SOLD CHICAGO BLUES BOX ROADHOUSE 50

Illinois-based Butler Custom Sound recently introduced its Chicago Blues Box amp series with the blues player very much in mind.

Company president Dan Butler has repaired and modified countless tube amplifiers for many years, for many great players. From this experience, he has come to understand that most players would just as soon forget the bells and whistles and settle for nothing less than a reliable amplifier with enough raw guts to cut through a band mix and enough pure tone to ignite artistic inspiration.

Butler offers two amp models – the Halsted (18-watt 1×12″ combo) and the Roadhouse (50-watt 4×10″, also available as a 2×12″). We recently put to the test the bigger Roadhouse.

Physically and in terms of features, it measures up to its Fender Super/Bassman-inspired brethren, with its four 10″ speakers, two power tubes, reverb, tremolo, etc. But beyond that, it shares few aesthetic qualities with any other amp; purple tolex, matte silver faceplate and grillecloth, and Q-parts knobs with purple mother-of-pearl inlays all add a hot rod element to its streamlined two-tone appearance – just enough flash to make you anxious to give it a test “drive.” And when you dig a little deeper, it shows a personality and flavor all its own.

The Roadhouse uses five 12AX7 tubes (three in the preamp, one for the reverb and one for the tremolo), and a choice of tube configurations using 5881s, 6L6s, KT66s (which ours had), or EL34s, and the 5AR4 rectifier. The solid pine, fingerjointed open-back cabinet is loaded with four Jensen C10Q speakers in parallel/series configuration.

Front-mounted controls include a High/Low treble boost switch, passive Treble/Middle/Bass tone controls, Tremolo Speed and Intensity, a Reverb Level, and the Power and Standby switches. Parked on the back panel are a Harmonic Boost switch (essentially a power amp governor) and the footswitch and speaker jacks.