Winfield Thomas Amps Elizabeth Reverb Head

This is a 20 Watt, 2-6V6 head that uses a 5U4 rectifier tube and has reverb. The controls are the basics: Volume, Treble, Middle, Bass, Reverb and a bright switch. The reverb is footswitchable. I give a 7 due to the fact that it's not feature laden. If it was, the tone would sacrifice. This amp has everything you need for good tone.

Honestly, if this scale went higher than 10, my rating would go higher than 10. I play a '99 Strat with Texas Specials, a '94 Les Paul with Wagner Fillmore pickups and an original '69 SG. I have owned a Fargen Dual Classic (which is a Blackface and a Tweed clone), countless Marshall, Sunn, and Music Man amps. I have never owned a vintage Fender, but have played through a 60's Super Reverb, 60's Pro Reverb, and a 60's Deluxe Reverb. My deal has always been that I wanted an amp that did Fender and Marshall in one (I know, join the club!) I have 2 of Winnie's amps, his Winfield (Marshall) and this Elizabeth (Fender). I love the Winfied, and I PASSIONATELY love this Elizabeth. It truly puts the Fargen to shame (sorry Ben), but it's the truth.

I've made the realization that no amp can truly do both at once. The Elizabeth does Fender as good as I have ever heard. My signal goes from the guitar to a VHT Valvulator, custom Wah, TS-9/808, Landgraff Dynamic Overdrive clone, Boss CE-2 chorus, and Ibanez 9 series analog delay to the amp.

Every guitar sounds perfectly as it should and it loves the pedals. I am getting an amazing SRV tone with the strat. Every Fender I've ever played sounded dull and lifeless without the bright switch on. This one isn't that way at all. I actually like it better with the bright switch off. On, it's actually too bright. At some point I may try tweaking that, but for now there is no need. I always knew the strat was going to sound good, that's why you go with an amp like this. What I've been pleasantly surprised with is how great the Gibson's sound through it. With the Landgraff I have an amazingly versatile crunch. Imagine in your head 'Since I've Been Loving You' by Zeppelin and this amp is giving me that tone. It's got the crunch yet retains the note articulation and clarity. It's like you can hear the clean punch along with the grit that the pedal is giving. With the right pedals, I don't think I'm ever going to need another amp, this is it . . . tonal nirvana found!!

I've owned this amp for a few months. It's build solid, but it's really too early to tell. I don't anticipate any problems.

Winnie's the man. I'm anal and had a cosmetic issue with the head, and he worked with me and fixed the problem without issue. He's a great guy and I highly recommend working with him.

This is the boutique deal of the century. I would have paid more than I did for this head given the sonic quality. My only real hesitation was that Winnie doesn't have any clips posted on his site, so I was going into this somewhat blind. Before he moved to AZ, I went to his place in VT and played through his Winfield and bought one on the spot. Due to my previous experience, I wasn't concerned about the quality or tone I would find in the Elizabeth and I wasn't disappointed. I've honestly called my buddy with the 60's Super Reverb and told him to sell it and get this amp.

If you're considering this amp, stop thinking and buy it now before Winnie figures out what he has and starts charging more money. I know that talk is cheap, but I'm a tone snob that doesn't settle for second best. If I thought I could get better tone from a vintage Fender, I'd buy a vintage Fender. The truth is I've never heard a better Fender tone that this.

This is a new reproduction of the well known 6G15 tube reverb which Fender built in the early 60's. Tubes are 12AT7, 6K6GT, and 12AX7. One difference is the power supply Winnie put in operates the tubes at a higher voltage than the original, but I'm told it doesn't affect performance. It may slightly reduce tube life, but it will probably not be noticed. There may also be a tiny bit of extra gain. I have no way to compare to the original though. Features include the Mix, Tone, and Dwell controls which give much more versatile control over the reverb compared to combo units having internal reverb - I've got three other amps with reverb and this one blows those away. I have to rate a 10 because it replicates everything the Fender had for features, including an excellent quality cabinet.

Guitars I use include a Solimar (Route 101 Guitars - you can read my review of it also) and a vintage Mosrite Bluesbender. The Solimar has Duncan Hot Rail on the neck, a Duncan Single Coil mid, and a Duncan Humbucker bridge pickup, coil splits, 5 way; in short capable of a myriad of tones. The Mosrite has a pair of original humbuckers. My music style ranges from country to blues, a bit of vintage rock. I play lead guitar in a Christian band that does nearly any style from country to gospel to rock to blues. This reverb can be set to provide any effect from dry to space echo. The tone and dwell controls allow quite a variety across the spectrum, but the stock ranges are a bit nonlinear. Fender's design fault not Winnie's, but it could have been improved for better control. I personally don't do much space echo so I'm on the lower 10 to 15% of the ranges. There is no apparent coloring of the tone going to the amp, and the unit is very quiet. The silence is rather amazing as I find that even though Winnie put a grounded cord on the unit, he doesn't connect it to the chassis as he said it caused a ground loop that generates tremendous hum. I may test the grounding to see myself, but the original Fender unit wasn't equipped with a grounded cord. I'm a safety engineer so this makes me a bit uncomfortable. If I find a solution I'll get back to Winnie with it.

My unit suffered a reverb tank failure in shipping, but that's a possibility with any spring reverb. Winnie provided promptreplacement and everything works great. He even spent considerable time on the phone helping me troubleshoot the unit. The construction of the unit is quite solid using an eyelet board as opposed to soldering resistors and caps to sockets, connectors and terminal strips as is often found in vintage style equipment, but I think the original Fender unit used a board also. I've got six old vintage tube amps I gig with regularly and would not hesitate to take this reverb on the road. It's too early in this new unit's life to tell about long term, but I'm betting it will last as long as the Fender units that are still around nearly forty years after they came out. And if service is needed, this thing is about as simple as it gets, so any decent amp tech should be able to repair it.

Winnie is a gem and stands behind his equipment. Excellent service.

I'm as vintage as the gear I mostly use, been playing 34+ years. Other gear includes a Fender Super Champ, Alamo Challenger (my favorite - it's a poor man's Champ), a couple Silvertones - 1482 turned into a head and a 1484 head driving a pair of Jensen P15R speaker cabs I built, a Traynor GuitarMate, a Kustom III Bass amp head and twin 15 cab (I stand in to play bass when our bassist Kathryn sings solos), and a home-made Southwest Technical Products solid state (yuck!) guitar amp I put together when I was in high school. I shopped a long time to find a stand-alone tube reverb, and all the old Fenders, Danelectros, and Premiers were selling for too much. I considered the Elizabeth worthwhile because it's brand new. If this unit were lost or stolen I wouldn't hesitate to call Winnie for another. Except I'd see if I could talk him into covering the cabinet in cream tolex and oxblood grill cloth to match my Jensen speaker cabs.