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Hey, thanks a lot for the kind words! I see that you're in Ireland, my girlfriend will be going to graduate school in Belfast in one year, and I may be there for part of the time. Maybe I can deliver you an amp! We have a friend from a small town in the Republic who also went to school in Belfast. School here is just too unaffordable.

All the Loudness controls are a little different for each model, and are designed to best suit the amp, or take advantage of other aspects of the design. For example, the Shiv gets a lot of its overdrive from driving the sensitive EL84 output tubes, and necessitated the "power scaling" circuit to keep that overdrive at low volumes.

The Decolonizer on the other hand has Loudness controls that are inserted between the preamp and power amp, which allow the power amp to stay mostly clean, which is typical of most higher gain designs, from the original 2203/JCM800 to modern Bogners, Soldanos, Diezel et. al. (all whose have their lineage in Marshall, btw) Having the ability to run the power amp clean also facilitates a well working FX loop, so that time-based effects in the loop can be run post-distortion and not muddied up by power amp/power tube overdrive later in signal chain.

This type of master volume also allows the JTM/Plexi style clean channel to clean up a little better. This is basically the same type of loudness control used in the Mother and Street Sweeper, for those and other reasons.

The Hellhawk has yet another type which is commonly referred to as a post-phase-inverter master volume, which allows the phase inverter, which drives the output tubes, into clipping. That amp develops most of it's overdrive there, so it was most practical to use that type and it maintains good tone when turned down. You can find this type of master from the vintage Park 1210 and Orange Overdrive amps, to Matchless DC30 and Suhr SL-68 to name a few, all using slightly different methods or throttling the signal after the phase inverter.

Hope that explains it okay!

Alex

That explains it great. Thanks, Alex!

I like that you use a Plexi style clean channel. That's perfect for what I want.

I know it's almost impossible to describe sound, but can you offer any details on the high gain sounds? I only know a few companies who make high gain sounds that I really, really like... Well, I should rephrase that. There are many companies that I dig—Soldano, Diezel, Verellen, Baron, Fortin—but I've owned them in the past and never kept them because they were too modern and 'sizzly'. I really love what Nick from Dunwich Amplifiers is doing (he's actually building me a small 1x12 combo) because it's high gain but done in a vintage way. His designs are inspired by Marshall Super Leads, Matamp GT120's, Hiwatts, Sunn Model T's, etc. What was your inspiration for the Decolonizer?

So your girlfriend is in Belfast at the moment? I haven't been to Belfast since something, like, 2010. I went to see Paramore above all things.

I can't speak to the guts of it but I have played a Decolonizer and, without setting it in a pretty stupid way, I couldn't make it sound bad. The amp is just an attack machine. The bass is Low mids oriented, which allows you to get a punch that you can't deny feeling in the low end in place of muddy/rumbly noise. The mids didn't get honkey when cranked. The treble just seemed to make everything brighter, but wouldn't get hissy/sizzly. It's of note that since the bass was mud free I didn't have to ever overcompensate with mids or treble to get note definition when down tuning like I've had to with other amps. The amp was stiffer than my Rocker 50 but it's not overly stiff like I've found Soldanos and Mesas to be. I was using my friend's wooden dan armstrong with a pretty high output pick up in it which could have contributed to the stiffer feel too and I wish I got to play it with a wider variety of guitars. I'd consider it more of a modern styled amp by a hair, but it seems to address most of my personal gripes with modern high gain amps by walking a middle course. It wasn't for me, but if a day comes where I need a more modern sounding amp it'll be my choice without hesitation. Hope that ramble is helpful while waiting for Alex to chime in again!

jamesmikelly wrote:I can't speak to the guts of it but I have played a Decolonizer and, without setting it in a pretty stupid way, I couldn't make it sound bad. The amp is just an attack machine. The bass is Low mids oriented, which allows you to get a punch that you can't deny feeling in the low end in place of muddy/rumbly noise. The mids didn't get honkey when cranked. The treble just seemed to make everything brighter, but wouldn't get hissy/sizzly. It's of note that since the bass was mud free I didn't have to ever overcompensate with mids or treble to get note definition when down tuning like I've had to with other amps. The amp was stiffer than my Rocker 50 but it's not overly stiff like I've found Soldanos and Mesas to be. I was using my friend's wooden dan armstrong with a pretty high output pick up in it which could have contributed to the stiffer feel too and I wish I got to play it with a wider variety of guitars. I'd consider it more of a modern styled amp by a hair, but it seems to address most of my personal gripes with modern high gain amps by walking a middle course. It wasn't for me, but if a day comes where I need a more modern sounding amp it'll be my choice without hesitation. Hope that ramble is helpful while waiting for Alex to chime in again!

Wow, that's a great review! Thanks! You definitely have a really good ear - I couldn't have described it better myself, and I'm glad the design translated that way.

The Decolonizer was the 3rd amp I designed out of a lot requests for a high gain amp. I wanted to make it two channel, but without an overly complicated front-panel that would make it hard to dial in.The Hellhawk itself has quite a bit of gain on tap, but I could never recommend for certain heavy styles, because it has a more raw "vintage" character to it's break up more akin to a late 60's Marshall. The Decolonizer can do a similar late 60's Marshall sound by dime'ing the master on the "Clean" channel and cranking the gain, and so it's very vintage/modern in that sense - because the power supply it bit punchier to accommodate the gain channel. And while the Decolonizer can be dialed into sound very extreme and modern (cranking gain, scooping mids, turning up presence and resonance) it is not particularly voiced for those tones like say a Bogner Uberschall is or Diezels. My personal taste for heavy tones is not too modern or vintage (while I appreciate both), and I really tried to make the Decolonizer really versatile to cover a lot of ground.

I do have plans on making a single channel metal amp with two inputs (codename: HEAVYMETA), that unabashedly goes into extreme metal territory. That amp will have a very sculptable sound in terms of gain and mid-range, but without a clean channel, effects loop, etc., which scare away true goat blood drinking church burning metal heads

AngryGoldfish wrote:That explains it great. Thanks, Alex! So your girlfriend is in Belfast at the moment? I haven't been to Belfast since something, like, 2010. I went to see Paramore above all things.

No, she's not going until next year, unfortunately... I mean for her, not me!

I would love to check out a Hellhawk, but absolutely could not justify getting one.

Screw the amps, I'm super stoked on hearing kidcrash for the first time.

kidcrash rules for sure!

jamesmikelly wrote:I can't speak to the guts of it but I have played a Decolonizer and, without setting it in a pretty stupid way, I couldn't make it sound bad. The amp is just an attack machine. The bass is Low mids oriented, which allows you to get a punch that you can't deny feeling in the low end in place of muddy/rumbly noise. The mids didn't get honkey when cranked. The treble just seemed to make everything brighter, but wouldn't get hissy/sizzly. It's of note that since the bass was mud free I didn't have to ever overcompensate with mids or treble to get note definition when down tuning like I've had to with other amps. The amp was stiffer than my Rocker 50 but it's not overly stiff like I've found Soldanos and Mesas to be. I was using my friend's wooden dan armstrong with a pretty high output pick up in it which could have contributed to the stiffer feel too and I wish I got to play it with a wider variety of guitars. I'd consider it more of a modern styled amp by a hair, but it seems to address most of my personal gripes with modern high gain amps by walking a middle course. It wasn't for me, but if a day comes where I need a more modern sounding amp it'll be my choice without hesitation. Hope that ramble is helpful while waiting for Alex to chime in again!

Would you say the Decolonizer was 'wet' like a Rockerverb?

Science Amps wrote:The Decolonizer was the 3rd amp I designed out of a lot requests for a high gain amp. I wanted to make it two channel, but without an overly complicated front-panel that would make it hard to dial in.The Hellhawk itself has quite a bit of gain on tap, but I could never recommend for certain heavy styles, because it has a more raw "vintage" character to it's break up more akin to a late 60's Marshall. The Decolonizer can do a similar late 60's Marshall sound by dime'ing the master on the "Clean" channel and cranking the gain, and so it's very vintage/modern in that sense - because the power supply it bit punchier to accommodate the gain channel. And while the Decolonizer can be dialed into sound very extreme and modern (cranking gain, scooping mids, turning up presence and resonance) it is not particularly voiced for those tones like say a Bogner Uberschall is or Diezels. My personal taste for heavy tones is not too modern or vintage (while I appreciate both), and I really tried to make the Decolonizer really versatile to cover a lot of ground.

I do have plans on making a single channel metal amp with two inputs (codename: HEAVYMETA), that unabashedly goes into extreme metal territory. That amp will have a very sculptable sound in terms of gain and mid-range, but without a clean channel, effects loop, etc., which scare away true goat blood drinking church burning metal heads

I decided to write you an email instead of chatting here, if that's cool with you. I have a bunch of stuff to ask and I didn't want to ask it all here.

These amps seem pretty freaking cool!

Can anyone speak for the weight of the Shiv? I'm looking for a smaller Vox-like amp to use for gigs, so perhaps I'd use this with a 1x12 cab.

Hey, Sorry I missed this earlier. The Shiv weighs in at 34 lbs.

Yeah, the Shiv is nice and light to lug around. Headshell is like 21"W x 10"D x 9.5"H, perfect size to fit atop a 1x12 or vert 2x12 or pair of 1x12s etc.

Ugh
MOTHER!!
....

I saw a real live sighting of a Science amp not too long ago. I Kill Giants and Lovechild shared one on stage at this music fest call Big Day In. I don't really have anything more to add /shinfo.

I convinced our guitar player to hit up Alex since he is looking into getting two amps soon. He really dug all the Science models. I remember seeing Birds in Row and Loma Prieta share one a while back and it sounded great. I think it was a Hellhawk. I like the Hellhawk and Mother. I think they would sound killer together. This is what I told our guitarist, that way I can use the Mother on bass, while he uses my Sunn or Sound City on guitar, until I get a Dunwich 200

I went through this whole thread and got a little more familiar with the models but didn't see much about the Hellhawk. Has it been posted or said what it's based on or similarities to a vintage make?