New Amp Day: SEWELL BLISTERTONE-35
Not a lot of talk about these amps on The Web so you may have seen this one before, but now I'm the newest owner. In recent years I discovered the "Blistertone" amps and figured that these amps would suit me just fine since I actually happen to be one of those guys who virtually never plays in "clean mode". I've got clean (in different amps) if I ever need it but I was drawn to the Blistertone for the heat... and now I have two of them.
As best I can tell, this amp was built by Doug Sewell himself, in his garage back in Texas when he was a design engineer for buildings for his day job and then building amps for gigging Texas musicians at night. The Blistertone amp came about after he had begun with amps called a Tex-A-Verb and Tex-A-Plex (which I take it was his version of the big Fender an big Marshall amps) where it then seems that he figured there might be some metalheads like me out there who would want a super high gain amp. So that led to the Blistertone being invented.
[Doug Sewell sold this amp from his garage to a guy in Texas. That guy sold it to guy in the Bronx NY who now lives in Baltimore. That guy drove it here to Northern Virginia in order to avoid the hassle of shipping it and make sure it got here okay. So I'm now the third owner.]
At some point, Doug Sewell and Paul Reed Smith himself meet, and then at some point begin collaborating together on amp design, and eventually, some years later, Doug Sewell becomes the guy in charge of the amplifier department at PRS Guitars. It seems that some of the very first PRS branded amps which were released after Doug joined the team were updated & tweaked versions of Doug's original amps. The amp known as the "Original Sewell" was probably based upon one of those early amps like the Tex-A-Plex or something. Then, PRS released an updated & tweaked version of the Blistertone.
So the amp I just bought is an original Doug Sewell Blistertone, 35 watt amp head, and it is now joining my PRS Blistertone 50 watt amp head. In looking over the two amp heads, the immediate differences I see are these:
* the PRS has a Reverb tank, the Sewell does not.
* both amps have two volume dials, 1 master and one regular.
* the SEWELL has a variable gain control knob in addition to the two volume controls and a small toggle switch on the back of the case which seems to enable/disable that knob. (Gotta figure out... what the heck does that dial do exactly?)
* both of these amps I bought from gigging musicians who gigged with them.
While I was waiting for this amp to get here, I bought a second Marshall 1936 cabinet and then built my own amp riser out of scrap wood I had laying around (because I got sick & tired of spending $80.00 for simple amp stands.). One cabinet has Vintage 30's in it and the other are the standard Celestion speakers that Marshall uses all the time.
Yes... it's red.
and here are both Blistertones together.
Not a lot of talk about these amps on The Web so you may have seen this one before, but now I'm the newest owner. In recent years I discovered the "Blistertone" amps and figured that these amps would suit me just fine since I actually happen to be one of those guys who virtually never plays in "clean mode". I've got clean (in different amps) if I ever need it but I was drawn to the Blistertone for the heat... and now I have two of them.
As best I can tell, this amp was built by Doug Sewell himself, in his garage back in Texas when he was a design engineer for buildings for his day job and then building amps for gigging Texas musicians at night. The Blistertone amp came about after he had begun with amps called a Tex-A-Verb and Tex-A-Plex (which I take it was his version of the big Fender an big Marshall amps) where it then seems that he figured there might be some metalheads like me out there who would want a super high gain amp. So that led to the Blistertone being invented.
[Doug Sewell sold this amp from his garage to a guy in Texas. That guy sold it to guy in the Bronx NY who now lives in Baltimore. That guy drove it here to Northern Virginia in order to avoid the hassle of shipping it and make sure it got here okay. So I'm now the third owner.]
At some point, Doug Sewell and Paul Reed Smith himself meet, and then at some point begin collaborating together on amp design, and eventually, some years later, Doug Sewell becomes the guy in charge of the amplifier department at PRS Guitars. It seems that some of the very first PRS branded amps which were released after Doug joined the team were updated & tweaked versions of Doug's original amps. The amp known as the "Original Sewell" was probably based upon one of those early amps like the Tex-A-Plex or something. Then, PRS released an updated & tweaked version of the Blistertone.
So the amp I just bought is an original Doug Sewell Blistertone, 35 watt amp head, and it is now joining my PRS Blistertone 50 watt amp head. In looking over the two amp heads, the immediate differences I see are these:
* the PRS has a Reverb tank, the Sewell does not.
* both amps have two volume dials, 1 master and one regular.
* the SEWELL has a variable gain control knob in addition to the two volume controls and a small toggle switch on the back of the case which seems to enable/disable that knob. (Gotta figure out... what the heck does that dial do exactly?)
* both of these amps I bought from gigging musicians who gigged with them.
While I was waiting for this amp to get here, I bought a second Marshall 1936 cabinet and then built my own amp riser out of scrap wood I had laying around (because I got sick & tired of spending $80.00 for simple amp stands.). One cabinet has Vintage 30's in it and the other are the standard Celestion speakers that Marshall uses all the time.
Yes... it's red.
and here are both Blistertones together.
