Siegmund Guitars Midnight Blues Head

Since there are so many unique features I will recommend that you check out the Siegmund website for the features which are all clearly explained and there are multiple links that you can actually hear the midnight blues amp in action with a band called Soulajar.

My MB is the 20-25W model and sounds amazing. It came with a pair of KT66 tubes which I had never used in any of my amps before an di found them to be just as they are described as somewhat springy with a similar to a 6L6 GC type of tone but I would say prettier tone. I wound up installing a mathed pair of GT EL 34 #5 and set the bias with my Fluke and the rear panel otest points.

The MB can deliver a range of tonal color from Marshall Tucker Band and Allman Brothers Band to ZZ Top, AC/DC and Zeppelin. The sound I was able to dial in was absolutely the best tone that I have ever achieved.

This amp has some special quality that reminds me of how the tone of an amp can inspire my creativity and I find myself getting better on the guitar and in addition find it hard to break away even to write this review.

I opened it up and inspected the wiring and found it was immaculate soldering in a the classic point to point fashion and the components are all top drawer quality. I have been playing it very hard and have been swapping out tubes and have had nothing but fun with no problems at all.

I sent an email to Chris Siegmund and found him to be very passionate and intelligent. He was extremely kind and assisted me with obtaing a replacement manual which I had somehow misplaced in my haste during a move and so Chris spent a significant amount of time spoon feeding me on how to set the bias for different tubes and how I needed to take into account the speaker load impedance and showed me a good work around for using 8 ohms on the output.

I really want to write more and maybe I will follow up with another review at some point in the near future but I can honestly say that if this amp was lost or stolen I would immediately call Chris and order me another!!!

Not sure when my amp was made but it was the one reviewed in Guitar Player Magazine. It's a one channel tone monster with a ton of featurs for a one channel amp. Killer effects loop. Great controls. Awesome build. Heavy frickin' duty chassis. Great transformers. Way above average components. Great take on Plexi, easily two upping Marshall, way over rated,....Siegmund? Has to be under rated. I'm glad he was innovative in his design, it really shows in the tones this amp produces.
I modded my amp though and will be reviewing the modded version.

The stock amp sounded great. Perfectly balanced tone when at 12 o'clock with the tone controls, which I like in an amp. It had nice edges to the notes. Seemed like the designer had really done his home work. So I decided to upgrade some of the components. I repaced the Vitamin Q's with Mundorf Supreame Silver Oil, Audience Auricap and TRT Dynamicap film caps. I replaced the High power 5 watt resistor with a Mills 12 watt Wirewounds. I changed some 5% Allen Bradley resistors in key locations with 1% 5 watt Kiwame's. And I changed the stock $.50 silicon diodes with $7.00 1200v IXYS FRED's. I also replaced the V1 slot with a '58 12AX7 Amperex Bugle Boy, V2 a 60's Tesla ECC803S, V3 a Mullad 12DW7 and the V4 slot with a special Mullard military grade 12AT7.
I now have the best sounding Plexi type amp in the world, the perfect bed for every pedal and rack mount effect you could dream of. No one has a clue what good tone is till they do it "right" with the "right" components that truly allows an amps design to shine through. I guarantee none of you have ever heard tone this good.
Oh yeah the clean and Blues tones are more magical then the lead tones this thing is capable of. Just frickin' amazing! The sound is way addictive and everything else no sound flat and pale with no magic.

The one weak point on the build is the printed circuit board used instead of a good turret....booo. A very weak board to attach quality components to. I plan on putting the components on a good turret board if I ever tour.

I have no idea. I haven't had any interaction with the company.

I bought it off Ebay for $1100.00 plus I put in another $200.00 for upgraded components. For $1300.00 I have the best sounding lead amp in the world, bar none. The most beatiful articulate lead tones imaginable with the best bass on earth. Dumble owners eat your hearts out for $1300.00 I have an amp that'll spank any Dumble or Two Rock. I sold my Marshalls, VHT's, Bogner Ecstacy 101B, Mesa Boogie, 6 Frenzels, Guytron GT100FV but I'm keeping the Siegmund Midnight Blues....you do the math.

A LOT OF FEATURES. PUSH PULL POTS AND THE ABILITY TO BIAS AND BALANCE TUBES. THIS WAS REAL COOL. AMP LOOKED VERY WELL MADE

NO MATTER HOW IT WAS SET UP, AND NO MATTER HOW MANY TUBE SWAPS THIS AMP SOUNDED PRETTY POOR. SINCE I PURCHASED THE AMP USED I THOUGH THAT WAS THE PROBLEM. WELL THAT WAS NOT THE CASE, A REALLY WELL KNOWN AMP BUILDER WHO IS MAKING A HUGE NAME FOR HIMSELF IN THE INDUSTRY, HAD PURCHASE THE SAME AMP NEW AND SENT IT BACK BECAUSE OF THE SAME POOR TONES I HEARD. HE WAS SHOCKED AS WELL BECUASE THE AMP WAS SO WELL BUILT. HE ALSO TOLD ME HE DROPPED THE CHASSIS ON HIS HEAD AND THOUGHT THAT THERE WHERE A LOT OF DESIGN ERRORS IN THE AMP THAT CONTRIBUTED TO ITS SO SO TONE.
NOT RECOMMEND

DON'T KNOW SOLD THE AMP RIGHT AWAY

TRIED CALLING, BUT SINCE I PURCHASED USED HE WOULD NOT HELP/ THATS A BUMMER BECAUSE SOMEONE LIKE CARR AMPS YOU COULD CALL AND HELP RIGHT AWAY EVEN THOUGH YOU PURCHASED USED/ A LESSON TO BE LEARNED FOR SURE

This is the first of hopefully a series of ongoing reviews on this amp. I bought it secondhand so I have no idea of it's age, but I'm sure it's less than three years old. It's not versatile at all by itself if you're into the poddytown store bought instant gratification of switchable channels and amp modeling. However...as good and versatile as those devices have become, (and they are sensational!) they still can't deliver the kind of sonics that this amp can because they can't produce harmonics the same way.

This single channel amp is versatile in its ability towards crafting original, signature tones, so much so that the more informed the player is, the higher quality of sounds are that can be gotten out of it. It's output is adjustable from 20-100 watts depending on what output tubes the operator chooses. Upon purchase the buyer immediately becomes at risk of becoming a "mad tube tone scientist" (which isn't all bad!) because of the nature of the amp controls. I already had the disease, owning this amp ensures an ongoing healthy state of the illness. ;)

The front end is fairly simple. On the left there is one input jack, then going right the knobs are: gain, for adjusting preamp distortion amount, drive, for how hard that signal is to hit the tone stack, treble, mid, bass, three position presence control, a master volume that is bypassed when turned fully up, a light for main power, standby switch, main power switch.

There is no vibrato, tremolo, reverb, or any other effect, but going to the back of the amp you'll find the first of this amp's several secret tone weapons, a parallell effects loop. It has a low impedance send, high impedance return. This amp's tube driven loop has a drive knob for the loop signal and a mixing knob for how much of the loop's signal is blended with the preamp. It's adjustable from preamp only to effects loop only, with a detent at the halfway mark. You can put a jumper between the send and recieve jacks to create a parallell clean channel. Above the loop controls and next to the first preamp tube is found the next secret weapon, a true stroke of Chris Siegmund's genius, a bias control knob (!!!) for the first preamp tube. This allows the operator to adjust the overall tone coloration and harmonic mix. To my ears, a hotter bias allows a warmer, fuller sound with more bottom, mids and upper mids, a colder setting allows a brighter sound with more chime in the harmonics.

Six or seven tubes are used to create those harmonics. The first preamp tube is selectable by type for gain, ranging from 12au7 to 12ax7. The second position hitting the tone stack is a 12ax7, the third position, a 12ax7, drives the effects loop, the fourth, a 12at7, is the phase inverter. The power tube sockets work with 6v6, 5881, 6l6, el34, el37, kt66, kt88 or 6550. A three position switch near the power tube sockets allows voltage selection suitable for the chosen power tubes, detents are marked for tube type. One immediate benefit is that when I use the older oh so toneful 5881's and 6l6's designed for lower voltage, a selection is available that won't fry them.

We've all seen amps that possess the ability to operate various output and rectifier tubes, such as the great THD amp line and Curt Emery's awesome Super/Microbabies. I may be mistaken, but I believe those makers use cathode or "Automatic" biasing in the output stages of their designs.

VERY few if any other maker's amps allow the kind of control on how those amps' output can be adjusted via four kinds of manual bias control and rectifier section selections like this one can. I've also never seen another builder's amp where one can choose to warm up or cool down the bias and resulting tone from the front end or the back end like this one can. Another nice feature is that the operator can control whether the signal distortion comes first from the preamp or power section of the amp, there are sustantial sonic differ

I play a Musicvox Spaceranger with single coils, a Heritage 555 (335 done bettter) with Seth Lover Humbuckers, a couple of Danos including a 12 string, and a vintage rosewood Tama Dreadnought 12-string with a Duncan Mag-Mic. This amp handles all of these guitars gorgeously. I like blues, gospel and folk, also rock from the pre death metal days. It can be adjusted to make any kind of tone I desire or wish to experiment with. It is among the very quietest amps I have ever heard, it's of HIFI quality in that regard. The amp can be VERY dynamic in pick attack going from clean to dirty at low gain settings, tremendously epressive to the player's emotions. It can be also set to sound compressed. The gorgeously detailed clean channel doesn't have tons of headroom, you'll have to put in the more powerful tubes to get the really loud clean, but really, the distorted sounds are what this amp was designed to do. With 12ax7's in the first two positions, a gain and drive knob setting of 4 out of 10 max is about the limit for clean, and the master volume is about halfway. At higher master volume settings output tube distortion appears when the strings are hit appropriately.

Because the transformer has such a wide range frequency response, players may experience some differences in tone that they didn't count on. Pick harmonics squeal like never before. Mistakes are glaring. Little harmonic accidents are exhiliarating. Detail, detail, detail from top to bottom of each note is consistent at all string and neck positions, the overall tone is more consistent within the guitar's range than any other amp I have heard, the voice is consistent top to bottom, however the operator sets it.

In high gain and volume the lowest two or three strings hit near the bottom of the neck for a fourth or fifth interval power chord generates thundering subharmonics waaaaay down there that rumble like a pipe organ, you can feel them practically rattle the boogers right out of your nose until you turn down the bass enough, particularly with a pair of wide range 15's, 2x12 or 4x12. This kind of bass response from the transformer allows the bass in the mix to still be sufficient with the bass knob turned down, so clarity of an overdriven chord is less muddy than with a lower quality output tranny. This help quite a bit when using 6v6 power tubes in overdriven situations.

Because of the harmonic spread, the distortion is capable of becoming quite brutal and gritty, or smooth and sweet, it depends on the tubes and settings chosen. Metal players might benefit from additional drive before the input jack, but for all others, gain is more than sufficient. This is, after all, the Marshall JTM45 that never was. It does vintage type tones but frankly almost none of the vintage amps had a transformer like this one so some think this amp does vintage type tones better than the vintage amps EVER did!

One other thing, this amp keeps a guitar's upper mid and top detail better than any other I've heard when the instrument volume is turned down by means of a volume pedal or guitar knob. Going back to pristine clean after a lead is an easy joy. The three position presence control properly set really comes into its own here. It not only effects the very highest frequencies, but also opens up mids and upper mids as well.

The use of the effects loop as a blendable, gain adjustable clean channel is helpful for doing some amazing "Woman" tones. Set the preamp drive at 8 to ten, gain at 6 to 8, the loop drive at 4 to 6, and the blend at 3 to 4:00 and you get a tone that sustains for days with an edge so smooth it sounds like vowels coming from an opera singers' throat. The blending in of just a little clean is dramatic in effect on the overdriven tone.

My favorite tubes are: V1: Raytheon jrp or ck 5751, Raytheon long black plate 12ax7, GE longplate 12ax7, and Siemens e83cc, I own about 100 12ax7's, if it's been made, I've probably listened to it. V

No problems. I haven't bothered Chris with a getting acquainted phone call because I'm a secondhand owner of one of his amps. He's plenty busy building and designing, I'm sure. I've had the amp for less than four months, it wouldn't be fair to others to give it a rating yet. I have opened it up and it's quality of build and components used are incredible, solder joints are all very neat and tidy, wiring is routed precisely. These amps have an excellent rep for durability.

I don't expect a warranty. I have heard from my boss, whom Chris custom built an amp for, that he is great to talk with, dedicated to his craft, and committed to a customer service and satisfaction level found almost nowhere else in his field. Since there is no first hand experience, I won't rate this category.

Besides the time spent playing guitar, I have spent quite a few hours hanging out in the repair area of my friend's guitar amp shop. I learned how to do some basic repairs, started collecting tubes and have had great success with a Champ I have modded. I have heard tons of amps and have seen the guts of more than I care to remember, for better or for worse. What is inside of the Siegmund Midnight Blues head is worth two or three times what I paid for it when compared to the boutique market. If it were stolen or lost, I'd try to find another, even to the point of going in debt.

When you look at the Midnight Blues from the front it's a very straight forward layout, easy understand and operate. However you turn this puppy around [ break out the owners manual ] and you realise there's a little more going on than initially meets the eye. The
amp has it's own bias control setup with test points for a volt meter hook up. Naturally for the tone obsessives among us this offers hours of tweaking /tube swapping insanity and I think a greater understanding of how your sound is created.

My first encounter with a Siegmund amp was one of those happy coincidences. I had a show coming up and was given the opportunity to borrow a Siegmund head and cab. The
music we play is loud,hard and fast [ lottsa Marshalls/Boogies etc ] but I've always remained open to investigating what's out there. Well to cut to the chase I cranked the head and beat the crap outta every song in the set. Thing was I loved the sound and
the feedback we got that that night [from audience and band members] really confirmed my feelings that the Siegmund had brought a [ loud of course] new harmonically rich definition to the guitar mix. Needless to say I arranged a purchase shortly there after.

It's yet to give me any trouble [ a year and a half in ]. I've even been running an electronic drum kit through the effects return at home rehearsals with the guitar and it still sounds great!

I think the other reviews will also confirm this but you'd have to go a long long way to find someone as passionate, informed and as articulate about the art of amp building as Chris Siegmund. A true gentleman and someone who stands 100% behind what he does. As they
say on Ebay buy with confidence.

In a nutshell it's a rock guitar ampliflier . It has definite sweet spots [ I give it 7 on the master and dial in from there ]. Yes if it was stolen I'd want another one, no question about it. I also know from talking to Chris that only the best components he can source are put into the amp so when it's all added up you really get solid bang for the buck.