Thanks to bad marketing, I recently bought a great sounding amp at a helluva price. This, my reward for a laboring quest to find something that would fit my style as a player and fit the kind of music I am to play. It had to be an amp that sounded uniquely me, for that is my strength as a guitar player. Some of the greatest amps in rock’s sonic history aren’t unique at all, but still offer great tone. They are perfectly respectable, some even honorable.

American-made Fender amplifiers and British-made Marshall amplifiers were both cornerstones of rock music’s sound, and therefore rock music’s impact. Marshall’s impact on rock ‘n’ roll is famously tied to the Who as Pete Townshend and John Entwistle (amongst other musicians) convinced company founder Jim Marshall to make and carry bass and guitar gear in his London drum shop. Marshall started carrying Fenders, which, coming from America, were quite expensive. So he started building his own. Then, thanks to Keith Moon (really, thank you Keith Moon), Entwistle convinced Marshall to make a really loud amp so he could be heard above Moon’s drumming. Naturally, Townshend showed up sometime later needing an amp loud enough to be heard on top of Entwistle’s bass rig, which could be heard above the amazing din of rock ‘n’ roll’s whirling-ist dervish. This was the dawn of the Marshall stack. As if the Who haven’t done enough for rock ‘n’ roll—they also pioneered (with Marshall), the amp stacks that have become an icon of the rock concert stage. Cream, the Small Faces, the Yardbirds, and Led Zeppelin—these are some of the earliest examples of bands using the classic Marshall stack. Metallica, Nirvana, and Jane’s Addiction, among countless others, have carried the torch since, and the flame shows no sign of dimming. I should point out that Townshend has used Fender amps for some time now, and has used other amps like HiWatt since he helped birth the Marshall stack. In fact, other than the history lesson, the Who is not generally tied to the Marshall brand.

Fenders and Marshalls are tube amplifiers (valves if you’re in the UK) and this has much to do with their infamous tone. In our world of transistors, ICs (Integrated Circuits—aka chips), and AD/DAs (the converters that take a power chord, mince it into zeroes and ones so the digital signal processing can happen, and then reconvert it into an analog signal a speaker can shake the air with), the most sought after guitar amps available are tube amps. And many of these use tubes that were designed in the ’50s and used in such illustrious environments as the Russian military. As I’ve written about previously, in my opinion the best use thus far of ICs in amps is with modeling technology where the processors (IC chips) emulate a classic tube amp.

In our digital world, where we can hold the Who’s entire catalog in our pocket for instant and random access, tubes are verrrryyy mysterious. For one thing, they glow! A real glow you can see! For another, they have wicked little fairy folk trapped inside, and it is their angry, burning wings and stomping boots that make the classic tube distortion sound. Technically that’s not true, or at least not proven, but it’s easier to explain than vacuum trapped electrons boiling up from a heated cathode passing through a grid before smacking into an Anode—the end result—voltage (what else?). Suffice it to say, tubes (or valves) are an ancient Druidic technology that involves searing fairy lights and devious elfin mischief and results in the warm, sonorous, overdriven glow that produces Lithium (the song, not the element). If you don’t believe Thomas Edison was a druid then the previous statement is mostly false. Now where was I…

Oh yeah, fairies… so this whole tube thing was a place I needed to get back to after years of playing a fine digital modeling amp. The computer amp served its purpose and I have no regrets using it as I did. I still think they’re a great technology in their own way, especially if you’re recording more than gigging.

But there is something about tubes, and really any great sounding amp, that emboldens the connection between guitarist and guitar. There is something wholly organic about a tube amp. They give and inspire and expose. The latter is not always a good thing—when you’re prancing about in leotards while riffing, any clams you happen to play are represented in full voice with a tube amp. The solid state and digital amps are better at hiding slop. Put another way, it’s easier to sound good on a slick Line 6 digital amp. A tube amp has the ability to let everything above, below, and in between playing notes and chords on a guitar speak, cry, squeal, honk, or fart. And no one wants to fart on stage. So with a tube amp you have to be more diligent on your axe lest you sound like a troubled fool. Hit the notes and hit them well, damn the leotards, full speed metal ahead!

This brings me to my new amp—an Ashdown Fallen Angel 40. (See what I mean about the bad marketing and fairies?) I walked past this amp several times looking for an amp with solid-state versatility and valve verisimilitude. The owner of an independent shop where I’d bought my recently remarked-upon effects pedal asked me why I was snubbing this amp. I didn’t know the amp’s name, but when I heard it I wasn’t surprised. It looked like it could be called an Ashdown Fallen Angel 40. Its name and look made me doubt the amp was for me. Ron Jeremy or that heavy metal magician on cable, certainly, but not me.

I am blessed to live near several great independent music stores. And if Dave, the owner of one of them, says I should pay attention to this amp, I guess I should. He hauled the Angel into the amp room, turned it on, and before you know it, I was in lust.

The amp was branded and dressed up to look like an awesome heavy metal amp. The warmth and width of the bottom end spoke to the amp’s origin—a former chief engineer from the illustrious British bass amp company Trace Elliot started Ashdown. With the Fallen Angel series, they opened up a line of guitar amps. The line was short lived, at least in the combo size, which mine is (40 watts, 1×12). Ashdown now makes guitar amps that look like so many amps these days—retro and loungey—under the brand name Hayden.