New portable pedal amp

[Woodstove]

Took it last night to rehearse with a jazz group. It pulled through very nicely and definitely capable of KB / GG sounds. I had plenty of headroom to keep it clean while playing chords at volume while still be able to get a bit of grit as desired.

Same remarks on the EQ as before. I read some Reddit threads and sounds like this is common feedback btw. So yeah it’s a darker amp. Next time I play it with this group I’ll bring a brighter voiced speaker and/or maybe my raezers edge closed back cab.

I’ll repeat I think the “feel”, which comes from having the right amount of compression and the ability to get some harmonic saturation is better than any solid state amp I’ve played.

Been following this thread with great interest. I have (had) a Milkman 100 that I liked a lot. My main tube amp for gigging is a newly purchased, used, Headstrong Lil King S which is superb but on the very first show a preamp tube went out with horrible noise. I play a fair amount of blues/country and rock along with jazz and the Milkman 100 wasn't giving me what I get from the Headstrong (of coarse). Hoping for a better low risk one amp solution for gigging I was at the Music Emporium outside of Boston last week on other business but brought my amp 100 to compare it with the Benson which they had all set up the the center of the store, waiting for me. It was love at first response and tonal range. Totally agree it has the most realistic feel of any pedal amp I've tried. They took my Amp 100 in trade and I've been putting the Benson to its paces all week and am amazed at how much it can do. I'm running into a nice pine cab with a Celestion Creamback, (16 ohm, 65 W) so not its intended speaker choice but it's really good. I have a Benson ceramic (Weber) that he voiced his real amp and this pedal for on the way and will report back. I do find it's on the dark side as is, the ceramic speaker will almost certainly brighten it and I'll be able to listen for what he was going for with his voicing. But keeping the boost on the lowest setting seems to brighten it a bit with upper midrange while maintaining crystal cleans. I also have run it to my PA and find the cab/mic sim is excellent and note he made it an analogue eq circuit so no 2msec delay! Nice touch. Since his sim is made from his speaker it should be cool having cab and front of house so well matched.

[Navdeep_Singh]

I bought the Benson the Amp by Milkman. I like it! It’s dark in a nice Jim Hall-Ed Bickert kind of way.

[omphalopsychos]

Yeah!

I've been playing it through different cabs and I think it definitely prefers a brighter speaker. Even with a bright speaker you can always roll the tone off. I don't want to go into a crazy rabbit hole of swapping speaker sin my cabs but I am feeling it coming. The jim hall comment definitely depends on what speaker/cabinet you are using. This thing with a jensen style small magnet alnico would be exactly in the grant green, kenny burrell ball park. I want to add wes to that, but wes' sound was a bit more scooped.

The other night for fun I plugged it into 2 cabs in parallel. A barefaced 2x10 with celestion golds and a barefaced 1x12 with a fat jimmy alnico. It sounded ridiculously good. Like unreasonably good. I'd never lug such a big setup to a gig but at home it was pretty insane.

Agree with everything from woodstove on the feel of the amp. Let me know about that Benson speaker!

[Woodstove]

Yeah!

I've been playing it through different cabs and I think it definitely prefers a brighter speaker. Even with a bright speaker you can always roll the tone off. I don't want to go into a crazy rabbit hole of swapping speaker sin my cabs but I am feeling it coming. The jim hall comment definitely depends on what speaker/cabinet you are using. This thing with a jensen style small magnet alnico would be exactly in the grant green, kenny burrell ball park. I want to add wes to that, but wes' sound was a bit more scooped.

The other night for fun I plugged it into 2 cabs in parallel. A barefaced 2x10 with celestion golds and a barefaced 1x12 with a fat jimmy alnico. It sounded ridiculously good. Like unreasonably good. I'd never lug such a big setup to a gig but at home it was pretty insane.

Agree with everything from woodstove on the feel of the amp. Let me know about that Benson speaker!

A few hours in.... just get it omphalopsychos. At least as compared to the Celestion Creamback the biggest plus is rounder, clearer bass notes. The difference is subtle but there's more dynamic range, a touch of air. No need to keep the boost on lowest setting to get some upper mids. I've been mostly playing jazz to test it but cranked up some dirty blues/rock as well and it's all there.