If the tone is too thick and muddy, there are two options. There’s a lot more overdrive, too, and the response is softer and more compressed. I noticed a loss of treble, along with a thicker and boxier midrange honk. The rip switch boosts the front end for more gain and crunch, but you can achieve the same result by simply increasing the volume, and you may find the tone is a little sweeter.īoost has a far more noticeable effect on the sound and dynamic response. About three o’clock seems about right if you want the tone control to remain effective.
Towards the upper limits of the master volume, the sound gets noticeably brighter. It takes a while to get used to the Bobcat’s way of doing things because this is a bright, loud and belligerent little critter that is capable of getting a bit edgy if you let it. With a plywood cabinet and chunky transformers, the 20R weighs 40lbs. The 12-inch Celestion speaker is described as `Bad Cat proprietary’, although a small label reads `Vintage 30′.
#Vox ac30cc2 fades away comes back series#
A second panel switch engages the rip circuit for yet more gain and there’s a passive series effects loop. A boost switch bypasses the tone control and works in conjunction with a rotary boost control. The main controls are gain, tone, reverb and master volume, which should be self-explanatory. Other nice touches include an illuminated display and gold-plated connections for the reverb. The insides may look a bit chaotic, but it’s actually quite neat for an amp that is mostly wired point to point. The chassis is obviously used for several different Bad Cat models and plastic plugs blank off non-required holes. A quick peek inside led me to conclude the Bobcat 20R is actually a 15-watt cathode biased amp and the lower figure is correct. On Bad Cat’s website, you can find two different power ratings – 15 and 20 watts. There is one 12AX7 but it’s used for phase inversion, and solid-state circuitry drives the spring reverb. Bad Cat has opted for a large early-50s style dual triode preamp tube, called a 6SL7. The tone is certainly pleasing, but without the effects, edgier players may find it slightly uninspiring.ĭon’t let the two 6V6 power tubes and the open back 1×12 combo cabinet mislead you into thinking this is some 5E3 wannabe. That said, you can use a pedal in front of any amp, but you won’t get foot control. It undoubtedly nails the Lonnie Mack vibrato, but so do affordable pedals such as the Bigfoot FX Magnavibe. With onboard spring reverb, it would have been Twin Peaks in a box. I had fun swelling modulation into fading chords and adding just the right amount of burble to picked arpeggios.Īs 15-watt amps go, the Super 15 is fairly loud and produces a big, room-filling sound. Rocked fully back, the expression pedal sets the speed to zero, which is the same as turning the effects off. The tremolo is so deep it feels like a heart massage, and the player-friendly rise and fall characteristics permit heavy settings without excessive choppiness. The beautiful vibrato has a swirly and slightly phasey quality that falls somewhere between a rudimentary chorus (without sounding dated) and a Leslie speaker (without the swoosh). The Super 15 is all about the vibrato, and to a lesser extent the tremolo. At more sedate settings, semi-hollow guitars sounded woody and deep, and the only issue was keeping low-frequency feedback in check. With humbuckers, I managed to dial in some woofy ZZ Top-style grind by maxing out the gain and master and turning the tone fully down. The limited tone-shaping capability means you need to be bold with the treble roll-off. It’s a big-sounding speaker that can fill a room with warm, syrupy tones, but it doesn’t have that much high-frequency sparkle.Īlthough not an especially versatile amp, the Super 15 is capable of some very pleasing clean and overdriven tones, but they’re all variations on a theme rather than a smörgåsbord of sounds, and things can get a tad ragged when the amp is pushed to its limits. The 15-inch speaker and the Vox-inspired circuitry define the overall tone.
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