Magnatone Super 59, Stereo Twilighter & Fano RB6 Thinline review demo

Jaw-dropping boutique amps and guitar demo'd
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The recently-revived brand Magnatone is positioned at the top end of the market, with made-in-USA products and no-compromise boutique-grade build quality. With Studio models yet to hit the UK, we're taking a look at the Twilighter Stereo combo and the flagship Super 59 head and cab, designed with input from ZZ Top's Billy F Gibbons.

The Twilighter Stereo is based on the classic Magnatone 50s design, with a square-edged solid pine cabinet covered in brown vinyl and a full-width badge overhanging the angled front baffle, bearing the 'High Fidelity' logo. The rear-facing control panel sits at a 45-degree angle, while the chassis is mounted at roughly 20 degrees to allow valves and transformers to clear the loudspeakers. This is a true stereo design, with two pairs of 6V6 output valves feeding separate output transformers, hooked up to a pair of vintage-looking Magnatone custom 12-inch loudspeakers. Add a valve-powered spring reverb, along with Magnatone's legendary frequency-modulating vibrato effect, and you've got no less than 12 valves.

The Super 59 head has similar internals, with a large high-quality through-plated PCB holding the small components, while all the valve bases and control panel parts are hand-wired. There are 10 valves here, including a GZ34 rectifier and a 12DW7. The Super 59 has two non-switchable channels, called normal and vibrato, with separate gain knobs feeding a shared EQ featuring bass, mid, treble and presence controls. As with the Twilighter, the built-in vibrato effect can be switched from frequency to amplitude modulation and has controls for speed and intensity. On the rear panel, there's a cool touch in the shape of an expression pedal jack, to remotely control the effect speed, along with an effect on/off footswitch jack, a pair of send/return jacks for the valve-buffered effects loop and a speaker-compensated line out.

Finally, it takes an extraordinary guitar to attract the eyes and adulation of every member of the Guitarist office, but the drool- worthy Fano Alt De Facto RB6 Thinline is one such rare bird. Inspired by Dennis Fano's vision of 'an alternate reality where the great American luthiers of the 1950s work together under one roof', the Alt De Facto series fuses elements of classics to form something new and utterly desirable, and the RB6 Thinline is no exception.

Here, Chris Vinnicombe gives both Magnatone amplifiers and the Fano RB6 Thinline a workout. Read more in Guitarist magazine issue 384, on sale 25 July 2014.

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