Underrated Amp: Quilter Microblock

[JazzerEU]

Hi all,
I’m a retired professional guitarist from the US turned English Teacher in Spain. I’ve lived in France where I discovered and ordered a Toob Metro 6.5GP+ cabinet. Originally, I paired it with a Quilter Microblock 45 and tried a Quilter Superblock UK. For some odd reason, I went back to the Microblock and left the Superblock UK in storage last Christmas.

The Microblock for whatever sounded better with this cabinet and my Ibanez AF71F guitar with D’Addario flatwounds than the Superblock UK, I crank the knob in the middle and also use an EQ pedal to boost the mids some more and reduce some treble, but I would be perfectly fine without the EQ pedal.

I can’t really say if this would hang on gigs, as I haven’t played a gig in over 3 years and live in a rather rural area of Spain, but this setup is quite easy to travel with for when I have to move.

Here’s a video of me doing something that would get me disavowed, excommunicated, banned, blacklisted, and possibly assassinated if I ever were to come out of retirement and do this in a professional music scene. That is playing Cherokee with a chill R&B groove with A LOT of improvised block chord solos.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

The Microblock is very giggable where you’d use a Champ or similar small amp, eg solo in a small restaurant. I have 2 (both bought used as spares to carry in my gig bags) and tried one with a Toob Metro on a quintet gig (tenor, me, keys, bass, drums) as background music in a hotel lounge about 75 feet by 25 with a high (15+ feet) ceiling. We were all happy with the sound it got from my Tele and amazed that it did so well. Pushed to its clean limits, there’s a little hair on the tone that reminded me of a Jr Barnyard. It gets surprisingly loud with both gain and volume up, but it’s not clean enough anywhere near its absolute limit through a Metro for any flavor of jazz except fusion leads. A Champ sounds a lot sweeter and more responsive to picking for blues so it’s more usable at higher SPL, and its tone is a bit fuller than that of the Microblock.

Since then, I’ve used a Microblock + Metro on a few more dates with a both a solid body and an archtop. There’s very limited EQ (the Q knob), no reverb, and no headroom - so you can’t do much dialing in. It pumps 33 Watts into 8 Ohms with considerable OD distortion, so it’s functionally no more than a 5 Watt amp for straight ahead jazz through a Metro. Through a 10” Toob, it’s closer to a Princeton with no tone stack and even better through a high efficiency 12. A 4 Ohm speaker ups the ante a few dB.

[Gitterbug]

I had the Interblock before the SuperBlock. Giggable, yes, but found myself adjusting the mid-eq all the time. SBUS is so much more versatile and has a great reverb. Never even seen a Microblock in my neck of the woods. Envy those block chords!