Kingsley Keep and Kingsley Bailey

Introducing - the Kingsley Keep.....Now Shipping - current wait time one week!

Anouncing a new Kingsley amplifier - simple to operate and portable, but with maximum tone!

The Kingsley Keep is available as a 15W or 30W tube head built into a small chassis and covered by a steel cage. It is designed to provide fat and warm clean sounds that seamlessly meld into rich harmonic overdrive. It features minimal controls - volume, tone and master, a 3-way output power switch (full, half and quarter power), bright switch and 3-way mode switch (changes the response of the tone knob)..

There are two main ideas behind this amplifier:

1 - to make an amplifier that suits players who are not looking to tweak a lot of knobs and switches and who enjoy controling their sound from their guitars.

2 - to make an amp that is suited to great clean tones as well as great overdrive inspite of its simplicity. Some amplifiers are great for fat clean tones but tend to get mushy and lack definition when overdriven. Others produce great overdrive when you turn them up but have a thin clean tone. This amplifier sounds rich and fat when set clean, but articulate and defined when overdriven. It also has a surprising amount of gain on tap for great rock tones.

The Keep has two inputs. Input 1 is the lower gain of the two, and is suited to full bodied and warm clean tones at lower volumes, up to medium levels of touch sensitive overdrive as the volume is raised. Input 2 starts off as a really nice clean tone also, but seamlessly turns into a rich overdive at medium volume levels and then into a high gain rock tone at higher volume control levels. The master volume allows all of this at any volume. For additional output control the 3-way output switch varies the power from full to half down to quarter power.

The Tone control rolls of highs in the power amp, but features a 3-way voice switch for altering its response from standard to thick to smooth.

A 3-way bright switch (labeled "mode" in the picture above - all new Keep amps say "Bright" instead) allows additional tonal control.

The power amplifier uses two EL84s (four EL84s for the 30W model) in cathode bias operation with a 12ax7 phase splitter, while the pre-amplifier uses two 12ax7s. Power supply rectification is provided by a 5AR4 tube rectifier. The circuit is hand-built in the same way and with high quality components just like the rest of the Kingsley line.

The amplifier is also available with an optional footswitch that controls the output of the amplifier. It features a poentiometer that varies the output of the amplifier from quarter to full power. There are many great amplifiers that overdrive nicely as the volume is turned up and that clean up nicely as the guitar volume pot is turned down. However, the clean tone is always going to be at least somewhat quieter than the overdrive sound. This optional footswitch plugs in to the back of the amplifier and gives the user a way of controlling the output level for clean or overdrive. When activated this functions like a footswitchable volume cut. Use this variable wattage control to cut the volume of the overdrive to a suitable volume. Now roll back your guitar volume control to clean up the sound and step on the footswitch to bring the output of the amplifier back to maximum. In this way you can set the levels of the clean and overdrive sounds to be different or the same.

Dimensions: 16" wide x 7.5" tall x 8" deep.
Weight: Keep 15: 22 lbs, Keep 30: 25 lbs

Here are a few preliminary clips of the 15W model. The speaker is a Celestion G12H.

strat blues 1 -

strat blues 1 w/reverb added

strat clean tone (w/reverb added)

strat jazzier clean tone

Les Paul Deluxe medium OD (w/reverb added)

Les Paul Deluxe fluid, sustaining lead

More clips coming.....

The introductory price for the 15W model is $999 US and $1300 for the 30W model.

The optional footswitch costs $100 US