Carr Telstar Black

The Telstar offers incredible versatility - and of course, tone - for both home and gigging players.

Steve Carr and crew have done it again - the Telstar combo we just received has absolutely floored us. Small footprint, killer tones, gorgeous looks...sounds an awful lot like all Carr amps, no? What sets this little beauty apart is how its circuit "blends the sinewy harmonic assertion of EL84s with the deep, full control of 6L6s in a new and unique push-pull recipe." Not cool enough for you? How about the ability to use any local power tube with the EL84 without re-biasing the amp? (!!) Amazing.

What does this mean in plain terms? Put simply, you have the best of both worlds - the chime and gain of a EL84 and the girth and depth of a 6L6. Rated at 17 watts, we found the Telstar to have the perfect amount of volume for both home playing (thanks to a variable attenuator) and small club gigs. It can get loud, but never unreasonably so.

The Lean/Lush switch tailors the body of the tone, while the 53/58 switch changes the overall gain structure - and - the frequencies the tone control emphasizes. It sounds fantastic with humbuckers, single-coils, or P90s and there's a huge range of both clean and overdriven tones. We should also mention that the reverb circuit sounds incredible - deep, lush, capable of getting washy, but it always sits perfectly with the core tone and never overpowers it.