Look at the valve amps behind Joe Bonamassa on any given night and you’ll most likely see a mixture of vintage Marshalls and Fenders as well as highly collectible Dumbles.
You might even find a Van Weelden or something made by Fuchs, like the signature JB-ODS he launched with them last year. And, going back even further, he’s been seen on stage with boutique models made by contemporary visionaries such as Suhr, Friedman, Budda and Bogner.
In any case, these are typically hand-wired crème de la crème specimens that live up to the sonic vision he has in mind. Given the overall value of the rig he chooses to tour with, you could say Joe Bo is not one to settle for second best.
What you don’t expect to see next to one of the world’s most deeply admired blues musicians and prolific collectors is anything remotely digital, aside from the trusty Boss DD-3 digital delay pedal that’s been with him since forever.
But that’s precisely what happened back in April, when he shared a photo of his signature Fender 59' High Powered Twin – made for him in black instead of the factory tweed, with three premium 12AX7 preamp valves and a matched quartet of 6L6 output tubes – next to a fully digital Fender Tone Master Twin.
The new Tone Master line of amps was launched back in 2019 to faithfully model the circuitry and power output of the world-famous originals, to the point where they are, according to Fender, “virtually indistinguishable”.
Speaking exclusively to MusicRadar, Bonamassa – someone who has been openly critical about the flaws in modelling technology as a dyed-in-the-wool tonal traditionalist – is finally holding his hands up and admitting defeat.
“I’ve got to be honest with you and admit when I’m wrong,” he explains, a few weeks after two sold-out nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall. “I still have my other tube amps behind me. It’s just that the high-powered Twin is now a Tone Master.”
My production manager, my sound tech, even my other guitar player Josh Smith – they were all telling me it sounds better and feels right
He continues: “When I first plugged into it, I realised this shit’s good. I wanted to dislike it, I really wanted to dislike it! But I couldn’t.
“My production manager, my sound tech, even my other guitar player Josh Smith – they were all telling me it sounds better and feels right. And I was like, ‘I know!’”
It does make you wonder – what is it about the Tone Master that managed to convince the old school purist that this kind of equipment could indeed find a place in his rig?
It all comes down to the air being moved. Even if the amps are running digital technology, make no mistake: their physical presence in the room is very much real.
“I think the trick at this point is to be physically pushing out sound,” he shrugs. “You have to be moving air. By having the right speakers, the Tone Master works. It’s not like I’m plugging into a direct box, which I could, but I don’t think that would sound good.”
And in order to find the sound he’s happy with, that air being pushed from the speaker cones is almost as important as the air going into his chest.
He reasons: “That’s where a lot of this digital modelling stuff can start sounding a little generic. With a lot of the things out there, you’re not moving air and the dynamic range is limited. For me, moving air is essential, just like playing loud.”
