Post by hogridr on Feb 21, 2009 15:48:33 GMT -7
This is my first 6V6 amp, so other than playing a backline or friends Fender here and there I have not spent a lot of time with a 6V6 tube amp. My first worry was giving up my Ghia, love the amp but it does not get quite as aggresive as I would like for the music I am playing now. I also wanted to try something with a "Fender Clean" sound. First, I am not trying to knock the Ghia, I will have another one someday, but for now the Z28 is definately my other amp. The Z28 came with greenback, good speaker for this amp, but I had to try a well broken in Tone Tubby Ceramic. For me this was the speaker, absolutely great with this amp. Now, the Z28 has an amazing thick tone with the sparkly top end and the very tight bottom. This was the first thing that grabbed me, the pounding bottom end coming out of a 1x12 open back combo. No matter how much I cranked it up it stayed tight and focused, never got mushy or muddy. One of the faves I had to try was the 3/3/3 setting. and had some slight adjustements depending on the guitar I was running(single, PAF HB, High Gain HB). Great thumpy dirt tone that retained clarity, and it cleaned up beautifully. Now, the second thing to play with was getting as much clean headroom out of it as I could. I noticed that depending on settings I found some amazing clean tones, one of which gave me the impression of having a slight reverb and the other like a slight chorus, great 3D cleans. For my experience this amp is different from some many of the Z's. I have found this amp is one for knob twisters. Most my other Z's have been set it and forget it, by that I mean I found the tone I wanted and only made slight adjustments to it. While the Z28 only has 3 knobs, there are a butt load of possibilites with these 3. I have found a few settings that did not sound to good, but that was on me, a slight twist here or there on the treble or bass would bring in just what I was looking for. This amp does do Marshall'esque tones quite well. I knew of the clean tones but was surprised at the sweet agressive crunch that came out of this lil sucker. I played it last night with my Maz JR NR, sweet little stack of 1x12's. I did not stick to one clean or one dirty, I traded settings on the two between sets, and I must say my pedal board was more of a decoration last night, except for my amp switcher. I had several of the standard comments, "Who makes those amps?", "Whats a Z amp?". Several asked if I was playing both at once to get the sound I was, I told them nope, just one at a time and smiled. I left several scratching there heads trying to figure out how so much sweet sound was coming out of a 1x12. I have been running though my pedal board settings today, getting things right, tonight I am going to try the Z28 solo and play with some different dirt pedals and see what I get. The Z28 is a keeper for me, and while I will have another Ghia someday the next amp for me will be a remedy. I don't know what took me so long to try the Z28 out, but boy I am glad I finally did.