While it’s not secret that Splawn Amps have gone through a number of revisions and circuit changes over the years, I haven’t seen many direct comparisons. Since I have three from a wide range of years, I thought I’d record some clips of the amps at different settings to show how different they sound.
First up, the 2006 Quick Rod. This amp has the offset input jack and 3x 12AX7 preamp tubes. The clean channel gets dirtier if the overdrive channel’s gain is turned off, so I turned it way down for this video. It’s a bit of a quirk of this amp, but you can’t have a pristine clean and a high gain sound footswitchable - you have to sacrifice your clean tone for the high gain overdrive tone. That said, this is still my favorite of the three.
Second, a 2008 Quick Rod, which has a much darker/smoother circuit and an additional preamp tube for the clean channel, bringing the total to 4x 12AX7’s.
Last, a 2018 Street Rod, while a slightly different design and lower wattage than the QR’s it is an almost identical circuit and the most up-to-date version I have.
Enjoy!
In this video, I play this sweet Charvel Model 4 in Rainbow Crackle finish