There’s a good reason the world’s great guitarists still prefer tube amps. There’s a unique alchemy that happens when a guitar is plugged into a tube amp, and for most serious players, that physical reaction makes a real difference.
The truth is nothing else brings out the depth and creativity in your playing quite like a good tube amp, and the convenience the digital revolution has brought to the masses is a poor substitute. It’s why all of the great studios in the world still have rooms filled with the hallowed tube amps of yesteryear, and why famed players like Queens Of The Stone Age’s Troy Van Leeuwen still seek tube nirvana. In his own words, Van Leeuwen says “I really consider the aesthetic quality of a tube amp to be part of my personal style. There’s still something about the heat of tubes and speakers moving the air that still gets me off.”
With his new signature amp, the GMI Public Address Systems 33F6, the best-dressed man in rock music has seemingly reached it.
The 33F6 is the brainchild of GMI’s Sean Romin, who has been Van Leeuwen’s trusted amp tech for over 15 years. For Romin, even the most beloved vintage amp circuits always left something to be desired. A lifelong guitarist (currently of the band Decry) and an obsessive tone-hunter, Romin eventually had enough and sought to make the thing he couldn’t find.
Romin explains “I've always tinkered. I’ll spend hours plucking a note through an amp and listening to how it fades, where the attack is – just the character a guitar and amp have. Over the last 35 years, I’ve wasted a ton of money buying and selling amps to chase a sound that I couldn’t get. I’ve also repaired and maintained a ton of vintage amps for my clients. So in 2020, I said ‘Fuck this, I’m just going to build my own amp!’”
That first prototype had some real magic coursing through its circuit. Starting with the familiar JTM45/early Bassman architecture, Romin incorporated tricks and techniques from Hiwatt, some of the design principles from early Vox amps, and came out the other side with an extremely direct and simple circuit that cherry-picks the most desirable sonic qualities from those cornerstone, genre-defining British amp circuits. While Romin pulled some ideas from the classics, his amp ups the ante by using only the highest quality upgraded components, which give the 33F6 an expanded tonal palette and feel, and make it exceptionally roadworthy.
“I use silver mica and ceramic capacitors, aerospace-grade teflon wire throughout, and NOS tubes like the 7581a” Romin says, continuing “The 7581a is like an industrial grade 6L6 that can handle 35 watts of plate dissipation instead of just 30. They’re a little more rugged and sound more stout to my ears, and they definitely give the amp more oomph. I designed the proprietary output transformer with the company who built Ken Fischer's Trainwreck output transformers and they hit it out of the park! It has a lot of push and a lot of headroom. I also found using 1% tolerance mil-spec parts makes a huge fucking difference. Using one mil-spec resistor in a circuit may not make a big difference, but when you use a whole set of mil-spec resistors that are all 1% tolerance, you hear it and feel it.”
“When you get your hands on this amp, it feels like a vintage amp because essentially it is a vintage amp circuit, but freshly built and overbuilt to be roadworthy. There’s nothing quite like a vintage amp that gives you that ‘thing’ makes it special, but when I’m touring, there’s little time to maintain vintage amps and life on the road can destroy them. With the 33F6, they’re built by hand and have been road tested by me over the last three years, so I know every time I step on stage it’s gonna work. On the inside, think of a 1966 Fender Bassman with more headroom mixed with a Marshall Jubilee, and it has the Solid State attack and clarity of a mid 1970s Peavey Standard.”
- Troy Van Leeuwen
Beyond the unique tones and its roadworthy build, Van Leeuwen says the 33F6’s big magic trick is its versatility, explaining “You can plug straight in and get a great tone right away. The two different channels cover what I need for an open round clean tone to a screaming lead tone. I first took these amps on the road with The Damned as a test. The setlist was composed of songs that span 40 years of records and tones. With the right combination of pedals, I was able to get the blown out 1976 tones of “New Rose”, the shimmering clean Mid-80s 12-String tone on their cover of Love’s “Alone Again Or”. I was in the studio with Gone Is Gone recently and I really tested the capsules of many microphones by turning the amp up all-the-way and jumping channels to get some big, burly rhythm tones and blissful stereo ambient imagery through two amps with 2x12 cabs. On the road with Queens Of The Stone Age, I’m able to get any and every guitar and lap steel sound I’ve used on all 8 albums. These amps are great for both analog and digital pedals.
They’re pretty much the only amps I’m using these days because they just do it all.”And yeah, the amps look killer, which matters to a man with such a well-informed eye for aesthetics like Van Leeuwen:
“Beveling on the edges of the head and speaker enclosures are straight up mid 1960’s design. Reminds me of Silvertone, Supro or Dan Electro amps from that era. Matching the speaker grill cloth to the head vents also looks cool as fuck. All of these features make me feel like I can play anything using these amps.”
For Romin, the looks are important – he designed the thing, after all – but it’s ultimately all about the sound. Tone hunting is a religious experience for this man, and he’s quick to tell you GMI is about more than making a buck, saying “I'm not doing this to make money, I'm building these because I fucking love tone. To me, it's the most important thing in the world. Guitar tone to me is more important than food. I know that's sick and crazy, but that's how I feel.”
Reserve Yours TodayJoin the email list for the latest news, events, releases, artist updates and more.
