On Saturday the amp will make the journey from my apartment to the rehearsal studio, and I'll have more to say then. When I use the overdrive channel, I hit the Bright and Mid Boost switches. This amp has a very deep and resonant bass response with the "voicing" switch on, but also you can turn it off if you want to scorch a little without getting murky. The clean channel is very Fenderish, but has more depth and nuance to it than on my SCXD. I also like being able to vary the gain on the clean channel - cranking the gain on that channel produces a good blues tone. After having to constantly fiddle with the volumes on the SCXD, I find this convenient.
The other thing I've noticed is that the master volume controls the whole amp, and you can change the gain on either channel without causing a big change in the end product volume. I'm looking forward to hearing more as you continue to form your opinions about this amp.Īll the tone controls are shared by both channels. It sounds as though it has cleans as beautiful as a Princeton, and at the same time has much better (meatier, warmer, more musical) overdriven sounds than most Fender amps. The Dean Markley amps use beam tetrode output tubes, like most of the Fender amps, so that is another way in which they are likely to have a clean tone that resembles those signature Fender cleans.
Pentodes on the other hand produce quite a lot of third harmonic distortion, which tends to sound growly or biting. Since the Dean Markley amps have a similar tone control circuit, these amps will have a similar mid-frequency notch.įender amps also seem to have favoured beam power tetrodes for the output tubes rather than the pentodes used in European designs, and it turns out the two types of tubes tend to have different sounds: beam tetrodes produce a lot more second harmonic distortion (which usually sounds warm or shimmering), but very little third harmonic distortion. The CD 120 schematic shows one common shared set of tone controls between clean and drive channels - is that the case for your amp? No independent bass, mid, treble controls for the two channels?Ĭlick to expand.I believe part of what we have all come to recognize as a good clean tone is a characteristic mid-frequency notch that Fender designed into his tone control circuitry, and which we have all heard on thousands of era-defining songs. I don't fully understand why the Dean Markley design is so much more effective than the Fender design, probably because I don't fully understand the Fender tone stack design either. The tone control circuitry looks superficially like the Fender design, but with a few changes, including the addition of those "mid boost" and "bright" switches. The CD 120 schematic also shows "mid boost" and "bright" switches in the clean channel. In the rolled-off position it appears to reduce frequencies below 340 Hz. In one position the voicing switch rolls off the bass, in the other position you have a flat frequency response. The CD 120 schematics I found do show an "overdrive voicing" switch, but it's in the drive channel, not the clean one.
#DEAN MARKLY CD40 SERIES#
I also found references to the fact that all three amps in the CD series shared a lot of their circuit design. I couldn't find any schematics for the CD 30 or CD 60, but did find some hand-drawn schematics for the CD 120. and sell for $998 and $1198 MSRP.Click to expand.Kinda sorta. There is a footswitch input for channel changing and reverb on/off, a send/return effects loop with send and return level controls, and a separate pre-out.īoth the CD30 and CD60 measure 20H- x 20W- x 11D-inches, weighs 42 lbs. The rear panel provides an AC input IEC jack, power toggle and standby switches, and a speaker selector. There are treble, mid and bass controls, master volume, reverb, presence and channel switching to drive two, 6L6 power tubes delivering 30-watts RMS for the CD30 and 60-watts RMS for the CD60. 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of these amps and in celebration of the occasion Dean Markley has committed to full-time production.īoth amplifiers come as single 1x12 (custom Celestion) combos possessing two inputs with volume controls and separate drive and gain controls. Dean Markley's CD30 and CD60 tube guitar amplifiers are known for their high headroom clean channel and also their classic, warm lead channel making them popular for artists such as Eric Clapton, Alex Lifeson and Andy Summers.
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