Dr Z Carmen Ghia

Amplifiers

Here is yet another glowing review for the fabulous Dr. Z Carmen Ghia. OK,
you may well be getting sick of hearing how good they are, but you should
have realised by now that there is a good reason for this….

Overview

It's important to note a few things here at the start.

1) Most of the tonal comments are based on this head running into a couple
of single 12" single boxes running Lorantz 100W 8 ohm guitar drivers
through a 4 ohm THD hotplate. (The THD has mostly been set to 8dB
attenuation, occasionally to 4dB.) I have played it quite a bit without the
THD into just one of the above boxes, but the THD doesn't seem to degrade
the tone at all on either of the above settings. I only got the THD on
Monday - it makes it a whole lot more useable at home when I'm not the only
one here, so I use it all the time now :-)

2) The guitar that I mostly used is my main axe, the infamous Fly Deluxe
that I crap on about continually. I've also used an old Yamaha with Texas
Specials in it, a Carvin DC-400 and a Charvel ST Custom with Lace Sensors
in it. The Texas Specials were fantastic, as I recall. That's the closest
that I've really got to using a strat through it. Sorry about that, but
I'll let you know how it sounds once I've had a chance to test it
*properly* with some real single coils. That probably won't happen any time
soon, so I'm posting it now. As noted below though, My favourite sound is
the inner coils of the Fly's humbuckers, so that's pseudo single coil.

3) I had in my first draft of this review that the CG was "a nice simple
amp - just a volume and a tone control" but I decided that this was
somewhat misleading. While it is indeed simple in relation to it's
controls, tonally and harmonically it's extremely complex.

4) I'm down here in Australia, so any difficulties I've encountered will
most probably not happen to you.

5) I'm not Sefstrat, so none of this is legally binding in way, shape or
form. Also, there shouldn't be any good bits at the end that are worth
skipping through to, but who can tell? :-)

6) ALL of the below is IMHO, ok?

The amp is a 2 x EL-84 amp that produces 15W. Don't be mislead by the
apparently low power rating - it can get *loud*. You certainly can't
crank it and practice quietly in the bedroom :-) It's a "second generation"
CG - which is to say it's not one of the funky little red ones that started
the whole CG thing off. I do wish that it was available in red though :-)

Mike certainly packs the amps well - it survived the trip to Australia with
no dramas whatsoever.

I paid US$499 + US$75 for the stepdown transformer for mine. That's a
straight up bargain in anyone's book. I believe that the price is soon to
go up to US$599, but that is still an absolute steal. You should order
yours today :-)

I've owned it for 2 months now. Sorry for the delayed review, but I figured
that it'd be better to get a review once the reviewer has owned the gear
for a while, rather than a "just got this and it's great" piece….

Construction Details

This amp is very nicely constructed. The amp is covered in black tolex,
with chrome corner protector bits and chrome end bits on the handle. The
control panel is black with 2 cream coloured chicken head knobs, a chrome
on/off switch and a red bezel light. They are well protected as the control
panel is recessed nearly an inch from the front edge. The lettering is
white engraving on the black panel. The back panel has the speaker out and
a fuse holder. The controls are at the top of the front panel. Below the
controls, the wood panel is covered with old HiWatt grill cloth, with white
piping around the edge and a black with white outline "Z" logo. It looks
extremely nice. Mike was good enough to send me some extra cloth and a
couple of logos, so the speaker boxes can be made to match. Should look
great! There is a decent sized piece of tolex covered wood across the back
to protect the tubes, but you can still change tubes without removing it.
My serial number is H-7170. (Exactly how anal can you get, eh, telling you
that? :-)

My Carmen Ghia has an external power supply, which is a bit of a pain, but
that was the only way that Mike could do it given that I needed a
non-standard transformer. It apparently caused hum if it was attached to
the chassis. Off the chassis, it's perfect. It's quite quiet even at high
volume.

It's only 18" wide, 8 ˝ inches high and 9 ˝ inches deep. Because of it's
depth and it's narrow width, it looks (to me) to be slightly out of
proportion when compared to "normal" heads. (Man, you gotta be picky to
find things to nit-pick on with this amp, especially when it gets to the
stage of having to pick on things that aren't actually bad or wrong :-) It
weighs 20 lbs.

Internals

Ok, about the tubes. Mine was shipped with :

5Y3 (rectifier) - Philips JAN 5Y3WGTA.

EL-84 (x2) (power tubes) - Ruby Tubes. 6BQ5 - EL84R (Russian)

5751 (phase inverter) - No idea, but it's "Made in the USA" ; and a

12AX7 Ruby Tubes 7025STR (input/tone recovery).

Mike also sent along a couple of alternatives - a 5AR4 rectifier tube (Ruby
Tubes - Chinese) and a 12BH7A (Sylvania) phase inverter.

I've played with the tubes a bit, swapping them in and out, and I'm
currently running the 12BH7 and the 5Y3. I might change these over at some
stage, but who knows? The 5751 was definitely crunchier than the 12BH7A.
Now, I'm a crunchy sorta bloke, but I really like the lower gain of the
12BH7A. I think that it really improves the dynamics of the amp.

Any other Ghia owners out there using different tubes? If so, can you tell
me/us about them? I'm extremely interested in discussing this, as I
couldn't believe the difference in swapping just the phase inverter tube.

The innards of the amp are extremely well protected. All of the circuitry
is tucked away inside a steel panel, with just the tubes and the trannys
visible.

Sound

Well, where to start? This is the richest sounding amp I've ever heard or
played. It's not a Boogie, but if you want a Boogie, you should go and buy
one :-) For blues/rock, it's absolutely ideal. While it doesn't have heaps
of clean headroom, it distorts beautifully and gets loud. I have no tonal
references for this amp, really, but Giri assures me that it's like a cross
between "Marshalls and brown Deluxes", whatever that is :-) , but hopefully
it will give you some idea. Each note or chord seems to be chock full of
tone, which sounds a bit hyperbolic, but it's really not. 3D is a term that
springs to mind. You find yourself trying all sorts of new and interesting
stuff, just to listen to it. Of course, you also find yourself playing the
old riffs and rhythm patterns over and over again too, just to listen to
them as well :-) I can get a really good AC/DC rhythm tone out of it,
amongst others. (Well, I was today, so that's the first example that
springs to mind.) The sound is, as ever, extremely hard to describe, but
it's definitely living in the vintage distortion zone rather than the
modern one. It excels at the "just on the edge" type of distortion that is
such an elusive sound. Feedback is as easy as you like. The amp has plenty
of bottom end. Well, really it has a *huge* amount of bottom end, due to
the rather enormous transformers.

I love the clean, and I love the crunch. Not a bad combination, that :-)

I've used it so far into 4 and 8 ohm loads - Mike says that it'll happily
run 4, 8 or 16 ohms without a worry. I must admit that I didn't really
notice any difference in the sound with the different loads, but maybe I
just didn't turn it up loud enough.

The tone control is interesting. It works backwards to normal - ie turning
it clockwise decreases the treble, rather than increasing it. It's ok when
you get used to it, but it's a bit weird at first. (Same deal with the
power switch - up is on. I guess it's the coriolis effect :-) The tone
stack certainly sounds different to a normal one. It certainly makes a big
difference to the midrange. I believe that it's voiced to sound like a Wah,
rather than just a treble cut, but I really don't care. It's a very musical
knob, so I'm happy with it :-) It certainly makes a *big* contribution to
your ability to sculpt a sound - not bad for a single knob.

Funnily enough, when I first plugged it in and hit some chords, I wasn't
ecstatic about it. I didn't think that it was as amazing as everyone had
said. However, I guess this was caused by my unsophisticated and untrained
ear - I wasn't used to single channel, no MV amps. My last few amps have
all been channel switching rigs, or I was using my rack. You know, it's
nice to have something as simple as this to use!! I certainly love it now
that I've learned how to use it properly. And that's the key - if it's used
properly it's just amazing. (I'm not claiming to use it properly, that's
just an observation :-)

Dynamics

(The dynamics are so good they deserve their own section.)

One of the amazingly good things about this amp is the way that it responds
to the player's dynamics. With the amp set to about 1 o'clock on the vol
knob, (I've got the THD set to an 8dB attenuation for home use, but that's
neither here nor there), it's just great. I can keep it nicely clean with
the guitar volume set to about 8, (using the inner 2 coils of the Fly's
humbuckers with a bit of piezo added), but get it pretty crunchy when
rolled up to 10. Flick the selector to the neck or bridge humbucker by
themselves, and there's a lot more crunch. This amp is a great
demonstration tool for power amp distortion. It's obscenely sweet.
Pinch-type harmonics are amazingly easy to get. Since the HotPlate arrived,
the FD2 has been relegated to just providing a bit of boost for solos. I
still really like the FD2, but it's a bit redundant almost now that I can
crank the CG harder :-)

Summary.

This is the best amp I've ever owned by a long way. The dynamics are
absolutely amazing, and the sound is stunning. The construction and sound
put it well into the boutique class, but the price is far from it. I'd most
certainly get another, (if Mike would build another for me :-) , if this
one ever got stolen. What more can you say? I'd love to try some of Mike's
other amps, but that'll have to wait until I can visit his shop when I get
to the US for a holiday, and that's years away.

Thanks.

There's always people to thank. Firstly, I'd like to thank Mike Zaite (Dr.
Z himself) for making this amp for me. He went way beyond the call of duty
with this one, even to the extent of running a permanent 240V outlet into
his workshop for testing it. Given how little they cost to begin with, and
the fact that the only extra I got charged was for the alteration to the
transformer, (I needed a special one made with a 240V tap added), he must
have made about 50 cents an hour on this one, absolute tops :-) I really
appreciate the time he gave to me on the phone, (I rang him a couple of
times - he's a great guy, but calling him internationally can cost a
fortune because he can *talk* :-) , and in the testing, changing
transformers, building an enclosure for the power tranny when it was deemed
not possible to put it on the chassis, etc. Thanks again, Mike!!

Thanks also should be extended to Giri, (who cost me a fortune in gear last
year), for keeping me going with the dream of purchasing it when Mike and I
were having a communication breakdown due to malfunctioning email, and his
eloquent description of the sound of the CG. He also kept assuring me that
even with the unbelievably high shipping costs for it to get here, it'd be
worth it. He was right, so thanks mate.

Finally, thanks to my wife, Cha, for allowing me to buy it even when we
really could (should?) have been using the money for other things. I
believe that this was the correct item on which to spend the money, and she
went with me on it :-) It's most appreciated.
cheers,

Stevie "I KNOW it was way too long :-) " Mic

The "Stevie" Page is found at
http://www.cross.com.au/stevies/

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