Omega Obsidian: Am I missing something?

[RedB4Black]

Interesting. I was pretty locked in on an EL34 since I'm more of a Marshall guy. Could you provide more details?

I had and el34 Hybrid, but ended up selling it after getting my 6L MTL. The hybrid low end wasn't there in comparison. Partly because the MTL has the depth. Really, with the different tubes, the differences lie in the character of the mids and overall girth. The 6L is a little bit more meaty sounding and more grunt in the mids. The el34 is a little thinner with a little more upper mid grind. If you want more Marshall, I'd say go for the MC2 or W800 though

 

[braintheory]

UPDATE: I got a text from Mike, who I think is the builder of the amps (I had been dealing with Paul, who I think is the sales guy).

He was very nice and gave great customer service. He said he thinks something is wrong with the amp, like a failed capacitor or resistor. He said most people describe the Obsidian as "on the dark side with a big low mid punch, not overly bright and nasal." I told him that "on the dark side with a big low mid punch" was the last phrase I'd use to describe this amp. At his request, I sent my settings, which is what led him to believe something is wrong with the amp.

They're going to send me a return label and examine the amp. If there was something wrong, they said they'd ship it back to me at no charge. This seemed very reasonable to me, so I accepted. I hope something indeed is wrong the amp and it ends up sounding awesome after they look at it, but I'm keeping my hopes in check.

Either way, it was great customer service especially reaching out on a Sunday. Fingers crossed.

Yeah I remember them leaning more dark sounding. I was surprised you said it sounded so bright, but I’d honestly agree with many of the other ways you described it. For me it was an ok amp overall, I didn’t hear anything that made me hate it or super turned off, but nothing really wowed or amazed me either, but I also had in the room my c+ & a Cameron modded Marshall. It’s very hard to find an amp that doesn’t sound bad next to those haha. Good to hear about their customer service & communication

 

[hellzington]

Yeah I remember them leaning more dark sounding. I was surprised you said it sounded so bright, but I’d honestly agree with many of the other ways you described it. For me it was an ok amp overall, I didn’t hear anything that made me hate it or super turned off, but nothing really wowed or amazed me either, but I also had in the room my c+ & a Cameron modded Marshall. It’s very hard to find an amp that doesn’t sound bad next to those haha. Good to hear about their customer service & communication

Yeah, I'm open to them checking it out and seeing if there's something wrong with it. If they open it up and everything is as-intended, then I'm just going to return it. If it was messed up, they can send it back to me but I feel likely that I'd resell it.

 

[RaceU4her]

all of these sound broken to me

 

[ClintN667]

I liked my Monomyth but the two Gowers I had were godly. I am on Dan's list to have another KK++ built. Not his fault but as usual everything is running way behind. He quoted me August, which came and went, and when I contacted him in October he said it would likely be midway into 2024 before he could mod an amp for me. Can't wait though!

He told me it was about an 8 month wait when I talked to Dan a few months ago. God I hope it doesn't take until 2024! I still need to find a donor amp though

 

[Apex1Rg7X]

I have a few friends with Obsidians that absolutely love them. I have yet to try one but I did own a Granophyre that was amazing, IMO. To be fair, the Grano leans more towards modded Marshall tones than the Obsidian does. More of an upper mid amp as opposed to the lower mid dominant Obsidian. The Grano was tight but not overly tight when playing on the high gain setting but I enjoyed boosting the low gain setting even more. The sweep of the EQ knobs was very intuitive from what I remember so it could be slightly dark or more clanky and percussive. For reference, I ran KT66 tubes in mine and from what I've heard from others, those seem to be a favorite in those amps.

 

[RaceU4her]

I’ve played a few different obsidian’s and IME that’s just how they sound. They have the typical qualities that I complain about newer made amps having. Doesn’t sound broken to me (other than the 1st clip lol), but rather just another forgettable modern amp without much life to the sound. The Driftwood I had suffered from many of the same things, but wasn’t a tight amp. I might still prefer an Obsidian over the Driftwood if I had to choose

well if thats how they actually sound i understand the OP, i think thats the worst sounding amp ive ever heard going by those clips.

 

[hellzington]

all of these sound broken to me

This is actually fascinating to me. The amp sounds wildly different in all of these clips.

So first of all, this really leads me to believe something might be wrong with the Obsidian they sent me.

In the third video with all the knobs at noon, sounds NOTHING like mine. I mean, absolutely fucking zero in common with my amp. Now, I don't know what tuning this guy is in, what speakers and pickups he's using, microphones, YouTube processing, etc, but it sounds a world apart from my amp. Even when I used my Drop C# Les Paul Custom with a Motor City Afwayu (big, thick, hot, fat pickup) it sounded absolutely nothing like this and I had my treble at 10:00 and my Detail at 8:00.

The second video just sounds like total ass. He must have the mids on zero or otherwise set up the amp like an idiot. Not much nice to say about that one.

The first video is interesting, too. The tightness at the beginning of the clip is exactly what I meant by "choked at lower gain settings." You can hear how the amp is just so tight it's asphyxiating the guitar. BUT, when he turns the gain up to 3:00, the amp suddenly fills out and comes alive. That's exactly what I referenced in my post. It's not necessarily a bad thing; many amps do this (fill out with the gain knob at a certain setting), but it does make that channel a bit of a one-trick-pony. When he switches to the Lead channel at :30, that sounds nothing like my amp either. My amp was absolutely unusable on the lead channel. It had SO much unusable gain. He has his Lead channel at noon and it sounds heavily distorted but still clear and I don't hear any feedback. My amp was over-gained and feeding back like crazy (my pickups are all potted, relax). His settings are a bit more conservative than video #3; more in line with where I had mine, but the amps still sound very different.

TLDR - These clips sound nothing like my amp. My amp might be broken, so I'm glad I'm going to send it back to them. We'll see what develops.

One thing I was considering, too, was asking him to retube the amp with different power tubes. Maybe EL34's are not the way to go on this amp. I have read a lot of people saying KT66's sound great in this amp. Perhaps I should request that if he says that something was messed up, just as insurance so to speak.

 

[hellzington]

He told me it was about an 8 month wait when I talked to Dan a few months ago. God I hope it doesn't take until 2024! I still need to find a donor amp though

This is NOT a dig at Dan (I love him and his amps, and am happy to keep waiting); but, this is my timeline.

I messaged Dan on Jan 9, 2022. He got back to me on Jan 11, 2022. In that message, he said his wait time was "approximately 7 months, due to high demand recently." I replied on Jan 13, 2022 and told him I wanted to be added to the list and we went back and forth a few times about the exact specs for my build. He added me to the list on Jan 14, 2022. He said that the 7 month wait would give him a ton of time to find an awesome donor amp in the UK, which I said was super cool.

I emailed Dan again on July 6, 2022 telling him there was no rush or pressure, I was just checking in, but asking if he had any update. He responded on July 11, 2022 and said he was taking some time off over the summer in Europe. He said, "Once I return, I still have a bunch of amps to get through, so I'm thinking it will be some time during the Autumn/Winter when I can mod an amp for you." He also explained he's been working at a slower pace due to Covid. He apologized for the delay and thanked me for my patience.

I haven't heard anything since. This is actually a nice reminder to ping him again.

 

[Devin]

So far I haven't known one person who bought one of these that actually kept it.

I keep wondering how they seemingly came out of nowhere and instantly got their own hype machine and Neural DSP plugin etc.


They certainly LOOK awesome, I'll give em that

 

[hellzington]

So far I haven't known one person who bought one of these that actually kept it.

I keep wondering how they seemingly came out of nowhere and instantly got their own hype machine and Neural DSP plugin etc.


They certainly LOOK awesome, I'll give em that

This is a fair concern to me. I see a LOT of these for sale. But then again, old Marshalls are for sale all the time so who knows.

I also wonder a bit how they came out of nowhere and got such a prominent deal with Neural DSP. I also wonder if this amp is better on recordings than it is in the room. When I was talking with Mike, the builder, about the voice and shift switches doing little-to-nothing, he said:

"The shift switch is more of a feel control than a drastic tone change. It affects the signal going into the phase inverter and is most noticeable in a recording scenario. The voice switch is more dramatic but still not an overly dramatic change. That controls the slope resistor and effects [sic] the main midrange focus to lower mids in the up position and more upper mids in the down position."

This made me think that maybe this amp sounds best in the studio, which is cool, but probably means it's not an amp for me. I am a player/collector so I need an amp that sounds good in the room and in the studio.

He continued, "In comparison to your Diezel amps, this will have a bit more top end, as the Diezels can be a bit dark and have their top end placed in a different part of the frequency curve."

Which I also thought was interesting. I think older Diezels are dark, but the newer ones are actually quite bright. My 2022 VH4 (which I have for sale, btw, check the Classifieds) has much more top end than my old 2006 model. And in fact, I prefer my Einstein 100w and my Big Max exactly because they're a bit brighter and more vintage voiced.

 

[braintheory]

This is actually fascinating to me. The amp sounds wildly different in all of these clips.

So first of all, this really leads me to believe something might be wrong with the Obsidian they sent me.

In the third video with all the knobs at noon, sounds NOTHING like mine. I mean, absolutely fucking zero in common with my amp. Now, I don't know what tuning this guy is in, what speakers and pickups he's using, microphones, YouTube processing, etc, but it sounds a world apart from my amp. Even when I used my Drop C# Les Paul Custom with a Motor City Afwayu (big, thick, hot, fat pickup) it sounded absolutely nothing like this and I had my treble at 10:00 and my Detail at 8:00.

The second video just sounds like total ass. He must have the mids on zero or otherwise set up the amp like an idiot. Not much nice to say about that one.

The first video is interesting, too. The tightness at the beginning of the clip is exactly what I meant by "choked at lower gain settings." You can hear how the amp is just so tight it's asphyxiating the guitar. BUT, when he turns the gain up to 3:00, the amp suddenly fills out and comes alive. That's exactly what I referenced in my post. It's not necessarily a bad thing; many amps do this (fill out with the gain knob at a certain setting), but it does make that channel a bit of a one-trick-pony. When he switches to the Lead channel at :30, that sounds nothing like my amp either. My amp was absolutely unusable on the lead channel. It had SO much unusable gain. He has his Lead channel at noon and it sounds heavily distorted but still clear and I don't hear any feedback. My amp was over-gained and feeding back like crazy (my pickups are all potted, relax). His settings are a bit more conservative than video #3; more in line with where I had mine, but the amps still sound very different.

TLDR - These clips sound nothing like my amp. My amp might be broken, so I'm glad I'm going to send it back to them. We'll see what develops.

One thing I was considering, too, was asking him to retube the amp with different power tubes. Maybe EL34's are not the way to go on this amp. I have read a lot of people saying KT66's sound great in this amp. Perhaps I should request that if he says that something was messed up, just as insurance so to speak.

I remember the amp sounding like in those clips more or less. It had flexibility to get a lot of different sounds, so maybe that’s partly why the sounds are different. For me, if an amp can do just one sound unmatched by anything else 10/10 (no matter how specific) it’s a keeper. Otherwise it goes up on reverb

 

[braintheory]

So far I haven't known one person who bought one of these that actually kept it.

I keep wondering how they seemingly came out of nowhere and instantly got their own hype machine and Neural DSP plugin etc.


They certainly LOOK awesome, I'll give em that

They were making cabs before for a while that I know some guys liked, so maybe not totally out of nowhere. I think I first tried an Obsidian in either 2017 or 2018, I think maybe before it was technically released, not sure when they officially came out

 

[PBGas]

Honestly, you have some really great amps to compare with so I think it is pretty evident that this one isn’t going to work for you.

Frustrating for sure.

 

[braintheory]

Honestly, you have some really great amps to compare with so I think it is pretty evident that this one isn’t going to work for you.

Frustrating for sure.

Couldn’t have said it any better. Lotta guys here with that “problem” lol

 

[hellzington]

Honestly, you have some really great amps to compare with so I think it is pretty evident that this one isn’t going to work for you.

Frustrating for sure.

Yeah, this is probably the way it's going to pan out. However, I want to give them the option to inspect the amp to see if there's anything wrong with it so that I can make sure I'm evaluating the amp as the manufacture intended. But I agree, it's probably not for me.

 

[cragginshred77]

I was at the last LA Namm 2020 right before the lockdown and tried one and was really impressed However there was so much background noise. I was really impressed with the crunch ch and was playing thru a Mezzabarba trinity at the time. Paid a deposit and E- mailed with the owned who was super cool, then got cold feet and pulled my order. Glad I did

 

[Techdeth]

I’ve owned countless wizards and I like tend the 6L versions better than the el34, which is crazy for me as I’ve always been an el34 guy. My 6L MTL crushes. I had a 6L MC 50w that was right there with it.

I keep one of each because they both rule . But it was backwards for me . I’m a 6l6 guy and ended up living the el34 more . Crazy

 

[braintheory]

I keep one of each because they both rule . But it was backwards for me . I’m a 6l6 guy and ended up living the el34 more . Crazy

I’m curious what do you prefer about the el34 one? I’ve only tried Wizard’s with 34’s and still have my 2016 MTL100 for almost 6 years now. I’m usually more of an EL34 guy, but 6L6’s or 6550’s/KT88’s in a Wizard sound like it could be interesting

 

[Bram576]

Yeah, this is probably the way it's going to pan out. However, I want to give them the option to inspect the amp to see if there's anything wrong with it so that I can make sure I'm evaluating the amp as the manufacture intended. But I agree, it's probably not for me.

Forgot to ask what cab and speakers you’re running it through?