You want amps? You had ’em at the 2009 NY Amp Show! Loni Specter ran another trouble free amp extravaganza at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Piscataway, New Jersey. There were approximately 64 exhibitors showing their stuff to hundreds of guitar players in attendance. So many goodies, so little time. All right let’s get down to who we had the pleasure to meet and sample some of their creations.
Now with my head spinning a little from checking out all this cool gear a small pile of daphne blue Tolex amps caught my eye. This was the Nolatone suite. Paul Sanders is the builder and designer of the Nolatone amps. He brought along the Chimey Limey (can you say fat AC15?) that has a switch on the back of the chassis to select either a 12AX7 or EF86 for the first gain stage. The 5 watt June Bug which has 3 gain stages for thick sounding overdrive and a removable baffle ring to accommodate a 10″ or 12″ speaker. And last was my personal fave the 22 Tango. This was one of the loudest, clearest 2x6V6 amps I ever heard. It reminded me of a tweed Bassman tone with tone stack controls that were much more effective. Paul says that the big, clear sound has to do with the special Mercury Magnetics RSO-type output transformer. Whatever the recipe is it sounded great and had a big amp feel to it.
