Omega Obsidian: Am I missing something?

hellzington

hellzington

Well-known member
Hey y'all,

So I finally got my Omega Obsidian today. I ordered it back in May as part of a small batch offering on Facebook. Loaded with EL34's.

Details are below but basically I just got this amp and absolutely hate it. So before I immediately list it for sale, I want to check and see if I'm doing something wrong or missing something. I have heard so many good things about Omega amps, especially the Obsidian, which a lot of people said was more of a hard rock amp than a metal amp (which is why I chose it over the Granophyre). So I'm just more confused than anything right now. I haven't disliked an amp this much in a long time, if ever. So here's my pros/cons and any help, settings, advice, etc. you have would be most welcome!

The positives:
  • It looks killer, got to be honest. Probably the coolest thing about the amp. It looks like it's from the future. Hell, even when it starts up all the lights flash and sparkle; it's very cool. That said, if looks are the coolest thing about an amp, that's a problem. (We'll get to that in a second.)
  • It has an absolutely insane amount of gain so if you want ultra high gain, this amp will deliver in spades.
  • The clean channel is fairly impressive for a high gain amp. It has a ton of headroom and has a little bit of "bounciness" to it, and it sounds really good with single coils.
  • This amp is tight. The lows always remain clear, even on heavily downtuned guitars, and it bounces back extremely quickly.
The negatives:
  • Frankly, both the gain channels sound like shit. I have owned dozens and dozens of expensive tube amps in my life and I can't recall having such a visceral reaction to an amp before. I hate this amp. I mean, hate it. I can barely get any useable sounds out of it.
    • The treble is absolutely piercing. I'm using my darkest speaker cabinet (Friedman with V30s) and the amp is so punishingly bright I can't imagine how it would sound with my brighter cabs (Marshall Jubilee cab or my Diezel front-loaded cab). When you turn the treble down, the amp quickly goes from extremely bright to extremely dark. Neither is usable. There is a very, very small sweet spot with the treble on this amp and it's hard to find it. Just a hair too much and you're in fizz-ville; just a hair too little and it sounds like your tone knob is at zero. Even with the Detail at zero the amp is punishingly fizzy and bright.
    • The midrange is awful. It sounds super "filtered." Imagine a Mesa Boogie with the EQ set like a Marshall, with a Fortin-modded Tube Screamer in front of it. That's what the midrange on this amp sounds like. It's nasal and honking, and there's no way to get rid of it. (I guess I could run an EQ pedal in the loop but I'm not doing that on a $4000 amp to find a useable sound.)
  • The Lead/Red channel has so much gain that it is almost completely unusable. I have the gain at 9:00 and it's absolutely overwhelming. The moment you stop playing or try to sustain a note, the amp starts feeding back immediately from the mountain of gain.
  • The Crunch/Orange channel sounds ok with the gain from about 1:00 to 3:00 but anything below 1:00 is unusable because the amp gets super dry and is already super tight. It sounds choked and constricted.
  • The mid-shift and voicing switch do almost nothing. I can barely hear any discernable difference between the two. Each mode is like two very, very slightly different takes on the same sound.
  • Finally, the amp is tight. So tight that it is difficult to play. The entire amp sounds like it has a noise gate and a Fortin 33 in front of it. It's like a Diezel VH4 with the Treble and Prescence maxed out and the Bass and Depth on zero.
Can anyone help? Any tips or advice? Other than to sell it, haha. Thanks guys.
 
Holy shit, I was interested in these amps in the past, but your description squashed any interest...unless others chime in with 180 feedback that might indicate somethings wrong with this amp. That would be my first thought based on all you're hate about it...that somethings up possibly. I'd check bias, plate voltage, and screen voltage and then proceed to tube swap to maybe indicate a bad tube?

Or, it might just not be the amp for you. like you, I've had many many amps and the only one I felt like you just described was the Armored amps Sabot. HATED it instantly and HATED it after trouble shooting and sending it back to the builder who sent it back with a clean bill of health.
 
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Bram576 said:
Unfortunately I think that’s about it man. I really was not impressed with mine. Sold it pretty quick and got a Wizard. I’ll stick with my wizard, old rectifier, and uberschall. Most of these new brands have just let me down.
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Yeah, you're probably right. I'm just extremely disappointed. I guess it could be good for super low, downtuned stuff but I already have a Friedman Naked for that which sounds 1000 times better.

Good news is I'm on the list for a new 100w Bogner Uber Ultra, so here's hoping that's a much better amp than this.
 
I’ve tried my friend’s Obsidian a few times as well as a few other Obsidian’s I came across. I didn’t like them either. I don’t remember them being super bright, but they were very dry, filtered/inorganic sounding like you said and tight. They kinda reminded me of the Fryette’s & Fortin Natas. The vast majority of these recent made amps IME sound too sterile/generic/lacking character. I like tight amps myself, but there are plenty of amp out there that are tighter with far better tone & feel (you have a few examples of such amps)
 
Bram576 said:
Unfortunately I think that’s about it man. I really was not impressed with mine. Sold it pretty quick and got a Wizard. I’ll stick with my wizard, old rectifier, and uberschall. Most of these new brands have just let me down.
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Agreed those are some of my favorites for metal as well. I’m always looking to try new promising stuff, but finding recent made gear with great tone seems to be like trying to find the needle in the hay stack
 
hellzington said:
Yeah, you're probably right. I'm just extremely disappointed. I guess it could be good for super low, downtuned stuff but I already have a Friedman Naked for that which sounds 1000 times better.

Good news is I'm on the list for a new 100w Bogner Uber Ultra, so here's hoping that's a much better amp than this.
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Same here man. Bogner knows what he’s doing. Looking forward to that.
 
im listening to some clips now and they all sound beyond awful. who and where are people saying they sound good?? this is why i cant understand why guys still take peoples word over what they are hearing in a video or clip
 
I was super interested in this because I really like my granophyre. It’s not my favorite amp but it’s up there. Disappointing to hear. I know they said the granopgyre is more “British” influence and the obsidian is more “American.” But if it sounds like ass it sounds like ass
 
braintheory said:
Agreed those are some of my favorites for metal as well. I’m always looking to try new promising stuff, but finding recent made gear with great tone seems to be like trying to find the needle in the hay stack
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I was really curious about the mlc stuff… but we’ll see.
 
braintheory said:
Agreed those are some of my favorites for metal as well. I’m always looking to try new promising stuff, but finding recent made gear with great tone seems to be like trying to find the needle in the hay stack
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The Carstens Grace is the only amp from a new maker I've tried that I absolutely loved. The Grace on full blast is what the Omega wishes it was.
 
itsgoodnow said:
I was super interested in this because I really like my granophyre. It’s not my favorite amp but it’s up there. Disappointing to hear. I know they said the granopgyre is more “British” influence and the obsidian is more “American.” But if it sounds like ass it sounds like ass
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Maybe I screwed up and should have gotten a Granophyre, idk. I thought by getting EL34's in the Obsidian it would make it sound more Marshall-like. Perhaps I should have gotten 6L6 or KT66's or something that suck a bit of midrange out of the amp.

Honestly, Shea Momomyth's stuff blows the Omegas out of the water. I used to have a Skeleton Key from the first run and that was a great metal amp. I found a ton of great tones in it. I ultimately sold it because it was a little too much gain and aggression for my everyday use, but I did really like it. I wonder if these people using the Omegas have ever played a Monomyth.
 
Bram576 said:
Interesting. I’m a metal, death metal guy… would it work for that?
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I will admit that I don't know much about death metal; however, I can't imagine that the Grace wouldn't work. It has an absolutely insane amount of gain, the bass stays tight, and you can adjust the feel from darker and more compressed to open and raw using the Headroom control on the back of the amp. Of course, you can get a zillion other tones using your volume knob but something tells me you aren't into that :) That said, I think Brian is working on a new amp that will be focused on the metal/djent kind of thing, so you might want to wait and see.
 
braintheory said:
Agreed those are some of my favorites for metal as well. I’m always looking to try new promising stuff, but finding recent made gear with great tone seems to be like trying to find the needle in the hay stack
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Yeah, I'd like a Wizard. Got my eyeballs on a Modern Classic Hybrid, but they're very hard to find. I guess I could order one but I'm sure the wait time is insane, just like with everything right now.
 
godgrinder said:
By your description I’d guess it was designed for lower tunings.
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I think this is spot on. I played it with my Les Paul tuned to drop C# and it was great for chugging and galloping rhythms but if you try to do anything else, it sounds awful.

For my downtuned guitars I have a Friedman Naked, which sounds a million times better, and even with standard tuned guitars is very usable if you turn the bass up to 8-10.
 
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