Posted by Norm on 8/2/2008, 12:51 am

Well, I finally got the Trainwreck clone. First UPS delivered it 2 blocks away from my house at the same house number but just 2 blocks over. They left the cherry wood cab and the amp in the rain sitting on a concrete planter. I was tracking it on line and saw that it was delivered at 3:30 in the afternoon but I was also at home waiting for that big brown piece of s#!t to show up so I knew they had never been there. So I went looking through the neighborhood in places that I thought a stoned person or one with a really low IQ would have left it. BINGO, there it was! I think a drug test is in order!! Anyway Stu packed the hell out of it with bubble wrap and it didn't get hurt or wet. I then looked the amp over and realized that there was no post phase inverter master volume control on it as I had ordered many months ago. But I didn't have time to try it out because I had an appointment and had used up my extra time running around the hood trying to find the amp. I emailed Stu and asked him if he forgot to put the master volume control on it and he emailed me a one liner back that said it didn't need a master volume control because it had Mercury Magnet transformers in it. Yeah, I was scratching my head too. The next day I tried out the amp and it is a very soulful amp, no doubt. However, it is about as loud as a 50 watt plexi and can't be used for bedroom playing at all or even for some band practices without an attenuator or me having to have someone install a master volume. I emailed my findings to Stu and haven't heard another word from him. I like Stu but for me this is like ordering a car with a sun roof and when the car comes in without it the dealer says that it isn't necessary if the car has a 6 cylinder engine in it. It is too much trouble to deal with UPS again and pay shipping both ways for me to send it back to Stu so at this point I have another amp perfect for any colosseum in the area! I am liking the AXE-FX more and more every day. The Trainwreck is Marshall sounding amp. It has a lot of gain but not like a Boogie. The sustain is more like a cranked Marshall feedback sustain as opposed to a singing Boogie type sustain. You still need pedals to do different types of textures. It cleans up better than a Marshall when you turn your guitar volume down. You don't turn this amp up to 10 like a Marshall. It has a sweet spot around 1 o'clock and is actually already breaking up nicely at 9 o'clock! Turning it past 2 o'clock almost saturates it too much and makes it sound unstable. It has a 3 position switch in the front panel for different degrees of brightness. There is a character about this amp that I don't know how to describe. It is a little smoother/ sweeter/ not quite as harsh as a Marshall. A great sounding amp for what it does but if I had to pick only one amp to take to a gig, this wouldn't be it.