ejecta « The Storm 50 brings the rock tone! »
Published on 03/17/11 at 08:11The Reinhardt Storm 50 is a 50 watt all tube design based on an el34 power section. This one had a very nice effects loop that could be switched in or out of the circuit but honestly I couldn’t tell much difference when it was in so that tells it's implemented well. It also had bias points on the back for easy tube biasing.
UTILIZATION
As for features there is a foot switchable gain stage, so what you really have is a nice plexi without the extra gain on one channel and a nice thick JCM800 tone on the other. One thing I noticed was when adding the extra gain it didn’t compress the amp a lot nor did it change the feel or the overall tone at all. I really liked that because I’ve had amps that when you add extra gain, sometimes you lost something in feel and or tone. The tone stack is very interactive and the two gain knobs also worked in conjunction to give you different levels of gain on each channel. Another feature was the “power scaling” that allowed you to dial down the power the goes to the tubes. This knocks down the volume but helps keep the feel and within reason the tone. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter if it’s a master volume, post phase master volume, attenuator, or power scaling…. you drop the volume or amount of power pushing the speakers the tone is going to change. There is no way around this as guitar speakers aren’t designed to stay the same at all volume levels like hi fi stereo speakers. All that said I did think it worked well for keeping the feel where as some masters and attenuators I’ve used really affected the feel.
SOUNDS
When I first I tried the Storm 50 at the Nashville Amp Show I was like WOW! That's gotta be the best Marshallesque tone I've ever heard. With the first chord I was hit with nice rich classic tone. It had that classic British punch and clarity that keeps you an honest player. When you picked every note in the chord it just jumped out and rang clear. The single note leads were thick, full, and just sang and evolved nice into musical feed back. I remember just turning and looking at my friend with a big grin on my face and he mouthed back under the riff I was playing “That sounds really good.” I was using my Dean Soltero which is a Les Paul style guitar with PAF style pickups. When I got it home I settled on setting the first channel for a clean plexi style crunch that cleaned up real well the guitar's volume knob and the second channel for more of a heavy rhythm tone and goosed it with a OCD pedal for leads. Over all I found it very easy to get great rock tones with it.
OVERALL OPINION
For around $2000 I think these are great amps for hand built top of the line parts amplifier. After walking around the Nashville Amp show and trying quite a few amps that day the Storm was the one that came home with me. To me that says a lot.
UTILIZATION
As for features there is a foot switchable gain stage, so what you really have is a nice plexi without the extra gain on one channel and a nice thick JCM800 tone on the other. One thing I noticed was when adding the extra gain it didn’t compress the amp a lot nor did it change the feel or the overall tone at all. I really liked that because I’ve had amps that when you add extra gain, sometimes you lost something in feel and or tone. The tone stack is very interactive and the two gain knobs also worked in conjunction to give you different levels of gain on each channel. Another feature was the “power scaling” that allowed you to dial down the power the goes to the tubes. This knocks down the volume but helps keep the feel and within reason the tone. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter if it’s a master volume, post phase master volume, attenuator, or power scaling…. you drop the volume or amount of power pushing the speakers the tone is going to change. There is no way around this as guitar speakers aren’t designed to stay the same at all volume levels like hi fi stereo speakers. All that said I did think it worked well for keeping the feel where as some masters and attenuators I’ve used really affected the feel.
SOUNDS
When I first I tried the Storm 50 at the Nashville Amp Show I was like WOW! That's gotta be the best Marshallesque tone I've ever heard. With the first chord I was hit with nice rich classic tone. It had that classic British punch and clarity that keeps you an honest player. When you picked every note in the chord it just jumped out and rang clear. The single note leads were thick, full, and just sang and evolved nice into musical feed back. I remember just turning and looking at my friend with a big grin on my face and he mouthed back under the riff I was playing “That sounds really good.” I was using my Dean Soltero which is a Les Paul style guitar with PAF style pickups. When I got it home I settled on setting the first channel for a clean plexi style crunch that cleaned up real well the guitar's volume knob and the second channel for more of a heavy rhythm tone and goosed it with a OCD pedal for leads. Over all I found it very easy to get great rock tones with it.
OVERALL OPINION
For around $2000 I think these are great amps for hand built top of the line parts amplifier. After walking around the Nashville Amp show and trying quite a few amps that day the Storm was the one that came home with me. To me that says a lot.