Whitney Amplification DV66 Head

Pretty minimal features one channel amp with master volume, and vintage/modern switchable pre-amp mode.All the tone I need!

I play heavy blues/rock in a power trio. I primarily use a PRS McCarty,1971 Tele,and my beloved 1964 Sunburst strat. The amp suits all my guitars well but for heavier stuff it definatly favors humbuckers. The vintage mode sounds like a hot bassman and cleans up well with guitar volume control. Lots of headroom and more than enough power for medium clubs(rated about 40 watts)I use a 2x12 Boogie cab w/celestion vintage 30's.The modern mode sounds more like a Marshall Plexi cranked...sweet grinding distortion with the PRS and violin like sustain with the strat. I would have liked the vintage/modern mode to be footswitchable but after meeting and discussing this with Mike he explained that he has yet to find a footswitch setup that doesn't suck the tone out of the amp...a sacrifice I am willing to live with.

This amp is built like a tank, the highest quality parts, real mullard tube, point to point solders, heavy duty transformers. All incased in a beautiful and very sturdy Mahogany and Flamed Maple cabinet.Should last forever.

Lucky for me Mike lives about an hour away so I was able to drive down and meet him and try out a bunch of his amps.First let me say Mike is a player first and amp builder/designer second...that combo is what makes him and his products great, he truly understands the tonal wants and needs of pro players and will work with you one on one to tweak your amp until you are completely satisfied,tube choices, gain stages, eq and voicing adjustments, he really builds each amp to suit your needs(rare these days)and all at very reasonable prices.Great!

I have been playing for 25 years and have owned almost every type amp out there...Marshalls,Boogies,Fenders(new and old),Bad Cat,Matchless,Soldano,VHT...and a few other unknown boutique amps.Compared to the price and quality of Marshall and Fender these days you can't beat the build quality,tone and bang for the buck.I am allready planning my next amp build with Mike.

I am very proud to write the first review of Mike Whitney's DV66 head. DV stands for Dual Voice, and these two voices, in my opinion, are Tweed Bassman and JTM 45. Mike has done a great job at keeping the simplicity of the basic circuit, while adding a couple of great features that make this amp much more usable at moderate, small to medium sized club volumes. The first is a master volume that really works well, and the second is a vintage/modern switch that brings in another gain stage. It has the standard bass, mid, treble and volume controls as well. Another great feature is the same type of external power tube bias measurement jacks and adjustment pot that David Allen and too few others put into their amps. The amp is designed around two KT66 tubes in the power section, but can be adjusted for any 6L6 style tube.

This amp sounds awesome. I have owned way too many amps, and this has the open, three dimensional sound that only the best tube amps have. I play it through an old Fender 2x12 cab that has two Celestion G12H speakers reconed with vintage 30 recone kits by some great reconer in Texas. This cabinet is perfect with this amp, and I can get any fat distorted tone that you would ever want for blues, classic rock or older heavy metal. There is enough control with the tone pots to get some modern metal sounds as well, and I was pretty surprised when I turned the mids down all the way and boosted the treble and bass. Sucked mids heaven (hell?). I really don't like that sound, so I brought the mids back up and never did that again, but it showex me how versatile the amp is.

I have come to love KT66 tubes. Maybe it's just that I never really heard them before, but this amp has girth and fatness that I have only heard on records before. I play out with this amp and it can be more than loud enough for any gig I can imagine. It would probably sound great through a 4x12 cab with Celestion Alnico Blues, but it may be a while before I can afford that puppy. The thing that really works well with the amp, is that with the master volume above half way, it sounds great no matter what preamp setting you use. It only gets louder after that, and with all controls being quite effective, there are many subtle variations that can make a strat sound full, or a Les Paul sound clear, etc.

The vintage/modern switch doesn't drastically change the sound, it just brings in more gain that never sounds fuzzy or harsh. This is not footswitchable, but Mike said he tried a few different footswitch options and they all affected the tone in a negative way, so he left this as a manual switch, which is fine by me. I can run the modern setting all night and adjust the volume on my guitar for most sound I need in my rock band. For the blues/soul/R&B band, I switch to the vintage setting to get as much clean headroom that I can for swing or other clean guitar tunes.

Built like a nuclear submarine - should be fine past WWIII.

You will not even find a web site for this guy yet, but when he retires from his day job, he plans on getting more amps out the door. Mike Whitney is obviously a guitar player/tone hound like me, and he has been great to email and talk to on the phone, so when he takes his amp business to the next level, I know he will be one of the good ones, like David Allen, DR Z, and the other makers that really love what they do and stand behind thier work. In the meantime, you can email me and I'll be glad to discuss tone, guitars, why you shouldn't obsess about equipment, why Protools sucks but I cant stop using it, etc.

I think I said too much already.