TopHat Vibra-Trem

This 1x12 combo features 2 inputs, volume, tone, tremolo speed & intensity. Pull the intensity knob up to switch from tremolo to vibrato. There are 3 12ax7, 2 el84 and one gz34 tubes. There are one or two things that could really improve the amp, like a more comprehensive tone stack, a bright switch or a bass cut switch. Overall though, what's there does help create the amp's unique character.

I wasn't very impressed with the amp when I first bought it. After about 15 minutes of playing time, I was making a mental list of potential improvements. The amp just sounded way too dark for me, even with the tone maxed out. I upgaded the tubes which had little effect. I then replaced the the greenback with an alnico blue. Again, only a slight improvement. So I opened it up and started looking around. My first thought was to add a bright switch on the volume pot. The standard bright cap used in Fender amps turned out to be way too bright so I removed it. Then, I noticed a simple way to improve the tone control. After that, the amp really woke up. It now does the glassy, shimery vox sound that I was after. There are still a few minor issues. The tremolo is nothing special. Limited in range and not as smooth as I prefer. It sounds similar to my CAE super tremolo, which isn't bad. I prefer more "vintage" sounding trem, i.e. my Standel amp, my Wurli a200 piano or my dallas-arbitor trem face pedal. If you're looking at this amp just for it's tremolo, save yourself some $ and buy a tuna melt. The vibrato, on the other hand, sounds killer. The tremolo circuit, and the amp on a whole, is on the noisy side. Even at idle, this amp makes much more noise than my 100 watt Marshall or 60 Boogie.

Seems very well built. All point to point wiring and minimum componentry should make for a reliable amp. No transformer issues yet. Time will tell.

I've never dealt with the company. I did visit the website and they have a # to call but I didn't see any online tech support or email support.

After the tone mod, tube and speaker upgrades, I've really enjoyed this amp so far. There's not a huge amount of preamp gain but my pwb j.fuzz does a fantastic job at pushing it over the top and controlling the bass response. The secret to this amp is finding the sweet spot with the volume control and let your guitar, boost pedal and fingers do the rest. A near perfect amp for an impromptu blues jam.

I own 2 Top Hat Vibra Trem 20's.One is a 96 Model with a celestion greenback. Volume/Tone/and Tremolo. The other Is a 97 Model with a Fane speaker. I use the amp to play blues gigs/and to do studio work. Both amps have high/Low inputs and utilize a pair of EL84's Very simple/toneful layout....A real plug and play kind of amp....which is why I give it a 10

I have been using these amps since 1996/1997. I bought them for the lush clean sounds they produce, as I tend to use alot of effects.I play several different guitars through these amps, mainly PRS customs& Standards.These guitars sound rich/full through this amp.I also own strats,and a Hamer artist semihollow which equally sound good.The amp likes to be cranked,and the tone is very rich/complex.The celestion greenback has nice/tight bottom end. The Fane speaker seems to be Louder overall, and has more "High end" response than the celestion. The amp does not distort/rattle at all when turned up.Both amps are quiet/never noisy.I play blues,and I also play with a singer/songwriter in the style of Paula Cole.The tone of the amp is somewhat dark, and works GREAT with effects....I have also used these amps extensively in the studio and they record very well......They have that classic "class A sparkle and chime" But enough bite to play some searing blues solos with an Old Ibanez Tube Screamer out in front.

I have NEVER had a problem with these amps......They are EXTREMELY reliable. I have gigged them heavily for the past 6-7 years, and nothing has gone wrong. The only thing Brian at Top Hat did was replace the chasis for free in my 96 model....The amp was wroking properly, he just wanted to replace the chasis because there were some problems in the first batch, and he did not want to have the amp die on me at a gig. He did the work/shipped it back to me in less than one week.

Brian At Top Hat is awesome. The BEST customer service period. he stands behind his amps, and they are built with alot of pride. They are friendly/helpful, and really took time to answer questions/take care of replacing my chasis....AND I DID NOT EVEN ASK TO HAVE THIS WORK DONE.....They offered because they wanted the amp to be working properly for me.

I have been playing at a semi Pro level since 1990. If it were lost/stolen I would get another no questions asked. I love the clean sound, and the rich Tremolo that the amp has.If you like the matchless Joh Jorgensen, but can't afford it, this amp is a welcome alternative.(that's how I discovered it anyway, after having price shock from Matchless) The bang for the buck is amazing for a hand poin to point amp. I own amps by Bogner/Two-Rock, as well as several PRS guitars.Baker TCM Fender and Hamer....When I am playing a small club, or a blues gig, this is the amp I reach for.

I have one of the first Vibra-Trem 20's with a single greenback Celestion and I must say, I love this amp. I use a 2000 American Standard Strat with stock pickups and a 2002 Les Paul Custom with stock pickups. This amp has excellent all around tone. The construction is excellent and Brian stands 100% behind any of his products. This amp does not need any more features. I have been playing guitar since the mid 60's and I remember the amps I used to play through. All tube single 12 combos. No extra knobs. Volume, tone, trem. Thats all I need.

Its funny how some people like the tone of an amp and somebody else will not. I think it has a lot to do with your playing, since anything coming out of the amp is coming from you. Finger, neck, pickups and your own ability to play. I am blessed with a style that allows me to sound like me through anything I play. Its just the subtle nuances of tone that I notice. For me, the Top Hat has wonderful Vox like shimmer, that bell like chime. When I turn it up to about 9, it sings. The sustain is pure cream. I run carefully chosen boost pedals in the front if I need some more grind with less volume, but this amp likes to be turned up. Turn it lower and use single coils and its pure Nashville. Its up to the player to find their own sweet spot. I've found several.

I also experienced the power transformer frying and it was repaired at cost because my amp is quite old and shipped back to me very quickly. Brian is excellent at service and gives as much information as you are looking for. I have had not other problems with this amp. I gig and record with it. I have a room full of tube amps, several class A combos and this is my favorite all around amp. Its built like amps used to be built and should last forever with proper care and feeding.

Better than any other company except Gibson. They are equally cool.

If you are confident in your playing ability and can coax great tone out of an amp without relying on master volumes, gain and pedals to cover up your playing, then try this amp. This will leave the tone up to you and your fingers, as an amp should be.

This amp is a combo with one 12 inch celestion greenback speaker. I have given it a rating of 8 because as far as "features" go, the amp does not have many. Then again, it doesn't seem to need many. Like almost all of the great amps of the past, the amp if so fantastic because it does not try to do too much. There are two inputs, one each for high and low, volume, tone, and two tremelo controls, one for speed and one for intensity. The intensity knob pulls up to double the speed of the tremelo. The amp is about 20 watts and that is plenty of juice for club dates.

I play telecasters exclusively, and I get a variety of sounds from these similar guitars due to the pickups in them. All of the pickups are single coils, but I have a warm tele (VanZandt pickups), a biting tele (Fralin pickups), and an esquire (Fender
Custom Shop Nocaster pickup). These guitar all sound fantastic through this amp. I have played humbucker and P-90 style guitars through the amp, but they didn't sound as good. The amp seems to favor the warm side of the tonal range, so I usually have the tone control all the way up, and adjust the tone using the pot on my guitar. With that said, I find the sound of this amp using guitar with single coil pickups to be pure heaven. I own four other amps, and this is by far the quietest running amp of the bunch. There is almost zero background noise, and the tremelo sound is thick and swirly. Just great!

I have used this amp for gigging for the past two years without a backup, and it has never let me down at a show. However, the power transformer did short out a few months ago when I was playing at home, and it could just have easily gone out during a gig somewhere. I am kind of torn about rating this category, because when I returned the amp for service (No cost to me), Brian let me know that the initial run of 100 transformers they had built had a problem that has caused almost all of them to short out. My amp seems to have lasted just about the longest with the original transformer. The amp is so well put together that I am still gigging with it with no backup for club dates. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

When the amp died, I called the factory, and Brian was great. I was quite unhappy that the amp was down, and he explained the problem, and told me that they would fix it and send it back out to me within 2 days of getting the amp in their shop. True to his word, the amp was repaired and back in my hands only 5 days after he got it. In all, the amp was gone for less than 2 weeks. Replacing the power transformer was done at no cost to me, and while he was under the hood, Brian made a few adjustments to center the tone control so that it now has a wider range. This was also done at no cost. Brian was great to deal with. He talked with me for about 25 minutes on the phone, and made me feel that my happiness with his product was his only concern.

I have been playing guitar for 18 years, and I own several boutique amps (Kendrick, Siegmund, Blues Pearl). This is ALWAYS the first amp I reach for. My favorite tone comes from this amp. The sound is so warm, but at the same time, I never have any trouble cutting through the rest of the band when I need to. If the amp were ever lost or stolen I don't know what I would do since Top Hat doesn't make this model anymore. I would definitely buy another amp from Brian. When I go out and play with this amp, I don't sound like anyone else. You can listen to a room full of people playing amps that sound pretty good, but when you plug into this amp, suddenly most of the other amps sound kind of thin and wimpy. And that's the truth!!!!!!!

the tophat vibratrem is a 20 watt\class a[sounding anyways]single channel combo guitar amp featuring a single volume,tone, speed and intensity controls.[the later two for tremelo]Mine came with a stock celestion greenback speaker and seems to be made of some sort of plywood[pine is prefered but sure beats chipboard]It is covered in tan tolex and is quite sharp looking.I gave it a 7 despite minimal features as the tone is at your finger tips and the amp responds nicely to nuances[i've yet to find this using preamp type distortion]

i only own an 88 strat w/fender noisless pickups but have tried many guitars at music stores with it and have concluded it sounds inescapably vox like.[as a huge u2 fan,i love it]I also play blues music[why is blues always used as a guage for boutique amps?]and is well suited for that as well.I would however like to hear it with a more midrangy [400-600hz]speaker as the celestion is bassy[the guy who submitted the other review is flat out wrong on saying the greenback is lacking bass unless he has a bum speaker,besides a bassy guitar tone sounds thin in the context of a band]i would also like it to have a hair bit more upper prescence as it sounds a little dark with some pickups.i fell in love with the tone and highly recomend it to u2, petty ...fans as it blows away the vox ac15 reissue wich uses preamp distortion that you cant escape if you want output distortion.there is room for a little improvement but the tone is definitly there.viva la vox tone!

it has been reliable to this point although i've only owned it for a half a year and the tremelo is very picky with preamp tubes in relation to tremelo noise.

i've actually spoken with brian gehrard[he is the company manager or owner or something] a few times about the tremelo noise on the phone and would say these folks are quite helpfull as they offered to check out and fix if need be the tremelo noise for free.[in all fairness , it may just be the nature of tremelo]

i've been playing for 15 years and know what sounds good and this amp sounds good,damn good.although not a metal musician's amp,you can't beat it for low to medium grind.i've owned many amps and i'm most happy with this one although the budda twinmaster was right up there as well.if lost or stolen,i'd deffinitly replace it.

The Top Hat Vibra-Trem is a single channel, point-to-point wired, 20 watt, class A amplifier whose circuitry is based on the Vox AC-15. It uses a pair of EL-84 power tubes, 12Ax7 pre-amp tubes, a GZ-34 tube rectifier, and a tremolo/vibrato tube whose nomenclature escapes me at this point. The basic model comes with one 12" Celestion Greenback, and for another $350 I got a Weber Blue Dog in a matching one 12 cabinet. From a control perspective, this is one of the most limited amplifiers I have owned: bright and normal imput jacks, volume, tone, tremolo intensity and tremolo speed (the latter has a pull mechanism that switches from the slower tremolo to faster vibrato modes). Four knobs; that's it. The tremolo circuit is one of the best I have ever heard and is the amplifier's strong point; however, I find the simple "tone" control to be prohibitively limiting and the Celestion a poor speaker choice for this particular model. More on that later.

As initially configured, the single 12 amplifier lacked bass response and the tone control was of little/no help in this area. According to the sheet of paper that passes for the manual (I've received more information on $3 cereal boxes than I did with this $900 amp), the tone control boosts the treble response, and that turning the control downward produced a Fenderesque "brown" tone. I found that turning the tone under one half produced mud--it allowed the bass portion of the audio spectrum through but that to get any sparkle out of this amp, you needed to push the tone control near the three-quarters mark, at which point the bass and some of the lower-mids dropped away. I was advised by the guys from whom I purchased this thing (Electric City Music--great people by the way) that the two speaker variant improved bass response, so I bit the bullet and bought a single twelve Top Hat extension cab with a Weber Blue Dog speaker in it. The bass reponse improved immediately and the clean headroom was enhanced, but the amp lost its punch and seemed thin. I suspect that the latter problem is due to asking a 20 watt amp to drive two 12 speakers. I finally unplugged the Celestion and ran only the Weber. This action substantially improved the amp's lower freequency response, improved the overdrive tone substantially and did not comprise the headroom. Lacking a degree in this area, I suspect that the reason for the improvement is that this amplifier depends on good bass response from the outset, allowing the tone control to merely tweak the treble, and the Greenback is just not a suitably balanced performer. I now have a one twelve combo in two cabinets...go figure.

I own two electrics that I hoped to play through this amplifier: A Terry McInturff Monarch with P-90s and a Heritage 537 (Roy Clark Model single cutaway semi-hollowbody) with humbuckers. The Monarch's P-90s sounded awful through the Celestion alone, sounded lost through two speakers and finally got a nice rounded, singing tone through the Weber alone. Unfortunately, it sounds best through my existing amplifier--a Fender Blues Deluxe--where the P-90s really express themselves in all their edgy glory. The Heritage has a bassy tone to start with and didn't sound bad through the Celestion, but regardless of speaker configuration, there was no significant improvement in the tone produced through the Top hat over it's tone through the Blues Deluxe. Convicned the guitar was at fault, I had the drab Schaller pickups changed out to Seymor Duncans (jazz model/JB) and the Top hat tone got worse. I am not sure where to lay the blame on this turn of events--I am considering trying the guitar through an amp with a 4X10 configuration (Super Reverb or Bassman) to see if small speakers help. If not... Now, time for the rant. I paid $900 (granted, not bad for a Top Hat Club model) for this amplifier and it should have been obvious to anyone at the Factory that this thing needed a different speaker. I shouldn't have to change out speakers to get the "legendary" Top Hat tone immediately after uncrating the amp from its packing material. An additional $350 was required before I was marginally satisfied with the result. Perhaps the most aggravating part of all this is that the Fender, with all of its "shoddy" mamnufacturing techniques (circuit boards vs point-to-point; solid state rectifier; lower grade speaker) sounded far and away better than the lovingly constructed hand made model. I mean c'mon, the Fender was $350 new about three years ago--and a could have bought three of them for the price of the final Top hat suite cost ($1250). Word to the wise--buy tone not authenticity. Regardless of whether an amplifier is constructed using baling wire and chewing gum wrappers ('cause thats the way Leo made "em) or modern alternatives, the final test is in the tone. I now play both amps together using a Horizon A/B box. Would I replace this the Top Hat if it was stolen? Puh-lease.