Lu Wan Rock

this is truly a thing of beauty – a small, versatile, all-tube amp that gives you a wide range of tones at low volumes. this is the egnater rebel 20 with matching 1×12″ cabinet.

the tiny and light rebel 20 has seven tubes in the back. three of them are 12AX7′s, two of them EL84′s and there are two 6V6′s. the 12AX7′s are all at the preamp stage while the other four tubes are for the power amp stage. on the front of the amp there is a knob marked ‘tube mix’ which lets you select a blend of the EL84′s or the 6V6′s. and there is another knob to progressively change the output wattage of the amp from one to twenty watts. so what’s the point?

the real beauty of a tube amp is that it achieves distortion by running the power amp tubes too hot. if you were playing through an old 100W marshall stack you’d have to crank it pretty loud before you get the sound to break up and give you that warm slashy distortion. but when it gets there, it’s worth the ear damage… or is it? these days there seem to be whole lot companies out there providing low wattage tube amps to get that cranking sound at bedroom/studio volumes. this little beast seems to straddle the line quite nicely between loud and soft – with everything on 11, this amp is LOUD. i’d love to gig with it. and backing it off all the way to 1 watt – i got some great tones at very reasonable volumes.

the other awesome thing about this amp is the choice of either 6V6′s or EL84′s at the output stage. these two different types of tubes have different sonic characteristics which could loosely be described as “american” and “british” respectively. to translate that back into real english, a lot of the early american made Fender amps used 6V6′s at the output stage as well as other similar tubes. on the other hand, marshall has used 6V6′s only once. they normally use EL84′s and similar, among many others. so to put it very loosely, if you were to turn the knob all the way to the left (6V6) you’d hear more of a Fender kind of sound – loose and jangly with a little sparkle. and if the knob were turned all the way to the right (EL84) you’d get more of a Marshall sound, tight and with bite. of course all of this should be taken with a grain of salt – the use of different output tubes in fender and marshall amps over the years is just one of many reasons that they sound different. i found i got a great tone by moving the knob to 12 o’clock i.e. a 50:50 split between the two options. it was warm and crunchy with lots of bite. i would love to go back and play this amp some more – the sonic possibilities are huge. as well as the different options for output tubes and wattage, the tone controls are very responsive and there are two switches marked ‘bright’ and ‘tight’ which i didn’t investigate to thoroughly.

big thanks to jiao chang, frank and kevin at world wide music on jinling lu for all their help.