The
New THD Flexi-50™ Amplifier
This amplifier has a fat, clear, full clean sound reminiscent
of late 1950s to early 1960s American combos, and overdrive to rival the
best British heads. Even at the highest overdrive settings, the amp still
demonstrates dramatic touch sensitivity, cleaning up very well when the
volume on the guitar is reduced. Additional features include external bias
test points and individual bias controls, permitting the user to quickly
and accurately set the output tube bias with any digital voltmeter. The
dual bias controls permit the user to correctly bias even mismatched tubes,
eliminating the need for matched power tubes.
What does all of this mean for you, the player? •
It could very well mean that the search for your sound is finally over.
While the UniValve and BiValve-30 amplifiers offer the same flexibility
and choice of tubes, they do so in a Class-A circuit. While Class-A amplifiers
do have a strong following due to their smooth, even character, there are
many players who need, or even crave the immediacy, clarity and "punch"
of a grid-biased Class-AB amplifier. The 40 year long love affair that
guitarists have had with the now almost cliché 50 watt rock and
roll amplifier head is proof of this.
In the Flexi-50, THD has brought together an ideal combination of simplicity
and flexibility, hence the name "Flexi-50". Why strive for simplicity?
Robust design and construction are among the reasons. Ease of use is another
prime reason. We hear every day from guitarists who have purchased 3- and
4-channel guitar amplifiers, only to discover that, aside from varying
gain levels, the channels all sound and, equally importantly, feel more
or less the same, dashing their dreams of flexibility to pieces. Another
byproduct of an overly complex amplifier is that it can take a very long
time to uncover a sound that really works for you.
How is the Flexi-50 different? • First off, it is
a single-channel amplifier, but one that can be switched and blended among
a number of different sounding and different feeling voices. The changes
can come from a number of methods including foot-switching a preset boost
level with its own, dedicated tone control that allows you to make your
boosted sound darker than the clean sound, brighter, or anywhere in between.
The unique combination of our touch-sensitive input circuit and the wonderfully
active and reactive tone control section (that THD slaved over for a year
to perfect) make for a front-end that really responds to subtle and not-so-subtle
changes in the signal being fed into the amplifier either by the guitar
or any effect that may be between the guitar and the amplifier. Back off
on the volume control and the amp gets much cleaner without losing the
fatness of the full-volume sound.
How does the Flexi-50 do this? • You buy the sushi
and well get as technical as you want, but what really matters is that
it works, not so much how it works.
Switch from an over-wound bridge pickup to a clearer, lower output neck
pickup and suddenly the amplifier responds very differently. The input
is quite sensitive to the individual impedance curves and inductance characteristics
of your pickups, so you will not experience the all-too-common situation
where every guitar you own sounds the same through your amplifier. PAFs
sound like PAFs. Strats sound like Strats. Filtertrons sound like Filtertrons.
Lipstick pickups sound like, well, like nothing else on the planet. Into
exotic handmade guitars and pickups? Wouldn't it be nice to have an amplifier
that lets you hear the difference between 9000 turns and 9200 turns of
wire in a pickup? Come plug in and see (and hear) for yourself.
You say that you like to use pedals? • There
are many talented pedal makers coming out of the woodwork from all corners
of the world. The THD Flexi-50 has no trouble helping you hear the difference
between a NOS military-grade germanium transistor and a modern "equivalent".
You decide if they are equivalent or not, and with the Flexi-50, you will
have the tool to do so. Does it like pedals? It LOVES them.
More about the overdrive capability of the Flexi- 50 •
With its modified-design, custom-tuned post-phase-inverter master volume
circuit, the Flexi-50 can give you a luscious palette of overdrive sounds
before you even get the output stage working, and these sounds are all
highly touch-sensitive as well.
Switching tubes is easier than ever before. With the built-in bias adjustments,
you can easily and accurately set the bias in about 20 seconds, even with
two completely different tubes.
Other THD Flexi-50 features
include a line-level effects loop and a 50-watt/20-watt switch right on
the front panel, letting you drop the plate voltage on the power tubes
from 475 to 325, giving not only lower output, but also smoother, more
even response and even longer tube life. The THD Flexi 50 has a series/parallel
switched impedance selector that can take any cabinet from 2 ohms to 16
ohms impedance, and always uses 100% of the transformer windings all of
the time, another THD innovation. This assures you a full, even output
sound, regardless of the impedance setting. The power and output transformers
are fully shielded to assure that hum and noise are kept to an absolute
minimum, and that pickup-feedback from transformer coupling is all but
eliminated.
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