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The Revelation SerenaOne channel, two knob, low-power amp for you to be able to crank up and get full power tube big-volume glory without waking the neighbors. Perfect for studio work (especially home studios) or in any other environment where loud is a bad word, such as coffee houses, at home practice, church worship bands, playing along with unamplified piano or acoustic ensembles, etc.Pictures coming soon! We are currently waiting on the face plates to come in before we can shoot the pictures. Serena is styled like a 72 only with a lot less knobs and uses the same cabinet, so for now, you might look at the 72 page for approximate pictures. Pricing information on the ordering page
Recorded all guitar tracks with
just the Serena combo using a 12AT7 power tube. All tracks are
192K mp3s and run from 2-5
minutes each. These tracks are recorded with my personal guitars,
which include a Fender Esprit with DiMarzio PAFs, an SG copy with
DiMarzio PAFs and a Fender Telecaster with Duncan pickups.
Olive Tree Studio tracks were recorded with a Yamaha PM-1000 channel strip and a MOTU 1224 audio card direct to Nuendo. There were no pedals or effects of any kind on these guitar tracks. Some reverb and delay may be added at mixdown. BOSS Micro BR tracks were recorded in my home with a Boss Micro BR digital 4-track and no outboard gear, with a Peavey PVM 380N microphone, and then mixed with Reaper on a PC. They also have some reverb and delay added at mixdown. This is total cheapskate recording! The Serena Concept We all know that tube amps sound best when they are cranked. It's one thing to build an amp that sounds great when cranked, to heck with the neighbors. It's quite another to have an amp that you can turn all the way up so that it sounds great, and then play at home in your apartment without having a visit from the landlord or the police. The Serena is a simple, pure-bred tube guitar amp with all of the big, fat tone of a big, fat cranked amp, only without the decibel hangover and frowns from the sound man. How it WorksMost small guitar amps built for bedroom use or practice are indeed small and sound small. There are two reasons why they sound small. Reason #1 is the speaker. Many have found that the tone of an old "Champ" or other little amp improves greatly when you plug it into a real cabinet with a 12" speaker.The Serena combo uses the same full-size cabinet as the big & bad 72, loaded with a Revelized* 12" speaker, to get over this "it's small, so it sounds small" hurdle. The other reason is a lot more technical. Most small tube amps are single-ended amps, while most big amps are push-pull amps. Say what? A push-pull guitar amp uses two power tubes, one to amplify one half of the wave form, and one to amplify the other half (one positive, one negative). A push-pull amp also requires an extra preamp stage called a phase inverter, which imparts its own sonic character. This out-of-phase, somewhat-balanced relationship between the opposing power tubes causes some harmonics to get cancelled out and some others to be let through when they distort. There is a distinct sound of two out-of-phase power tubes each making their own distortion. This is a big part of the sound of the classic tube guitar amp. Most small guitar amps use one power tube to amplify the whole wave. This is called "single-ended". A prime example is the old "Champ" type amp, and most modern small amps are descendents of this same idea. These amps are kind of like 1/2 of a regular guitar amp, but without a phase inverter. There is only one power tube making distortion, and none of those harmonics get cancelled out. The tone of a single-ended guitar amp is very different than that if a push-pull amp. The Serena is a small amp built big-amp style. It is a push-pull amp with a phase inverter and the whole shebang. Only instead of using high-power output tubes, it uses a low-power dual-triode tube for the power stage. You get the big-amp sound, at the small-amp volume level. So How Loud Is It?Don't get me wrong. This is not necessarily a quiet amp. The Serena will run with one of many dual-triode tubes in the power stage to give it different amounts of power, clean headroom, and tone character. Also, speakers of different efficiency can be selected for the combo to tune it to taste. With an ECC99 power tube and a 102dB speaker, this is a totally giggable amp for small-venue blues gigs, larger churches, jazz, or just about anywhere that you don't need ear-bleeding levels. Switch the power tube to a 12AT7 and the volume goes right back to spouse-friendly levels.The Serena combo is available with a choice of speakers to make the amount of clean headroom and cranked volume you need. The Voice SwitchThe Serena has a "Voice" switch on the front panel, that goes from a warm, round tone in the "Blues" position to a more aggressive, brighter tone in the "Rock" position. Both modes have plenty of gain to get the amp very saturated but the tonal character is not-so-subtly different. The Serena is touch sensitive and cleans up with the volume control in either Blues or Rock voice.Different Power Tubes? Since the Serena uses a standard 9-pin dual-triode for the power tube, you can run multiple different kinds of tubes in it for different tone character, clean headroom, total power and breakup. Serena was designed to optimally run with a JJ ECC99 tube or a 12AU7. Revelized speaker All Serena combos come with a Revelized* speaker for increased low-level sensitivity and suitability for a lower-power amplifier. The Serena is completely hand-wired and built by hand, one unit at a time.
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