Balthazar Film Noir 50 Head Black/Silver Crocodile

Balthazar Audio Systems is proud to announce the release of our first guitar amplifier, the FILM NOIR 50, a hand wired point-to-point 50W amp built in Chicago!

The Film Noir 50 has 2 channels, each loosely inspired by amplifiers that defined the sounds of classic 1960’s beat, British blues, psychedelic, and instrumental music, but thoroughly useable with more contemporary styles! This is a 50 watt amplifier with 2 EL-34 power tubes, 4 12AX7 preamp tubes, and a GZ-34 rectifier.

The Normal channel derives from the first Selmer “Treble ’n’ Bass 50” heads, produced from 1962-1964. This channel delivers low and medium gain sounds with unusual sparkle and harmonic complexity, pushing into moderate crunch when cranked. The Tele and Jaguar sound files below illustrate this pretty well, showcasing some older country picking as well as modern shoegaze with only a reverb pedal added to the chain.

The Brilliant channel is a modified take on the Vox Top-Boost preamp found in the AC30-AC100 amplifiers of the mid 1960’s, but with added gain and thickness, courtesy of a parallel triode gain stage, as well as numerous little tweaks to the tone stack and filtering to give it a bit of a beefier sound at higher gain settings. This channel can go from chimey medium gain sounds all the way to distorted overdrive, and even thick lead tones with higher output pickups. The Les Paul clips below highlight the channel cranked all the way to demonstrate.

But perhaps the most striking difference in the design of this amp is the unique power supply design that allows for even more “bloom” and compression than is normally found in tube-rectified amp! Players have described the experience of playing it almost like standing in front of a full volume recording of an old British amp, because the overall soft-saturation and compression created by the power supply gives the impression of a slightly tape-enhanced sound overall, regardless of which channel you use. Without getting too technical about it (happy to supply nerdy details on request!), this has the effect of giving the amp a truly useable range of tones and drive levels using only the volume control on the guitar, allowing the amp to cover a big range of sounds from just a single channel, all of them very hearable in a dense full-band context. Future videos will cover this more in depth.

The amp is further enhanced by the addition of a master volume, and master “cut” tone control, to allow you to shape the final sound further, as well as scale down if needed for smaller venue sizes. It’s also able to run on both US and foreign voltages, thanks to a switch accessible by removing the rear panel.

We’re offering the first batch of amps at a discounted price of $1999, and offer a 2-year warranty on all parts except the tubes, which are warranted for 90 days.