Bad Cat ERA 30 Amplifier - Mini Review

[santellavision]

 I'll just cut to the chase... This is the greatest tone I have ever heard in my life. End of review.

OK, a bit more. This Bad Cat ERA 30 is basically an improved Matchless DC30 or C30 amp. I actually owned 3 of them over the years (One was formally used on the first Third Eye Blind record) If you ever played one, you know. You can't get a bad tone out of a DC30. And, pretty much every pro player and studio seems to own a DC30. They are just great amps with 2 channels: a 12AX7 Preamp channel and a Voxy EF86 Preamp channel. This new Mark Sampson amp (RIP, he recently passed) is basically taking that DC30 and improving it. Both channels are now foot-switchable, a cleaner signal path, better EFX Loop, a tweaked tone stack and now, you can mix/combine both channels by foot-switch!

You all know how much I LOVE my Bogners (Goldfinger has been my gold standard) Side-by-side, this ERA tone-wise just killed it. Killed it!!!! (I just sold the Goldfinger) The detail and depth of the tone is so amazing, especially the tightness of lower end frequencies is mind blowing. If you live in the slightly dirty clean to classic rock world, this is it peeps. I can honestly say, with 67 years and owning 100+ amps later... there is a Nirvana and I am here.

Sure, it doesn't cover every base. It's not a Twin Reverb country clean or Mesa Rectifier tear your face off metal. It just does the middle ground like no other. If I had one thing, I wish it had reverb. But, I put a simple Electro Harmonix Holy Grail in the loop and done. After getting the head and digging it so much, I got the matching 1x12 Cab with a custom Bad Cat voiced, Celestion speaker. A perfect match for the head.
I highly recommend checking one out. 



Here's a YouTube review that shows it and Mark Sampson's interview (Plus, I love all of Paul's videos, they guy is a monster player)

 

Edited September 2 by santellavision