features a nine. It does a lot of great clean and in-between sounds and also some distortion sounds that for me are more of a bonus. So for someone looking for an amp with both clean and distorted sounds, the rating would probably be lower.
Sound Quality
:
10
As I said, I was looking for an amp that does clean very well and was convinced by the excellent and acurate clips on the website that this might be what I was looking for. I play Jazz, Blues and some country and I have several SF Fender amps that I use in conjunction with a '68 Tele, a Warmoth Strat with Kinman pickups and a Custom made Archtop.
I love the Fender sound, but sometimes I find it a little bit too scooped in the mids. The sound I was looking for is the clean or almost clean, singing Dumble sound of Larry Carlton and I have to say that the Kingsley comes quite close. When I compared it to my Fenders it first sounded a little congested to my ears until I realized that it just produced the mids the Fenders were lacking. The Fenders sounded realy thin afterwards. On stage, it cuts like a knife, without being piercing.
I mainly use Input 1 that does not have a master volume and crank it. Input 2, which adds a mastervolume, is great to achieve more marshall-like distortion, but you have to decide which input you use because it has to be dialed in differently.
A real good option is the footswitchable boost that can be rgulated by a poti on the footswitch. It sounds great to ad just a little "hair" at lower volumes and to increase the distorion at higher levels without changing the character of the amp. It works much better than my Klon!
Another extremely helpful option is the slave out. When I conect the slave out of the Kingsley with the Input of my Fender Super Reverb, I get the most fullrange sound imaginable. This combination sounds incredible.
The only thing I changed so far was the speaker. The Vintage 30 sounded good with the overdriven sound but it lacked the sparkle for the cleans. Currently, I am using it with an old JBL D120F, that sounds very detailed at lower volumes but has the tendency to fart out at higher volumes and is quite raspy when used with distortion (amp or pedal). I need to look for a compromise between those two extremes and Simon suggested a Classic Lead 80, which I will try next.
Reliability
:
9
No problems so far, exept for some resonance in the cabinet that is not audible on stage and on tape. It might be a result of some damage in shipping, as the amp was shipped from Canada to Germany. A tech that was looking for the reason of this resonance was commenting very favourably on the build and component quality. He said it was the best workmanship he has ever seen.
Customer Support
:
10
Excellent. Simon and Christine Jarrett were extremely quick and helpful with answers when I purchased the amp and also afterwards, when I asked some questions. Unfortunately though, as I live in Germany and Simon in Canada, servicing by him will be impossible.
Overall Rating
:
10
I have been playing for almost thirty years and earn my living as a musician. I was looking for a reliable amp that does clean souns other than Fender sounds really well and I got what I was looking for. The only thing I would change is that I would take the top version next time, for three reasons:
1.It is so heavy
2.because of the resonance
3.because I found that the speaker is realls critical.
Otherwise: Excellent amp for my style of music.
