Trace Elliott Bonneville

[charveljunkie]

Well my friend from gc called me and told me they just got a Bogner Shiva in-Jumped in my trooper and took off-I tried a uberschall and my jaw hit the floor-So I decided to sell my marshalls and buy a couple of uber's-I did not dig the shiva as much as the uber-I was told the shiva was the holy grail of bogner-Well I like the uber but quess what I was walking out and seen a Trace Elliott Bonnevilles-6 12x7's-hmmm...
Plugged it in and adjusted the setting and holy $hit!!!!!Gain for days and man this amp smokes not a uber-but god it's a smokin amp,pentode/triode mode (100/50 watt mode)output damping mode-all kinds of bells and whistles.So anybody ever played thru one of these???
If you have give me some feedback [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[charvelguy]

Re: Trace Elliott Bonneville

I have a Bonneville. It is great amp but I haven't use it in awhile. The only drawback to this amp was that it has a single eq section and that the three channels could not be switched except by the rotary 3 way on the front (which is essentially a voicing/channel switch. I can't recall if it had an english/american switch on the back. It can run EL34's or 6L6 and has a bia adjutment on the back panel. So basically it could only do one really good sound at a time and if the need arose for a separate EQ, it had to be from outboard or reset manually. The Trident was the solution to the Bonnevilles limitations as it had channel switching. With some mods the Bonneville can do the same.

IMO the Bonneville was meant to be like a hot rodded Marshall & was meant to compete with the like of the SLO. The product line had some problems with transformer reliability from what I've heard like other Trace products had some issues. Pretty amp tho..green tolex, chromed bell tranny covers. Mine was made in '95. I think most of Trace Elliott stuff was hand wired but used the green circuit boards. If had been p2p with turret boards, it would have really taken off as a 'hand made amp' as these weren't cheap when issued. As is tho.. it is a cool amp. I plan on replacing the output with a mercury mag trans and modding the rotary switch to be footswitchable.
I have had a few other trace products, the GP3 head and I used to own a TVT9 preamp...that had a beautiful clean and a real Santana sustain to very high gain saturation. Still own the GP3, kinda a cool novelty item and has some unique features (like a valvestate).

[charvelguy]

Re: Trace Elliott Bonneville

I guess not a lot of people here own a Bonneville. There was a guy on ebay buying them up like they weren't ever going to exist ever again about a year+ ago. If you can find one for 400-500 with footswitches in good working condition..it's a good price. They made combos also..I saw one with a 15" listed years ago. Usually they have 12".