Today’s market offer a wide array of products feature-packed to play at home, or direct into a PA for live applications, a full-on digital reproduction of everything, preamp simulation to output tube simulations, profiling, modeling, Impulse response, able to navigate through a world of options that aren’t always manageable. We went a different way: Going old school. We designed our AFK150 focusing only on sound. With the obvious advantages of an hybrid amp like weight, size, portability, reliability and just the few options you might need to gig around or recording at home and in studio.
Our idea can be found with the hashtag “#dontgodirect, we strongly believe the real sound of a professional amplifier in a live environment, must be captured by a mic in front a good speaker cabinet. This is how it’s been for over 70 years of live gigs and recordings and…. that’s what we like! We studied, experimented, and worked hard in the last 14 years to make a “solid-state-of-the-art” class D amplifier and power supply, to really create something that emulates like no other the characteristics of a real tube amplifier.
We are confident that any A/B test of the AFK150 with a classic 100W tube head, Volume, richness, fast response, dynamics, and overall tone and ability to sound great with pedals in front of it, you’ll be hard pressed to hear any difference. Use it to record a track with or without a speaker connected, or use our analog CabSim, or go direct and apply your favorite cab sim software.
In the past, solid state amplifiers have been used mostly for economical/entry level products, but this was not due to a lack of quality of Solid State technology, which has hugely evolved in the last 15 years .
Remembering legendary solid state amplifiers like the great sounding Roland JC120, but people always seem to have preferred Tube Amps. Now a lot of guitarists have moved to digital, but often come back to tube amps cause they feel they’re missing something in terms of sound quality, and now due to the tube shortage, maintenance costs, and issues like weight, size, and reliability. We now have presented them perfect solution with an Hybrid Tube/Class D amplifier that combines the best of both worlds. The AFK150!
A solid state amp, like any other amplifier, is not magical and even if it has a very high efficiency rate, it can’t produce more energy than what it takes from an electric network to operate. It uses a portion of that energy to power its own circuits, there’s some loss due by transformers, vents, and other components, part of this energy is also converted in heating and that’s why no circuit operates at 100% efficiency. That said , The AFK150 is a REAL 150 W RMS (that is a standard measurement “Root Mean Square”) amplifier and in order to produce that 150 W RMS @4 Ohm, it has a total maximum consumption of 190W…The power consumption must always be indicated on a device label so, please be sure check it. If your “Amp” is rated 200 W (often without mentioning which kind of Watts, there’s “musical” Watts, PMPO Watts,..) and the max power consumption is “55W”, there’s something wrong .. you may have bought a “magical” device, which may be something not quite what it should have been .. Long story short: The max power consumption must always be bigger than the power produced.
