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<< back to reviews Komet Constellation 30 a First impressions lasts... By Fred Heghammar. Komet Constellation 30 - The Tone Machine! In marsh 2003 I had the big pleasure to visit Hogy and Mike at Komet Amplification down in Louisiana. We drove an extra 200 Swedish miles forth and back to Dallas just to try the new Komet, the Constellation 30. This test drive was amazing to me! I have heard many amps through out the years but nothing compared to this one. It really rocked my boat! Just the thought about leaving this beauty in the shop was killing me, but unfortunately I had too since the cabinet weren't finished. So I went back to Sweden with an empty wallet and the sound of the Constellation 30 spinning around in my mind, oh man I can't wait any more… A couple of month later the eagerly awaited message from Komet arrived in my inbox, your amp is ready to be shipped! 
The arrivalFedex did a good job and delivered the amp 3 days before the given date and it where perfectly packed in a B.A.D flightcase. I unlocked the case and a strong wood smell hit my nose, man what a beautiful amp! The Constellation 30 looks a bit like an old German radio, wonder why…Holger Notzel :-) ! Its very cool looking with the characteristic Komet design meets vintage, but still fresh and up to date. You can have it either Black with Wood front or White with black front. The amp The Constellation 30 is an EL84 based 30-watt amp with two volumes an Hi-Cut control a bright switch and one input jack, why complicate things? The first volume is for the clean channel and the other is for more dirty tones, hmmm, two channels? Yes the constellation has two channels, but the whole idea is to mix the channels together to get a bigger more rich sound, and the feeling is like playing two amps at a time. To make it even more versatile Komet have made a footswitch to bypass the dirty channel if the player doesn't want to use the guitar volume control to clean up the sound. The sound 
Like its bigger sister the Komet 60, this baby really got that little extra!The Constellation 30 got everything that I like with and amp, a direct touch response, dynamics, shimmer, rich sustain, tight bass and good string separation. The "clean" channel got a nice Voxy kind of vintage sound and the "lead" channel got some of that magic Trainwreck vibes, both sounds REALLY good separate but mixing the channels makes a very special rich sound! The amp is unforgivable direct, with an incredible dynamic and touch responsive and the tones are really alive and 3 d like. The sound cleans up amazingly with no lost of shimmer or fatness when you turn down the volume on your guitar. From killer distortion to beautiful cleans with a twist on your guitar volume. So you don't have to feed this baby with pedals to get the mojo working, even though the amp is very pedal friendly. This amp is pretty loud for a 30watt amp, but you don't have to push it to get good lead tones, you find them easy on a decent volume with out have to compromise. And you can get harmonic feedback even on clean chords! We tested the amp with a Telecaster -67 and a Les Paul (both loaded with Fralin pickups) through a Marshall Basketweave cab from -68, loaded with G12H 30's (The Constellation 30 really like old Celestion speakers that's for sure). The Constellation 30 brings out the sound of your guitar, a Les Paul sounds like a Les Paul and a Tele as a Tele. It was easy to dial in classic tones, but still with out loosing the unique Komet character, I can't figure out what it is, but its very unique sounding. And the tone controls? I'm not missing any filter options at all, who needs them? With the bright switch and the Hi-Cut control you can dail in endless of good sounds, add to that your guitar controls and you got a "smorgas bord" of possibilities. It's very fun to play The Constellation 30 and it makes me want to play for hours! And for me that's the best compliments I can give to an amp. When you play it, it feels like you are one of the X-men guys with "energy laser beams" shooting out from your finger tips, you have to test it to believe it! Read more about the Constellation 30 at www.kometamps.com Best regards / Fred << back to reviews |