The new Black Cat could’ve started with an “American” channel and a “British” channel, promising “classic” tones that remind you of your childhood guitar heroes, but you’ve already heard that promise and you’ve already played that amp. The Black Cat promise is different. Sure, we’re going to share some things in common with our forebears, like an all-tube signal path, powerful transformers, familiar controls and premium Celestion speakers, but what’s under the hood is uniquely Bad Cat.
The heart and soul of the new Black Cat is the immediate feeling of connection you get with it. It’s always lively and toneful, never feeling choked or constrained. Driven by a 20W power amp featuring a cathode bias pair of EL84s, it’s remarkably loud with enough headroom to play with a live drummer yet has an effective master volume control allowing for playing at home with no loss of tone.
Channel one has a blooming clean and a sparkling, punchy, tight crunch with those important shades in between. Channel two picks up right where the clean finishes. An addictive crunch soon gives way to a thick hard rock snarl that you likely wouldn’t expect from this amp. The unique two band EQ circuit and powerful cut control makes finding and shaping your own sound ridiculously easy and for added texture and atmosphere we’ve included a lush custom-tuned reverb and adjustable bias tremolo too.
How does it handle pedals? Impeccably, both at the input and in the transparent, fully buffered effects loop, Plug in your favourite pedals from any decade with zero drama. And on the subject of pedals, don’t you hate it when you buy a new amp and the footswitch is so huge that you need to get a new board just to accommodate it? So do we. That’s why the Black Cat’s all metal 2-button footswitch for channel and tremolo switching is so compact.
A full complement of speaker outs means the amp can handle any cabinet combination and we’ve included a line out as-well, so you can connect it to an IR loader or aWet/Dry rig.
From the beginning, we knew that the Black Cat was special. It has already captured the imagination of players and magazine reviewers around the world, including the editors at Premier Guitar Magazine, who liked it so much that they honored it with their Premier Gear award in March of 2023.
