Egnater MOD50 amplifier walkthrough

Although Egnater Amps has become well-known lately because of their Tweakers, Rebels, Renegades, and Tourmaster amplifiers, they started years ago as a provider of high end boutique amp makers. If you’re familiar with the Randall amps that allow you to trade out preamp modules, then you’re familiar with Bruce’s work. He designed all of the modular Randall amps and was building US-made versions in his own private shop in Berkley, Michigan. Those amps were his MOD50, MOD100, and M4 preamp.

This is an internal shot of one of Egnater's modules

The whole idea behind a modular amp is that you have a power section of a tube amp that is standard or fixed but you’re able to swap in and out different preamp voicings. For instance, you could load your amp with a Bassman sound and a hot-rodded Marshall Plexi amp sound and be able to switch back and forth effortlessly from those two sounds in one amp. It’s like the perfect mash-up of your favorite amps. Egnater offered 10 different modules, ranging from Fender Twin cleans all the way up to Modern High Gain Diezel amp sounds and all points in between. 5 years ago, Egnater hired me to spend some time with the modules and then write the descriptions for their main website. Having spent all that time with the different modules, I really fell in love with the BMAN and the SL2 modules since the two amps were originally built from similar circuits (Marshalls were originally launched as an alternative to the expensive import expense associated with bringing Fender Bassman amps over to Europe). I felt that a MOD50 with the A/B channels of the BMAN and the A/B channels of the SL2 would give you 4 channels ranging from fat clean to screamin’ mean. You can hear the Egnater MOD50 all over my own CD project here.

Bruce has since discontinued the modular line and I had a friend ask me to do a walkthrough of my MOD50. The video is below.

ton appetit,
The Tone Chef