Dr Z Mazerati V2 - The Double-Powered Carmen Ghia!

Описание: As you'll all know, I'm a huge fan of Dr Z amps - and there's one model from Mike's line up that has always intrigued me: the Carmen Ghia. The first amp that the good Doc ever made, it started life as a reverb unit that was then adapted to become an 18W guitar amp. And in all the demos of it I've heard, it sounds beautiful.

But personally, I've always found amps under about 30W to record beautifully, but in terms of a playing experience, I've always been left wanting for a bit of extra punch and level. So I've never sought out a Carmen Ghia for that reason alone.

But there's an amplifier from the Dr Z history books that - on paper at least - would have solved that problem for me. On Joe Walsh's request, Mike doubled the power of the Ghia up to about 36W and called it the Mazerati. There were two original versions of this amp - the V1 and V2 (the latter having an output transformer upgrade for a bigger sound). There was also the Mazerati GT, but that was a very different thing. So when a used V2 Mazerati came up for sale recently, I leapt on it.

It's not hugely gainy, but it really packs a punch - it puts me in mind of old Hiwatt amps, with some Vox & Marshall mixed in too. It also only has a single tone control...a brave choice, but when an amplifier circuit is this refined and dialled in, it's literally all that it needs. My amp had a different speaker in when I bought it, but I've popped a Vintage 30 in today as that's what the 1x12 combo would have come with when it was new.

Weirdly, there's barely no demos of the original Mazerati anywhere online...so, let's put that right! Today, I'll be throwing a variety of different guitars and pedals at it; but primarily, just cranking the amp up punishingly loud in the room to see what it's got to give.

What do you think? Huge amp tones? Or not for you? Comment below!

Guitars:
Ron Kirn Barnbuster w/ Don Mare Hot Bakelites
Gibson SG Standard w/ OX4 Low Wind A4 PAFs
Gibson ES-330 '61 VOS Reissue
Fender Partscaster Strat w/ Mark Foley 60's Pre-CBS
Fidelity Stellarosa Jr w/ Mojo Gold Foil & Jaguar Pickups
Gibson Les Paul Custom w/ McNelly Stagger Swagger V2s
Gronlund R16 Redeemer Jr w/ TV Jones Ful-Fidelity Ray Butts Filter'Tron
Gibson Les Paul Standard w/ ThroBak SLE-101s
Heritage H535 w/ ThroBak PG102 LTDs

Amp recorded with Aston Spirit Condenser, '70s Sennheiser MD441 and sE RNR1 ribbon mics, with a Schoeps CMC6 room mic.

0:00 Intro Playing
0:52 Intro
4:36 Playing
10:53 Outro


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