Product: Kustom TRT-50 Head
Price Paid: N/A
Submitted 10/31/2004 at 11:19am by Toby
Email: into_adoration<at>yahoo dot com
Features  : No Opinion
Sound Quality : 8 Alright, this is an update to my last review. I replaced all the cheap tubes with all new JJs and im amazed at the difference. Before doing this I was making plans to save and get a new preamp or head right away, but now that I've done this that's the last thing on my mind.
Now I'll be honest, the high gain channel is crap. That's all there is to it, it's poorly built. As the amp tech that changed my tubes put it "I don't know what they were thinking when they designed this." That's why I'm giving this only an 8.
What I do is turn the gain on the 1st channel up all the way and then hit the gain boost. It's a really unique sound that I honestly haven't really heard on any other amp. And by that I mean its a really good unique sound. It's nice and sensative to how hard I play and my guitar volume, etc etc. Although I may have to find a nice pedal to drive this amp for parts where I may want high gain, it's sounding marvelous right now. Amazing cleans and then I can roll the volume back and get a great tube overdrive sound.
Reliability : No Opinion
Customer Support : No Opinion
Overall Rating : 8 For the price I paid for the amp including shipping, and the price I paid getting the all the preamp and poweramp tubes replaced ($480) I realld don't think you can beat it if you like this sound. It's exactly what I've always wanted, something I don't see everywhere with a unique sound.
Product: Kustom TRT-50 Head
Price Paid: US $300
Submitted 09/22/2004 at 03:09pm by Toby
Email: into_adoration at yahoo<dot>com
Features : 9 No clue what year this amp was made, but according to the shop I bought it from here's the story... Kustom decided it'd be a cool idea to bring back a design of the old tuck and roll amps and make a reissue of it. For no explainable reason only about a quarter of the original intended amount were made, which was not enough to release the amp as a new full line. So Kustom appearently relied on a few online stores to sell their amps...? Regardless, the amp in my opinion has every feature youd need, multiple cabinet outputs, reverb for both channels, seperate EQ for both channels, footswitchable gain boost for the clean channel, effects loop (which i have not tried). 50 watts, I can't believe someone said it wasn't loud enough, you need to change your cab or something because that's a ridiculous thing to say about this amp. Oh ya, mine's sparkly read. It's got that "tuck and roll" like a car seat all my friends say, probably the best feature.
Sound Quality : 6 I'm poor or else I honestly would probably not be playing this amp. Along with having a cheap head I use a epiphone les paul studio and a homemade 4x12 cabinet with celestion g1250s. The clean channel would get a 9, but thats it. The distortion is currently terrible. I've used it with a technical melodic metalcore band and it worked, but it was just so bassy. Now I'm in a unique indie band and am currently using the clean channel with the gain boost on and the gain turned up all the way. This gives me a decent distortion that sounds much less muddy and covered by a blanket, but unfortunately slightly buzzy and not quite enough gain for me. I'm currently looking into rebiasing to some EL34s which should completely change the sound of the amp. If I can't do this I'll at least get rid of these terrible stock tubes. Everywhere I've read has said that this amp sounds much better once you get rid of the stock tubes. I'll write up another review once I do that.
Reliability : 9 Had it for about a year now and it definitely seems dependable. Didn't work once at band practice randomly. It was blowing fuses. I brought it out of my basement for the night and then it was fine again, appearently it just got damp.
Customer Support : 9 From the few emails I've traded with Kustom they seemed eager to help. Too bad they're the worst company ever now.
Overall Rating : 7 Been playing like 6 or 7 years I think? This is my only amp, if something happened I don't know if I'd replace it. It's debatable with how cheap it is I guess I might as well. I really do want a unique tone and a unique amp though, and who knows, maybe I'll get that after I change the tubes. As I stated the clean is wonderful, I'll keep it simply for that. For the price you really can't beat it.
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