I bought my Dumble in 1989 from a friend of mine, who at the time was a professor in the Music Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He was the original owner, and an excellent jazz guitarist. He had decided to focus on playing classical guitar and sold all of his electric guitar gear. I also bought a 1959 ES-335 from him at the same time I bought the Dumble that I still own. The amp is 100 watts, with EL34 tubes. I prefer amps with a lot of headroom, and this amp delivers on that. I usually use it with a Two Rock 2x12 with vintage G12-65’s in it. The amp also came with a Dumble 2x12 cab which he unfortunately sold to another professor at Carnegie Mellon. I tried to buy it from him but he wasn’t interested in selling it.
I tend to gravitate towards amps with 6L6 tubes, but this amp sounds phenomenal to me. The EL34’s in my Dumble produce a warm, smooth, and slightly scooped midrange sound with a natural compression, less high-end sparkle than 6L6s, and in my amp they can produce a smooth, natural sounding overdrive when pushed a little bit.
My amp has tons of sustain with very little distortion and without going into uncontrolled feedback, great harmonic complexity, and touch sensitivity that is very responsive to picking dynamics. As it is setup it doesn’t have as much gain as some of the Dumbles I’ve that I’ve played through, which works for me. I’ve never had a need to try adjusting the internal trim pot to the OD. I don’t usually play very loud, but this amp can definitely push some air. But it also sounds great at conversation levels. There is an immediacy to how it responds to my playing, that I haven’t experienced with any of the Dumble clones I own, have previously owned or have tried.
The settings that I typically use are:
Volume - 4
Treble - 3
Middle - 4
Bass - 5
Overdrive Level - 4
Overdrive Gain - 5
Presence - 5
Bright Switch - Down
Mid Switch - Up
Rock/Jazz Switch – Up
I keep the bass control a little higher than the other two EQ controls based on a now deleted thread on TGP where Steve Kimock discussed the architecture of Dumble amps. He gave some suggestions about settings, which I have found to be very useful. One thing he said is that the input signal goes thru the bass pot first, so if is turned too low you’re not sending much of a signal to the mid and treble pots. I don’t know if this is correct from an electrical engineering perspective, but the amp sounds good to me when I play through it using these settings.
My friend didn’t use any effects and opted to not buy a Dumbleator. I use either a Bludotone Dumbleator clone and a Universal Audio UAFX Golden Reverb Pedal or a Glaswerks Reverb-A-Loop which is basically a Dumbleator clone with reverb built-in. I'm using RG400 mil spec Teflon coated coaxial cables with my Dumbleator clones. The cables are 5 1/2 feet long and measure approximately 200 pf as measured by a Fluke digital capitance meter. I was using the Reverb-A-Loop on the recording. I grew up playing 60's Blackface Fender's, and I need the sense of space and depth that reverb provides.
