For many guitarists the search for the perfect tone is something that never ends. Sure we get get tone already but we are always looking for things we can do to improve our tone. The problem many guitarist face is they can’t get good tone at low volumes. Living in apartments of even in a house we can’t crank our amps without someone complaining - and lets face it most of our amps sound best when they are cranked! 

Even small 5 watt tube amps can easily be way too loud to play at home.  I’ve got a few 5 watters that can get incredible tone when cranked, but at full volume they are almost as loud as a 50 watter. Any decent 5 watt tube amp into good speakers can still shake the walls. If you like a good tube overdrive, then you have to try a good 5 watt tube amp through a 4×12’s cabinet, the tone is incredible.

My current setup is my guitar into a Marshall Guv’nor Overdrive/Distorion into a Marshall Reflector Stereo Reverb with the main channel feeding into my Fender Vibro Champ and the secondary reverb channel going into my old Kalamazoo Model Two. Both amps are about 5-6 watts of pure class A tube tone. All point to point wired and very simple circuits to give sweet singing tube tone.

Both amps have very good clean tones. The fender of course is cleaner at full volume while the Kalamazoo starts overdriving at around 3 with good pickups. The fender I have set to a very sweet bluesy clean with a hint of overdrive and the kalamazoo is my crunch box. I like to blend in the fender cleans with the overdriven kalamozoo to add more substance and a fuller tone. It helps make the notes stand out and sing even with a lot of overdrive.

I play a mixture of blues, classic rock, vintage metal and some newer stuff. The one thing I had been missing in my tone was a touch of reverb. The Marshall Reflector Stereo Reverb does an incredible job of adding reverb to my amps. I was concerned at first since it is not a tube reverb, but the tone quality and all the reverb options make this unit an incredible tone tool. It has 5 different types of reverb, hall, plate, room, and two different spring reverb settings. Every setting sounds good and has its uses but so far I am addicted to the plate reverb setting.

The Marshall Guv’nor Overdrive/Distortion pedal also adds some interesting sounds to my setup. The cool thing about it is the incredible tone controls. The tone controls are Low, Bass, Mid and Treble and they really enhance the limited tone circuits on my amps. The Kalamazoo only has one tone knob and the fender has two. The low and bass controls on the Marshall Guv’nor let me dial in some really nice bass or scoop out my mids and so much more.

Quite often I use the Marshall Guv’nor as a clean boost with tone controls to overdrive my tube amps. Some times I crank up the overdrive even more by cranking the gain on the Gov’nor, it all depends on my mood and what I am playing.