Driftwood Purple Nightmare

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I got a Driftwood Purple Nightmare a little while back. Didn't know much about them, never played one for real. I watched some cool vids on YouTube that were promising and a lot of folks basically told me that I needed to check these out... So, I got one with the KT88/6L6 powertubes. According to Marek that's a great powertube combo for extended range guitars etc. Then the wait began, which took about 6 weeks. The amp had to be built for me...

It arrived a couple of weeks ago and I got to spend a good amount of time with it. Honestly, this amp has blown me away! It obviously has a lot of great features that are very useful like the built in boost, the noise gate, the night mode etc. But what I love the most is its unique tone! It sounded kind of like a heavily modded Rectifier with that raw edge and texture but just way more modern and tight sounding while still retaining that rawness. Really cool!

Of course I made a video on it so people can hear how it sounds and look at how beautiful this amp looks:



Ever played a Driftwood? What do you think of these amps?
 
Good review. I know they get mixed reviews around here, but I've had mine for 6-7 years and really like it. I sort of liken it to a more polished 5150. Can get polished or go raw but has similar saturation. Smart design. Marek is great to deal with as well.
 
Really enjoyed the video...Thank you. The simple add on features such as a the gate and TS style front end boost are very attractive...I don't understand why more manufactures haven't begun to include them on their amps that are aimed at the "metal" crowd.
 
Cheers guys! Love this amp a lot! I'm going to start working on my ENGL Savage 120 and Peavey 6505 1992 Original amp demos now....
 
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angelspade said:
Really enjoyed the video...Thank you. The simple add on features such as a the gate and TS style front end boost are very attractive...I don't understand why more manufactures haven't begun to include them on their amps that are aimed at the "metal" crowd.
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This made me think of a feature that all amps could benefit from and I've been saying this for a while: a "tightness" control. Basically a pot that let's you dial in the amount of bass that goes into the preamp. So counter clockwise it will sound loose and fat and clockwise tight and articulate. That would be cool!
 
Guitarjon said:
This made me think of a feature that all amps could benefit from and I've been saying this for a while: a "tightness" control. Basically a pot that let's you dial in the amount of bass that goes into the preamp. So counter clockwise it will sound loose and fat and clockwise tight and articulate. That would be cool!
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Many of the KSR amps have this feature on their amps.

You need to review some of them on your YT channel :)
 
grrr_me_scary said:
Many of the KSR amps have this feature on their amps.

You need to review some of them on your YT channel :)
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Really? That's awesome! More amps should have that, especially amps that are geared towards high gain rock and metal players.
 
Sweet review. I have a schematic floating around somewhere for these and it's really similar to the Recto design, so it makes sense why they get compared a lot to those along with 5150's and SLO's, since they are all kind of in the same "family." Great tones!

Tightness control is a great idea. there's probably some way to do it. I had some ideas about using a dual-gang pot to change the values of some resistors in between gain stages (like on a JCM800 style circuit, bright caps between stage 2 and 3). Not sure how usable something like that would actually be since the cap values stay the same (variable caps do exist but they are way outside my area of expertise), I've been meaning to build my own simple 800 style amp just so I can wire in some weird controls and see what I can make them all do.
 
TotallyRadGuitars said:
Sweet review. I have a schematic floating around somewhere for these and it's really similar to the Recto design, so it makes sense why they get compared a lot to those along with 5150's and SLO's, since they are all kind of in the same "family." Great tones!

Tightness control is a great idea. there's probably some way to do it. I had some ideas about using a dual-gang pot to change the values of some resistors in between gain stages (like on a JCM800 style circuit, bright caps between stage 2 and 3). Not sure how usable something like that would actually be since the cap values stay the same (variable caps do exist but they are way outside my area of expertise), I've been meaning to build my own simple 800 style amp just so I can wire in some weird controls and see what I can make them all do.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a really fun idea! :)
 
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