My friend Obeid Khan is MAGNATONE Lead Design Engineer. My old local tech Chris Villani is MAGNATONE Production Manager. Both these guys worked for SLM / Crate / Ampeg back in the day. MAGNATONE owner Ted Kornblum used to own above mentioned companies. Its a St. Louis thing. Personally for $4500 id rather a 60's or 70's JMP Marshall. Obeid is a bonafide genius and hellava guitar player.

Everytime I see and hear one these Magnatones I am baffled by the quality of the build and the sound. The "new" Magnatone did real great with the old Magnatone Heritage and even improved the reputation. Nice to see one of these beauties here...

Ive been thinking about getting one of these as my amp to see me out. Great to hear your comments on this one Lyle. Your a hard taskmaster but fair and you dont mind calling out crap but you always pay credit where its due. Love the vids and the educarion you impart on us.

Great to get to get a peek inside a new amp and good to know Magnatone is building their amps well. I hope you find a way to dig into more new amps. Build quality, proper design, and execution needs to become a more important part of presenting and selling an amp. Keep their feet to the fire, Lyle!

Not that I could afford a 4k amp, but glad hear their well constructed as they sound pretty sweet online... never confronted one in the wild...

Liked this video very much, and enjoyed the seemingly fair opinion of build quality and why it is liked for what it is, and where it is in the market (value).

That's a beautiful modern build right there, I prefer turret, just easier to work on, but they definitely did a good job on that. I don't like the preamps on the board, but it probably saves room. One time I got a box of faulty fuses, they just kept blowing, I tested everything I could think of, everything was kosher, it ended up being bad fuses, I hooked them up with alligator clips, I could literally watch them blow. Very strange.

Oh this is great! I have been really intrigued by these amps, so its great to see one on your bench to get your thoughts!

I really like Magnatone amps. Esthetically and tone. Still waiting till I can afford one.

I had the same amp with the same problem come in about a year or two ago. This one was also brand new. Sorta drove me crazy because of the intermittent nature of when the mains fuse would decide to blow. I initially changed the fuse, played through (awesome sounding) and after doing the routine checkup, returned the amp to the customer. Fast forward a day or two and I got the call... still blowing fuses intermittently. This time I met my client at a local music store and brought a few tools and a handful of fuses. Put in a new fuse and when I came out of standby, "pop" it went. Tried another, the same result. That's when my friend Lynn (anyone remember the Boogie Body?) said, "hey jeff, what's that flash coming from the back?" Yup, you guessed it, flash over inside the rectifier. Took the amp back to the lab, tested with a couple different brand tubes, and a half a box of fuses later, I determined it was not the rectifier. So, I installed some suppression diodes at the socket, a new rectifier (original tested fine but, I have trust issues....;) and returned her to the customer at no charge. She's still running strong today. A super well built amp that sounds incredible.

It looks good to me! The varistor project was years long, if I recall. Definitely look like WGS speakers to me. They probably are a custom build but close the the G12 family. I’d be looking at a Two Rock or Amplified Nation in that price range, but these are special.

Brilliant always. Thank you.

Magnatones are just fantastic. Some of the best sounding clean tone amps I have heard in years.

I had a Twilighter that was blowing fuses and it turned out that the power switch (or maybe the standby I can't remember) had a intermittent short to the chassis. I remember simply bending a lug a touch and the problem went away. I ended up selling the amp because I fely it was too loud and bass heavy for my home use but my impression was it would have been a great gigging amp, but maybe the wrong tool for recording and playing at a home. In retrospect I believe the Panoramic would have been a better choice for my purposes. The stereo vibrato was nice but I have a few vintage Magnatones that do that just as well.

I have one. I like it quite a bit. It takes OD/Fuzz pedals very, very well and the Pitch Vibrato in Stereo is really nice. It also pretty darn loud but still sounds excellent at low volumes. If you turn the Volume up to 9 oclock, it breaks up and grinds great too, though it is real loud at that point. It is based on the Fender Deluxe Reverb circuit and the designer for this model is Obeid Khan I believe for both of those points. Mine has had intermittent issues. I’m very interested to see what you find is going on if anything with this one, Lyle.

Very informative review. Anxious to hear it play.

This amp looks great! I had a similar issue with one of my 1971 Bassman amps that I've heavily modded. I found an unmarked fuse in the amp. I replaced it with a proper 2 amp slo blow. Come to find out, the ones that I just bought are also marked the same exact way as the fuse that I found in the amp. Anyway, I test it at full volume for a while and the volume dips. I check the fuse and it had blown. I investigated, tested again, and STILL didn't find anything wrong with the amp. I figured the fuse was bad. I still haven't had any issues.

I bought the Super 15 about 4 years ago and it’s a great amp. It is extremely loud for a 15 watt amp. A friend of mine really liked it and has borrowed it a few times for gigs. I priced one yesterday for him and they have gone up $600 in just 4 years! I don’t think it is worth the money now. I will try to find him a used one. 👍

That is one crazy looking amp. Tubes for days but they definitely sound amazing. I own a Magnatone Super 15 and a Varsity Reverb. I owe you for getting me down this Magnatone rabbit hole. Cool vids man

I just got a Magnatone baby M80 combo and love it.

We missed you Lyle, glad you're back :)

I will keep this amp in mind for the future. Thank you.

I had a vintage ss magnatone about 15y ago that sounded awesome. Had a great reverb as well. It was well made

Looking forward to your run through on this one. In the early 90’s I got to play around with a friends’s vintage model 280 Magnatone and I was totally enthralled with the stereophonic vibrato effect it had and wondered why no one else ever attempted to add that circuit to other amps.

The great slide/songwriter Jason Isbell plays through one of these. Aside; he attended Memphis University.

these just look so damn cool

Very educational video!

It seems silly to put a second fuse on the underside chassis behind the ventilated panel, where you can't get at it without pulling the panel or perhaps the entire chassis out; perhaps Magnatone was trying to keep the look of the original amp and not put a second fuse holder on the control panel. I disagree with that design philosophy. PS, vintage Magnatone amps don't have "harmonic tremolo", they have patented pitch-shifting vibrato; and although the original copper-oxide varistors (supposedly custom-made for Magnatone) are pretty much impossible to find nowadays, luckily they almost never fail. Vibroworld ---- run by Robert Cray's road tech, a guy named Zak ---- had, or perhaps still has, a stash of them, but stopped selling them when his stock started running low; and I don't know if the company is even still around. Note that Magnetone once built private-label amplifiers for music stores and other instrument companies, especially accordion companies !!!, and several other companies licensed the patented vibrato circuit. Some of the Magnatone-built amps to look for include Panaramic, LoDuca, Giuletti, and possibly Flot-A-Tone; and there's also Audio Guild, who apparently built their own amps under license to Magnatone, with the same vibrato circuit. There's a "Universal" amp that might also have Maggie vibrato.

Great vid thanks! Ive been curious about the quality of the new builds as i nurse my inherited 1960 280a back into health.

used some vintage stereo Magnatone amp in a studio setting. exquisite trem. I would never take it on the road tho

Why do you think Magnatone don’t include a master volume in this amp? Beautiful but unusably loud in for some places. eg home

Cool amp but did you say over four grand???? That amp with 6v6,s would be, what , fourth watts or so?

Have you worked on a Starlite yet? I'm considering buying one and was wondering if it is just as well made.

Woo!

Vibrato = frequency modulation Tremolo = amplitude modulation

Great video! I just actually bought the mono Twilighter 1x12 , it sounds fantastic! I did have a question for you as I am getting some mixed responses from other users. I am finding the amp has quite a lot of operating hiss. Just turned off with volume, reverb and viibrato all turned to 0, it provides quite a high amount of hiss...nothing plugged in. Compared to 2 other amps I have probably about 2 times as much. Once you turn it up and the reverb up this increases. Did you find this the same with the Stereo model? Magnatone customer service said it is normal due to the varistors however some users are saying theirs are dead quiet. Thanks!

Know how you feel, mate. No videos from me for all of Feb, I reckon.

finally an amp with logic ICs in sockets. great amp, but whoa, $8K AUD. Bloody expensive. But I get why. PS, im confued, you can still buy varistors, are these ones special in some way Lyle?

Could you please share how to schedule amp repairs with your shop?

Have you done any work on vintage Magnatones? I haven't yet opened my M15 Custom

I have this amp and it was blowing fuses too. Turned out to be a bad REctifier tube.

Who déjà vu cool

6V6s? My Twilighter has 6973s in it. It's also the original Magna version from the 1960s. The Twilighter was an accordion amp.

hate to be the village idiot here but how much did that thing weigh ????