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A real pro-level machine

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• Review

Although relatively new to the UK market, Fuchs Audio Technology is well known in the USA for its high quality amps and pedals, which sit at the top end of the boutique market. Based in New Jersey, company founder Andy Fuchs started out modifying and repairing amps and effects for music shops and customers back in the seventies.

Today Fuchs offers a wide range of products, although the one model that most folks associate with them is the flagship Overdrive Supreme. Based on the infamous Overdrive Special amps built by Howard 'Alexander' Dumble and used by artists renowned for their tone – such as Larry Carlton, Robben Ford and Carlos Santana – the Fuchs has been evolved to the point where it's no longer just another Dumble clone, although the similarities are quite obvious.

"Ford and Carlton fanatics take note: if you want thatsound, this amp nails it better than everything else we've heard – including, ironically, one real Dumble."

This 2 x 12 ODS combo comes in a very solid cabinet, with a rear cutout oval tuned port, echoing that found on original Dumbles. The joinery and vinyl work is exceptionally crisp, with perfect, evenly radiused edges. Around the back, you can see that Fuchs lines the interior with the same sort of acoustic wadding found in hi-fi speaker enclosures – this is to cut out unwanted internal reflections and it is the only guitar amp builder we know of that does this.

The Fuchs has just one handle to lift and carry it with; it's compact, but very heavy and really needs a pair of handles on the sides of the box. The logo is screen-printed onto the same kind of reflective film used for car licence plates and is somewhat oversized – meanwhile the front panel could benefit from this film as it's tightly recessed and in permanent shade, making the controls very difficult to read.

Electronics are contained inside a thick, precision-cut and folded gold-anodised aluminium chassis – the valve bases and transformers are all chassis-mounted, while the rest of the components are on very high quality PCBs. This differs from a Dumble, which is built up on hand-drilled eyelet boards with a lot more wiring, however, there's nothing wrong with using PCBs as long as they're properly designed and laid-out.

Fuchs also uses a DC supply for the preamp valve heaters, removing any possibility of high gain audio coupling to a hum source on the PCB. Only a handful of manufacturers offer this feature, which puts the ODS in very exclusive company. Not only this, but the entire DC supply is regulated to avoid problems from mains fluctuations.

Despite the PCBs, there's still a fair amount of hand-wiring and soldering inside the Fuchs – and while the wiring isn't as tidy as some amps we've seen, the soldering is excellent. The control layout closely follows the topology of an eighties Dumble ODS, but with reverb and just a single input jack.