My favourite amp for the last 15 years or so has been my Bad Cat Black Cat 30 - in fact it's the best amp I've ever plugged into. It's one of the very early ones that's made with Matchless components.
For reasons that are too convoluted and dull to go into here I decided last year to order the Matchless version of the same amp. It finally arrived this week, and I got my first chance to use it in a session yesterday, alongside the Bad Cat, both plugged into the same type of cabs loaded with one Alnico Cream and one Creamback, mic'd with a matched pair of mics into a matched pair of Neve preamps.
And...it's just glorious. Everything I've always loved about my Bad Cat - actually the 12ax7 channels are close to identical - but with a little bit more of everything on the ef86 side, which is a lot gainier.
Ended up recording them all day in stereo, primarily playing Gretsches. These things ADORE Gretsches!
I custom ordered it in a lovely Navy Blue (cos Scottish) although it looks more teal in this photo. Wonderful, wonderful thing.
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I've also got a lightning head. So from experience you have to plug your hc30 into a 4x12.
Glorious things. Regretted selling the head ever since.
What are those mics btw?
but do we get to hear it?
What a lovely studio, are you allowed to tell us what it's called?
Studio is called Beetroot - it's where I'm based