TESTED BY ART THOMPSON

Guitar Player Editors’ Pick

THE NAME SUPER Bee recalls a famous Mopar muscle car from the late ’60s, but in this case we’re talking about a potent new boutique amplifier from Steve Carr that’s designed to shift through different flavors of blackface Fender tone. The key to the highway here is the Sting rotary switch, which has three positions: 64 (based on Carr’s own ’64 Deluxe Reverb), 68 (classic medium-gain Super Reverb), and 72 (a blackface-style circuit modded to deliver extra drive and distortion). Tone shaping is provided by treble, mid and bass controls, and the amp is equipped with a variable power feature to accommodate practically any performance situation.

GREG VOROBIOV

This reverb-equipped 1x12 hot rod may be focused on specific Fender sounds, but it departs from the Fullerton platform by featuring a pair of 6BM8 power tubes, which Carr describes as a cross between a 6L6 and a 6V6. But unlike those octal bottles, the 6BM8 is a nine-pin tube that combines a high-gain preamp triode and a power pentode in one package. Running in cathode bias and fueled by an EZ81 rectifier, the pair gives the Super Bee 10 watts when the attenuator switch is set to the up position (attenuator bypassed), and two watts in the down position, where is can be throttled down to a whisper via the attenuator knob.