Here's an amp that I've been drooling over for a good few years....! Introducing the Z-Master - Joe Walsh's signature amp made by Dr Z!
Joe had a 1959 Fender Tweed Bandmaster that he gifted to Pete Townsend, and always regretted giving it away - so he tasked Dr Z with recreating the magic it had. They began with a vintage-correct circuit, which Z then tweaked in conjunction with Joe's requests for a slightly more modern-day (i.e. pedal!) friendly design. It even utilises the original impedance mismatch that happened by wiring three 8-ohm speakers in parallel (giving a load of 2.66ohms) and connecting that to a 4ohm transformer....that causes the transformer to saturate a little more and add an amazing harmonic richness to the overall sound.
Playing a Fender-style amp with 10" speakers is a very new experience for me, but I'm absolutely loving the tones coming from this thing! The cleans are glassy & pristine; the crunch is gnarly and punchy; and the thick saturation is squishy and lovely, without flubbing out like vintage tweed amps typically do.
I'm not going to use any pedals today - I'm just going to crank the amp, as that's usually what people want to hear in a tube amp demo.....plus, this amp doesn't need pedals to sound amazing! But if you'd like to see a video where I throw some pedals at the Z-Master, please comment underneath and I'll gladly put that together if there's enough interest. :-)
What do you think? Epic Tweed tones? Or not for you? Comment below!
Amplifier recorded with Aston Spirit Condenser, '70s Sennheiser MD441 and sE RNR1 ribbon mics, with a Schoeps CMC6 room mic.
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0:00 Intro
7:29 Playing
16:02 Outro
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