Thanks to a friend of mine located in Europe, I was able to get my hands on one of these amps. Brunetti is fairly unknown here in the US but I’ve been lucky enough to play an XL and own a (still partially broken) XL-REVO II, and both of those have been fantastic amps.
The 059 is a more classic voiced amp, aimed a little more at vintage hard rock tones than the XL or XL REVO which are both fire breathing metal monsters out of the box (not that they can’t do great vintage tones too of course).
The panel looks a little complicated at first glance, but it makes sense once you are up close. The first three knobs on the left near the input are the gain controls - one for each channel, Clean, Crunch, and Solo. Then each channel has a 3-band EQ and a master volume control, and these are cluster together in this “stairstep then drop” pattern - bass, middle treble, then the one towards the bottom is the volume control right next to the push-button channel select switch. Each channel also has some addtional tone shaping options I’ll cover individually.
The clean channel is really fantastic for a high gainer, with a lot of lively character that makes it interesting to listen to - it’s not flat or sterile at all. The gain control has a bright switch attached which has a very strong impact on the tone especially with single coils and adds a lot of sparkle. It’s not a feature heavy channel, but the tone is superb.
The Crunch and Solo channels are similar looking, but they do have a clearly audible difference in their basic structure. The Solo channel is much looser and thicker by default, but not in a metal-amp saturated kind of way, which might put some players off. It’s really aimed more for your thicker, flowing, 70s era solo tones - I hear Highway Star solo tones in it.
The Crunch channel on the other hand has a much more defined low end for rhythm riffing, and still has plenty of gain on tap, but won’t satisfy for the most extreme metal styles without a boost. I do find this channel to be a bit anemic until the yellow “Shift” button is pressed, which adds a ton of low mid chunk to the sound. For my playing style, the Shift stays on all the time but I can see a use case with lower gain tones without it, or especially as a variation on a clean or “edge of breakup” type tone. Basically, you can get that type of sound with the gain turned up on the clean channel, or with the gain turned down on this channel - very nice.
Both channels have a “mellow” switch, and this cuts some of the high end and tapers it off more quickly. It interacts well with the presence control, and you can get some unique tones by arranging them opposite to each other (ex high presence but mellow on, or vice versa). And the last interesting feature is the “crunch/solo tone reverse” which simply swaps the tone stacks between the two channels. This lets you use the Solo channel’s higher gain but with the tone settings (and tighter low end) of the crunch channel. It’s not a perfect channel clone or anything, and it’s not intended to be, it’s just a nice feature for giving some versatility to either channel because you effectively have two different sets of EQ with different circuit values you can use for whatever you need.
Other features include an effects loop with send and return controls, a line out, and has many functions that are MIDI controllable. It also has the very cool feature of a 1U rack space underneath the chassis, something I’ve only seen from Brunetti and is a great home for my Yamaha SPX90.
I did have to rewire this to 120V, but the transformers still had the wires all ready to go and taped off. I sent a quick email to Marco Brunetti (who has been very responsive to my emails!) who confirmed I had the right wires, so it was an easy job.
Of course, this keeps fueling my need to acquire more Brunetti amps. There is a second edition of the 059 with some different features I’d love to compare with, and I’m also really wanting a Pirata 141. The Pirata 141 “valvemix” has a knob that allows the user to adjust the amount of two different power tubes in the circuit - by default a pair of 6L6 and a pair of EL34. This is similar to the Egnater Renegade (which I had, and sold) but I’m interested to hear Brunetti’s take on this idea, especially since the Pirata seems geared a little more towards high gain sounds than the Egnater was.
Either way, I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for more of these great amps!