Rockman A12-50

The A12-50 is a 50 watt guitar amp with 3 channels (clean, semi-clean and dist) and a 3 band equalizer. It's one of Scholz' very late products (1994, just before he got out of the business). It's a very nice amp, and has that 'sustain for days' feel to it that you either love or hate (me, I love it). and JESUS CHRIST it's loud. I mean REALLY LOUD. It has a single 12" Celestion speaker in it, but this thing can blow your shirt off--really. It's so simple a monkey could use it--it has guitar in and aux in (for an organ, or other unit), footswitch pedal, signal out and signal return (for an effects unit(s)) and an external speaker jack. The front has a volume and gain knob for the clean and distortion channels--the semi-clean channel is a push-button switch for the clean channel that toggles between the two (clean and semi-clean). The channel select gives you either the clean or the distorted channel. The amp uses 'Ultamatum Distortion', which is essentially the Boston guitar sound on steroids.

I use this amp with my Strat (Joe Barden humbucking pickups) and a Rockman stereo chorus. With the stereo chorus, this unit really shines. The 'Ultimatum Distortion' proclaimed on the front panel is the same old Tom Scholz sound we know and love, only more so. The clean channel has a very rich, clear sound. The semi-clean option switch on the clean channel gives the guitar a rich, ringing fatness, similar to the edge channel of Rockman soloist, but with a very sharp overlay of the clean channel--it's almost like the channels are being mixed. Very nice. The distortion channel has a yummy crunch to it, with a long, long sustain and nice warm tones. Again, it's the trademark Boston sound, although I've gotten weird Satriani variations out of it as well. The sound quality is excellent--it's a very quiet amp.

I've used this amp mostly at home. I bought it in 1994 (new), and used it solidly since then. The volume pots went south about 3 years later, so I hit them with WD-40 and ran them around a lot--that fixed the problem, although they are still a bit noisy. Seems like the pots got oxidized inside, which in my opinion shouldn't have happened. Other than that, the unit's been rock-solid.

I bought this unit direct from SR&D, and they were wondeful. Haven't had to deal with Dunlop, because apart from the volume pots problem, this thing's just worked. The people at SR&D were even looking around for some used sustainors for me. They were really, really nice.

I really like this amp--if you're into the vintage Boston sound (that is, NOT a tube amp) then this is a really, really sweet deal.