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Ashton
Viper-50. 50w combo Guitar Amplifier Reviewer: Craig McDonald Distributor: Ashton |
I had seen plenty of promotional material in local music magazines about ‘Ashton’ gear, particularly for their amplifier range, but until now hadn't seen one of their amps in the flesh. The fact that all their products are designed here in Australia made me even more intrigued to discover what an Ashton amp had to offer.
The "Viper-50" is advertised as being an ‘entry-level’, high-gain versatile amp. This amp could be your very first ‘all-valve’ amplifier after leaving your old solid-state model behind in search of the true valve tone many of us strive for. One thing I noticed straight away about the "Viper" was the quality of construction. I wasn’t going to begin on this point, but I was so impressed with the build of this amp. It has a solid, chunky metal grill on the front protecting the ‘Celestion’ speaker as well as another very solid grill on the rear protecting the exposed valves from being knocked about by prying hands. The back of the combo is half closed, and the grill takes over from there. The purpose of the grill is obviously for keeping the valves, spring reverb and speaker in good condition and will also prevent you from throwing all your guitar cables, effects pedals and foot-switches in the back of the amp to bounce around as you travel to your next gig.
The "Viper" comes with heavy-duty black covering, corner protectors, rubber feet and a single handle on the top. The weight is quite reasonable for an ‘all-valve’ amp. The main control panel is recessed slightly and the control knobs for each channel are cool looking ‘chicken-head’ style. It has 3-band EQ adjustment, gain and output level for each channel and a master volume and reverb control as well. On the rear panel the foot-switch jacks allow you to switch between both channels and reverb. The foot-switch is a very solid, four button metal controller with led’s which light up your channel selection (the foot switch is optional - not supplied with the amp). There are also optional jacks for running additional speaker cabinets. I thought the overall finish was of an excellent standard.
The "Viper" has 2 foot-switchable channels – clean / crunch and mean/ filth. As soon as I read the word ‘filth’ I knew that this amp must have some gain and just couldn’t wait to try it out, so yeah, straight to ‘filth’ I went with the gain on full! Wow, what a heavy sound, and with the master volume only on half, it sounded loud with plenty of grunt to spare. It was the type of tone that I would use for hard rock/metal playing, with plenty of ‘over-the-top’ gain, and harmonics happening. Going immediately to the other end of the spectrum, the clean channel had more of a warm vintage tone that you could easily make sparkly with added EQ and lush spring reverb.
I took some more time to set up the amp and soon had four very usable sounds happening. The clean channel stays surprisingly clean up to very loud volumes before breaking up. Dial in the right amount of output and switch to ‘crunch’ for a very bluesy sounding tone. Jump to the ‘mean’ channel and here comes the gain, with a very AC/DC, ‘Marshall’ guitar sound, great for rock or metal riffs. Then to back to my favourite, ‘filth’. Here you get a real ‘Mesa-Boogie’/‘Soldano’ sound, great for screaming solos or full on heavy riffs. I used two different "Ibanez" guitars for the review, one with lower output ‘Vintage’ single coil pickups, and the other with Di-Marzio ‘Super Distortion’ humbuckers. They both sounded great, but I especially liked the extra gain from the ‘super distortions pushing the pre-amp even harder.
The "Viper-50" combo rocks, and the single 12" ‘Celestion’ speaker sounds solid with plenty of punch for the size of this package. I plugged this amp into my ‘Marshall’ quad box and the bottom end sure did pick up. At a volume level just over half, the power amp was starting to work and I was having a ‘filthy’ time! I found that this amp also sounded fine at low levels, but even better at higher levels. Valve amps always sound better when you push them.
The "Viper-50" comes as a 50-watt combo and a 100-watt head. "Ashton" also has a semi-closed quad box designed for the head, which has ‘Celestion’ speakers installed as well as heavy-duty castors for easy set up and transportation.
"Ashton" state that the 100-watt head used with the matching quad box will give you a "thick, fat bottom end that will shake the stage", a statement I wouldn't argue with. At a retail price of $995.00 for either the combo or the head, and an additional $695.00 for the quad box, you get a real professional sounding package at an entry-level price. I was most impressed with the "Viper-50".
This amp is a very versatile unit indeed, whether you're playing clean, ripping the blues, or screaming rock and metal riffs. The Viper is a great ‘all-in-one’ amp with plenty of grunt for any live gig. It's got fangs!