It came out during covid and was very short-lived due to supply chain issues and everything that happened during that shitty time of our lives. Not many of these seem to be out there. In theory it seemed pretty cool. It was a desktop Amp, not too far off in design from one of those Bias Spark amps, that was loaded with a pair onboard stereo speakers. The AMP part was a unique experiment as it consisted of their ef86 preamp, ef86 into a 12ax7 into a 12ax7 phase inverter into a stereo class D output. The sound could come out of either the onboard speakers, Stereo DI out, or Stereo Speaker outs. It also was loaded with Stereo Effects Loops, stereo reverb and it has an IR loader where you could add 16 different IRS - or bypass them entirely.
I remember at the time being intrigued because I had seen John from Badcat mention that he thought the sound of Power amp distortion was actually the phase inverter distorting. this was a wild concept to me and I wanted to hear it, but I could never find one for sale.
That is until two days ago when I found one listed as "project" and it was dirt cheap.
So, I went for it.
I got it home and plugged it in and it was a mess of bad sounds. I popped it open and tapped on the ef86 and it was horribly microphonic. In fact all of the tubes were. So I swapped those out and started some testing.
The first thing I noticed is that I do not like the onboard stereo speakers. They just sound dull and lacking. So I then took it to the garage and plugged it into my 2x12 and it came to life. I just sounds awesome. The cleans and the dirt sound as natural as any old tube amp. I ran a SSBS mini into the front end and it ate up. Another pleasant surprise. Then it was bedtime. These tests will continue, but so far I am pleasantly surprised that this impulse buy was a success.
