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These days, low-wattage amps are a staple of the boutique amp business. The best of these can cover everything from small club gigs to arena rock shows. And depending on the design philosophies of their creators, they can sound quite unique, too. Dr. Z’s new model, the Z-PLUS, is no exception. It’s a 1x12 combo that weighs in at 38 pounds and kicks ass across classic American and British tone dimensions.
The Z-PLUS is switchable between 7 and 15 watts, and has a familiar front-panel control set: volume, treble, mid, bass, cut, reverb, and master volume. It also features the company’s variable boost footswitch (included), which partially bypasses the amp’s tone stack via a variable potentiometer to provide boost that you can adjust via a side-mounted dial. And if you’re a dirty player who craves spanky lead sounds, the boost—and the way the Z-PLUS achieves it—pays off big time.
We’ll discuss the Z-PLUS’ performance in more detail momentarily. But, for now, here’s the backstory. After borrowing a Dr. Z MAZ 8 for a 2006 reunion recording session with the James Gang, Joe Walsh bought the head and took it on the road. The MAZ 8 became a staple of Walsh’s setup with the Eagles, alongside a Fender Deluxe. But as the Eagles’ respective ages increased, so did their vocal microphone levels, so Walsh asked Mike Zaite (a/k/a Dr. Z) if he’d make a quieter amp that would bleed into vocal microphones less.
Zaite, who’s been building amps for 30 years, agreed. Knowing that Walsh used filthy-sounding 5-watt, class A Fender Champs for the raunchy James Gang hits “Walk Away” and “Funk #49,” he decided to start with the single-ended output construction used in those amps. Then he and Walsh turned to hi-fi audio amplifiers for further inspiration. The result is a class A amp with a single-ended output stage that allows full reproduction of even-order harmonics (unlike class A/B push-pull output stages that cancel out second- and fourth-order harmonics). Typically class A amps are limited by lower headroom, but the Z-PLUS uses two 6V6 power tubes in parallel to increase headroom.
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