Carl Zwengel

[mrbeasty]

Is anybody familiar with Carl Zwengel's <P><A HREF="http://www.zwengelamps.com/" TARGET=_blank>Banshee</A> ?

[DeezelDude]

There was one on Ebay this week, but i think it got yanked.<P>The soundclips on their website are poor. All the people doing testimonials are lcoal people the builder jams with. I wouldn't be the opinions are un-biased.<P>I'd like to hear one, but I wouldn't buy one without a demo first.

[Zwengel Amps]

As a very new member here please don't take this post as inflamatory as you do have some valid points. As a brand new builder it's amazingly difficult to break into a market that's already fairly saturated with "boutique" companies. It's even worse in this economy.<P>As to the sound clips, I ran with some live room mic'd recordings because after talking to a lot of people the big complaint WAS that most of the clips were studio recording and they wanted to hear the amplifiers in a live band with very little processing. Others aren't too keen on the rough around the edges quality of unmastered samples. Guess you can't please everybody. Maybe I should post a few of each variety. <P>Now, with regard to jamming buddies. Actually, I barely know these guys, and only on a purely professional level. JB hauled in an old 4 hole Marshall to have me install a Hoffman board. He played through the amp, asked to test drive it at a live gig, and bought one as soon as I started production. The other guys have only played my amp at the same open mic jam where I recorded the clips.<P>These truly are stunning amplifiers that cover an amazing amount of tonal territory. I've just finished building one for a Guitar Player review that will hopefully shake off some of the "new kid on the block" stigma that I'm fighting through right now.<P>I'm not too familiar with the board policy, but if it's cool, I can give you a little background on myself, my business, and how this amplifier came to be.

[DeezelDude]

Carl,<P>I love hearing about new amps, I appreciate you piping in here.<P>My favorite demos are just 30 second or so clips in different styles. Clean, edgy, gain, over-the-top, etc. Nothing fancy, just clear recordings. In a band context, I find it hard to get a true sense of the amps tone.<P>Breaking out a new amp is tough, but I think with great soundclips, you'll get a few amps sold without a demo, and then if they like it, the word just begins to spread! Through places like the various Forums and harmony-central.

[DeezelDude]

Last time I listened to the clips was through the tinny little speakers on my laptop. <P>I just gave them another listen on my home computer, and I stand corrected. While the sound is a little rough, it gets you a good idea what the amp is capable of.<P>Still wouldn't mind hearing some close-miked recording though

[Zwengel Amps]

Well, here's the life and times of Zwengel amps in a nutshell.<P>I started out as Summit Amp Repair in 1993. It was mostly an outgrowth of doing a lot<BR>of repairs, retubing, and hotrodding of amplifiers for guys while I was in college. I started out doing it part time while I was working as industrial coltrols engineer at an injection molded plastics company. In '96 I finally got on "the net" and began doing mods and repairs nationally. At that point I renamed myself Summit Amplifiers.<P>This is where The Banshee comes it. I started getting a LOT of requests for high gain sleeper mods for Fender Bassman and Showman amps which were dirt cheap at the time. We're not talking about a heavy crunch, but great big, hairy balled, massive, saturated, infinite sustain kinda gain! as well as some miscellaneous wake up tweaks to the JCM800 MV's. Then it occured to me that while tweeds and plexi's are killer amps in their own right the musicians coming up now don't have these amps as a personal reference tone. Players in their late 20's to early 30's grew up on Metallica, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc. Dropped tunings and 7 strings started coming into the picture so the amps had to be able to support and pass a HUGE amount of low end along with the gain, and nobody, but NOBODY was building hand wired circuits that could hang on this level.<P>So, I went about designing a circuit that could virtually do it all in a single package without loading an amp down with controls and switches. In early '97 I had open sourced the design process on my website with regular posts on the Ampage BBS and low and behold, a certain hand wired boutique amp mfg pops up with an all new "Vintage/Modern" switching option. Coincidence? So, with a new understanding of why Dumble gooped his amps, I squelched the design but quick. The big guys will rip off the innovators and screw you but quick and won't even kiss you afterward!<P>Somwhere around '99 GP magazine started publishing reviews of an Allesandro as well as some other clone/handwired amps and the first thing I said to myself was this is a joke right?! I can build a higher quality amp on my worst day. So, now we're off to the perverbial races. I stated designing custom transformers, custom chassis, enclosures, etc. All my chassis are 16g powder coated cold rolled steel. I had Jeff Suites who does many of the cabs for Victoria Amplifiers do my enclosures, and Schumacher Electric did the winding of my transformers, which is a story in it's own right! They've moved ALL production south of the border, and are already having QC problems. I refuse to farm out any parts that aren't built with American labor, even if it costs a few extra bucks! So, I'm shopping for a new company to do my trannies. I'll probably wind up with either Lenco or TMI<P>By mid-'01 I was pretty much ready for production. I became a member of NAMM and had my first show this time last year. Well, there's another company in existence called Summit Audio and they had a **** fit. I was blessed with a cease and desist order and was forced to rename my company and completely reorganize. There went 6 months right down the toilet. So now I'm Zwengel Amplifiers. I dare somebody to trademark that mess!<P>So, here are a few of Zwengel Amplifiers firsts;<BR>First to open source a design on the net<BR>First ultra gain point to point amp<BR>First use of vintage/modern remote channel switching<BR>First to use a new circuit topology not based on a vintage amp.<P>There's a few others but it's splitting hairs so I won't even go there.