Victoria Regal hand wired boutique amplifier - Trade for CS Strat or cash offers
I find myself over endowed with amplifiers and whilst this REGAL II is sensational I cannot turn it up loud enough to do it justice, even at 5 watts. This is a bit of a feeler as this amplifier is likely only to appeal to a small audience. I am interested in trading for a custom shop strat, or a PRS DGT. Also interested in Knaggs if there are any out there. Only credible offers please and I am not interested in other amplifiers. I now find myself needing to raise some cash so will consider offers less than the trade value I have listed. The amp is the lacquered tweed version with a 15" Eminence, and is in all round excellent condition. All the valves have been recently renewed and the amp will come with 2 x x6V6, 2 x EL34, 1 x 6K6 and 2 rectifier valves. Also fitted Roq-Solid cover. If you were to buy a new one, it would be a special order with 3 months wait and would be around £ depending on exchange rates. Here is a little blurb A variable-output (5 to 35 watts) Class A, cathode-biased, dual single-ended amp, the Regal II’s circuit uses Reverb and Tremolo, both defeatable via an optional footswitch. The stock tube complement includes a 5U4GB, a pair of s, three 12AX7Cs, and a 12AT7 for driving the reverb tank. Speaker options include a Custom Weber VST 15″ Alnico, an Eminence Legend 15″, and Celestion’s Gold 12″. The amp’s control panel is dressed with cream-colored chickenhead knobs that control Volume, Treble, Bass, Reverb, Speed, and Intensity. There’s also a standby switch labeled Run/Yield, and the prerequisite On/Off switch. The Regal II has a solid pine cab covered in optional lacquered tweed. Inside, the Regal II’s wiring is a work of art, with clean routing, Allen Bradley resistors, and custom Orange Drop caps. The heart of the Regal II is its adaptive transformer, which allows it to use one, two, or mismatched power tubes to create myriad tones without having to re-bias. The tube-swapping madness is possible because each tube reacts to its own transformer winding and bias resistor. The bi-filar OT design makes it possible to employ any combination of octal-based tubes, including a 6L6/6V6 combination. The tube rectifier can also be swapped for any common five-volt rectifier, such as the 5Y3, 5U4, and 5AR4. With the stock Tung Sol tubes, lower volume and tone settings produce classic Fender blackface-like highs and lows, while the midrange response is more tweed-style. And the solid pine cab is nicely resonant. Turning the volume past 3 with a humbucker-equipped PRS Swamp Ash Special (past 4 with a single-coil Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster), the amp moves to a more overdriven tone. And as sweet as it is, the Regal II also exhibited Fender Pro-like overdriven tones with somewhat limited headroom. Rolling the volume up produces narrow-panel tweed Pro sounds. Swapping Tubes For most players serious enough to invest in a hand-wired boutique amp with a “tweakable” design, instinct will demand they take advantage. Doing so with the Regal II reveals a pleasant surprise in that the tone of the amp does not significantly change, but headroom does! Swapping the stock s for a pair of new-old-stock JAN Phillips 6L6s produced a noticeably greater clean headroom. A pair of EL34s added a bit of a British flair, but more importantly to us, low-end response was tightened at higher volume settings. With 6V6s, the amp again took another turn with lower headroom, more mids, and a bit more compression. Trying the various (seemingly mismatched) combinations of 6L, EL34, and 6V6s produced unique tones every time, though all shared a “layered” effect. To use a sci-fi analogy, it was like an episode of “Star Trek” where two characters are combined in a transporter incident. Or like playing through two amps at the same time, but instead of being beside each other, they somehow coexisted in the same spot. For example, with the /EL34 paring, the tones became more complex, but to a certain degree they also lost some of their individual ability to bring forth a new tone. But that’s part of the uniqueness of the amp. How many amps can combine an EL34 with a 6V6? Overall, the Victoria Regal II is impressive because it’s a tube-swapping tone-tweaker’s dream come true, and produces a fantastic mix of pre-CBS Fender tones. Ad ID: Delivery Service Consumer Credit