New amp gear - Egnater Rebel 20

The latest amp to join the ranks in the studio is the Egnater Rebel 20. Obviously (if you take a quick look around the blog) I've long been a fan of Egnater gear, having owned a real Egnater (M4 preamp) and a small mountain of other amps designed by Bruce (hot-rodded JTM45 head, Randall RH50T/RM20B/RM50B/RM100C/RM4/RT2-50, Rocktron TOL100/Vendetta). So, once again, I took advantage of the Microsoft/e-bay 30% cashback offer to pick up a practically new Rebel head.

The Rebel, considering its small size and low weight for a tube amp, is packed with cool features... two of the coolest have got to be the "tube mix" and "watts" controls. Tube mix allows you to blend the two EL84's and two 6V6's in the power section in pretty much any combination--the 6V6's provide a smoother tone compared to the edgier nature of the EL84's. Watts is essentially an attenuator that allows the wattage to be dialed down from 20w to 1w--this is in addition to a standard master volume control, which has a different impact on the amp's tone and feel. Of course, it's finished in the standard Egnater "black & tan" tolex.

Admittedly, curiosity got the better of me on this amp... lots of folks on different forums were raving about the tone, but nobody could offer up a good comparison. Hot-rodded Marshall? Hot-rodded Vox? Hot-rodded Fender? All of the above? None of the above? (well, at least with Egnater, you know it's hot-rodded something) Needless to say, with the Egnater JTM45 head around, I was hoping it was more hot-rodded-anything-else than hot-rodded Marshall. Turns out the Rebel's still got a Marshall-esque vibe, but it's a bit thinner sounding (more like a real Marshall) than the JTM45 head. With the bright switch engaged and the EL84's full-on, it does a great sparkly clean/overdriven tone. Yet with the gain cranked up, tight switch enaged, and mids dialed down, it can pull off metal tones. A little fiddling around in the studio has proven that it'll sit nicely in the mix with the JTM45--distinctive enough to be distinctive, but not too distinctive.

Here's a pic of the Rebel on top of the JTM45 head from the first Egnater amp building seminar...



Since the Vox-like tone is unique compared to the other preamps I've got in the rack, I've been debating wiring the Rebel into the rack... basically taking the speaker out from the Rebel into a Weber MiniMass attenuator, then feeding the line out from the attenuator into the Lexicon FX section and Randall power amp. Overkill? Perhaps... but in the true spirit of G.A.S. and "rig complexity," I think I'm gonna have to give it a shot at some point. Though I think I'm gonna need more cables... rats!

--B