He spoke to me on the phone answering countless of my newbie questions without being bit irritated.not the case with some of other builders I dealt with. He responded to all my e-mail within 48 hours and majority of the times within 12 hours or less. I bought mutiple hand made guitars in the past and spoke to countless amp and guitar builders and I can trully say that Mark cares and goes the extra mile. Mark Bartel is THE best builder I have ever dealt with. I honestly felt that with a single Overdrive, I can cover all range of tones from Country, Jazz, Metal(yes metal). I honestly don't know if I need anything else since I like this pedal so much with this amp.I'm still a gear nerd so I'll still probably try the Barber but man this amp sang with this pedal. The amp became and half stack monster with this pedal. I would like to try Barber DD but since this is the only one I have at the moment I thught I'd test it to see how Metro might take it. I can't comment on Lead as I didn't spend enough time. The amp sounds same to my ear at low volume. Perhaps I didn't experiment enough but reverb was nothing special for the few minutes I had chance to play it. Is was very welcoming and the amp was sayiing "play me". I can see my self spending hours on this channel using clean setting. I honestly really enjoyed playing this channel clean.with Mid bite knob and tone knob in the middle, the clean was slighly hairy(just enough), thick, mid was very creamy and airy(scooped out is probably what I'm trying to say here). After all this is tweed channel and again, it delivers. I really ejoyed the gain on this amp but it's not in Marshall territory.perhaps near there but not quite there. With mid bit turned fully up, with destortion on this amp was very punchy.kind of remind me of using a Timmy pedal on a DRRI. The clean with mild gain was thick and airy( I like airy). This channel acutally sounded more like the Swart AST I had. Memota, you will see what i'm talking about now that your amp is on the way. Unlike anything else I've tried in the past.those of you who have this amp knows what I'm talking about. The bass knob on Metro Rhythm channel is extremley sensitive with huge range. I had 4 Reverend amps so I have bit of experience with them.
Kind of scary to think what else I can get out of this amp once I get to spend more time with it.Ĭompared to Reverend, with full respect to their line, Metro just killed in every aspect. I can tweak the Metro so that clean can go thick to thin, warm to sharp, scooped mids to solid.there were so many variance of clean tone I was able to get it out this amp with such a short time I had. The tweakability of Metro was far beyond Swart AST I had. However unlike AST the clean on Metro is more creamy and chimy that will easily cut through the mix. I knew this was what I was getting into and it delieverd the cleans in spade.Ĭompare to Swart AST, the AST seems to be bit thicker and 3D. What I'm saying is that it's probably the cleanest clean amp I have ever heard or tried. I would have to A/B them side to side to hear the difference. Again, very much like Deluxe Reverb I've tried in the past. Rhythm- Very Fender Black Face.I honestly would have difficult time picking which is which blind folded if not A/Bing right next to each other. Channel switching (comes with nice pedal to switch channel and hosa cable) 1x12" Tone King custom speaker made by Eminence I only have Les Paul Vintage mahogany right now so that was the guitar I used. I feel bit reluctant to write a detailed review as I only had less than an hour of play time and altought knobs and layout of this amp is simple, there seesm to be many ways I can tweak it. Yesterday I finally recieved my TK Metropolitan and finally had some time to take pix and play a little to write a small review.