This is probably the last amp I thought I’d be talking about here, but I’ve been watching this amp sit in the Guitar Center listings for months now. After it finally received a discount - quite a large one - and reading about it online, I really had to find out for myself.
This is a much more versatile and impressive amp than I expected, especially reading some of the negative comments about it on forums. It does not specify where it is built, but the assumption is China - and I do see where it gets some flak, being over $3000 at the time of writing, pricing it above amps like the ENGL Savage Mk II and not too far off other handmade boutique amplifiers. The argument is that the Thrasher was designed by Mike Fortin, who has a well renowned name in the metal amp community with his own line of amps - I’ve played a Fortin Cali - and they indeed sound fantastic.
I have to say, this Thrasher is no different. It’s a great sounding amp and can do a lot more than just metal, and it actually has less gain than one might expect from an amp of this style. On top of that, the clean channel is also a stand out quality sound I would argue beats out quite a few other high gainers in that area. The key to that channel, and really the overdrive channel as well, are the 3-way “Shift” switches, which have a drastic effect on the sound. The clean channel can go from a mid-scooped spanky tone, great for fast funk chords, up to an overly thick jazz tone by flipping that switch alone - with an appropriate in-between sound of course. The distortion side has this same ability, but even further, this amp has two controls I’ve never seen on any other amp; the “LF Gain” and “HF Gain” controls. These allow you to adjust the amount of overdrive of both high and low frequency ranges separately, along with a more standard overall gain control. Now that I’ve played it in person, I don’t think it’s necessarily a must have game changer in amp design, but it is very effective at tonal shaping. The most obvious use of this is to lower the gain on the low frequencies to tighten up and make a more clear bottom end, which I probably would notice the benefits more if I played a very low tuned guitar through it - something I plan to do very shortly. On the other hand, you could even turn that control up higher than the high frequency setting to thicken the saturation up a bit - probably not desirable for metal level distortion, but setting this channel up as a classic rock crunch channel gives that control a lot of power. Overall I’m extremely impressed with this channel and if anything, my biggest criticism is that the amp isn’t just two copies of this same channel, or even better a 3-channel amp. There is a footswitchable boost function, the amount of which is adjustable on the overdrive channel, but it’s not quite the same - I would love to set up a crunch tone and a metal overdrive tone on the same amp but I’d have to switch between two amps to pull that off as it stands right now. Yes I know the Randall 667 exists, but it’s just not the same as this.