New amp gear - Zinky Superfly head

Let me start this one out with a small soapbox... I'll be the first to admit that I've owned a lot of gear over the years, perhaps (some would argue) even too much gear. Some of it has downright sucked; some of it has served its purpose for a couple of years. But rarely does a piece of gear come along that sounds so good that I become an immediate evangelist, zipping from forum to forum to tell the world of my killer find. This post is about one of those pieces of gear...

The latest (but probably not the last) amp acquisition coming out of the "Great Egnater Downsizing of 2008" is kind of an anomaly... sort of a high-tech boutique amp... the Zinky Superfly. It quite possibly could win the award for "campiest-sounding amp name ever". :) The Superfly is the creation of Bruce Zinky, who worked for the Fender Custom Shop for several years (has several amps to his credit, including the Prosonic) before starting his own company. Zinky has since produced several amps including the Blue Velvet, MOFO, Supro series, and Smokey amps (which are the size of a pack of cigarettes).

The Superfly is far & away the most high tech of all the Zinky creations... it's a MIDI programmable amp, similar to the H&K Switchblade or Mesa Triaxis. The Superfly has 6 uniquely voiced channels (clean, vintage, blues, rock, fusion, overdrive), can store/recall 32 user presets via MIDI, has programmable tube reverb, and pumps out 120 watts (!) using four Sovtek 5881's. While it's not quite as high-tech as the Switchblade (e.g., no digital effects), it does have one cool feature that the Switchblade lacks... global bass & treble controls (not clear if they're in the preamp or power amp section) that can be used to quickly adjust the amp's tone to a particular cabinet and/or room--an extremely helpful feature on any amp with presets.

So how does it sound? In a word, AWESOME. Honestly, I can't remember an amp I've owned recently that immediately clicked with me like this. I wired it up through my Randall 2x12" cab with Celestion Classic Lead 80's. The clean tones are just that... CLEAN and warm, nicely compressed, with fatter tones available on the clean channel and brighter tones available on the vintage channel... definitely some of the best clean tones I've ever played. The blues & rock channels step up the gain, once again providing warm, fat, slightly compressed tones--not the typically Marshall-esque crunch, but more reminiscent of a Mesa Mark rhythm channel. The fusion channel continues the trend (more gain, still warm + fat + compressed) making for singing lead tones. Finally, the overdrive channel adds a bit more grit to the mix, yet remains consistent with the Superfly's overall smooth character.

Dialing in great tones was a piece of cake; I was hard-pressed to dial in a bad tone... no matter what I did to the knobs the amp retained its fat, warm, smooth character. While some folks may find the amp to be too compressed, I love it... it practically plays itself, whether at high-gain settings on the fusion channel or at pristine settings on the clean channel. It reminds me of everything I liked about the Mesa Triaxis (warm, fat, compressed tones) but is simpler to dial in; cranking up the global bass control isn't much different from engaging the 2:90's DEEP mode, either. Compared to the recently-acquired H&K Switchblade, it's just different... the Superfly sings, while the Switchblade has more crunch to it. Perhaps the Superfly is more suited to my guitars & style of playing... the Switchblade is fun to play, but the Superfly is way too hard to stop playing.

Um, picture time... here's the Superfly with the aforementioned H&K Switchblade head and Randall R212CS cabinet:



All in all, this is one for my "Top 10 Pieces of Gear I've Ever Owned" list. Oh, wait, I don't have a list like that, but clearly I should. More to come as I get more time to explore the Superfly... perhaps this week I'll sneak it onto a couple of the Necessary Distraction tracks we recorded last Tuesday.

--B