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Can some one explain the histories and tonal differences of the companies listed below..

Matchless

trainwreck

tophat

Following material culled from various internet sources. Feel free to add/update.

VOX started this off with the Classic British chime wwith world renowned reliability problems.

Matchless was founded in 1989 by Mark Sampson and Rick Perrotta, with the idea of making the greatest sounding and most reliable (or least prone to malfunction) guitar amplifier possible. Steve Goodale joined them as the third co-founder in 1991, bringing financing for the company. Borrowing heavily from and perfecting designs of early Vox (a famous British amplifier company) amplifiers, the first Matchless amplifier model - the acclaimed DC-30 (the name bearing tribute to the legendary Vox model AC30), was the first model that saw regular production.
Sounds like a VOX AC-30 on steroids.

Mark Sampson Moved to Bad Cat...where he started applying some of the ideas to improve the noise level, and acquire better harmonic content and to eliminate power supply harmonics.

Bad Cat Black Cat
This is a 4 EL-84 powered, dual channel amp. One triode channel, and One pentode channel. These amps were the first ones that Bad Cat produced. Very similar to the DC-30

TRAINWRECK was started in 1981 as amplifier repair and modification service in Colonia, New Jersey.

At that point I decided to come up with a blueprint of the goals for what an ultimate amp would be to suit my personal tastes. There were so many styles of amps already out there, I wanted to try to break through the limits of those designs. I knew that one channel was the way I’d go. When you had the typical two or three channel amp of the sixties, I found that the mixing circuits caused a compromise in the sound, response, and general feel of the amp. Also I noticed many amps were slow to respond to pick attack and lacked a proper response to changes in touch. I also found that master volume circuits did not give the response of power tubes. Master volumes are fine for some. There are styles of music that require them.

The Trainwreck Express is reputedly one of the best sounding clean amps and jazz players love them.

I have heard there is not much (dozen parts) to change in a Lightning to get a 15 watt Trainwreck style amp which means they are also close to the triode single channel DC-30 but super clean & apparently, loud.

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Stephen
Web: www.trinityamps.com. Facebook: facebook.com/trinityamps. Twitter: @trinityamps

I like the sound of the badcat amps but not enough gain or low end grunt... is the express chimey like an AC30 or more creamy like a BF amp???

Bill