REVIEWS
"it sounds as big as a Hiwatt 400 only more versatile and you can get very good high gain sounds out of it too - we're talking monster amp here."
"Putting my ECC82 in socket number two gave real interesting results - It sounded almost like a Super Reverb. A lot of people would buy the amp for this sound only - and never use the high gain sounds."
"you have an amplifier with the potential of reforming the whole amplifier industry"
"Where can I place an order"
"After hearing this amp all other amps I use will sound dull and not so good anymore. That's really sad because it will take some time before I can afford to get one."
Guitar Player Review April/2006
Reviewed by Art Thompson
"single-channel head with novel features that provide a level of flexibility rarely seen in a non-channel-switching design"
"Suffice to say they combine to deliver very happening—and unusually meaty—tones with either humbuckers or single-coils."
"Even in these ridiculously overdriven realms, however, the CS-40 maintains excellent articulation and dynamic feel."
"Within the CS-40’s steel chassis resides an ultra-neat handwired circuit. Note the super tidy lead dressing, thick solder joints, and abundance of chassis-mounted components. The gloppy goo covering the clandestine components on the side-mounted board is the only downer in this otherwise spotless layout."
MP comment: The chassis is actually aluminum and now the side-mounted FET board is housed in a tidy box.
The whole review available at Guitar Player site.
Review from a Finnish Riffi Magazine 6/2005
Reviewed by Jarmo Hynninen
"Soon I found a tone that I ended up playing jazz for a long time with the neck pickup of PRS. I think the tone was good and balanced and and for my taste stayed clean even with thicker and more complex chords"
"From clean tone I wanted to move to slight distorted dynamic neck pickup tone that would be touch sensitive. It was easy to find and you got many tonal variations and none of them was bad."
"I found tones with agressive rock feel and for British Blues and after some tweaking a singing cleaner lead distortion."
"The scale of distorted tones is very wide and the amp sounds great even with low volumes"
"It was inspiring to play with the bright and clean Fender-style clean tone"
"The the real treat was the SRV-style blues distortion, I have never been able to get the Strat sing blues like this with any other amp. I think the Blues and Blues/Rock tones with a Strat are extraordinary."
"Especially pleasant was this Tele-type clean bridge pickup tone with a hint of distortion, specially when playing double stops. This tone was "juicy". It was very nice to bend country bends and pick chicken picking jamming with Mad Professor."
"I must recommed Mad Professor for a guitarist who is looking after extreme quality and is ready to spend money for his/her tone. This could lead to a long term relationship without any compromises and to a one that just gets deeper by time"
Review from a Scandinavian Fuzz guitar magazine Nr.1 Feb 2003
Translated by Johan Hellman
Dynamics, DYNAMICS!
by Jan "Nusse" Dahlin
It isn't every day that we get the chance to present a tryout of a swedish guitar-amp. But, as the well-informed reader might recall, it actually has happened before. Because it still remains a fact that the small country of Sweden holds a vast knowledge on the area of amplification. So great that it has gained international esteem, for instance by way of the world-guitarists that have engaged the help of gurus like Tommy Folkesson, bought Elmwood amplifiers from the region of Bohuslan and, as of now, queued up for a Mad Professor Amp.
Behind the Mad Professor there are a number of talents, spearheaded by Bjorn Juhl. And it would be a mistake to mention the Mad Professor amplifier without a short description of its creator. Bjorn has spent many a year repairing and modifying amps and effect-pedals.
His own pedal-designs were a hit from scratch, and are today, in the USA and Japan as well as other places, viewed upon as among the best available.
Bjorns knowledge spans principally from the molecular level to what happens with the speaker-fabric if you change the plectrum. (With this in mind, it isn't too hard to figure out from where the amp was named).
But the Mad Professor isn't theory alone. It is very much a down-to-earth and practical amplifier constructed from Bjorns own experience of the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the best amplifiers on the market. The amp is assembled in Finland, soldered, mounted and tuned by hand.
The general-agents are Custom Sounds.
MASSIVE CONSTRUCTION
First a few words on the obvious physics. The Mad Professor is "built like a tank" with a steady chassis made out of soundly dimensioned stainless steel-plate. The top- and rear-sides have been fitted with lathed cylindric aluminum bussings that, as well as serving as air-vents, also give the amp a worked-through and massive outlook.
The components are throughout among the best available and, among other things, a very powerful, specially designed power-transformer has been developed that is built both to last and to deliver the right prerequisites for sound and function.
According to the designer himself, the amp is built, in view of both function and appearance, "to last for at least 50 years". And after examining it both exterior- and interior-wise, I believe him. To top it off, both top and speaker-cabinet are covered in leather. The output power is 40 watts.
The pre-amp contains five ECC83:s (12AX7). Those who want to fine-tune their sound on their own can experiment with ECC81:s (12AT7) or ECC82:s (12AU7) in tube-positions two and three.
(Those who are interested can read more about this in the Mad Professor manual, available at Custom Sounds homepage: www.custom-sounds.com)
The output tubes are two EL 34:s but they too can be replaced by 6L6:s or KT88:s. To simplify changing of output tubes and bias-adjustment, the amp is equipped with a switch for the different tube-types and inputs for a multimeter. You simply unscrew the back-cover, change the switch, plug in the multimeter and adjust the bias.
There are two inputs, Normal and Abnormal. The Normal input, based on pure tube-amplification, is the cleanest while the Abnormal input offers two different modes; Tube amplification with extra gain possibility and Fet, based on field-effect transistors supplying even more gain. The Abnormal input is also slightly brighter to give better string-separation at distorted sounds.
TRADITIONAL AND INNOVATIVE TONECONTROL
The controls can furthermore be said to be a mix of conventional and unique solutions, and therefore require a little bit more explaining. Volume controls the amount of gain in the pre-amp and basically functions as a gain-adding volume-knob. Focus has four fixed positions, where two of them function as treble boosters. Here you can give the treble and middle registers the profile or character you wish. The Bass control is more or less of the usual kind, but is affected by the position chosen with the Focus-control. Middle, the mid-register control, is also affected by the Focus position. Tone Balance balances the the amount of bass and treble so you can choose if you want to give your sound a darker or brighter character in general. Treble is your average treble control and Presence regulates the amount of treble in the power-amp by attenuating feedback of high frequencies.
Boost is simply a boost-control that alternatively can be activated by the supplied pedal-switch. Master is evidently a master-control.
But the possibilities for tone-sculpting do not not end here, on the back by the effect-loop there is yet another knob, marked Nature. This one also has four fixed positions. It has two functions, it regulates the signal level of any looped effects, and it chooses between bright or dark tone-character.
The connections in the back furthermore consist of a jack for the pedal-switch, and five outs for speakers, covering more or less every possible Ohm from 4 to 2x16.
Also on the back is a "Powersuck" switch with four different positions; Arena, Club, Pub and Bedroom.
UNIDIRECTIONAL SPEAKERCABINET
The top can of course be bought separately, but the manufacturer has also developed a matching speaker-cabinet. Nothing has been left to chance here either.
The cabinet, leather-covered as the top, is closed and built out of solid wood with a plywood baffel. It is equipped with two diagonally placed twelve-inch Celestion Anniversary and has a clever feature that probably will make things a little more comfortable for guitarists, as well as for their co-musicians and audience.
Mounted in the cabinet sides are two 8-inch Jensen speakers that distribute the sound, especially the treble, in an effective way.
Normally you adjust your sound standing right in front of the speakers where you hear the treble the best, which is swell as long as you stay put.
If you should happen to take a few steps to one side, an action not that rare in the rehearsal studio or on stage, the treble gets more or less undiscernable, both for guitarist and co-musicians.
The end-result frequently is that you over-compensate with treble/volume in a way that makes the direct-sound almost unbearably harsh and also a lot harder to capture with a microphone. The speaker has two inputs so you can choose to play with or without the two side-speakers.
HANDLING AND SOUND
Even if the Mad Professor deviates a bit from conventional amplifiers when it comes to controls and settings, it isn't hard to handle. Most things come naturally and if you feel insecure you can just do it by ear or throw a passing glance in the manual from time to time.
After playing for while at least two things are quite clear, one is that the variations are almost infinte, another is that you don't need more than one channel at a time. The key-word is dynamics. Or more accurately DYNAMICS.
Let's start with the Normal input, the cleanest of the two. The basic sound here spans from clean to moderately distorted for blues, country and crunchy rock. The sound is very vigorous, solid, sings a little bit and can - with the help of the Focus and Nature controls - be endlessly tailor-made, not least the mids and trebs.
It is clean without being clinical and you get reasonable headroom if you open up the Master all the way. You can easily tweak in a "fendery" sound, but this is closer to Blackface or Tweed than the gossamer transparency of a Silverface.
If you add some gain and choose to adjust the volume with the Powersuck control on the back instead, it starts to sing a bit more and you'll soon be somewhere on the border between a strained, wet Super Reverb and an old, scarred Marshall plexi-top. The bass stays surprisingly clean and yet the G- B- and high E-string distorts. Yummy.
If you plug into the Abnormal input (in tube position) the amount of gain increases rapidly from the start. The basic character is the same as the Normal but a little bit brighter, which is something that has been consciously done to keep the string-separation at increased levels of distortion.
The difference is slight, but obvious and you get no sense of loosing bottom at the cost of some other frequency. Here the amps incredible dynamics and unique capabilities become very tangible. You simply start by dialling in a really fat and chunky lead-sound with the right amount of gain and exact tone-color you wish.
Then you roll off the guitar-volume and - stand in awe. And now if not before you understand why this amp doesn't feature a lot of channels to switch between. You don't need them.
You can basically achieve the same clean, solid sound as with the Normal input. Without a lot of annoying fizz and rumble. And without loosing bite.
I realize that this description sounds slightly improbable, but if any reader should be in doubt I recommend a visit to the general agent Custom Sounds' home-page. There are several downloadable sound-files illuminating this very quality.
Should you then want to try another type of distortion you set the amp to Fet-position. There the input tube is driven by a field effect transistor with enough capacity to give a mega-heavy but still easily-played and somewhat "cleaner" distortion, with less unwished scratch and fizzle.
The dynamic capacity is impressively obvious even in this position. Or in other words; from Gary Moore-type sustain to "clear as a bell", using one and only one setting on the amp...
If some inveterate old pedal-stomper still, in spite of the dynamics, feels an uncontrollable urge to use a pedal to stomp in yet another little bit of push, he just needs to connect the amps' boost-pedal. It basically functions as a volume-boost and adds, decided by the amount of boost you dialled in, maybe that final edge you sometimes need to get through to the audience in the very back of the venue, in the final set, in that final heart-searing solo that you just can't leave the hell alone.
"But does the Professors' 40 watts really suffice?", you may ask, being used to a 100 watts or maybe even more. Well, you could answer that one with the old clichée; "It doesn't come down to size, it's in the way you handle it." In this case they have succeded to get every single little bit of power out of every single little watt. And probably more to add. The energy delivered to the speakers even got one of them to come loose on our testing specimen.
Finally some words on the treble. One of the defining qualities of this amplifier, apart from the dynamics and distortion, is the possibility to achieve a distinct and silvery treble that hardly ever get harsh or searing.
They claim that it comes with the construction and thoroughly thought-through filtering, but I don't know. Maybe it's magic anyway...
FINAL JUDGEMENT
The Mad Professor is an ingeniously constructed and solidly hand-built amplifier with dynamics and sound-qualities that places it among the best boutique-models available.
It is an amplifier for professionals, studio-musicians and enthusiast, who would rather own one monster-amp than a number of half-measures. It is allround without compromise and you can play more or less any kind of guitar-music conceivable with it.
If I had to choose one single amp to bring to a desert isle, this one would be one out of maybe two or three alternatives in the world. Among those alternatives it would also, despite it's price, be the cheapest.
Email from a happy owner
First of all thank you so much for talking me into this amp and cabinet.
I will be thankful for this as long as I keep on playing guitar.
My fingertips are hurting and my head seems like a balloon after hours of playing in my little studio.
My way of looking at "tone and sound" will never be the same again" after the session with this amp.
Holy Grail of tone, worth every hour of waiting for and for every Swedish krona spent on the complete kit of tube driven master soul.
As I try to describe the situation its easy to see that there isn't word enough to cover the hole experience. My first impression at the Stockholm guitar show was that it sounded very much as the sound samples. It was easy to hear all the way to the entrance, that there was a MP amp somewhere in there. When listen and even more after tried it out at this "guitar show volume" I was a little bit concerned how or if it was capable to deliver high overdrive sounds (like rectifier etc.). It was my mistake not thinking that this was able AND WAY BEYOND...
I have tried the distortion section of sounds first to cover my most desirable sounds and its absolutely fantastic. Its even more fantastic to play than it is to listen to!!! I mean there is some kind of catapult thing going on - the tones are on some way leaving the cab in a flying way???
At first sight its easy to hear that there will never be any amp at any cost better for solo work than this one. After working a while with it sounds fantastic with many different kind of rhythm sounds as well, especially with guitars equipped with good single coil pickups.
There a whole heaven of overtones and it can play really loud. My wife said to me, when I came in from the studio (00.25 Sunday night) that our neighbors surely wont appreciate my new loud studio thing as much as I do.
When I listen to the recording sessions and there's a lot of mid in the setting I have used which I prefer very much. Its very easy to switch to a more "natural" midsituation just by switching from TUBE to FET, in this setting you will put the tone perspective back a little bit and get more distortion.
Frasse Franzen
Comment from Musictoyz forum
Well let's just say I've been incredibly lucky to have this amazing amp on loan from BJ and Harri at Custom-Sounds.
I have been playing the Mad Professor head into a reissue Marshall 4x12 cabinet loaded with Celestion 25w Greenbacks. Guitar is a '60's Gibson Firebird with P-90's.
So wow, where to start ? I am going to keep it as simple and staightforward as possible. This is a hard amp to relate in words because it can do just so many things, so well ! There are many, many "amps" sitting inside this thing. It is running EL34 power tubes, so the obvious comparison would be a Marshall, but there is Fender clean/grind in there, Vox chime/honk in there, Hiwatt hugeness in there, Mesa/Soldano phatness/saturation in there, etc., etc. This is the "anti-digital" modeling amp that, in a sense does the modeling thing oh so much better, and with an all-analog path.
It is worth looking at the manual here to get a sense of where I am coming from: MP manual. While this is not the manual verbatim, it is close. The "features" page, as well as all the MP pages at the Custom-Sounds site are worthy of a look.
I began by plugging into the "normal" input, which is clean thru much of it's range, but gradually grinds up as you turn up the volume/master volume. I cannot emphasize enough that there are so many shades available between bell-like, shimmery clean tones and warm, thick Keith Richards style overdrive tones in the "normal" channel alone. The touch is also very dynamic, even if you have the gains cranked.
While you are setting up the gain structures, there is a "focus" knob to consider. What a cool, ingenious concept/idea it is ! The focus seems to be basically a type of midrange emphasis that is dependent upon the way you are driving the amp. If you are going for a cranked pre-amp sound, then the focus "should" be turned to the right (obviously your ears tell you what you like best). If you are going for the master volume/power tube overdrive thing, then the focus knob goes left. This is explained in the manual and I felt that the suggestions were dead-on.
The next step was thru the EQ section. The EQ goes: Bass > Middle > Treble > Balance > Presence. There are some nice things about the tone section to mention. First off, the controls are all highly interactive. If you have ever played an Top-Boost AC30 (or even a TBIAC for that matter), you know that the EQ controls are all part of the tone picture. The same is true here, but it seems much more logical and sensory. Another nice feature is a tone "balance" control. This is the first EQ control to set, because it sets the overall emphasis of the amp to either a treble or bass tone. Then from there you EQ the bass/mid/treb to taste. Another nice EQ feature (in the Fender vein for sure) is the presence control. It sits nicely above the "treble" control and brings in all the air and sparkle you could want.
Also nice is that the EQ can be subtle, but it can also be extreme. Pull ou the mids and turn up bass/treb and the 7-stringers and Metallica fans would be stoked. Crank the mids and you get total honk if you want it, or you could just go easy on the EQ and the changes are subtle and smooth. Keep in mind too that the aforementioned "focus" control is still available as a mid-emphasis and thus is another part of the EQ section.
This is what I meant about this amp really being what I'd call, hmmm... "everyamp!" There is SO much depth to the fine tuning you can do and it eventually leads you thru so many familiar tones of so many amps. I had such a good time going from one great sound to another.
But let me get back to the input choices again.
The other input on the amp is labelled "abnormal." [ I've come to realize this is part of BJ's great and wacky sense of humor. The manual is full of funny quips, settings, philosophies and suggestions!] The abnormal channel has much more gain on tap and is voiced a little brighter. So where the normal input was (to generalize) more like a Twin, the abnormal channel gets you anywher from AC30 to Tweed to Marshall to Soldano and on... Once again, the shades from overdrive into distortion are gradual but very wide ranging. Now that you are in the abnormal input, the Tube/FET control is now available. I believe the FET selection brings another gain structure into the circuit. I didnt think I'd like it (uhhh dude, it's not tube) but I was wrong. It sounded great. Really thick Jane's Addiction power riffs were flying out of my paws and I was loving it ! The best part of it was that the sound, while compressed and harmonically rich, never got nasally or flabby or in any way left that full and present place it was with the gain turned down. It was still dynamic to boot. I found this simply amazing.
Keep in mind that the amp also comes with a tunable effects loop that you can tweak the gain and Eq to (the "Nature" control) and match levels to rack or pedal effects (how cool is that?).
Keep in mind that the amp comes built-in with one of the best sounding power-attenuators I have ever heard (and I own an Airbrake). It has 4 settings on it (Arena > Club > Pub > Bedroom -- BJ's humor again). I was cranking at 3am and no one heard a thing !
Keep in mind it comes with a boost pedal (hand-painted like BJ's pedals of course) that you attach with a gtr cable to the amp. It has a single knob on it with up to +15dB of boost.
There are also 5 different speaker combination outputs on the back of the amp.
How can I criticise the amp ? Well I guess it could have channel switching, but really that wouldn't make sense with this type of design. It is the perfect studio amp, but perfect for gigging too as it was so receptive to the various stomp boxes I threw in front of it.
I feel with this amp you have at your hands an intensely variable and malleable tone-machine that is at the same time, very intuitive and easy to follow your muse and your ears with to find the tone YOU are hearing in YOUR head. If you get tired of one sound, well then find another, it's in there.
Sorry folks that I went on so long, but I cant help but be excited about this thing. I really wanted to give all my pals here at the forum a first-hand report on the Mad Profeesor. I hope I gave you all an idea of what it is about and how much fun I am having with it. Alas, it will not be mine forever...
Thanks again BJ, you truly are the "Mad Professor!"
Just a little update. I was jammin' on the MP today and realized that it is extremely sensitive to guitar volume. I found a nice fat lead/rhythm tone, kinda' Pete Townshend-like, and when rolling back the gtr. volume for the quiet part of the "song," man, all the OD smoothed out and the tone cleared right up. Very Plexi... very FuzzFace...
Also, I plugged bass into it and wow, what a great recording sound for bass guitar ! I played bass in the band Cowpatch (fffrrrrt) a few yrs. ago and used the guitarist's 100w HiWatt to record the bass (one of those '70's studio myths) and got an excellent recorded bass tone. Well the MP immediately struck me as a great recording amp for bass. I dialed in a little preamp drive and instant Entiwistle ! Clear treble bite (I've got Roundsounds on the bass) and the low-end was full and punchy.
A pretty versatile machine.
Paul DiBenedetto http://dalakings.com/
Comment from PRSforum
Mad Professor Amp - all my tones in one package
Tried the Mad Professor this past weekend. I have to say I was pretty impressed.
Quick summary:
" Killer cleans in the blackface vein
" Some of the best pushed SRV tones ever
" Gainy tones from classic rock through 80's metal
" Extremely flexible EQs - well thought out - allows you to transform the amp completely
" Cleans up extremely well at the guitar volume, for a Master Volume amp.
" Very responsive to pick attack, again, for a Master Volume amp
" Reduced power options
" Built - in, variable level boost. Set your boost level, and go
" Loop is tailorable for rack and pedal effects
" In the OD channel, you can switch between SS and tube
You heard Dean's Jazz clip the other day?
It amazes me that this amp can capture that warm, 50's vintage Jazz tone, and also do over the top 80's metal stuff, and SRV blues, and blackface cleans, and 70's hard rock, yada, yada, yada. The amp is voiced with all my favorite tones in mind.
If I had to pick nits, there's really only one: it's not a channel switcher. It does have 2 inputs, but not switchable. The dealer, Harri, explained that they chose not to, because the settings for great cleans and great OD are so radically different. And with this amp, I have to agree. And I don't know where you'd find the real estate for independent EQs per channel on this beast.
This is the closest I've ever come to having one amp do it all for me. If I ever was forced to go to one amp, I think this one would be it.
MikeyG
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