TopHat Club Royale 1x12 Combo

This is an update to my previous review. I have found out two things about this amp: 1) please to not try to swap the Greenback for a Vintage 30. Not good, it sounded pretty lame. Maybe try a Vox-type speaker, but not a Vintage 30. The Greenback seems almost proprietary with this amp. 2) Replacing the rectifier tube with a 5Y3 totally changes the feel and, somewhat, the sound of this amp. It went from Marshall to more Vox after the switch, a change I appreciated immensely. However, it did seem to loose some power (I think that 5Y3s are not as strong a tube as a GZ34) and is noticeably more "squishy" (I guess GZ34s also have the tightest "sag envelope" of all tube rectifiers), but again this is something I found quite appealing.
I guess that if I were to pass on any word of wisdom, they would be that Top Hat amps are made right the first time. I have gotten in the habit of taking apart and modifying things to my liking, this most likely being due to my historical pattern of purchasing less than exceptional gear. I tried this with the Club Royale, but soon found that Top Hat and Brian Gerhard really know what goes together and what does not. Another testament to their quality of structure and sound: After running with this amp for a while I purchased (sight unseen and sound unheard) one of their 50 watt Emplexador heads and a 2X12 cabinet. Yikes. Incredible. This is one of the finest amp companies, and for that matter company in general, that you can find, folks.

This is a 1X12 version of the Club Royale and was made in February of 1998. As the specifics of this amp are mentioned in other reviews I will not elaborate on them here. One issue worth mention is the power of this amp. It is a 20 watt class A amp with a full set of wonderfully voiced eq controlls, and while it is loud it is not overwhelming (more on this in the next section). I have heard that the 2X12 versions sound a bit bigger. The rating here reflects the amp per se, not in comparison with other veg-o-matic amplifiers out there which try to be everything and often fail to be anything. When you play through this amp it does not matter that it does not have "channel cloning", a variable fx loop, or a graphic eq, for it is built as completely and comprehensively as any amp I have ever heard; that is, it has all the features that it needs to fully utilize its inherent tone.

Right now I am playing through a Fender American Standard Telecaster, so consider this when reading the following reviews. Judging by the tone of this amplifier I am certain that it would sound even better with a Les Paul type guitar, as the darkness of the Les Paul would be a perfect compliment to the chimey, Class A tone of the Club. As far as noise goes this amp is extremely quiet (especially compared to my Mesa DC-2), this most likely being to 1) superior construction and 2) the lack of multiple high gain circuits. This amp is a non master volume setup so if you want distortion you just have to turn it up. Being a fairly young player I tend to go towards the fun, high-gain sounds, yet when I truly heard the sound of this power section on ten I realized that even the best pre-amp distortion is totally different and incomparable. Which brings up the feel of this amp: when you turn this thing all the way up and play through it, you will experience the very "organic" and natural "feel" this thing has. It can go from Vox to almost Fender to nearly Marshall plexi; the tone controlls are the best voiced that I have ever used. When you play through this amplifier it just feels right, not sterile like other amplifiers. I am completely certain that this small combo version would make an EXCELLENT studio amplifier and would certainly cut it for smaller gigs. As mentioned in other reviews, this is not an amplifier for the high gain crowd, or heavy music in general. I tried to play my Mesa V-Twin through it and it was as if the Club Royale rejected it! The natural sound of this amplifier is so comprehensive and dominant that the Mesa sounded horrible. Granted, in a lesser amp the Mesa would be able to do its "take over and make the amp sound like me" thing, but with the Top Hat this just does not work. Buy another amp if you like gain, but buy this amplifier if you want TONE, TONE, or mabye TONE.

I have had this amp for about three months and have not really put this to the test. However, EVERYONE else who I have talked to, including dealers and owners across the nation, has only had glowing things to say about the quality of construction and reliability. These are hand wired, point-to-point amplifiers that have a LIFETIME warranty. What more could one ask for? The rating here reflects the numerous opinions I have gathered from others.

I have e-mailed the company with a question and to my surprise the OWNER responded! I have heard great things about Brian Gerhard but man, when the guy who makes your amp and ownes the company calls back, you have to feel good about things. It is just this type of customer service which will make you drop any preconception about great customer service. Very nice.

For the price, well, for just about any price, this is one of the best deals in the world. There are a few other small amp builders kicking out great amps (Dr. Z comes to mind), but I cannot speak as to their amps and service, etc.. Let this give some extra perspective on the influence this amp carries: To purchase it I traded in a mint condition Epiphone Les Paul, an Ampeg Jet II reissue, an Ibanez tube screamer, and a Tech 21 XXL. Upon REALLY playing the Club Royale I proceeded to sell a MINT Marshall 4X12 and my Mesa DC-2. Please do yourself a favor and play through a Top Hat.

This review is the second Bay Area 'shoot-out'. In response to the first shoot-out, John Bartlett and Brian Hill volunteered their TopHat Club Royale and King Royale, respectively. Oleg Tomashevsky brought his recently purchased Dr. Z Carmen Ghia, Pete Cage sent an 18/00 head and I brought my stock Alessandro English and George sent an upgraded English for comparison (see review for details on the differences). The price given for each amp is list price at the time of purchase, not necessarily what you would pay. Contact your nearest dealer or the manufacturer for your price.
The guitars used to evaluate the amps were a Grosh Retro Classic with Fralins and a rosewood fretboard, an older Fender strat with Rio Grandes and a maple neck, a PRS McCarty and a Tele clone with a stock Fender Telecaster pickup in the neck position and a Seymour Duncan in the bridge position and a maple neck.
In the interest of time, we used the tubes that were in each amp rather than switching tubes to optimize each amp. First, the owner of each amp did a quick run through of what he likes about his amp. Then the other 3 played the amp, changing guitars to get the overall tonality. Finally, we recorded each amp with every guitar on to Brian's Roland digital recorder.
E-MAIL - if you have general questions about this review that are germane to this post, please post a follow-up. If you have specific questions for one of us, please contact us via e-mail: scott.weaver@etak.com, olegt@pmanet.org, brianh@sirius.com.
Before describing what we heard, we should provide a little information about each participant and their preferences.
First up, Oleg Tomashevsky - I play single-coil (Van Zandts, Fralins and Duncan P90s) equipped Fender Strats and Don Grosh guitars. What I mainly appreciate in an amp is an ability to fatten single coil tone while preserving articulation and definition. I do appreciate high-end complexity but only after I hear strong (not TS9 honky, though) midrange. My favorite guitar tones are the ones of mid 70's Ritchie Blackmore and Tommy Bolin.
Brian Hill - I play a few different styles - mainly rock, funk, blues and jazz. I like amps that are versatile but I mainly want a good clean sound and a good overdrive sound. I particularly like amps with which I can smoothly go from one to the other just by changing the guitar's volume and/or my picking. Some of my favorite guitar tones are Eric Clapton's on the first Cream album (particularly his lead tone on 'Sleepy Time Time'); Jimi Hendrix's on the album 'Axis Bold As Love' (pretty much all the guitar tones); Mike Bloomfield's on 'Super Session'; just about all Bill Frisell's clean tones, especially those on the album 'Bill Evans' by Paul Motion, Prince's rhythm tones on tunes like 'The Kiss'; Eddie Van Halen's on the first three Van Halen albums.
Scott Weaver - I grew up listening to Queen. Brian May's guitar tone does it for me. I also love the sound that Mike Campbell gets with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and Peter Buck with REM. I play a Grosh Retro Classic with Fralin single coils although I love a good Les Paul style guitar w/humbuckers. What I look for in an amp is balance throughout the entire frequency range (bass, low mids, high mids and treble) and a lot of detail and complexity. I love to play clean, semi-distorted and full tilt distorted (not metal) so I look for an amp that can do all three well. If I can control that from my guitar volume, that is even better.
Unfortunately, John was unable to complete his portion of the review due to work travel. Hopefully, he will post his comments at a later time.
TOP HAT CLUB ROYALE 2-12" combo tested; 2-EL84 output tubes; 3 12AX7 pre-amp tubes; single channel; two inputs; volume (pull boost), bass, midrange, treble, cut; tube rectifier. Don't know MSRP, but general price seems to be around $1,150.
Scott - The Top Hat is a very versatile amp due to the boost function and the very interactive tone controls. No matter what you plug in to it

Only five knobs and one pull switch, ah simplicity. One other thing not noted by others, there is another input jack which is lower gain, a 3-way ground switch and second speaker jack. No master volume and no reverb and I don't even miss them.

This thing sound so good. No matter what tone or volume setting or even which guitar. A crappy newer Gibson garbage Les Paul sounds good on this! The higher the mid tone setting the more it sounds Marshally. I cut the highs and crank the mids and the volume w/boost and easily stay with my friends 68 50 watt plexi. Not better, but different, and just as pleasing to the ears (and obviously not as loud). The bottom stays tight and never flabs out no matter how loud or high you set the bass control. This thing is loud enough to bother the neighbors and be over a loud drummer, but for live I think I need two daisy chained together or mike to the PA.

Opened it up, all quality wiring and parts. Point to point. Only one problem so far, I'm getting a buzz somewhere at high volume and I can't seem to find it. I'm still tightning screws and searching, so I haven't contacted Top Hat yet (I don't want to send off my amp, I just got it).

Don't know yet.

I've played for 20 years and this is it. I'm down to this amp and now I want another one. I sold my Rivera and another amp to buy this. I tried the club royale out side by side with a Matchless 2x10 Hurricane and this won hands down. The Matchless was too clean and dark sounding. The Top Hat had more gain, tone, and character. I originally wanted a Vox but felt they were also too clean and too loud, the Club Royale is just right.

Keep reading. This amp isn't supposed to have many features. all about tone. There are two noteworthy features. The volume has a top boost function which gooses all frequencies when pulled. There is also a "cut" knob which rolls off some of the very highest frequencies but later in the signal path than the other EQ controls.

My God, this amp is just beautiful. If you don't know, it's modeled after the old Vox amps which means that there isn't a master volume the distortion you derive is from overdriving the power tubes instead of using the preamp tubes (like a Marshall or a Boogie). The amp starts to break up around 4 and by the time you have the thing completely cranked, it's like butter and cream are pouring out of the cabinet. I'm playing a Tele Plus (3 pu's) with Duncan pickups (Alnico II for Tele in the neck, Vintage Staggered for Strat in the middle and Vintage '54 Tele in the bridge)and it's really difficult to get a bad tone out of this combination. You can get cool kind of jazzy tones turned down low, beautiful jangly tones with the volume around 6, and dimed this baby screams! I really mean it about no bad tones. Just for the hell of it, I've turned all the controls--volume, bass, mid, treble--to 10, engaged the top boost, and had no cut at all and the thing still sounds great.
One caveat. There is almost no headroom in this amp. But, if you want this type of Voxy power tube overdriven distortion, you're going to blow the windows out (and your hearing) if it's got any headroom.

This thing is built so simply that I have every confidence that if TopHat shut down tomorrow, and my amp did the next day, I'd be able to get service on it from any number of qualified techs who work on vintage amps. No problems whatsover so far.

Here's the highest possible compliment I can give--the customer service is as good as the tone. Brian Gerhard (owner/founder) is an absolute pleasure to talk to and bends over backwards to get you the amp you want. Probably the single most satisfying customer service experience I've had in the music industry.

I want another one. This thing is just such a great amp, I love to play through it. This is really a steal when you can get an amp like this for less than 900 bucks. Buy one!

Not much to it. The other submissions cover the controls and such. 15 watt class A combo, EL84 output tubes, Celestion speaker, not a bell or whistle to be found. One note, there is a pull-boost and a second speaker out jack if you need it. If you count looks as a feature, my dark green version is quite an eye catcher. If you count wiring as a feature (and you should), it's BEAUTIFUL point to point work under the hood.

I normally play blues, jazz and pop/rock, with a strat, a 335, a tele, and a Hamer special. This amp makes all of them but the tele sound wonderful right off the bat. The amp is naturally pretty bright, so the tele is only for the brave, but a hefty high end cut will do the trick.

But the real deal is that this amp, with any guitar, at any volume, sounds simply outstanding. It will do gorgeous, blooming Vox clean to slightly grinding sounds, great gritty overdrive, and really over the top crunch/feedback insanity if you want it to. I play with a guitar player who uses a Budda Stringnmaster (the Twinmaster was my previous dream amp) and this baby sounds as good. The Budda has a bigger bottom end, and a bit more of a marshall flavor, but it's different, not better.

Bottom line, this thing sounds as good or better than any amp I have every played. It distorts so well, you may find yourself using more distortion than you had previously. You won't do any better.

It's so new, I don't know. It is built in the old school method, so I bet it will last a lot longer that pretty much every mass produces amp.

no idea

I'll give it a 9 only because I can't answer some of the questions. I recorded this amp this weekend, and we got fantastic sound from an AKG mic about 18 inches from the speaker. We didn't have to jam an SM-57 a quarter inch from the speaker to get it to sound full and tight, we just needed it to sound like the amp did in the room, which was fantastic. If you have a real preference for a Matchless or a Budda, I won't argue with you, but this thing can hang with those amps easy. I guess the Top Hat is for the lover of low wattage amps who wants the Vox flavor with a bit more Tobasco. I'm in heaven.

Controls are Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble and Cut. No reverb; no trem; no effects loop; no master volume. Celestion Greenback 12 standard.
Features aren't really what this amp is about. In fact, it's kept simple on purpose. I will say that the preamp section, although simple and straightforward to use, is incredibly flexible.

I play various styles of music, but when I can manage it, the lead tone I prefer is singing VOX ala Mike Campbell in the Heartbreakers circa Damn the Torpedos). I've owned more different amps than you can shake a stick at.
Ok, guitars - PRS Standard (dragons), G&L ASAT-3 (duncans), Fender '57 RI strat (antiquity IIs), Supro Lap Steel.
I was literally in a position to buy ANYTHING I wanted for the first time in my 32 years of playing. So I tried EVERYTHING I could get my hands on - Matchless, Tone King, Diaz, Budda, Groove Tubes. About the only amp I didn't try 'cause I couldn't find one locally was a Dr. Z.
Let's cut to the bottom line - this amp sounds fantastic. It gets a wide variety of tones ranging from quasi-Fender clean on thru the Vox range to girthy Marshall, albeit only one at a time. It took me a while to appreciate just how flexible the tone controls are. I don't usually care for Cut controls - I like a lot of detail on my tones. However, setting the other cotrols (especially the mid) to max and using the cut control yields some exceptionally thick early Zep tones. This amp sounds girthy but never muddy or harsh.
I would have to say that this amp sounds a bit dark, probably due to Greenback. I gigged with it recently. The lead tones were everything I wanted, but it was hard to get enough sparkle. I'll probably use two amps in the future - this amp and my Fender Deluxe Reverb.
Make not mistake about it - NO ONE AMP WILL PRODUCE ALL THE TONES YOU NEED.
I hate to give anything a 10, but this truly sounds awesome. So a 10 it gets. There are some pieces of gear (my PRS is another) that are so killer that you just know any problems getting good tone has to be your problem and not the result of inferior gear. This amp is one such piece - I you can't get good tone with this amp, you can't get it with ANY amp.

Built like a tank in EVERY respect. Every component is the finest available. BTW, his amps are laid out on terminal strips so that any amp tech worth his salt could repair a Top Hat.

OK, I know Brian Gerhard a little bit. He really bends over backwards to satisfy all his customers. The only downside I could see is if something ever happened to Brian.

This amp is an incredible addition and complement to my other amps. This amp is a total Matchless killer - better tone at 2/3 the price. Look up "value" in the dictionary and you'll see a picture of this amp! I paid $625 for a new Peavey Classic 50, for just a bit more I could've had a Top Hat. Save up, you'll never sell this amp.

This is an 18 watt single channel amp with absolutely no frills other than the excellent tone controls. Part of the concept of this particular model is keeping the signal as free of interference and as pure as possible. All Top Hats are point-to-point hand-wired with the most discriminating components. The tubes and tone circuit of this model are based on the Vox AC30 Top boost, only half the size and power (Class A with two EL84's and three 12Ax7's, plus a tube rectifier which can be changed to all the usual rectifier tube types). Brian Gerhard, the company owner and designer recommends using a Celestion Greenback with this model, but I really wanted a Vox Blue in this case and was lucky enough to end up with a 1968 Vox Silver which I located privately. Tone controls include Treble, Middle and Bass, plus a Cut knob that employs a Capacitor before the power section and provides a lovely cut in highs unlike turning down the treble. Of the tone knobs, the Treble is the most active. It peaks around 2 o'clock, and then seems to engage a reduction in Bass and Mids as you dial it the rest of the way. It's a very hip and musical control, like some of the controls you find on Matchless products. (Try a Hotbox floor pedal preamp for a good example). The volume control features a Pull Boost that increases gain, but evenly across the spectrum without coloration of it's own. The two input jacks sound different, the 2nd being cleaner without that slight loss of tone you will get with other amps. The amp is set for 8 ohms, but runs fine at 4 or 16 without a selector switch.

I bought this amp after years of soul-searching over my clean sound and admiring the great tones of the Vox AC30. I considered the "real thing" for a very long time, but came to this amp instead because of the very high quality craftmanship and the interactive relationship that Brian Gerhard offers his customers. He is willing to modify his amps for each customer, and in this case he installed a slightly cleaner resistor because of my agenda for keeping the sound clean. Even with this mod, if you dial up the volume to 12 o'clock, you have half the clean sounds and half the break-up sounds at your fingertips. This is my favorite part of an amp, the point at which you can control the distortion by playing harder of softer. With the Vox speaker, the clean tones are clear and gorgeous. With the Pull-boost pulled out, the distortion can be creamy or firebreathing, depending on the tone settings. Virtually all of the guitars in my collection sound marvelous with this amp. My personal favorites right now are guitars that feature highs as integral elements of the tone, such as my ES-335 12-string, with was the instrument that called for the search for this amp. This is the kind of amp that is hard to find a bad setting on, even with different guitars and speakers. I tried the Club Royale through a pair of 30w Celestion reissues in a Fender cab, and of course it's a different world than the Vox speaker, providing a killer creamy distortion that I don't get with 6V6 (or 6L6) based amps I own, including a terrific Jim Kelley amp I've had for years. (See my review posted on the Amp Database).

I've only had this amp for 2 weeks, and in fact the Club Royale only came out in early 1997, but the service is very good with this company according to another friend of mine, who owns the same model with a Greenback and regularly visits the shop in La Habra, Ca. I don't expect the amp to break down, but if it did, I wouldn't have the slightest worry about getting it fixed. It's a total pleasure talking to Brian Gerhard on the phone, who lives and breathes the topic of tone and will discuss the many amazing aspects of guitar sound and how it is affected by each variable in the design of a tube amp and speaker.

(See above), their specialty. TopHat amps can be purchased through West LA Music, who I hear has most of their models in stock. I also hear if you try them out you'll want them all.

For a hand-made boutique amp, it's an excellent value. The Club Royale with the Greenback would run under $1000 based on the $1100 List. I took the amazing risk of ordering the amp after MANY discussions with another owner (but without having played through it) and I'd get it again in a heartbeat. I had such a picky agenda over the quality of the clean sound (and the circuit itself) that I'm amazed I didn't disappoint myself. The Club Royale lived up to all of my expectations, which were very high.