B-52 AT-100 head & AT-412 cab review - audio clips inside

I bought the AT-100 head and the matching AT-412 cab and received it Tuesday of this week. It's Sunday now so I've had a few days to play with it. I'm not who believes in happy dicked reviews - reviews where people play their new gear and not even owning it for more than a few hours they post a glowing review. I will use this thread to post any further review updates as I've only had the half stack for a week. In other words if my opinions change or if something breaks down I'll post the updates here. Prior to purchasing this amp I was very skeptical as I've seen tons of good reviews and tons of reviews indicating various problems with this amp, mainly the reverb tank. The reverb tank can get up and walk out of my amp and I won't care cause I use my GT-8 for reverb but so far I've had no problems with the reverb whatsoever and I have tried it on several occasions. Apparently B-52 has said all the current market AT-100's have the reverb problem fixed. I'm going to post my review without the 1-10 bullshit rating cause I can't honestly be expected to know what 10 is really supposed to be as I haven't tried every other amp out there though I have tried a ton (Mesa Rectifier's Marshall's, Randall's, Crate's, Fenders, shit you name it). Now to the review:

I received the amp head in a box that was starting to fall apart. Granted though the head is quite heavy. It has 4 6L6 Sovtek tubes in the power stage, 4 12AX7's (simply marked China) in the preamp, 1 12AX7 as a phase inverted (marked China), a 12AX7 in the effects loop (marked China) and a 12AT7 for the reverb (marked China) as well as a 5AR4 tube for the rectifier (don't know what it's marked). Initially I had been using a Marshall AVT20 with a Metal Zone distortion. I know it's small and meek but I've had full stacks in my time but since I had taken a hiatus from guitar into electronic music I decided on something small when I started moving back into guitar. Since getting the AT-100 I've ditched using the Metal Zone as the distortion in the AT-100 is far superior. I actually found that I prefered the The amp has a low-res knob which increases the bass on a scale more around 50-60hz or so which increases low end punch even further. The amp also has a "Contour" switch which acts basically like a sweepable mid EQ. It gives a more compressed yet aggressive kind of sound. I'm going to be short on the features section cause if you'd like to know you can easily go to the manufacturer's site or look it up anywhere else online to find all the specific features. The clean channel is awesome as it's exactly that... clean. It's also loud as hell. The bright switch is odd in a sense cause not only does it boost the highs around 10khz but it also appears to scoop out some mids. As a result I choose not to use the bright switch but rather just raise the treble a little which works much better for my tastes. The amp also has two input jacks, a Low and a High. At first I plugged into the High figuring "Hi-Z" but the sound was odd. There was an odd breakup to the sound that really had me neverous as when I tried the amp in the stores I loved the sound and this was odd. Eventually I moved over to the Low input and bingo! Great sound with no odd breakup. So if you try this amp out I suggest trying each input as they surely do make a noticeable impact on the sound. I've played with it for days now and I haven't personally come across any of the problems I've read from others online. Someone online made a great point... they've probably sold a thousand of these amps and comparitively the number of complaints are relatively small. You can read of others having problems online cause whenever someone has a problem they compain about it vocally whereas someone that is happy with their amp usually doesn't take the time to say it. Again though, if any problems crop up I'll surely post ALL of them in this thread. The cabinet is quite nice, sturdy design and to me sounds great. Unfortunately I don't have any other cabs to try out and compare though. The 4 button footswitch that comes with the amp functions perfectly with no switching noises at all. The effects loop I have to say is perfect. It has two level controls (send and return) and at first I dreaded having to set additional level controls. But I found after connecting my effect unit that the levels are line level when turned up all the way! So it was great, I just turned up both levels and had perfect level between having the effects loop in or out. The effects loops is full pass through (the entire sounds goes through like an insert rather than an effects send) so you can use any type of effect through the loop. Granted this is probably how most amp effect loops are. I've mic'd the amp and have had the best results I've ever had micing an amp even though I spent little time trying different mic positions. I'd really like to take the time to work out a perfect micing position for my "sound" and eventually will but the audio samples I made will have to do for now. Another problem with micing an amp in my room is I'm right near the amp with headphones on which is hard to hear the sound since you're still hearing the amp sound in the background. Ideal conditions are obviously to have the amp in a seperate room with someone else moving the mic and you communicating via talkback mic. Anyhow, overall I really love this amp. I got the head and cab, free shipping, for a total of $999 from MF as I apparently had a $100 off electronic coupon I wasn't even aware of. I have some replacement JJ preamp tubes coming within the week and will later change out the Sovtek's with JJ's when I have time to have the amp rebiased. I'm including a zip file of two audio clips of a generic series of three riffs that are recorded with the amp "Contour" switch on and off. The samples are not EQ'd in any way and are only maximized for volume. The drums are played by me on my keyboard (Battery Studio Drums). It's just a plain-jane generic riff set to give you all an idea of the sound. I will re-record the samples when I've replaced the preamp tubes with JJ's. The clips were recorded with a Rode NT-1 condenser mic placed at roughly edge of top right cab speaker. I probably should've placed it a little bit closer in but whatever, still sounds good to me It's just two tracks each (left and right guitar) with the drums.

Download the clips zip files here:

http://www.skateboardspecs.com/temp/AT-100%20clips.zip

Rev.