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James... « Good, almost great »
Published on 02/19/12 at 20:25As the world of "lunchbox" amps begins to get dangerously overcrowded, it's becoming harder to justify not owning at least one of them. A few years ago, amps like these were hard to find. Now they're everywhere and every manufacturer has one. Traynor's darkhorse lives up to its name though by looking different right out of the box. Seriously, you can see the transformers! That's something new. The internals are no surprises. 6V6 tubes. 15 watts. It has three tonestack settings: USA, brit, and pure. The pure is basically a bypass. I elected not to get the extension cab. Although I am used it in with a matchless 212 with greenbacks so i can't be too far off.
UTILIZATION
There's really not that much to the Darkhorse. It doesn't even have a gain knob. Just pure master volume amp tones. I will say though, for a tiny little thing this is built about as tough as any lunchbox amp I have played. The design gives you that vibe as well, that this is an amp that was designed with a military spec or something.
SOUNDS
The USA setting has kind of an overdriven fender tweed thing going on. But when you push it, there's some heavy overdrive to be had. Kind of Sounds like a Mesa Mark I in a way. Impressive. The Pure channel is really really loud, and is also probably the gainiest. It sounds best for strumming rock stuff and not much else. But still a sick channel. The brit channel is probably the most aggressive sounding. You can get a lot of gain out of it with some tweaking, probably even more than the Pure channel. It doesn't sound quite traditional enough for me though. I wish it sounded more marshally. Don't expect any super high gain out of this thing. It can get into led zeppelin territory. That's about it.
OVERALL OPINION
The midrange voicing is fixed, and for me that's kind of annoying so that's probably the only big gripe. It's surprisingly versatile. It can do blues to heavy rock and everything in between. Not metal though. Sorry. I would like to try it with some different speakers to see if I can get it to sound a bit different. The lack of a full eq is a real shame. I feel like as it stands, this is a really good amp, but a couple more features could make it great.
UTILIZATION
There's really not that much to the Darkhorse. It doesn't even have a gain knob. Just pure master volume amp tones. I will say though, for a tiny little thing this is built about as tough as any lunchbox amp I have played. The design gives you that vibe as well, that this is an amp that was designed with a military spec or something.
SOUNDS
The USA setting has kind of an overdriven fender tweed thing going on. But when you push it, there's some heavy overdrive to be had. Kind of Sounds like a Mesa Mark I in a way. Impressive. The Pure channel is really really loud, and is also probably the gainiest. It sounds best for strumming rock stuff and not much else. But still a sick channel. The brit channel is probably the most aggressive sounding. You can get a lot of gain out of it with some tweaking, probably even more than the Pure channel. It doesn't sound quite traditional enough for me though. I wish it sounded more marshally. Don't expect any super high gain out of this thing. It can get into led zeppelin territory. That's about it.
OVERALL OPINION
The midrange voicing is fixed, and for me that's kind of annoying so that's probably the only big gripe. It's surprisingly versatile. It can do blues to heavy rock and everything in between. Not metal though. Sorry. I would like to try it with some different speakers to see if I can get it to sound a bit different. The lack of a full eq is a real shame. I feel like as it stands, this is a really good amp, but a couple more features could make it great.