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First, a big apology for the lateness of this review. Cygnus XI was good enough to take a partial trade for his amp, which I received over a month ago. I honestly had no time to play it above a whisper until recently. I guess chalk up that to living in a small apartment with a wife and toddler…oh, and that whole work thing. Also, I do not gig or have an opportunity to play out. I stay at home and play with myself….and sometimes when I get tired of that, I break out the guitar! 
Now this is what I think is ordained as the Cygnus Lead Amp build #3, which states CYGNUS SEL-2 on the front.
Here are the stats best described by the builder:
The reason why I wanted this amp is because it’s a low wattage amp that can do high gain metal tones, which bodes well mainly due to my apt living situation. I am lucky enough to own an SLO-clone that sounds incredible thru a 4x12, which I do not have the room for where I live currently, and for good reason..I’d get evicted with that amp on “1”!
But the Cygnus is not quiet by any means. I had the opportunity to play it at reasonably loud volume for a good while last week. I know this amp can easily do small to medium gigs without miking. Even though this amp is described with an output of 5 watts, but it sounds much much louder. I could only bring it up to 40% of max in the apt which was pretty loud.
Now I know incredibly very little about the inner workings of amps… class A, A/B, cathode-based, simul-class, WTF-class, …I got no clue. But I know a good sound when I hear one, and this amp’s got it. My preference is a dry full old school distortion, like Down has, and this amp delivers it in spades. When I play with any amp, mainly it’s 99% full on distortion, and 1% clean tone. This is a single channel amp so of course I go for the great metal tone, and this can deliver it without the need for an OD pedal before it. And it does clean up reasonably with the volume knob turned down, something that solid state amps don't do as nicely, IMO. That being said, I have been experimenting with a tubescreamer, just cos I have it lying around, where I use very little drive on it, mainly using it as a boost. I turn down the gain on the preamp stage this way, and get a mellower tone when I kick off the pedal. Also, so far, I’ve only been using passive pickups with this amp, as I got no EMG-equipped one with me at the moment.
So far, I’ve been playing it thru an open back 1x12 cab, which is all I have with me at the moment, but I’m dying to try it thru other cabs. I’ve got a closed back 1x12 cab in storage which I think would give it more low end thump.
Also, I have not had time to use it with softer, half-gain settings a la Zeppelin, which I know it can do, but I haven’t yet the time to explore those tones. So, I’ll need to post a follow-up review when I get more time to play with myself.
Now this is what I think is ordained as the Cygnus Lead Amp build #3, which states CYGNUS SEL-2 on the front.
Here are the stats best described by the builder:
The reason why I wanted this amp is because it’s a low wattage amp that can do high gain metal tones, which bodes well mainly due to my apt living situation. I am lucky enough to own an SLO-clone that sounds incredible thru a 4x12, which I do not have the room for where I live currently, and for good reason..I’d get evicted with that amp on “1”!
But the Cygnus is not quiet by any means. I had the opportunity to play it at reasonably loud volume for a good while last week. I know this amp can easily do small to medium gigs without miking. Even though this amp is described with an output of 5 watts, but it sounds much much louder. I could only bring it up to 40% of max in the apt which was pretty loud.
Now I know incredibly very little about the inner workings of amps… class A, A/B, cathode-based, simul-class, WTF-class, …I got no clue. But I know a good sound when I hear one, and this amp’s got it. My preference is a dry full old school distortion, like Down has, and this amp delivers it in spades. When I play with any amp, mainly it’s 99% full on distortion, and 1% clean tone. This is a single channel amp so of course I go for the great metal tone, and this can deliver it without the need for an OD pedal before it. And it does clean up reasonably with the volume knob turned down, something that solid state amps don't do as nicely, IMO. That being said, I have been experimenting with a tubescreamer, just cos I have it lying around, where I use very little drive on it, mainly using it as a boost. I turn down the gain on the preamp stage this way, and get a mellower tone when I kick off the pedal. Also, so far, I’ve only been using passive pickups with this amp, as I got no EMG-equipped one with me at the moment.
So far, I’ve been playing it thru an open back 1x12 cab, which is all I have with me at the moment, but I’m dying to try it thru other cabs. I’ve got a closed back 1x12 cab in storage which I think would give it more low end thump.
Also, I have not had time to use it with softer, half-gain settings a la Zeppelin, which I know it can do, but I haven’t yet the time to explore those tones. So, I’ll need to post a follow-up review when I get more time to play with myself.
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