Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about a currently discontinued tube amplifier that is still easy to find at a very affordable price in the used market: the Randall Rh50T!
This is a small, lightweight, 50w tube head which pioneered the current trend of downsizing tube guitar amps to play nicely both in a home environment and in the stage-rehearsal room.
The amp is 2 channel with independent eq, each one with two modes, the normal and the boosted one, so that in total we can choose between a clean, a crunch, a rhythm and a lead sound.
A spring reverb is also included and does its job beautifully.
I have owned this head for six months, and during this time I have been able to appreciate the incredible sturdiness of the build quality, probably one of the most solid-feeling amplifiers I've ever owned, and the warmth of the EL34 tubes, which adds a lot of harmonics and mid range to the tone.
This is a double edge blade: the characteristic EL34 tone is present, and if you like it, it's a blessing, but if you don't, be prepared because it will permeate all the four channels.
The Clean and crunch channels are very pleasant, with extremely creamy clean-slighly overdriven tones, the sound is rich and bassy, and for pop, rock, hard rock, punk etc this head is absolutely a good bang for the buck, if you can find it used.
Unfortunately if we want to push it towards modern metal tones, which was something I needed, the gain did not have a nice texture: at the levels required for metal it tends to get muddy and fuzzy, probably due to the combination of tubes and low wattage, and it takes quite an effort and some good pedal to achieve a satisfying tone.
My bottom line is: for low to mid gain genres this head is a good compromise between price, wattage, tone, and it is 100% tube. For genres like metal, it will need to be boosted and carefully tweaked because otherwise probably you will not obtain the tone you are looking for.
Either way, a head that definitely deserves a try!
Specs:
- 50 w tube amp, 4 12AX7 Tubes in the preamp, 2 EL34 in the power amp
- effects loop
- 2 channels (Clean / Overdrive) / 4 modes
- Spring reverb
- 4 switches footswitch included
Specs:
- 50 w tube amp, 4 12AX7 Tubes in the preamp, 2 EL34 in the power amp
- effects loop
- 2 channels (Clean / Overdrive) / 4 modes
- Spring reverb
- 4 switches footswitch included
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