Y'all are doing great with the videos. Please don't let any negativity discourage you. Some people get jealous and show their nasty side. A lot of people from all over talk about the great deals and beautiful guitars they have bought from Chicago Music Exchange and I am proudly one of them. Thanks.
Great demo of the Swart. I think most face-off vids tend to show only one setting which the player thinks is optimal. You guys showed the full range , which was much appreciated. They designed the tweed cabinet to look like a Supro- definitely looked like that in the screencap.
Bartel sure ticks all boxes (apart from the pricepoint maybe...) #2 Benson, and Swart if you're looking for a bedroom amp with great features. No offence to Evan but the G string of the Strat was a tad flat in the first demos, and a bit more variety would have been nice in the playing although I know it's an amp tone demo... Nice vid, thanks for uploading !
With all these magnatones behind you, I think a Magnatone Panoramic Stereo could have been added to the shootout :) The most amazing combo amp out there!
Not going by the demo but from ownership and professional player friends that own them. The Matchless you need to hear in person, the compression from RUclips just doesn't do the amp justice. The amp is designed off of a Vox, it is handwired with a lot of headroom and honestly you do not need pedals to play it if you don't desire fuzz distorted sounds. It will not hide mistakes like some amps do, it is clean, powerful, and responsive. They must of lightened it up, a 2 x12 used to weigh 96 pounds to ship. That is why I own the head & cab. Single coils, hum buckers and P90's sound great with this amp. Bad Cat started with Mark Sampson one of the prior owners of Matchless, major similarities. Mark left and started his own company Star Amps. Both guys Mark and Phil are really super nice, helpful, and willing to fully explain the amps if you are sincere and seeking the truth. They go out of their way to help honest customers. I heard Mark is building boutique audio stereo amps now and will custom build an amp for individuals. I promise you that you can sound great on stage with a Matchless and no pedals if you are a serious dedicated musician. Thanks.
I was a hesitant to watch this videos, I was afraid I’d find yet another amp. They all sound great, I really wouldn’t turn any of them down, but it made me realize just how happy I am with my Carr Mercury V.
I sold off a serious vintage Fender amp collection after buying a Bartel Starwood. It just sounded better than the others and I never used them. The two piece version is easier to haul.
You should check out the Silk tone, parallel, pure class A at 25 W. The tone I can get out of this amp is incredible. Best Tampa I’ve ever owned not cheap though.
The Starwood had a lot more to show you. It has a unique & active treble/bass controls in that when set lower you get more of a British vibe, at noon where you had it is tweed/brownface and at max it is blackface.The artels are incredible amps.
Some great ones. Benson amps are really cool. My favorites of the last year have been Magnatone and Amplified Nation, and I really like the Tone King Royalist as well.
Which AN do you have? I have the Wonderland Overdrive and A&G and love them both. My WO even though its 100 watt can get amazing tones at even lower volumes than the A&G (50 watt) but the A&G also sounds pretty great at lower volumes.
Yes please 😃 Love seeing awesome gear that I can’t afford! There’s always Lotto, so hey, you never know? Seriously, I love seeing what’s out there. Some of these amps you can tell are really good. I have a Carl’s Custom 5e3 clone with an excellent master and push/pull eq that cleans up the circuit. It wasn’t cheap (…less than $2k all in) sounds like million bucks. Mark I Z28 Dr Z, that has a crazy amount of harmonic content. Used around $1100. Love ❤ the boutique bespoke builders!
Thanks for showing when an amp starts to break-up which is nothing more than static to my ears. Clean headroom and tone quality for Rock a Billy and Surf is what's important to me. Also, attenuation is a must have for practice with tone. Once an amp is overdriven reverb gets muddy, and I'm done. Most amp reviewers can't wait to go into trash settings like that's all that matters. I like the Benson
Hello Evan, nice job doing all that demoing for us. Everything sounded very close to your descriptions however, lets talk Matchless. I believe that you started off with the wrong knob positions and you were really never able to get that beautiful instrument to do its thing. That said, I also believe that if you had put the Master at 930-10 o'clock you would have had a better starting point with more feel and more tone at your disposal making it easier while demoing, it seemed a bit choked in the headroom dept.(considering limited time to demo it fairly and your being unfamiliar with it) and I believe that had you plugged into a 1 X 12 it would have been a bit less to handle since it being your first time in pool ;)). Keep up the good work your chops are good and so is your attitude.
Nothing else comes close to the spacious onboard reverb and deep throbbing bias tremolo of any Swart amps. From a simple bluegrass to stupid ambient space travel
Hear here! I couldn’t stop feeling like this video was something akin to listening to my little brother’s best friend bullshitting his way through the finer points of the history of tube amplification for guitar. “I don’t like playing at loud volumes. It’s generally kind of scary. You can hear all the mistakes.” - Isaac Newton
@@joshuamihalow6054 Ordinarily I don't watch videos pertaining to items outside my budget-but I was in bed with the flu and said just pushed play to view what was going on in the 'boutique amp world' in this new year-2025. As a stage technician for the last 30 years I'd had the privilege to work with many of the greats/my heros. And I should preface I never leave comments or exchange options in these types situations online in any of the modern forums...but as stated above I was bored and bed ridden. I enjoyed most of my life before the advent of the internet. The young gentleman seemed a bit unprofessional to me but I may have been too old to appreciate the experience. The language, terminology and (I'm sorry) playing skill appeared unsanctioned or after-hours for a legitimate CME video. $4000+ equipment deserved heady overview by a seasoned veteran. Thank you for taking the time to confirm what I noticed.
@ I don’t think that it is too much to ask that if someone genuinely wanted to find out as much as possible (in a video format) about these very expensive amps, almost anybody else could have put on a more cogent presentation.
I had the bartel at one point It’s not super intuitive and definitely not an amp to test with all knobs at noon. That’s probably where it sounds the worst. The eq is hugely interactive ong with the master. You can get anything from clean blackface fender (if I remember right with both the bass and treble way up) to Marshall (with the eq way down if I remember) it breaks up way more or less from the settings on the eq. You have to spend some time with it to wrap your head around it. But it doesn’t sound great just at noon eq wise
@ yeah man those amps really need a deep dive. They really can get a crazy amount of sounds in one amp from one channel but are definitely not easy to just dial in like a normal amp conceptually. I sold mine because of that since I like simple fenders. But they can sound fantastic
I like the player! However, I don’t know if the bass was left up really high once the amps volumes were cranked, but they sounded really farty when cranked. I understand some people like that flubby blown-out sound, but man… it makes such a positive difference to my ear when you turn bass nearly off when cranking an amp way up like that. Cool demo nonetheless.
Benson and Carr sounded pretty great. Unfortunately that is the worst I have ever heard a Matchless sound. The key is the relationship between the Master Volume and the PreAmp Volume. I love seeing these types of videos. Keep them coming.
Bartel fuzz/Overdrive sounds like a benson Nathan with less top end. Benson Earhart is the top boost one. Not totally a clean fender style one to choose for this shoot out.
nice presentation. strange how these amps are so expensive, there are a demo of the $500 20 watt Marshall Origin on Segeborne's channel that sounds 10x as expensive
Great demo! Liked the Benson cleans the best. Was shocked at the Matchless...if you'd told me it was an old Crate solid state in the wood enclosure I'd believe you. Thought it wasn't just the worst in the video, but one of the worst sounding amps I've ever heard in a demo. To each their own, cheers!
🤘🤘 To each their own! Sounded great in the room. We shot that one last and the shoot took a lot longer than planned so we definitely spent the least amount of time with that one. We may need to do a full feature on Matchless to show off how good they can be. Thanks for watching!
The Benson has a custom ceramic speaker, the Carr has an Eminence Patriot series speaker, the Swart has a Mojotone BV-30H, the Bartel has a Fane Alnico A60 Speaker and the Matchless has two Celestion Creamback G12H75. 🤘🤘
i have one Pure Tone Amps, model the cosmonaut, customized, personalized, in Pink DeSoto made by Serpetsidakis Michalis in Crete Greece, with celestion neocreamback with real gold leaf at a balsa wood cabinet without front panel. i could sell it for 3k. european. i live in spain.
rather hear them just recorded, rather than microphoned up, running through software and all that cus every amp just sounded the same after processing... only had his reaction to go off...
honestly, the best for my ears to approximate the real tones is to mic them few feet away and capture it as we're in the room instead of hearing the scratchiness from speaker paper vibrating, it's just unrealistic since we would never play with our head sticking to the grill listening to microscopic harmonics anyway. Now softwares are just another maze of rabbit holes to debate. Just my humble opinion and preference.
This guy typifies the younger player that is in love with THE IDEA of hardwired, boutique and so on but clearly does not know much at all. Nothing I can learn from him.
Man, I couldn’t stop feeling like this video was something akin to listening to my little brother’s best friend bullshitting his way through the finer points of the history of tube amplification for guitar. “I don’t like playing at loud volumes. It’s generally kind of scary. You can hear all the mistakes.” - Isaac Newton
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Y'all are doing great with the videos. Please don't let any negativity discourage you. Some people get jealous and show their nasty side. A lot of people from all over talk about the great deals and beautiful guitars they have bought from Chicago Music Exchange and I am proudly one of them. Thanks.
Love to hear that!! Thank you!! 🤘🤘
Great demo of the Swart. I think most face-off vids tend to show only one setting which the player thinks is optimal. You guys showed the full range , which was much appreciated. They designed the tweed cabinet to look like a Supro- definitely looked like that in the screencap.
Thanks!! 🤘🤘
Bartel sure ticks all boxes (apart from the pricepoint maybe...) #2 Benson, and Swart if you're looking for a bedroom amp with great features. No offence to Evan but the G string of the Strat was a tad flat in the first demos, and a bit more variety would have been nice in the playing although I know it's an amp tone demo... Nice vid, thanks for uploading !
Definitely wouldn’t mind seeing a video with Dr. Z, Two Rock, and 1/13 showcased
I like my Dr Z affordable hand wired tons of tones
With all these magnatones behind you, I think a Magnatone Panoramic Stereo could have been added to the shootout :) The most amazing combo amp out there!
Not going by the demo but from ownership and professional player friends that own them. The Matchless you need to hear in person, the compression from RUclips just doesn't do the amp justice. The amp is designed off of a Vox, it is handwired with a lot of headroom and honestly you do not need pedals to play it if you don't desire fuzz distorted sounds. It will not hide mistakes like some amps do, it is clean, powerful, and responsive. They must of lightened it up, a 2 x12 used to weigh 96 pounds to ship. That is why I own the head & cab. Single coils, hum buckers and P90's sound great with this amp. Bad Cat started with Mark Sampson one of the prior owners of Matchless, major similarities. Mark left and started his own company Star Amps. Both guys Mark and Phil are really super nice, helpful, and willing to fully explain the amps if you are sincere and seeking the truth. They go out of their way to help honest customers. I heard Mark is building boutique audio stereo amps now and will custom build an amp for individuals. I promise you that you can sound great on stage with a Matchless and no pedals if you are a serious dedicated musician. Thanks.
I thank John Jorgenson❤ Matchless all the way thanks to him
I was a hesitant to watch this videos, I was afraid I’d find yet another amp. They all sound great, I really wouldn’t turn any of them down, but it made me realize just how happy I am with my Carr Mercury V.
Thanks for watching!! 🤘🤘 Love the Mercury V!
Great amp! Carr makes great stuff
I sold off a serious vintage Fender amp collection after buying a Bartel Starwood. It just sounded better than the others and I never used them. The two piece version is easier to haul.
You should check out the Silk tone, parallel, pure class A at 25 W. The tone I can get out of this amp is incredible. Best Tampa I’ve ever owned not cheap though.
We've had a few Silktone amps over that last year, love them!
I would have liked a Dr. Z and Magnatone in this comparison.
The Starwood had a lot more to show you. It has a unique & active treble/bass controls in that when set lower you get more of a British vibe, at noon where you had it is tweed/brownface and at max it is blackface.The artels are incredible amps.
Definitely want to do a deeper dive on Bartel in the furture! 🤘🤘
Love this type of video. Good job!
Thank you! 🤘🤘
Great video ! ... very cool Thanks Fellas 👍 Bartel 4 me ... and the Benson was very cool
Thanks for watching! 🤘🤘
Some great ones. Benson amps are really cool. My favorites of the last year have been Magnatone and Amplified Nation, and I really like the Tone King Royalist as well.
Great choices!!
Which AN do you have? I have the Wonderland Overdrive and A&G and love them both. My WO even though its 100 watt can get amazing tones at even lower volumes than the A&G (50 watt) but the A&G also sounds pretty great at lower volumes.
Nice amps, but another level up in tone would be Two Rock and Top Hat. Both of those brands will end the search for tone.
i have a top hat club royal that i love,i also have a swart str that is awsome...
I bloody love my Carr Sportsman, amazing amp.
🤘🤘 So good!!
Imo hate when amps/speakers just completely lose it under gain in a brittle way like the first one
Yes please 😃 Love seeing awesome gear that I can’t afford! There’s always Lotto, so hey, you never know?
Seriously, I love seeing what’s out there. Some of these amps you can tell are really good.
I have a Carl’s Custom 5e3 clone with an excellent master and push/pull eq that cleans up the circuit. It wasn’t cheap (…less than $2k all in) sounds like million bucks. Mark I Z28 Dr Z, that has a crazy amount of harmonic content. Used around $1100.
Love ❤ the boutique bespoke builders!
Thanks for watching!! 🤘🤘
Solid video, the presenter did a great job.
Thanks for watching! 🤘🤘
Hey I didn’t know Ralph Macchio now does demo’s for CME. Cool
😂😂
Matchless for me. sounding thick and badass!
That strat is so damn gorgeous!
Thanks for showing when an amp starts to break-up which is nothing more than static to my ears. Clean headroom and tone quality for Rock a Billy and Surf is what's important to me. Also, attenuation is a must have for practice with tone. Once an amp is overdriven reverb gets muddy, and I'm done. Most amp reviewers can't wait to go into trash settings like that's all that matters. I like the Benson
Good choice! 🤘🤘
Hello Evan, nice job doing all that demoing for us. Everything sounded very close to your descriptions however, lets talk Matchless. I believe that you started off with the wrong knob positions and you were really never able to get that beautiful instrument to do its thing. That said, I also believe that if you had put the Master at 930-10 o'clock you would have had a better starting point with more feel and more tone at your disposal making it easier while demoing, it seemed a bit choked in the headroom dept.(considering limited time to demo it fairly and your being unfamiliar with it) and I believe that had you plugged into a 1 X 12 it would have been a bit less to handle since it being your first time in pool ;)). Keep up the good work your chops are good and so is your attitude.
Nothing else comes close to the spacious onboard reverb and deep throbbing bias tremolo of any Swart amps. From a simple bluegrass to stupid ambient space travel
🤘🤘 amen!
CMS...it was like watching a 5 yr old drive a F1 race car. All the manufacturers deserved a better overview.
felt to me like he chose and positioned the mics to have them sound super fizzy...
Hear here!
I couldn’t stop feeling like this video was something akin to listening to my little brother’s best friend bullshitting his way through the finer points of the history of tube amplification for guitar.
“I don’t like playing at loud volumes. It’s generally kind of scary. You can hear all the mistakes.” - Isaac Newton
Yikes, yall. Could just not say anything at all. No need to watch it if you don’t like it.
@@joshuamihalow6054 Ordinarily I don't watch videos pertaining to items outside my budget-but I was in bed with the flu and said just pushed play to view what was going on in the 'boutique amp world' in this new year-2025. As a stage technician for the last 30 years I'd had the privilege to work with many of the greats/my heros. And I should preface I never leave comments or exchange options in these types situations online in any of the modern forums...but as stated above I was bored and bed ridden. I enjoyed most of my life before the advent of the internet. The young gentleman seemed a bit unprofessional to me but I may have been too old to appreciate the experience. The language, terminology and (I'm sorry) playing skill appeared unsanctioned or after-hours for a legitimate CME video. $4000+ equipment deserved heady overview by a seasoned veteran. Thank you for taking the time to confirm what I noticed.
@ I don’t think that it is too much to ask that if someone genuinely wanted to find out as much as possible (in a video format) about these very expensive amps, almost anybody else could have put on a more cogent presentation.
It’s nice to somewhat see and hear amps you won’t in a place like those nationwide guitar garages (GC) 😂
🤘🤘
I had the bartel at one point It’s not super intuitive and definitely not an amp to test with all knobs at noon. That’s probably where it sounds the worst. The eq is hugely interactive ong with the master. You can get anything from clean blackface fender (if I remember right with both the bass and treble way up) to Marshall (with the eq way down if I remember) it breaks up way more or less from the settings on the eq. You have to spend some time with it to wrap your head around it. But it doesn’t sound great just at noon eq wise
Thanks for the info! We wanted to keep it simple for time reasons. Maybe we can do a deep dive on the Bartel in the future and really dial it in! 🤘🤘
@ yeah man those amps really need a deep dive. They really can get a crazy amount of sounds in one amp from one channel but are definitely not easy to just dial in like a normal amp conceptually. I sold mine because of that since I like simple fenders. But they can sound fantastic
I like the player! However, I don’t know if the bass was left up really high once the amps volumes were cranked, but they sounded really farty when cranked. I understand some people like that flubby blown-out sound, but man… it makes such a positive difference to my ear when you turn bass nearly off when cranking an amp way up like that. Cool demo nonetheless.
🤘🤘 Thanks for watching!!
FANTASTIC OFFICER
can i pick my favorite before i listen? i pick the bartel.
I have a Swart STR Reverb and it is fantastic.
love to hear that! 🤘🤘
Benson and Carr sounded pretty great. Unfortunately that is the worst I have ever heard a Matchless sound. The key is the relationship between the Master Volume and the PreAmp Volume. I love seeing these types of videos. Keep them coming.
🤘🤘 Glad you enjoyed the vid!
Bartel fuzz/Overdrive sounds like a benson Nathan with less top end. Benson Earhart is the top boost one. Not totally a clean fender style one to choose for this shoot out.
🤘🤘
funny how many of them are either tweed or valco related
nice presentation. strange how these amps are so expensive, there are a demo of the $500 20 watt Marshall Origin on Segeborne's channel that sounds 10x as expensive
Just goes to show price isn't everything!! 🤘🤘
Y’all gotta support your local boy and throw a Carstens amp in the mix!
We would have for sure but didn’t have any in stock 😡
Love to see some Victorias
Great demo! Liked the Benson cleans the best. Was shocked at the Matchless...if you'd told me it was an old Crate solid state in the wood enclosure I'd believe you. Thought it wasn't just the worst in the video, but one of the worst sounding amps I've ever heard in a demo. To each their own, cheers!
🤘🤘 To each their own! Sounded great in the room. We shot that one last and the shoot took a lot longer than planned so we definitely spent the least amount of time with that one. We may need to do a full feature on Matchless to show off how good they can be. Thanks for watching!
And the winner is: Headstrong lil king 😂
Any time someone says tube amps are dying or dead, I'm gonna show them your face in this entire video. This face doesn't happen with a helix.
Nothing beats that feeling! 🤘🤘
Try a Standell super artist.
What brand of speakers were each amp issued with?
The Benson has a custom ceramic speaker, the Carr has an Eminence Patriot series speaker, the Swart has a Mojotone BV-30H, the Bartel has a Fane Alnico A60 Speaker and the Matchless has two Celestion Creamback G12H75. 🤘🤘
When it's at half a watt is that bedroom volumes?
Definitely! 🤘🤘
Who is this joker? Get Nate back in here to show us how to play!
i have one Pure Tone Amps, model the cosmonaut, customized, personalized, in Pink DeSoto made by Serpetsidakis Michalis in Crete Greece, with celestion neocreamback with real gold leaf at a balsa wood cabinet without front panel. i could sell it for 3k. european. i live in spain.
🤘🤘
Man that strat…
Matchless did sound very good! Heavy 😢
🤘🤘
Red Plate
Nice
🤘🤘
You should be telling us what kind of tubes are in each.
rather hear them just recorded, rather than microphoned up, running through software and all that cus every amp just sounded the same after processing... only had his reaction to go off...
honestly, the best for my ears to approximate the real tones is to mic them few feet away and capture it as we're in the room instead of hearing the scratchiness from speaker paper vibrating, it's just unrealistic since we would never play with our head sticking to the grill listening to microscopic harmonics anyway. Now softwares are just another maze of rabbit holes to debate. Just my humble opinion and preference.
Swart.
love the Swart stuff! 🤘🤘
you have to pay an extra 2k just use the word Boutique.... an extra 2k for capitalizing the B
😂😂
This guy typifies the younger player that is in love with THE IDEA of hardwired, boutique and so on but clearly does not know much at all. Nothing I can learn from him.
Shut your pie hole, grampa.🔱☠️
All that pulling on the neck and taking it out of tune drives me crazy. Just play it straight.
One day I hope to see a ceriatone amp on here. If you guys ever need one to demo, I can bring one by. 🤘😎🤘
🤘🤘
The best you could find was this stoned teenager to attempt to try an educate us on some of your finest amps?
Well none of those beat my 65 Princeton 12” speaker. All farty sounds. No good clean sounds here.
Strat is out of tune, or your bending it out, hope not to offend but couldn’t listen 😬
Whichever one impresses the most lawyers and dentists.
Is it me or is that strat out of tune?
Finally! I thought I was crazy. I think he’s in tune, but his right hand is working the trem.
Man, I couldn’t stop feeling like this video was something akin to listening to my little brother’s best friend bullshitting his way through the finer points of the history of tube amplification for guitar.
“I don’t like playing at loud volumes. It’s generally kind of scary. You can hear all the mistakes.” - Isaac Newton
😂😂