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Carr makes great amps, not just the tone but the ruggedness of his amps. I recently sold a Slant 6v that I bought in 2001 new. I loaded the amp in and out of cars, vans and pickups all over Western Montana and Idaho. I drove down bumpy dirt roads with it, had foolish drunk peeps spill drinks on it and even dropped it once. In the end the outside looked very worn and rough but I never had to repair or replace anything aside from tubes but that’s normal. It never made a funny noise or gave me a moment of pause. Your Carr, if you like the tone and keep it, can be a reliable amp for life. Good purchase!
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02-12-2020 04:26 PM
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I sampled a Carr Sportsman like yours in a music store and was amazed at the quality, sound and construction...and high price (new).
It was so good that it distracted me from the guitar I was sampling at the time. My credit card started heating up in my pocket, but I resisted.
You've got a great little amp. Enjoy that bad boy!
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Thanks!! Initial review is that the tone is simply stunning. My only worry is about clean headroom on gigs that are unmic'd so we will see. What did you think of the tone of the Slant 6v? Can it do it blackface Fender? I was looking at those as well for the extra wattage, but settled on this one due to the tiny footprint and lightweight
Originally Posted by Zguitar71
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The Slant 6 is all about the blackface tone. It also have abundant headroom on the 40 watt setting. Actually it has a lot on all the settings. I sold the amp because it was too loud! I stopped using master volume amps or pedals. Now I mostly use a 5 or 20 watt amp that are more tweed like for the breakup. The Carr gets nasty when cranked but is very loud. If the sportsman does not give the headroom you want try the Carr Rambler, it is all about the blackface sound and designed for headroom. It makes a great pedal platform. It has a luscious reverb and overall tone. Originally Posted by Paulie2
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Bumped up this old thread because I acquired a NOS Sportsman priced at two grand last week. I’ve used that amp to try guitars whenever I visited the shop that carried it and loved it every time. But I could never get myself to pay full retail. This time it was discounted and I just had to take it home.
Build quality and sound quality are different things. My amp of choice over the last five years or so has been a Brunetti Singleman 15 combo. I love that amp to bits, it sounds so damn sweet and can handle any guitar thanks to its various tone shaping options. That’s a €1400 amp. Truly great sound but not exactly built like a tank. Sure enough, mine’s occasionally been eating power tubes for breakfast and recently it developed a super-high frequency squeal that hurts the ears and is probably caused by a loose winding in the amp’s output transformer. Ouch. What is amazing is that Marco Brunetti always personally responds to emails the same day and I’m in touch with him about possible solutions. He’s a great guy and that little combo sounds unbelievable, possibly even slightly better than the Carr. But in the end you get what you pay for.
The Carr _is_ built like a tank. Point to point wiring, the best components (including film capacitors that do not age), everything built to outlast me. And it sounds incredible, just different to the Brunetti. The Carr is gainier but in a really good way. Notes leap out of it, very 3D and incredibly dynamic. It can (and does) sound angelic and sweet at low gain settings but that kind of really Fender-y, glassy, mid-scooped, open-sounding clean doesn’t seem to come with lots of headroom. It’s glorious but not loud. Turning up the amp makes the tone more punchy, fatter, fuller, more dense and deliciously dangerous. To my ears this sounds best with single coils. Turning everything up will get you into early Brian Adams grind such as in It’s Only Love. I’ve asked Carr if I might get some more headroom out of the amp by swapping one or both 12AX7s with AT7s and am waiting for their response.
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Bill seems to agree. Succinct as always ;-)
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Carr amps are fantastic. It's very common to swap out the speakers, oddly enough. For my sportsman I think the WGS et 65 is perfect. And my rambler (which is unbelievably good) has a Fane F70.
Here's a clip I made with the rambler (before I swapped the speaker).
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I like old guitars but I don’t like old amps because I need something that is going to be reliable, gig after gig. My Carr Rambler sounds as good as the best vintage amps and I don’t have to worry about it. Considering that I’ve used it for 20 trouble-free years, I would say it’s worth the cost.
…..Oh, I guess that, at 20+ years old, I do have an old amp!
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Agreed. I have a Carr Telstar in my stable these days. It's a superb amp, but not really a jazzer. For my Jazz needs I have a Louis Electric Columbia Reverb, again a more modern take on a vintage BF circuit, with all the attributes you mentioned(reliability etc..). In fact all my amps are modern takes on models from the 60s and 70s. The likes of Bartel, Reeves, Two Rock are pricey no doubt, but for me...well worth it. Everyone is different tho... Originally Posted by Cobra
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I’ve had the Sportsman for 10 days now and basically I’m, well, stunned. I’m hearing my guitars like never before and I play better. A lot better. For a long time I’ve had guitars that make me play better and I thought that I had amps that did the same. That bar just got raised. My previous amps sound fine but now I realise they don’t really lift me up. The Sportsman does. It’s not just sound and hard to put into words, but this amp has my back. It’s like it goes ‘Oh, you want to play that particular guitar? Then I guess this is how you want it to sound’. Or ‘You seem to be playing the treble strings in a certain way to make them sound fuller and fatter, let me do that for you’. Really inspiring.
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o.k., but why are you surprised that a Sportsman would help you up your game? (hopefully it's not just a placebo effect that will wear off in a while).
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First time hearing a Sadowsky archtop was through a Carr Sportsman. Roger used it in his booth to showcase guitars at NAMM. I ended up with that precise amp shipped from NAMM to my place and used it for a year until I auctioned it off to support Houston TX hurricane victims. Bought the new model with the new cabinet design last year. I am currently all about Henriksen and low weight, but Steve makes some of the worlds finest amps and the Sportsman is an equal unassuming sleeper to the Rambler. Congrats @ Oscar67 !
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Because that has never really happened before with an amp. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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That was one of my futile attempts at humor: Sportsman < > Game. Originally Posted by Oscar67
Has the Sportsman improved your golf game too?
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i’d say to get power amp sag before losing their hearing? In my experience second hand,AC-30s get half of AC-15s. Apart from that i quite agree!! Originally Posted by Jazzman301
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So I say this after owning so many wonderful amps as well as guitars old ,new,boutique,etc.
I had a vintage Ampeg and Fenders which were wonderful, and well built. But the current crop of Bespoke Amps ,especially Carr,and a couple others are top notch tube circuits with great attention to detail.
So I get what makes them cost so much money. Another thing is they are like wonderful old sports cars. In the way they have a set goal and and they are the best for that intended purpose.
Certainly lovely,but remember they aren’t always the most practical for a myriad of situations.
And that’s fine if it fits your gigging purpose and say weight limitations,Lol!
I guess for me I’m really happy with newer technology when it comes to amps.Especially the lower price and portability as well as the versatility.
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