Koch Multitone

Not sure what year it was made but mine is the 100 watt combo version w/Koch Jensen speakers rated at 90 watts each. 3 ch...clean, crunch, and high gain. Clean and crunch share a pre EQ while the gain channel has post EQ and presence controls. A pretty decent spring reverb tank on board as well as a rythm/solo volume which is absolutely a wonderful idea that I also enjoyed with my Mesa. My only thought for Koch is to give the crunch channel its own gain. Dual gain feature is nice idea but limits one channel or the other. Only reason for the 8 really. And holy crap is this thing heavy!! Cabinet is very well constructed of I think 11-ply birch. A very clean looking amp!!

I use an Agile AL3000 Prestige and an Agile DC both with humbuckers. Yeah I know what you're thinkin...cheapass guitars with cheap pickups. Actually for the money, these things outperformed the Epi's I use to have including a flametop custom which I loved. If you don't atleast check out these guitars, you are missin out!! I run the combo through a Carvin 4X12 cab with Eminence V12's. Let me tell ya, the sound is so incredibly thick and warm on the gain channel and the clean channel is the best I have ever played. This amp has a very 3D sound allowing every nuance of your guitars tone to shine through. Was a Mesa man but their clean sucked ass compared to these. EQ adjustment is no problem with plenty of room to sculpt your tone which this amp has in droves!!! I run 2 EL34's and 2 6L6's and had the amp rebiased with no problems!! I play mostly nu-metal to rock and this handles both with more definition than my dual Recto. The only thing I might add to my set up is a Boss GE-7 to scoop just a hair more mids and use it to boost my signal from my guitars. Other than that-KILLER!!!

I haven't had it long but I have a good tech that rebiases it for me. The only problem I have is than when the gain channel is on, I get a slight whistle somewhere if the reverb is on and the rythme switch is off and vice versa. If both are on or off it's fine. If anyone else has had this problem please email and let me know at drumtek89@hotmail.com. Other than that it has worked flawlessly

I've been playin since I was 8 and have had numerous amps with my last one being a Mesa Boogie Dual rectifier. I just happened to stumble upon this on ebay and decided to buy it and I have to say it was definitely the best buy I have made in years!! Without a doubt, the best clean I have ever played and the warmest, thickest distortion that will make you cream!!! Is it worth the retail cost? If I would have had enough money to buy it retail I would have!! If stolen, that person better watch their back!!! Like I said, another gain on channel 2 would be nice but I don't really use that channel alot anyway. Maybe I would if it had one. If you're lucky enough to find one for what I payed for it, don't hesitate....BUY IT!!!

multitone 100 head. im not sure how old it is. serial no. 0357. i love this amp. i traded a mesa single rectifier and marshall jcm 600 combo even up for it. best decision of my life. i needed an amp that had a great clean sound at loud volumes, a great bluesy overdrive, and straight up metal. it does all of these better than any bogner, soldano, rivera, cornford, zwengel, marshall, mesa, or any dr z amp ive tried. i play in a jazz combo, a funk rock ragae band, and a speed metal band. i use this amp for all of them. this amp has 3 channels. 1, clean, 2, uses channel 1's eq but adds overdrive, 3, balls out distortion. rolling back the gain to about 7 (goes to 20) gives this amp a great chunky sound.

i play in 3 bands. when i play with the jazz combo i run the amp at 50% power through a custom made 1x12" cabinet. its 3/4" solid ash with a solid oak baffle. its a 1/2 open back with celestion vintage 30 in it. this gives my clean sound a crispness that doesnt come out of my other cabs. in the funk rock ragae band i use a vht 2x12 cabinet with weber ceramic 60 watt speakers. it is a 7/8 closed back. its a very versatile sound. with the metal band i use a marshall 1961a with ev proline 200 watt speakers in it. its a 412 size cab, but 2 holes arent cut. great heavy thick sound. i also put a marshall 1936 cabinet on top of that with vintage 30's in it. i get some awesome breakup from the v30's and the ev's sound soooo tight.

i used to play a fender tone king with 2x12 cabinet for clean, marshall jcm 600 2x12 combo for bluesy sounds, and a mesa single rectifier with mesa 412 cab for heavy sounds. this amp pulls off all these sounds with ease. the clean stays cleaner, the middle of the road overdrive is bigger and more pronounced, and the metal sounds dont over-saturate at all. the mesa was really buzzy, almost thin. this thing rocks.

right away the amp quit working. this was purely because of a biasing problem. the store i got it from replaced the tubes with a different set of ruby tubes. the amp was never biased for these tubes. koch's biasing circuit is very touchy. you can run just about any tube configuration u want. to do this, it needs to be very sensitive. and it is. if its off, its way off. i blew an internal fuse. had my tech bias the amp and i havent had a problem since. this happened the very first day i had it. ive owned this amp for about 3 months now. i play through it about 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. i basically beat the crap out of this thing. it just keeps getting better. it weighs a ton. and its big. one of the biggest heads ive seen. ive played many gigs with the multitone. i wont use anything else. i dont have a backup. just a backup set of tubes and fuses. just in case.

i emailed koch about getting a head cover. they responded that evening. they actually sent me a cover for free because i talked to him on the phone about how happy i am with it. that really made my day.

ive been playing for 13 years. ive gone through line 6 amps, crates, peaveys, bogners, soldanos, marshalls, fenders, mesas, dr z, orange, metamps. ive used just about everything. this koch multitone tops them all. i would absolutly buy another. i am actually. im picking up a multitone combo. just for practice and smaller gigs. only complaints are size and weight. im not a little guy, so its no big deal. try to talk your singer to lug it in for you. ha, ha, ha. i love this amp. it makes me want to play nonstop. ive gotten in lots of trouble with the landlord about loud music late at night. oh well.

2002 Koch Multitone 100 all tube powe/preamp is a truely versitile amp for all genres of music, Jazz, Fusion, Blues, Country, Rock, metal, Nu-Metal etc...
There are 3 channels with a clobal master volumn. Switching is provided by a remote chorded ( 15 ft, 5 switch ) floor control which is included with the amp, or you can use the three way switch on the back panel for basic three channel switching, this switch overided when the foot control is pluged in. Included on the floor control are a switch to control ( on/off ) the built in Accutronics spring reverb and any effects that are in the parrallel effects loop.There are two effects loops one in series and one in parrallel both are tube buffered. No headphone jack as such but a jack for direct to recording console out with speaker 2+12 emulation is provided and works as a headphone jack. Other switchable options are a triode/pentode switch on the back panel used to cut output watts in 1/2 ( 50 watts ) voicing is more traditional in the 1/2 watt setting.
The only feature I wish it had is a built in power soak but koch makes a brillian power soak for a reasonable price.The reason for the power soak inable power tube clipping at lower volumns which is particularily useful in the studio.I'm going to use this amp in the studio and live.On the 1/2 output power setting (50 watts ) it has more than enough power to play small to medium venues, for anything bigger than that select 100% output power ( 100 watts ).
This is a mono amp with relay channel switching it also has 2+4 ohm, 2+8 ohm and 1+16 ohm speaker jacks for extension speakers, included are two Koch/Jenson speakers in an open back constructed enclosure, there is also a speaker dampening switch to allow very little ( or full speaker dampening from the power transformer

This amp is well suited for use with single coils or humbuckers, passive and active pickups, in fact it has two inputs, one for passive and one for active or high output passive pickups.I use a variety of guitars that fall in all four categories and the Multitone does very well with them all. It suits my needs perfectly as i require a very flexible amp and the mutitone delivers in spades.
It can be noisy but no more noisy that any other all tube high end amp, I have and have had other amps for comparison, if there is a poor ground as it is in many cases in residential settings any amp, tube or otherwise will produce noise. in my studio I have installed isolated grounded recepticles for all my gear as this assures a quiet operation.
Channel one and two share a pre preamp circuit EQ but the drive effects channel two only. Channel three has a dedicated post preamp gain EQ and seperate dual gain funtion.
This amp can go from classic clean ( fenderish ) to glass clean ( Roland ), to bellike clean ( Dumble/Fender ) on the ch#1, it is very hard to make this channel distort even at high volumns.
The crunch channel ( ch#2 ) is suited for Voxxy and Matchlesslike barely clipping clean tones ( I must say it does this equally good as any other fine amp ) to moderatly high gain like an early Marshall ( Bluesbreaker ) to more modern Marshalls like the JCM 800. This channel also has a very nice clean tone a little more jangly than CH#1.
CH#3 is the high gain channel and here is where the distortion can get really brutal. This channel goes from a warm clean tone to full on Bogner, Soldano,Mesa Boogie, ENGL, Budda, high gain. Still it lets the guitars voice shine through just like all the channels on this amp.
Noteworthy mention is the dual gain feature from one gain nob. This feature lets you go through a miriad of gain voicings by simply turning the dial.The bass responce and overall voicing is the first to rival Bogners voicing, it is tight and BIG and this is the reason why earlier I mentioned NU-Metal as a possible style it is suited for.
The upper mids are perfect and along the lines of Soldano.
All the tones retain a unique "Koch" quality to them making this a very sonically recognizable amp.
There is not a bad tone from this amp.

As with all gigging amps I would have a backup but this amp is built with the highest attention to quality so you would do fine with it for quite some time I'm sure.
The tubes are a factor in this amp as all tubes expire at some point, I carry a full set of Koch bias matched power amp tubes and a full set of preamp tubes at all times, as I would with any other tube amp/preamp.
This amp is fairly new to me so reliability is still up for critisism but so far it has not broken down.
For the reason above I will leave this rating blank and will give a reliability rating down the road.

I have dealt with koch many times on a purly question/answere and assistance base only through e-mail corrispondance and on this bases I give them a 10 out of 10.
Koch has placed thier customers and thier needs first, you will not get any better support/service.
There is a local dealer and local tek at my disposal if I ever need them.
All new Koch products have a 1 year warrantee and a lifetime of unsurpassed support.
I have not needed a repair but I allready know and have dealt with the local dealer and sevice on other issues and all was excellent.

I have been enjoying the top end of guitar gear for some time now ( 19 years ) and I was so impressed with the Koch Powertone ( see review here at Harmony central ) that I just had to own the Multitone 100 I also plan on purchasing the Koch Load Box ( power attenuater ). I also own Soldano, Budda, Marshall and have owned Fender and Peavy amps.
If it were lost/stolen I would replace it.
I love everything and hate nothing about this amp.
This amp also has the ability to take just about any power amp tube ( comes with 4+EL-34 power amp tubes ) with great ease and no fuss if you purchase Koch bias classed tubes, if not you can still change them out and bias them with the bias pots and included biasing procedure. I would not perform this if I did not feel competant for the task and nor should anyone as Koch mentions in the manual.
There is also a power amp tube cage to protect the user from accidental burn, cudos to Kock for that.Power amp tubes also have spring retainers to keep them firmly seated in thier sockets.
As mentioned before I wish it had a power attenuater built in but no biggie.
This is a handbuilt ( like a fortess ) all tube masterpiece and every aspect of it's design has clearly been painstakenly worked with reaching perfection. I got mine at a super price but I had allready started saving for one and was fully prepared to shell out over $3000 ( Canadian ) for it, so even at full price I would have been happy, this one just came along at the right time so I could not pass it up. Thanks to John Thiel ( Koch Rep ) and Long & McQuade in Calgary Alberta for providing such great service with the purchase of this amp.
You can check out my site ""Guitar From The Green Goo"" for gear reviews and sound samples of my various gear. Coming soon is the Budda Phatman and Koch Multitone 100 combo.

Fist let me say that while Koch may have started off with a few problems, each problem has been addressed since. 2002 Koch Multotone 2x12 combo. 100 watt tube guitar amplifier.I found this amp to have all the versatility any guitarist would ever need. 3 channel that are footswitchable. The Multitone is very easy to use due to its simple layout. One nice feature is the active & passive instrument inputs. Rated at 100 watts, this amp has more than enough power for an arena down to a bedroom. I beleive that Koch is on its way to becomming a big player in the USA market very soon.

I have used many instruments to test the Multitone out with over a 6 month period. From strats to Les Pauls at all volumes the Multitone continues to have tone for days.
The Multitone is perfect for every music style.
The 3rd. channel (high gain) does have a bit of noise when the volume on the guitar is turned off, wether it is a single coil or humbucking pickup that is being used.
The clean channel is very shimmerind and is well suited for jazz, blues or ballads. The second channel is great for that dirty blues tone. I would say it has a Marshall like brown tone. The third channel is high gain. The Multitone pounds out creamy gain! Perfect for the lead guitarist. Its somewhere between a ENGL and a Deizel as far as the amount of gain. The reverb is also fantastic, at least in the combo. I beleive that a short pan is in the head version and I have not been able to test it out for this length of time.
All three channels are different as far as tone goes.
The clean channel stays clean and so on.
It even has the same tone at low volumes.
The one tone I missed is that of an "A" class amp.
But the Multitone does not claim to be a "A" class amp either.

In 6 months I have not experianced any fuse or other problems what so ever.
The only flaw is that the cable for the footswitch comes out of the pedals socket every now ans then.
This is a wonderful amp that cuts through any mix.

No proublems eccept for the footswitch cable.

Great amp, fantastic tone and gain. No proublems to really speak of.
It would be better if it weighed in a bit lighter though. A common proublem with all combo amps.

I am submitting this portion as a follow up to my previous review.....Bottom line; this amp is extremely unreliable right out of the factory. I have had this amp blow an internal fuse twice, both times only minutes after it was turned on, both times on a gig. I had it retubed, rebiased, etc. I had to have the cable for the footswitch replaced because the original cheap cable suffered a small laceration with a little copper wire showing. So what happens??? The pedal doesn't work at all!!! This is ridiculous!! Even when I turn this amp on, I hear some popping noises going on with the amp. it almost sounds as if it gonna crap out on me.....So here's your dilema. This amp sound fantastic. But, just as fantastic as it sounds, it's very unreliable.

I don't even use this amp on gigs anymore. It's now my emergency amp(that's a scary thought). I use a Reverend Hellhound 1x12 and it smokes this amp in every way. I would never, ever buy another.

This amp covers most everything features-wise that I need from an amp. It's laid out very well.

The overall tone of the amp has what I call a "greasy feel" to it. The tones are very, very good. The propietary Jensen's do a great job. This combo really does sound great, but only after I performed some repairs and upgrades. Read on...

Here's where Koch gets cheap. Why in the hell would any amp maker use 1/4 watt resistors throughout the entire circuit? I replaced the critical resistors on the screens and the rails with much better stuff. Also, the REAL cheap "Hum" trim pot had melted to the circuit board after only 10 minutes of playing. I scraped it off the board, and mounted a 100 ohm, 5 watt pot to side of the board. If it fries that sucker, this amp goes up for sale. And the kicker...the spot welds on the chassis corners were broken. Koch had better take a serious look at their quality control department before too many of these amps gets bashed around here in the states.

I'm into fixing my amps, so I don't give a rats ass about Koch's warranty.

The tones are amazing. The versatility is top-notch. The construction is borderline psycho. You make the call. I spent $15 on replacement parts to make this amp useable for gigs. An amp tech would charge you this plus his bench time. With a list price over $2k, you'd think that Koch would have all the kinks worked out; they don't. Be carefull when deciding on this amp. Oh, and another thing...I could care less if PRS or Santana endorses this amp like the ads say. As it sits from the factory, this amp needs help. I give it a rating of 5 overall because it does sound fantastic, but man...be carefull.

The amp was made in the year 2000. This is a great tube-amp. I use it mainly to play rock and blues. It handles these styles perfectly. A lot of possiblities in this amp. It has 3 channels, clean, crunch and distortion. A parallel and a serial fx loop and a recording out. You can also switch between 100% or 50% output power. There's also a switch for speaker dampening, but I rarely use it. This amp has lots of power, you'll never be able to crank it open in a small room. It has a solo/rhythm switch on the floor-pedal. It also had adjustable bias, this way you can switch between all sorts of tubes.

I use a ibanez js100 guitar. The guitar sounds good thru this amp. Pickup's could be better, but that's in the guitar. The amp is extremely silent in my opinion. The clean channel is CLEAN ALL THE WAY. It never distorts. The amp is like a magic mix between fender clean and all sorts of distortions. The distortion is as brutal as you want it to be, it goes up to 20 :-).

Only had small gig's but I would take it anywhere with me. Assuming your not putting it under extreme circumstances it'll never break. When I bought it there was one faulty tube but this was easily replaced.

This is where you pay all your hard-earned money for. The service EXTREMELY good. I had this problem with the amp : it produced a very loud hum, even when the volume was down. They helped me on every way they could. They even let me into the factory to help me out. Great guys. The problem turned out to be somethinh with the electricity in my house, so there was nothing wrong with the amp. The warranty is 1 year, but if you don't have any problems right away, the amp will last forever. Authorized dealers may be hard to find in foreign countries, that is outside of holland, because this is a dutch brand.

I've been playing for almost 9 years. If it were stolen I would get a new one immediately (if I had the money). I love the versility of this amp and hate nothing about it. I tried a whole bunch of other amps, but they didn't come close to this one. Especially because the clean and distortion channels are both great.

same as everyone else's

Im only submitting this for the reliabilty section. The sounds (when it works) are fuckin a.

Alright here we go.... I went to my buddys music shop to check out the new koch's they got in. (a multitone head, and 2X12 combo) I plugged into the head and was loving the shit out of it, when all of a sudden, it stopped. Mike, the store tech came over and we pulled out the chassis. We determined it to be a bad fuse. No biggie. So I was testing the amp when it stopped AGAIN. This time, all but one of the pre-amp tubes were bad, and had hardly any output. So we changed those out. I started playing again, poof. Stopped again within 5 minutes. This time the power tubes were bad. We replaced every single tube in the mamma jamma. I CONTINUED to try out the amp. Sounded great again for about 5 more minutes before it crapped out again. I decided to let mike work on it for awhile and I would try it again tommorrow. I went in, and he said he had it fixed, he was running them all day to make sure there would be no more failures. It wouldnt even turn on when I plugged in. Same thing with the combo next to it. I was thinking NOTHING could possibly be this bad, except maybe a mesa. (thats a totally differrent story) ask any mesa dealer that would tell you the truth. Anyway! It turns out that these amps were WAAAAAY off bias from the factory, I guess they thought when you convert from 220 to 110 volt, all you have to do is cut the differrence. Wrong. So Im gonna try them AGAIN today, and see if I can make them fail. If I cant make them, I'm probably gonna buy one. If not that, I'll save some money and get the jmp mk2 50 watter we have at my store. I'm gonna leave this field blank cause I dont want to bring down their overall rating.

Ive heard they were nice, and they sent a schematic. But they couldnt figure out how to bias their own amp? C'mon man, gimme a break.

sounds killer, works like shit.

Same as in other reviews.

Currently using a prs ce24 and a prs standard with maple top. The clean channel is very deep and round. Compressed a bit with hot humbuckers but very smooth. I'm beginning to like the crunch channel more than I did. It shares eq with with the clean channel. I do think the clean channel sounds better than a reissue twin. The crunch channel reminds me of a cranked bassman or an old marshall with tons of low end and good articulation. The distortion channel is very versatile. Jcm 800 to soldano. It really sings. The speaker damping is a cool thing also. My multitone has vintage 30's which sound a bit brighter than the koch/jensen designed speakers that are in the new amps. The new speakers more midrange presence with a different breakup point. The multiton is an expensive amp but a very well thought out piece of gear. You could pretty much do anything with it.

So far so good. Makes a loud pop when coming on at times.

Haven't returned emails. Koch is in the netherlands, could be a problem. Eden the distributor seems helpful.

I've been playing for nearly thirty years. I play everything from zeppelin, ozzy, metallica, limp bizkit to parliament. I like the versatility and would buy it again.

No brainer hear. 3 channels with reverb, 2 effects loops, damping switch, and solo (increased volume) button on footswitch. Lets not forget about the triode/penthode power switch alowing you to choose between half and full power for two very distinct tones. Possibly one of the most versatile amps I have ever seen.

I run a PRS mccarty and singlecut through this baby, and it goes through a mesa cab with vintage 30s. Unbelievable, great clean tone, similar to fender twin (stays clean at high volume). The distortion is crazy. I play rock/power pop (influences: creed and weezer), perfect at gain setting 10 (amp goes 0-20 on gain.) Hear a tiny amount of compression at higher gain settings, which I think is fantastic. The dirty is very much like a boogie, but without all the low end. This could cover ANY kind of music (please don't play country with this amp, it would be a tragic waste of this amps potential.)

Verrrrry new, haven't pushed it too hard yet, but I doubt any problems will arise.

Haven't dealt with them yet.

I made a leap of faith with this amp. I bought it without hearing it. I knew Paul Reed Smith played one, so that was good enough for me. I was very nervous when plugging it in the first time, hoping I didn't waste my money. I was blown away by this amp. I have finally found the last amp I will ever need. If lost or stolen, I would buy 3 more just for good measure. DON'T PASS UP AN OPPORITUNITY TO OWN SUCH A WONDERFUL INSTRUMENT.