Wish Tone King Imperial Mark Knopfler Amp

stef borremans said:
Thanks! So I should get Victory sounds when tweaking the Cornford?
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i would think yes should be similar
most endorsers of Victory ie Kotzen
came from Cornford
funny enough Mark Cameron once said if he didnt make the CCV he would play the Cornford so the Camerons have some DNA of those in there too likely
 
dpeterson said:
People just want more choice, whether it's exactly like a fender is irrelevant to the way people (guitarist's) think. "If i had that kalughn and steel string singer my gear searching days would be over." If you think of it like why would someone buy the Toneking imperal doohickie over a Fender deluxe? why not just get the Deluxe? because it's not the Toneking imperial doohickie. It's an ongoing thing that will never end.

I think once the "Cliff has a better way in patent gulag" is over and implemented, maybe that will spell an end to all the requests for all these obscure amps. Someone somewhere can "capture" it.
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The problem is that amp is not a clone of a Fender, just like a Friedman isn't a clone of a Marshall. How many recto style, modded marshalls, EVH amp models are in the Axe? and that doesn't seem to bother anybody (me neither and I don't use that style of amplifiers), but seems than wishing for a cleaner style amps is a sin "why do you want another Fender copy?" just like even all fender were the same... You could even ask this question to Mark Knopfler, one of the most known (if not the most) players using a Tone King Imperial.
 
The Imperial is definitely not the same as any other fender circuit. I'm kind of surprised by the general equivalency responses. Tone King actually have some pretty neat innovations and they're made by the same Boutique Amp or whatever factory as Friedman, Soldano and Morgan.
Just the build quality alone is enough to know it's nothing like a Fender as a Friedman is really not a Marshall as Morgan is not a Vox.
 
I found some schematics but I can't verify accuracy of course. At a glance there's some different values in the tonestack and PI. It's also cathode biased.
 

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johnnypig said:
The Imperial is definitely not the same as any other fender circuit. I'm kind of surprised by the general equivalency responses. Tone King actually have some pretty neat innovations and they're made by the same Boutique Amp or whatever factory as Friedman, Soldano and Morgan.
Just the build quality alone is enough to know it's nothing like a Fender as a Friedman is really not a Marshall as Morgan is not a Vox.
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I have an Imperial Mk II sitting beside me that's my #1 tube amp, and it doesn't sound like any Fender I've ever heard. There's a depth to its clean channel that makes my strats sound glorious. The lead channel with the gain on 10 and tone and mid-bite at 5 goes from cleans to snarling with a tweed type of sound bordering on early Marshall, and increasing the mid-bite just makes it more and more Marshall-ish, which isn't bad for a 1x12" 22-ish watt combo.

And its Ironman attenuator... that was as much a part of my purchase decision as the sound of the amp. I run it at -3db almost all the time, which is equivalent to an 11 watt amp, and is plenty loud to keep up with most bands, and if it isn't it's one more click to 0db and that's as loud as I'll ever want to be.

My amp tech loves the amp, and says he recommends ToneKing to anyone who asks what boutique amp they should buy because of Bartel's design and workmanship. I had a Sky King that he retubed for me using all NOS tubes, and that is a hell of an amp with a unique wiring style that creates gorgeous cleans and a roaring distortion.

Yes, I'd enjoy seeing both of them in the Axe-FX and the FM3.

I'd really like to see Bartel's new "Bartel" amp line inside the modelers too... heck I'd like to have one of his new amps, but I'm trying to reduce the flock... hmm... maybe if I sell my Imperial and Lonestar Special, then I wouldn't feel guilty about buying his new Starwood amp. :)

http://bartelamps.com
 
Some stuck up wise ass will probably comment which amp the tone king is based on and tell you to experiment with that ... Not helpfull at all. But I second your question and would like to add the victory amps (duchess) to that list! Cheers man!
 
stef borremans said:
Some stuck up wise ass will probably comment which amp the tone king is based on and tell you to experiment with that ... Not helpfull at all. But I second your question and would like to add the victory amps (duchess) to that list! Cheers man!
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Um... wouldn’t a request for a Victory amp be in a different thread? This is for the Toneking Imperial.
 
dpeterson said:
People just want more choice, whether it's exactly like a fender is irrelevant to the way people (guitarist's) think. "If i had that kalughn and steel string singer my gear searching days would be over." If you think of it like why would someone buy the Toneking imperal doohickie over a Fender deluxe? why not just get the Deluxe? because it's not the Toneking imperial doohickie. It's an ongoing thing that will never end.
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There's plenty of reasons to own the real amp that don't apply in the modeling world: the attenuator, the tweed meets blackface channel setup, the build quality, the bias tremolo and the speaker. All of those are things not offered by Fender in one amp.

The Tone King Imperial is one of the best clean amps I've ever tried but at the same time it is very firmly Fender based so I have no doubts you can get those tones already out of the Axe-Fx. People simply don't want to take the time to understand the hundreds of models already at their disposal. They want a one stop shop to the tone of that amp and while I understand that line of thinking, it will still lead to adding models that sound very much like something else "just so you have it." If people treated the amp models more like sound presets they'd probably care less about adding more amps.

The thing you would want to include is the speaker because that custom Eminence is surely a big part of the tone of the amp so getting an IR of that cab would be a good addition.
 
+1

laxu said:
If people treated the amp models more like sound presets they'd probably care less about adding more amps.
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True, but I agree with @dpeterson: one of the main selling points of the Axe is having various amps (e.g. your fav) at your fingertips.

However (and this is a can of worms and might not be technically feasible), if Cliff could enable some kind of independent choice of preamp and power amp, that could go far in mix-and-matching to get closer to other models (and non-existing ones). These could be saved off in block library and also exported/shared.
 
laxu said:
There's plenty of reasons to own the real amp that don't apply in the modeling world: the attenuator, the tweed meets blackface channel setup, the build quality, the bias tremolo and the speaker. All of those are things not offered by Fender in one amp.
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Agreed. I have one sitting beside me exactly because of those things, plus the speaker as you said, and yes, an IR would be good. I sent a note to Cliff offering the use of mine if he wanted to model it or do an IR but he never responded.

laxu said:
The Tone King Imperial is one of the best clean amps I've ever tried but at the same time it is very firmly Fender based so I have no doubts you can get those tones already out of the Axe-Fx. ...
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Yes. I think the FM3 or AF3 are plenty flexible to do it well, it just involves thinking outside the box.

laxu said:
The thing you would want to include is the speaker because that custom Eminence is surely a big part of the tone of the amp so getting an IR of that cab would be a good addition.
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Bartel's new line of amps (post- ToneKing) would be great to have models and IRs for. They're very unique and the cabinets resonate like a cello, deliberately contributing to the sound. They're not typical preamp architecture according to Mark and the controls are very interactive. Given the times, and the flexibility of Cygnus I'm not sure I can justify one of the new models, but I'd enjoy playing through one.
 
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