Guitar Gear

When I was 8 years old, my school offered a folk guitar class, run by one of the Jesuit priests. I remember him being a pretty cool guy, playing guitar at our weekly school Mass. It was then that I aspired to be a worship and liturgical musician. Unfortunately at the time, my parents really didn’t have the means to get me a new instrument – and now as a parent I understand – I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to make an investment like that since I was so young and could easily lose interest.

So they asked friends and family if anyone had an extra guitar they’d be willing to lend me, and my cousin Willie just happened to have one. It was a project guitar that he had sanded down so he could re-stain and lacquer, but he never got around to it. So he strung it up and gave it to me. Little did anyone at the time know that I would play it – all the time.

In fact, I played that guitar for 10 years before my dad gifted me with “Betsy,” my Yamaha FG-335 acoustic on my 18th birthday. I played that guitar for almost 20 years, performing on stage and in recording sessions. It wasn’t until it fell over one evening and the neck broke away from the body that I got another guitar, and then an amp, and then another acoustic, and then a better PA, and then an electric guitar, an amp, a few effects, then another electric, then a tube amp, and another tube amp, and more electric guitars and more effects, then recording equipment, blah, blah, blah… Aiiiiyeeee!

But I never forgot about that first guitar and how the kindness of my cousin transformed my life. And even in the midst of my buying frenzy, I always made it a point that I would pay gear forward.

And over the past couple of decades, one of the ways I’ve thinned my herd has been to give gear away. And not crappy gear at all. My thought is that if I give someone decent gear, they’ll more likely play it. Plus, I don’t want them to feel as if they’re getting my discarded items. And if the gear is good, they’ll take care of it.

About 12 years ago, my wife and I used to hire a sweet Mexican woman name Maria to clean our house. She would often bring her teenage children with her to help her. Her eldest child, Eric, used to hang out with me in my garage and listen to me play after he got his stuff done.

One day, he commented, “Man, I’d love to play guitar. My friend has one and I’ve learned some chords. My mom is saving to get me one for my birthday.” He wasn’t fishing for a handout. But I could feel the passion in his voice as he anticipated getting his first guitar.

Not wanting to make his mom feel bad, I just nodded, excused myself, then got up and found her. I told her that Eric told me that she was going to get him a guitar for his birthday. She said told me that yes she was, and Eric was so excited. At that, I asked her if it would be okay for me to give Eric one of mine, along with an amp. I told her that I didn’t want her to look at it as a handout. I could see how much he wanted to play, and as I already had a bunch of guitars, I’d be honored to help him get on his way to being a guitar player.

She wanted to pay me, but I refused and said that it was a gift, and shared how my cousin had changed my life by gifting me with a guitar long ago. The tears welled up in her eyes and she gave me hug in thanks.

When I returned to my garage, Eric was plucking the Fernandes Strat I had been playing. It was a Chinese model, but I had it set up and it played and sounded like a dream.

“You like that guitar?” I asked.

“Oh man! This is great! It plays so easy!” replied Eric.

I smiled then said, “I talked to your mom and asked her if it was okay to give you a guitar. If you like that one, it’s yours along with the amp it’s plugged into.”

The kid almost fainted from the shock. I followed that up with, “But here’s my deal: Later on in life, if and when you have the means, do what I did for you for someone else. I got my first guitar from my cousin, and it changed my life forever.”

A few months after that, we ran into a bit of financial difficulty and had to let Maria go as we couldn’t afford a house cleaner. But several years later, we hired her to help prep our house for a party and I asked about Eric. She told me that after he got that guitar, he practiced all the time and had since joined a couple of bands and was playing regularly. He also still had the guitar I gave him, but was thinking about giving it away to one of his cousins. Hearing that made me smile from ear to ear.

It’s amazing how our lives are changed when we receive certain gifts and it’s even more amazing what we can do to change others’ lives by paying it forward.

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In the early days of this blog and up until a couple of years ago, I spent a lot of time scouring the Web and trade rags in search of cool gear. I don’t do that nearly as much anymore, due to life and paying college tuitions, so when I do get the chance to explore, I’m amazed at some of the totally cool stuff I encounter, like the Pak Amp from Khan Audio.

Truth be told, the Pak Amp builder, Obeid Khan is someone I’ve known about for a long time. He was the lead designer for the now-defunct Reason Amps company, but he also designed the Ampeg Jet as well as the Crate Vintage Club. So this dude has some serious engineering chops.

I completely stumbled onto this amp; that is, Google stumbled on for me. 🙂 I was on YouTube, watching and Anderton’s video comparing the new Fender ToneMaster DRRI and Twins against the real thing, and on the suggested next videos column to the right, there was a video for the Pak Amp! Google’s algorithms must’ve dug really deep to put my association with Obeid together. I literally hadn’t even thought of the Reason guys in years. Kind of creepy…

Oh well, creeped out or not, I’m glad that I discovered this amp just the same, and I have to tell you, I’m VERY excited about this amp because I’m probably going to get one! No, not just because it’s cool-looking (it is) but I’m actually in the market for another amp as I gave my Katana 50 to my son.

Gave away the Katana? Amazing, right? I LOVE that amp. But my youngest son needed an amp for the acoustic-electric ukelele I got for him, and he’s also picked up the electric guitar, so he needed an amp. Besides, I was pretty much only using the Katana as a clean platform and for that, it has worked marvelously. But this is a perfect amp for my son to start with, and I know he’ll get a lot of mileage out of it.

Honestly, I actually was going to get another Katana, but when I saw the Pak Amp and watched videos and scoured the forums, I really started thinking about what I wanted sound-wise. The Pak Amp ticks off a LOT of boxes for me.

What’s so special about it? Well, for one thing, I’m familiar with the builder and the high-quality stuff he’s made in the past. He’s also a vintage Marshall freak and tuned the amp’s sound and feel to be like a vintage Marshall; something that appeals to me because the vintage Marshall sound is what I love. And finally, and most importantly, he packed some very cool shit into a 9″ X 7″ X 2 1/2″ box! In my older age, rig size and weight matter. At 6 1/2 lbs., and that form factor. I literally could put this in my gig backpack along with my cords and mics and get to my gig.

And though deeper, at 9″ X 7″, that freakin’ box has a smaller footprint than a laptop! Talk about the perfect fly rig amp! You could even mount this sucker on a board! But before I go too crazy, I should probably get into features. The amp comes in two flavors: A single- and a dual-channel. Technical specs are as follows:

SINGLE CHANNEL ($899):

• Gain and Master Controls
• (2) 12AX7 and (2) 6AQ5 tubes
• Bright and Boost Switches
• Boost foot-switchable

DUAL CHANNEL ($1199):

• Dual Concentric Gain and Master Controls
• (3) 12AX7 and (2) 6AQ5 tubes
• Bright, Channel, Presence and Boost Switches
• Channel and Boost foot-switchable

SHARED FEATURES:

• Switchable 9 or 18 watts @ 5% THD
• Treble, Middle, Bass tone stack
• Buffered FX Loop Send and Return
• Speaker response simulated balanced line out
• Silent operation with an internal 8-ohm load resistor
• Speaker Impedance selector – 8 and 16 ohm
• Built-in cooling fan with on/off switch
• Fully CNC front plate for striking visual aesthetic
• Made in USA custom Heyboer transformers
• Compact size: 9″ x 7″ x 2 1/2″ (including knobs and feet)
• 6.5 lbs. total weight
• Export voltages of 100V 220V 240V available

If you’re not familiar with the 6AQ5 power tube, it’s actually a fairly plentiful NOS tube that has been around since the late ’50s. It is the power tube that was used for the Reason Bambino and it produces a very nice sound. Obeid discovered it in an old LA2A compressor.

Standard features in the amp are pretty incredible. Having a buffered effects loop is very cool, and I can see how the line out can be incredibly useful for recording (though I have yet to hear any clips on this feature). Obeid also mentioned that because it already uses speaker simulation, you probably can’t use IRs with it. That’s not too much of a problem because I have a solution for that if I want to use an IR for recording the amp.

Dual-Channel Model: More to it than meets the eye?

Now at first blush, based on the online specs, one might be led to believe that the Dual-Channel model just adds a second channel and Presence control. But I just discovered – from downloading the user manual – that the Dual-Channel has an incredibly useful feature that really should be called out. In fact, it is this feature alone that will make me lean towards the Dual-Channel model rather than the Single.

One of the challenges of 2-channel amp, especially when there’s only a single master volume is setting the volume balance between the channels. In my experience, the way this is typically solved is to only use the Master Volume on the second channel. It works. It’s not very flexible, but it works. But with the Pak Amp, Obeid took a different approach. Here’s the tip that is in the user manual:

TIP #2: Start by setting the gain and master levels for Ch 1 (clean). Switch to Ch 2 (dirty) and set the gain and master levels with the outer controls. Switch back and forth and adjust the outer (dirty) master to balance the two channels. At this point the volume balance between channels has been set. You are now able to control the overall volume with the inner master (clean), while maintaining the channel balance.

Yes, that’s right. The Dual Channel model has both dual volume and master knobs. I know that this may seem a bit pedestrian to some, but think about it: If all you have to do is click a footswitch to go from clean to dirty with minimal to no volume change, just how useful is that? This is EXACTLY how I set up my overdrive pedals. When I want a dirty sound, I add just a touch of volume boost.

This, to me, is HUGE: The mere fact that I can raise the Master levels for both channels at the same time means that I don’t have to screw around with my guitar volume knobs. I can use those simply for adding or subtracting input gain. Pretty f-in’ cool and to me, it’s a MAJOR feature that could easily be overlooked. Obeid’s a pretty humble dude, so he probably didn’t think to showcase this feature. But when I get this amp, you can be sure that I will do a video about this feature. It’s the feature that sold me completely on the Dual Channel amp.

Here’s a video of Obeid talking about the development behind the Pak:

And here’s the Pak amp in action:

For more information, check out the Khan Audio website!

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