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One of the biggest clean sounds out there.

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• Review

While Fender's smaller Tweed amplifiers from the fifties - the Junior, Champ and Deluxe - have become some of the most highly prized collectables today, it's worth remembering that the Tweed era was also the genesis for, arguably, the most widely-used Fender amp of all time: the Twin.

For a while in the mid-to-late seventies - pre-digital effects and amp modelling of course - practically every recording studio and stage hire company in the world owned at least one Fender Twin Reverb combo, although when the Tweed Twin made its debut in the fifties, it lacked the now standard reverb.

If you ever wondered what one of these early amps would have sounded like with Laurens Hammond's other great invention, Lazy J may well have the answer in its new Model 80.

"Unlike many amps in this genre, the Lazy J 80 is biased toward producing big clean sounds at pro gig levels."

At first glance, the 80 appears to be a nicely-made replica of a fifties Twin Amp, with a handmade finger-jointed pine cabinet covered in thick, lacquered tweed. The chassis is chromed steel with white lettering and controls that go up to 12, in traditional Tweed style.

The electronics are quite close to the original 5F8 schematic, with all the small components mounted on an eyelet board - the traditional American way to build a guitar amplifier. The choice and positioning of components isn't accidental.

"Although my amps are inspired by old Tweed Fenders, I often make component changes, depending on the tone and response I'm going for," explains Jesse Hoff, the man behind Lazy J.

"These can be as small as changing a resistor type or as big as a new output transformer. For this particular project, we wanted to create an amp that was very loud and clean, but also fat and warm - two characteristics that don't always sit well together. The critical thing here was getting a good balance between preamp and power amp gain. It's about creating warmth and harmonics, without sacrificing the responsiveness".

The Model 80's standard of construction is very high indeed, with impeccable soldering and wiring, mostly using vintage Belden-style cloth-covered hook-up cable. The controls follow standard Tweed format, with two non-switching channels called bright and normal, each with a pair of inputs and separate volume controls, which can be jumpered together with a short patch lead.

Shared tone controls consist of bass, mid, treble and presence - and it's a true presence control, operating in the amp's negative feedback loop, unlike on some amps where the presence control is simply a high treble EQ centred around the 4kHz region. Incidentally, the original 1954 Twin was the first Fender amp to feature this control.

One extra chicken head knob next to the fuse carrier handles the 80's power fade function, which gradually adds or removes one pair of 6L6 power valves, varying the output from 40 to 80 watts.