Trace Elliot Bonneville 112 Combo

This particular amp was made in 1995, I'm not sure if Trace is still manufacturing this particular amp. The signal path is pure tube consisting of 6 12Ax7's and 2 EL34 power tubes. There is a bias toggle switch which allows you to switch between EL34's or 6L6's. It can also use 3 additional tube types, but requires rebiasing in that case. Biasing pots are provided on the back panel for convenience. This is a single channel amplifier with a 3-way configurable preamp switch. The first position was designed to simulate the Fender tweeds, the second a Marshall plexi, and the third is referred to as a modern high gain setting. Other front panel controls are Gain, Bass, Mid, Treble, Presence, Reverb, Master Vol. 1, and Master Vol. 2, as well as a toggle switch for the effects loop. Rear panel controls include a variable speaker damping control, triode/pentode mode switch, effects send & return level, impedance selector (4,8,16ohms), Mute for turning off power amp output for running DI, and effects loop parallel/serial toggle switch. The Reverb and Effects Parallel/Serial are footswitchable, and you can also footswitch between the 2 Master Volume controls. Effects loop is also footswitchable. It would be nice if you could footswitch between the Preamp types, and since they didn't do this, I'll knock off a point for that sole reason. Oh yeah, there's also a Bright switch and Mid Boost switch on the front panel. The combo has a Celestion Vintage 30 speaker with an open back.

I use a Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion and a Gibson LP DC Standard with the amp. Because of the versatility of the amp, I can get just about any sound that I'm after. Depending upon whether you're in triode or pentode mode, affects the overall tonality of the amp. Triode mode tends to be a bit darker sounding, whereas Pentode mode has a brighter sound with more snap. The Variable damping also affects the overall sound quite a bit. Tighten it up, and the amp takes on a more focused sound, loosen it up a bit, and it starts to get more bottom end with more harmonics. Triode mode is great for getting thick, singing sustain in a solo. It responds well to the volume control on the guitar, and never seems to get muddy - although, if you loosen up the damping too much you can start to get muddy a bit. The distortion on the amp is great, very detailed, fat and chunky. It took awhile to work with the amp to understand how all of the controls interact. Using the preamp settings, the first position gives you a nice clean sound, but you can push it into the type of breakup that you would get with a Fender, nice for slightly distorted blues. The 2nd position gets you in Marshall territory and can run from blues to fat distortion. The 3rd setting really gets a nice fat brown sound going, and both guitars really sing at this point. I wouldn't call it a shredder type sound though, the distortions all have a very musical, harmonically rich texture about them.

I ordered this amp from Nashville Music and had it shipped to me in Massachusetts. They really did a lousy job packing the amp. They stuck it in a box, filled it with packing peanuts and shipped it. 50% of the peanuts found their way into the inside of the amp through the open back - real bright of them. Consequently, there wasn't a lot of packing to keep the amp from jostling about with UPS. The cabinet suffered a couple of good dings as a result. However, I did get a tremendous deal on this amp since it was their last one and they wanted to move it. When it arrived, I had a problem with a noisy volume pot, probably from being on their store floor for so long. I also had a problem with the reverb fading in and out. The warranty service took care of both problems, unfortunately, they really didn't succeed in fixing the reverb. I finally pulled the chassis out, and I found a single connector that wasn't pushed all the way down, I reseated it and haven't had a problem with the reverb since. I replaced all of the preamp tubes, and replaced the power tubes with a set of Svetlana EL34's (these are great!). This amp is built like a tank. The control knobs are all chrome plated brass, and all electrical connectors are gold plated. Wiring and soldering is very neat and well executed. Excellent build quality. As long as you maintain good tubes in the amp, I'd expect reliability to be excellent.

Trace Elliot's support center here in the US is top notch. I've called several times to discuss some technical details of the amp, and have always gotten knowledgeable individuals. They're quick to react to customer problems and requests, and seem concerned about customer satisfaction. Don't know how this will change in lieu of Gibson's acquisition of the company.

I've been playing for over 34 years now. I play a wide variety of music, and this amp works fine for all of them - blues, rock, jazz, country. If it were stolen, I probably couldn't replace it easily since they're difficult to find. I really like the quality of sound from this amp, it's not a cliche sound like that of a Marshall. I used to have a Marshall JCM900 combo, and this amp just blows it away hands down. Like I said earlier, I just wish you could switch the preamp config with a footswitch. All in all, this is a great amp, I love it.

Single channel 50 watt 1X12 combo. The signal path is 100 percent tube going through six 12AX7'S pre and two EL34'S post. Although it only has one channel it has three different pre amp voices. It achieves these extra voices by adding gain stages, re-biasing and reconfiguring the solitary pre-amp channel. Other controls are: bass, mid, top, presence, a level pot for the spring reverb, TWO master level pots, a bright switch and a mid boost.
On the back panel there is a switch to re-bias the output tubes should decide to swap out the supplied EL34's for 6L6's. The amp can also take 5881's or 6550's although a more complex re-biasing procedure needs to be undertaken. However the Bonneville makes the bias trimmer pots, needed to do this, easily accessable. There is also a switch to change the power tubes operation from penthode to triode effectively cutting the power from 50 watts to 25.
After this there is an output damping control, an effects loop that has both input and output level controls and is switchable from parallel to serial operation and a power amp mute button so you can use just the pre-amp for d.i. work or whatever. Two speaker outputs cover every likely ohmage and the amp comes set at 16 ohms to drive the Celestion Vintage 30 speaker.
Phew! I think that's it. Despite this wealth of features I was tempted to drop a point because although the two master volumes, reverb, effects loop and effects loop mode are all footswitchable (footswitch supplied) the pre-amp voices are only selectable by hand on the front of the amp. I decided not to strip the Bonneville of a perfect ten because it is after all only supposed to a be a one channel amp. And I don't know of any other one channel amp that gives you all these features let alone two extra pre-amp voicings on top.

I can't really summarise the sound of this amp in a few words because the amp is so versatile. The features provided and the quality of the signal path ensure that you can get just about every tone you want. And it truly represents the sound of whatever you care to plug into it. I play a Surfcaster and what I was looking for when I bought this amp was a really rich, smooth, shimmering clean tone that was just on the verge of saturating but with plenty of headroom to take both playing subtleties and the dynamic boost of my rat pedal. This is pretty bloody easy to achieve on the Bonneville. The tone controls are all passive but some interact with others. I found this to work really well and makes the amp seem even more organic and intuitive to use.
So the killer clean sound I wanted I got straight away. But the reason I bemoaned the lack of pre-amp footswitchability earlier is because the other, progressively dirtier, preamp modes sound so damn good. And they sound great without any need to re-tweek the EQ once you've set up your clean sound. The second voice sounds like a really gained up Hiwatt or other British style valve amp and the final voice is the mother of all high gain filth. Not that pussy scooped filth mind just really fat super chunk and shred. The all tube architecture ensures that no matter how much gain you pile on, and there's a truck load here, the sound is complex and harmonically rich.
My usual amp is a Hughes and Kettner Triamp stack. I've recently needed something more portable for sessions and gigs and so my quest for a small combo began. I tried twelve different combos(tech 21, fender, H&K, Laney etc.) , some more than twice the price of this combo(mesa, matchless), and the Trace slayed all in it's path.
Although the Trace can't replace my stack live (when transport and roadies are available) ,purely because the triamp has six midi switchable channels, it will definately be taking a lot of my recording tasks away from the H&K.
Live power is definately not a problem with this amp. It is super loud and despite it's size can handle the bottom end of a heavy metal chug with aplomb. I found the output dampner helps with this (why don't more small amps have this feature?). Operation is real quiet with no noticable switching noises when going between the master vols - another great live feature - real volume boost and real poweramp saturation. I haven't used the reverb much yet but I can say its pretty plush - sort of dark with a long decay. The reverb seems best suited for slower tempos, because of the decay, although it may sound surfish to some.
My style of music is quite hard alternative rock but since this amp is so versatile you'd have to be playing bolivian nose flute folk not to find the right sound for you in the Bonneville.It may seem overloaded with features but they're all there for a purpose. To deliver great sound. The only sound you can't get is a bad one.

Only had it for a month. But Trace's rep is pretty good. It's really solid and oozes quality. Anyway no problems yet.

No need to use this yet. But One thing's for sure they're dealer/service base was pretty big before Gibson aquired the company so I can only assume that now support will be even better (with respect to finding a local service agent anywhere in the world anyway) than it was before.

The only thing I wish this amp did is the footswitch thing. I only wanted one channel when I bought it but the other voicings are so good I almost feel sick every time I kick in a stomp box for distortion knowing what this amp could really be doing with that one simple modification. There is a real audible pause when selecting different preamp modes, caused perhaps by how these sounds are created, and maybe that's why Trace Elliot decided not to market it as a true three channel amp. Regardless of this I'm going to look into getting it modded to be foot switch capable. I would not only buy this amp again if it were stolen but if my H&K were stolen I'd use the insurance on that to buy two more of these and switch between the three. Yes it's worth the inconveniance.
The amp I almost got was the Fender Hotrod Deluxe(#30 more expensive). Frankly after borrowing the Fender for two days I was really depressed about how my sound would suffer from my need to be portable. The Bonneville represents no such compromise. It's a truly huge sounding amp that doesnt seem to realise that it's only a couple of feet tall.
Oh, and not that it matters, but the reason I tried it out in the first place is because it's a real looker - if you like green that is.