Ugly Amps Whirley

This amp is brand new, in fact, I have the first prtotype. I had bought a rebuilt amp from Steve on Ebay and we started discussing amps, blah blah, when he offered me the prototype Whirley to get it out into the public eye. The only reason I gave it an 8 for features is that it doesn't really have any, just a bright switch, gain, volume and tone. I only wish that it had a standby switch for breaks etc. There is no channel switching, no effects loop, no headphone jack, just an input 2 switches and 3 knobs anfd really great tone. Our band recorded a live album recently and I used my Whirley in tandem with my Victoria Double Deluxe and the engineer liked the Whirley better. This is an all tube amp with a solid state rectifier that uses 5881's or 6l6's with 12ax7 preamp tubes.

The amp has quite a variety of sounds for me with the gain and master, you can dial in distorted sounds at very low levels, I play mostly bluesish stuff, kinda Stevie Ray meets ZZ top with a dash of Henry Garza. If you want more than one good sound at a time you had better buy some pedals. I have brought my pedals down to just a fulltone fulldrive 2 and a keeley moded blues driver with a fender stand alone reverb reissue and for me it seems to be enough. I wish it had just a little bit more headroom for clean tones. I think that it is about 30 to 35 watts. I use the top with a lopoline 15" cab with an eminence big ben red coat and a mesa thiele designed cab with a 12" cannabis rex. I use various strats with csutom pickups (texas specials and antiquities) a custom made tele with rio grande and custom tele pickups, a les paul with seth lover seymour duncan pickups blah blah, I just honed my collection down from 34 to 20 guitars and the amp sounds so good with the strats and the teles that I don't use anything else. I have really had no noise problems except in polaces with bad electrical situations. I play 2 to 4 timnes a week and I have used nothing but this head since I got it, my Clark prototype is too noisy, my Victoria will not turn down low enough for some smaller gigs, the Whirley with a 12" cab does fine for smaller gigs and with the added 15" cab is almost enough for my biker bar gigs.

No problems so far except when I turn everything all the way up, it has a whistle, Steve said that if it became a problem he would take care of it. I use this amp without a backup. I have used it in various situations from pubs to biker bars to recording with no problem so far

Wow, here is here it gets really awesome, you can call the company and talk to Steve, we have talked quite a bit over the last couple of months. The only other 2 times that I could actually talk to the amp builder was when I called Rivera and talked to Paul Rivera himself and when I called Victoria and talked to Mark, these are very busy p[eople and don't have much time to talk, so the conversations were brief. Steve on the other hand still has time to talk at great length about his amps and what will suit you best. Steve will work with you. When I told him that I was not getting enough headroom he said that he would put in a larger transformer for a very reasonable fee. He also sent me some free tubes to try out to see if the amp would sound better. I have no idea what the warranty is, but it should say on the website, or call Stewve and he will tell you himself. Don't need an authorized service center, just send the amp back to Steve, butr I cannot see anyone having to do this too much, I rn this head hard and have had absolutely no problem with it.

I have been playing professionally for over 40 years now and still get out and slam it loud and hard on the weekends and holidays. I keep a 3 piece band working and have to have a big sound, not too loud, but fat and big. I have 20 guitars and 20 amps, but that is dwindling at this time, down from 34 guitars and more amps. If the Whirley was lost or stolen, I would call Steve immediately and get another amp, either another Whirley or maybe something even bigger. I really don't know how much these amps cost to buy, I just know I got mine cheap because Steve wanted to get them out into the world. I would pay twice as much as I paid for another one though. I know it sounds like I am overdoing this, but after having some of the big companies and even some of the boutique guys blow me off, it is so refreshing to have someone talk to you personally and take into account your playint style and go through the amp repeatedly befroe it goes out to you.