RSS
Home
King Amplification takes classic tones to new horizons.
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Rocket 88 amplifier
Tone. Tone is a very complicated concept to describe to anyone who isn’t a guitar player. People spend years, decades, maybe even lifetimes (and thousands of dollars) trying to find the guitar tone they hear in their head. The language of tone is an unquantifiable hodgepodge of terms understood by very few. Here is a small reference guide to this strange language spoken by guitarists around the globe :
Blackface: A very clean, undistorted tone commonly associated with the famous mid 1960s line of Fender amps: Twin Reverb, Deluxe Reverb, and Princeton Reverb, which all had black faceplates where the controls are mounted.
Plexi/British: Referring to early 1960s amps that are commonly associated with the British invasion (like the Vox amplifiers and the Beatles jangly tones), and early hard rock, specifically Marshall amplifiers, which is more known for their huge, soaring, distorted/dirty tones (think Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, etc).
Creamy: A term to describe a smooth level of distortion with an organic nature that does not sound processed. Turn a tube amp up loud, and this is the sound that people are after, power tube distortion. The only problem, typically, is that these tones can only be achieved at extremely high volume levels.
Crunchy: A term that describes guitar tones on the edge of distortion. Not quite clean, but not fully distorted either.
So, as you might imagine, this type of language is how gear heads talk to each other, and in fully understanding these terms, Val King of King Amplification (located in San Jose) has introduced a line of amplifiers that aim to give guitar players everything they’re after.
The number one feature that King has innovated in his amps is what he calls “parallel gain architecture.” This allows you to essentially have best of both worlds: “clean” and “dirty” at the same time. Kings amps have two channels. The clean channel is his modern (and in my opinion, improved), take on the classic blackface sound. The second channel is his modern take on (again, improved to my ears) the British distortion sound. In every amp I’ve ever played, you have to choose which channel you want to be playing out of. Which means you’re either all distortion or all clean. But with King Amplifiers, you can be playing out the clean channel of the amp and blend (in terms of how up front in the mix, and the level of saturation) in the distortion channel into your signal, giving you, essentially, the best of both worlds. You can retain the clarity of your clean sound, while adding in the desired amount of “dirt” to your sound to give you the responsiveness and attitude that comes with distortion. It is an amazing thing to hear because most guitarists, including myself, have the complaint of “I love distortion, but my playing gets lost in the sound of distortion, and lack of clarity.” King has solved this problem with his amps, and it immediately made me smile when I played. To have that feature available opens new tonal doors for every guitar player out there. When you open up new musical avenues for players, you have succeeded. And King has succeeded beautifully in that department. I would not be surprised if I started seeing this feature popping up in boutique (at first, and then the mass market) amps everywhere.
Innovation truly is the name of the game at King Amplification. Far too many boutique amp companies out there strive to only recreate the great amps of the past, exactly as they were, to achieve the exact same tones. I have no qualm with that, as these recreations do exactly what they are advertising: giving you more of the same. But King has gone above and beyond to retain the great sounds of the past and add modern features and improvements to give you more “bang for your buck, “ more tonal opportunities to play with, and more features to use to your advantage, like power scaling. Power scaling allows you to achieve the deep, warm, distorted tones that come at ear splitting volumes, but gives them to you at reasonable, useable volume levels. Essentially, you can get the sound of your amp on “10” but at the volume level of “3.” This is very useful to any musician who has neighbors, or who does not typically play at Madison Square Garden… which, I assume, makes up 99.9% of musicians out there.
The hardest part of writing this column is going into music stores or amplifier showrooms and not walking out with new gear. But this time around, it was spectacularly difficult. I only played King’s “Uptown 33” amp for fifteen minutes, and I was hooked. It was everything and more that I had been looking for in an amp. And here’s the best part, if you buy a King amp, it is totally customized to what you want out of that specific amp. He goes in while you’re playing the amp (in a completely safe and “to be done by professionals only” fashion) and changes different resistor and capacitor values ( think “little building blocks of the amp” that change the sound in different ways) so that you can find the sound you’re looking for. I’ve never, ever, heard of a boutique amp company offering something like that. Again, innovation on the part of King is what sets them apart.
In addition to potentially solving the tonal needs of guitarists everywhere, King Amplification offers maintenance and repair work on amplifiers and other musical gear. They also offer workshops that teach clients how to properly and safely build and repair amps.
I was lucky enough to be able to talk to King at length on a variety of subjects ranging from his amps to career to music to life in general, and I found him to be just a great guy who really does have the customer’s best interest(s) in mind. Like most boutique builders, he has a genuine love of the craft he has mastered, and you can tell that this is not just an opportunity to make money; this is his art, his enduring contribution to the music world. All youthful musicians have visions of rock stardom, but many just let the dream fade away. King has just figured out a new and different way to express his musical creativity, his gifted ear, and his technical know-how. This, as clichéd as it sounds, truly is a labor of love, and that’s why the boutique amp market continues to grow. When you sit down and talk with King, you know he wants you to be as happy as can be with your purchase. You can’t put a price on something like that.
Do yourself a favor, get down to King Amplification in San Jose, and check out their showroom of amps. You won’t be disappointed, but you will be dying to buy one of their amps. Support the bay area music scene. Peace.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
