Club Royale Combo

This month's product review is the Top Hat Club Royale 1x12 combo amplifier. From the quality club of Top Hat amps, comes the Club Royale. A single 12", 20 watt combo from a company whose name alone has penetrated the boutique amp pool with a big splash the past couple years. Believe me if you haven't had a chance to check out a Top Hat, I encourage you to do so immediately if not sooner. So as usual I grab three of my favorite guitars, six of my favorite beers and we drag the Club Royale to the vault for its punishing review.

FIRST LOOK:
Way cool retro looking combo. Classy burgundy colored tolex with a silver weaved grill cloth. Recessed black top mount control panel with white chicken head knobs. The control panel consists of six knobs including volume, bass, mid, treble, cut and master. A three way mini toggle boost switch (fat, bright, off) 2 1/4" inputs, standard full size toggles for power on and stand by and a green pilot light for power. Heavy duty black leather handle, complimented well with black corner covers. The Royale sports a single custom designed 12" speaker and is powered by 2 EL84 power tubes and 3 12 AX7 pre amp tubes producing 20 watts of class "A" power. The tube chassis also includes a three way ground lift switch and soft/normal rectifier switch. Classy with a hint of vintage vibe looks wise, but the real test is in the tone, so lets...

FIRE IT UP:
First of all this is where it gets serious, so drop your linen and start your grinnin'. My selections of guitars include an 80's stock Fender Strat with noiseless pickups, a PRS Custom 22 and an 80's Les Paul Classic flametop equipped with '57 reissue pickups. After letting the tubes warm up properly my first guitar used is the Fender Strat. I initially set up the Club Royale primarily to produce a flat response, bass, treble and mid controls at noon and also with volume, cut and master the same. I set the three way top boost switch to the normal middle setting. I like to start at this point knowing inevitable changes will be made. If an amp can sound "in the ballpark" with a flat setting, it's highly probable by tweaking it, it can sound "Really" good. Hitting the standby switch and strumming on open A, oh yea! This bad boy can be tweaked.. So my first move is to boost the bass to about seven, reduce mid to about four, and increase the treble to about seven and a half. By playing with the "cut" control which basically is an additional control for rolling off the highs, I end up with this control at four. Dude I'm tellin' ya, this tone is the shit! Pardon my expression. But at this setting, the tone is clean, full and has a great sparkly, chimey high end to it.

One of the first things that I notice is how incredibly responsive the EQ section of this amp is. Very responsive, and small adjustments produce huge changes. As I mentioned earlier this amp is equipped with a three way "top boost" switch to compliment further the arsenal of tone settings. Thus far I have been using the "normal" or basically bypassed setting. By utilizing the "bright" setting obviously increases high end but without reducing bass, very important. At this setting with my Strat set in position two, utilizing the bridge and middle pickup, the tone is chimey and if you are a Strat player looking to achieve that "bell" type tone, it's here. Somewhat reminiscent of some of my favorite amps, Matchless! And that's quite a statement. In utilizing the "fat" setting of the top boost I found this added more bottom end and more low mid punch. Fat is an appropriate term for this setting for that is exactly what it provides is a fatter, tighter more defined low end. In this setting I adjusted my treble setting to about eight and a half and the top end seem to cut through nicely.

Gain structure. The Royale is not, nor intended to be a high gain amp. By utilizing a Les Paul and cranking the volume all the way up and backing the master off to about four, this setting does produce a moderate crunch tone. In fact SRV tones are achievable from this setting, however if you require a bit more overdrive this does require some type of overdrive or distortion pedal. I prefer overdrive as opposed to distortion because there is a difference! I hooked up an old MXR overdrive pedal that I've had since the early 80's, and this gave me what I needed. A bit more gain for heavier crunch tones. The Royale however still retained great balanced EQ with a warm over driven tone.

Rectifier switch. Located on the underside of the tube socket panel. This particular switch has two settings soft/normal. By utilizing this switch basically allows for reduced or increased current or voltage produced by the rectifier circuit itself. In the normal mode, this produces tone with more headroom and the soft mode will allow the amp to break up a little easier. A very nice touch and very useful function.

BOTTOM LINE MOJO:
This amp kicks some serious butt! Quality construction, point to point wiring, killer EQ and tonal possibilities are all here with the Top Hat Royale. For a 20 watt amp, this amp is more then enough. It's the loudest, punchiest, creamiest 20 watts you will find anywhere. It's no wonder these amps are found in some of the worlds most prestigious studios, and used by some of the industries most prestigious players! With a retail price of $1549, the TopHat Royale is certainly not inexpensive but it's certainly notout of reach either. A great value when you consider you can pay much more for a comparable amount of tone, and tone is what it's all about! Hats off to the Top Hat Royale. NUFF SED!

SPECIFICATIONS:
The Club Royale features one channel with high and low inputs. This channel, derived from the King Royale's full EQ channel features:

• Fat-Off-Bright switch
• Volume
• Treble
  
• Mid
• Bass
• Cut
• Master Volume
• Soft/Normal rectifier switch
• Standard Speaker TopHat/Celestion G-12H in 1x12"

The Club Royale output section uses two EL-84 power tubes producing 20 watts
of Class-A power along with that "Famous British Overdrive".

The Club Royale Pricing

• TC-CR1 - 20 Watt Class-A 1x12" Combo w/EL84's - List Price: $1,549.00
• TC-CR2 - 20 Watt Class-A 2x12" Combo w/EL84's - List Price: $1,849.00

INFORMATION:
Top Hat Amplification
920 E. Orangethorpe Ave.
Anaheim, CA 92801-1127
714-447-6700
E-mail: tophatamps@aol.com
www.tophatamps.com