Egnater Rebel 20 deal at GC!!!

[jackthehack]

What a steal on a great amp! GC had these on "clearance" for $424 (normally $549), print out the "Tax Days" $65 off coupon and cut off the bottom part that says that clearance items are excluded and get the biggest of the morons in the GC to check you out at $359... SCORE!!!

The EL84's/6V6's that come with it are JJ's, will have to play around with swapping the Sovtek 12AX7's with ECC83's and 12AX7-WA's to see what voices best.

 

[leo12.]

What a deal, I would like to hear your view on that amp especially the 6V6's.
I enjoyed your threads on the Blackheart Heads. Are you still using them?

 

[clearerphish]

Love my Egnater Renegade head. One of the best music purchases I ever made.

 

[jackthehack]

I probably won't be using the Blackhearts much any more since picking the Rebel 20 up, it pretty much fills the roles of both the 5 and 15 watt Blackheart heads...

We had a major product launch over the weekend so I really haven't had much time to play with this and am waiting on some preamp tubes to arrive to do some swapping.

That being said, I'd highly recommend the amp, as it's well worth even the list price, as being able to dial it from 1 to 20 watts and from 6V6 "Deluxe Reverbish" to EL84 "18/20 watt "Marshally" makes it versatile enough to replace a couple of amps.

Dialed down to 1 watt you can still get "crunch" and volume (I'm playing it connected to a pair of Blackheart 1x12 cabs retrofitted with Celestion Vintage 30s which output 100 dB at one watt). At the 20 watt setting through the same cabs there's enough volume for small venues.

More later when I have time...

 

[jackthehack]

Waiting on plumber today, really had time to put this thing through it's paces and...

Wow!!! This head does everything with variable tube voicing and essentially a built-in attenuator. Clean to aggressively crunchy at all volume levels, and that's just stock out the box without any tube swapping (will try replacing all the pre-amp tubes with ECC83's, but pretty happy with stock at this point.

If you haven't played with one of these, go somewhere that has them in stock and try before you buy anything else 5-40 watts. As there's little discernable volume differential between the Rebel 20 at 20 watts and my Blues Deluxe, I think the Lil' Giant, Handsome Devil and Blues Deluxe are all getting sold to pay for a '63 re-issue Fender Reverb Unit as the only thing this amp doesn't have is reverb.

Most of the YouTube demo's suck, this one is in Dutch, but the guy does a better job demoing and his patter is less lame than most in English: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Y8rRnN7Es&feature=related

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Usually extended warranties are a ripoff, but get one for this.  My former band's guitar player has one that has crapped out on him twice.  One time was operator error though.  A 2nd cab, as you know, really wakes this thing up.

 

[jackthehack]

Usually extended warranties are a ripoff, but get one for this.  My former band's guitar player has one that has crapped out on him twice.  One time was operator error though.  A 2nd cab, as you know, really wakes this thing up.

Don't need no stinking extended warranties when you have one of these:

 

[jackthehack]

Let the tube swapping begin!!!

This is a matched set of 3 Mullard ECC83's and an EL84 Duet; also got in a gold duet of GrooveTube 6V6's plus several other sets of 12AX7's to audition...

 

[thebutcher85]

Renegades are great little amps, my buddy has one, and it's killer! On another Egnater note, I'm wanting to try the Tweaker 88...

 

[Tempest]

Renegades are great little amps, my buddy has one, and it's killer! On another Egnater note, I'm wanting to try the Tweaker 88...

I played a Tweaker 88 the other day, not gonna lie I expected better than that, the Tweakers are really interesting amps though.  I wish more features on them were foot-switchable, no one wants to have to flip mini-switches mid-gig.

A buddy of mine has a Renegade half stack...I wouldn't exactly call them little haha, that thing rips.

Another friend of mine JUST got one of these Rebel 20's that I may be using for some things I have to play for soon, looking forward to hearing it tomorrow morning....

 

[jackthehack]

Still working through tube swapping on the amp, more on that tomorrow, but:

" I wish more features on them were foot-switchable, no one wants to have to flip mini-switches mid-gig."

Any switch/mini-switch on an amp is relatively easy to modify to a foot switch if you want to; had already thought about doing that to the bright/tight switches on the Rebel 20...

 

[jackthehack]

Round 1

Although per product descriptions and user manual state that the Rebel 20 head comes with all GrooveTubes 12AX7/EL84/6V6 tubes, mine had Sovtek 7025/12AX7WA's for preamp stage and JJ EL84's and 6V6's.

Don't get me wrong, the amp is very impressive with this setup, but a man has to tweak!

On the power tubes side, I like alternatives much better than the JJ's that came with the amp. I replaced the 6V6's with a GrooveTubes GT-6V6-S duet with a max "power rating" of 10. DEFINITELY much mo' better. So far I tend to leave the power tube setting mostly all the way over to the 6V6 side or mix about 25% EL84 most of the time. The GrooveTube 6V6-S swap gives a lot more clean headroom and a warmer sound than the JJ's do.

Same deal with the EL84's. I tried both a GrooveTube EL84-R Silver Duet and a matched set of the Mullard EL84 re-issued ( http://thetubestore.com/mullardel84.html ). Either set gives you more headroom than the JJ's, but I'm going to have to do some more back and forth before I make up my mind which set to leave in, leaning towards the Mullards, but the differentiation is subtle.

As for the preamp tubes, I've used the Sovtek 12AX7WA's before, they give you a bit "darker" sound than your run of the mill 12AX7's, have a set in my Fender Blues Deluxe. I tried replacing all with GrooveTube GT-12AX7-R3's and GT-ECC83-S's and the Mullard 12AX7/ECC83 re-issues ( http://thetubestore.com/mu12ax7.html ).

Here again, I need to do some more back and forth between the GrooveTubes ECC83-S's and the Mullards before I make up my mind. Also, due to the unique design of the amp, after a lot more experimentation I may wind up using a different preamp tube for the V3 position.

More later...