[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE NICHOLAS: Tone Master's are
designed to be a professional solution for the modern guitar
player.
We're the authority on how to deliver the sound of a Fender
amp in the digital world, because we're
the authority on how to deliver a Fender amp sound in the tube
world.
The original Deluxe Reverb and Twin Reverb
are almost perfect tools for doing almost any kind of guitar
playing.
Because those amps can be clean, they can be dirty,
they can be bright, they can be bass-y,
they have a couple of great effects on them,
you know, guitar players from all walks of life
adopted those as the standard.
A good electric guitar with a good tube amp
is kind of like the complete system.
It evolved into what we think of as great guitar tone.
We started talking about doing the Tone Master
series many years ago.
It came from two basic things.
One, was we absolutely saw the trend towards lighter.
We've seen a trend of modeling, getting
to the point where high end professionals, they'll still
tour with the high end modeling solution, usually a rack mount
or a floorboard because it's so convenient.
A lot of modern performance situations
benefit from having a line out, benefit from playing quieter.
So how would we combine the look and feel
and sound of a traditional tube amp,
but also offer some of those modern conveniences.
We wanted to make the amplifiers sound as accurate
as we can to the iconic Twin Reverb and Deluxe Reverb.
In order for us to do this, we needed
to have all the processing power available.
By using a quad core processor on the Tone Master, where
one core by itself is more powerful than what
we're using in the Mustang GT.
This is a big move.
There's a ton of tradition here.
We wanted to make sure we were going to do it right
if we were going to do it.
This amp has an unprecedented amount of CPU processing.
We're using one of the cores just for the amp model.
Two of the cores, just for the Reverb,
it takes a lot of processing to do this.
With convolution, you can get the best reverb sound
possible right now.
The whole processing will cost you
a lot compared even to the amp model.
Doing a 12 second convolution reverb on one core
is not possible.
So we decided to split the reverb processing
into two cores.
And then the remaining core for the cab-sim.
KEN PORTER: The cab-sims is what we're using on the line outs.
The cab-sims are based on impulse responses.
So in order for us to capture the cabinet simulations,
we actually went to a studio here in Phoenix
and we took tons of measurements with different microphones
of the cabinet with the Jensen speaker.
And that's basically what's in there.
The capsules have 100 millisecond impulse responses
that allow us to capture not only the character
of the speaker and the resonance of the cabinet,
but also just a hint of the room that really sweetens things up.
We thought Tremolo was a really important thing.
We actually brought six old blackface amps into the room
and had the engineers with oscilloscopes
and all the gear, all the tools.
We had to kind of hone in on I think this range of rate,
and this range of depth, and this wave form is representing,
you know, the best of the vintage examples.
I'm really glad we put the attenuator on the back.
We have six different positions on the switch
that you can use that output power control.
You can put these amps on 10 and do your Santana or your Sex
Pistols tones.
But set it to any volume you want.
You can go all the way down to apartment volume if you need to
and still get that same sound.
Turning up a twin is quite an experience.
But you don't want to do it for very long.
And now you can hear these amps as if they were at volume,
but not being at that volume.
One of the challenges was the speaker.
And it made perfect sense for us to actually work
with Jensen on this just because they're making the C12K that
is in the reissue amp.
One of their requirements was to make the amplifier lighter.
So we knew that we couldn't go with the ceramic magnet.
We had to go with the neodymium magnet.
And what we ended up with, it's a lighter version of the C12K.
It uses the same voice coil assembly.
It uses the same spider.
It uses the same dust cap.
It uses a neodymium magnet versus a ceramic magnet, which
makes it 4.4 pounds versus 9 and 1/2 pound.
But it has the same power handling
and it has the same sensitivity as what's
in the original reissue amplifier.
So in the spirit of making the amplifiers light,
one of the things we did is choose
to go with a solid pine finger jointed cabinet.
We've done solid pine on a bunch of higher end
amps over the years.
The woods more expensive.
It's a little trickier for the guys
to do the finger joining in the factory.
But the sounds great and it's light.
The same factory where we make the 68 reissues and the hot rod
series amps is where the final assembly on the Tone Masters
are.
We wanted to do that because the vinyl, the grille cloth,
the knobs, the hardware, the corners, the tilt back legs,
everything looks exactly right.
It looks exactly like the same stuff as the reissue,
because it is.
To do this right, you really need
to understand math and electronics.
But you really need a sort of guru level tube expertise.
In fact, the two guys that did the 65 twin and deluxe reissue
amps, the guys whose names are on those schematics
are right down the hall.
They were our consultants for this project.
Who better than the guys who did the original deep dive
20 years ago to guide us into this new era.
I was the project engineer in 1993.
So it was really exciting for me to be involved.
The guitar, which is an analog signal, goes into the inputs.
And that first stage or two of the circuitry
is an analog signal that gets converted to digital.
And then it's out of my hands and the digital experts
take it from there.
It's super important, too.
I mean, we've been trying to push for that so that knowledge
is transferred from the analog guys to the digital guys
so we can understand better how it works
and then emulate it much better.
When they're finished on the digital side of things,
it's back into the analog domain.
So there's output circuitry that conditions the signal
for the power amp and for the line output.
We just wanted to give the front end a lot of headroom
to handle pedals really, really well, right?
Because pedals are all over the place when
it comes to the output signals.
We tested these amps with all kinds of overdrive pedals,
delay pedals.
They respond the same way as if you
had your pedal board in front of a 65 reissue Twin or Deluxe.
We're making products that have so many features
and are so amazing at the price points these days.
I always say it's a good time to be alive.
BEN RATHKE: I like tube amps.
I love the simplicity of them.
I love that we're using DSB technology
to do simple things great.
These amps sound and feel like they're two versions.
If you want tone from a modeling amp that
has 200 presets, if you want tone from a high end
amp like the Tone Masters that has no presets,
but you're using all the processing power to get
a great amp sound, or if you still want to buy the tube
amps, we're still making those.
We have the kind of cross pollinated knowledge
to be able to do all of this.
We take a lot of pride in the work that we do.
Going to a music store and seeing an amp
that you were a big part of, that's priceless.
[MUSIC PLAYING]