Crazy Tube Circuits Falcon Tweed/Brown pedal

The early Fender tweed amplifiers and their later Brownface counterparts hold a hallowed place in guitar amp history. But let's face it: Not many of today's players could get by with just a small tweed Deluxe. They are notoriously low on headroom which makes them pretty bad pedal amps, and the interactive volume and tones controls are baffling at worst. And at the same time these little 12-watt cathode-biased fire breathers can actually be too loud when in their sweet spot. So if you like to visit Tweed Town but don't want to live there, the Crazy Tube Circuits Falcon is the answer. 

We've played a number of Tweed and Tweed-inspired amplifiers and it's uncanny how the Falcon nails the grind, burley low end and touch sensitive nature of the '55 5E3. Like the tweed Deluxe the volume control is really a "distortion" control, the tone control interacts with the volume control, and past noon adds additional volume and harmonic richness, and the output control lets you modulate all this mayhem to a reasonable sound level. And very few amps clean up like a tweed. You can be raging along full tilt and quickly reign it in by dialing back the guitar's volume control. It's why many tweed players simply dime the amp and ride the volume control. And the Falcon reacts the very same way. 

We have not said much about the '61 Brownface side, but think of it as a kinder, gentler tweed. Rock music was growing, bands were getting louder and Fender was trying to get more clean headroom and volume. The fixed bias Brownface amplifiers were an evolutionary step towards "louder cleaner" sounds that ultimately became the Blackface series. The '61 side of the Falcon is a little brighter and tighter than the '55 setting, and offers more headroom, less bass emphasis when pushed, and a more sparkly high end. The Brownface amplifiers were short-lived and often passed over, but they offer a great middle ground between the molten Tweed grind and the bright spanky Blackface.

The Falcon is a total blast, and gives players an opportunity to experience the visceral, organic nature of the early small Fender amplifiers without remaking their rig or compromising flexibility. In a crowded world of Klon, Screamer and Dumble replicas, the CTS Falcon is truly different and lets you experience tones usually associated with rare vintage or boutique amps. 

Tech note: What is "sag" on an amplifier? Think of sag essentially as a temporary reduction in voltage to your power tubes, which causes them compress the tone momentarily, and then recover. When you hit a big chord the amp needs a instantaneous boost of juice, and the rectifier tube and power transformer struggle to keep up with required voltage to produce the big chord. The result is some compression, clipping, and a "push-pull" feel between player and amp. Bigger amps with beefier transformers and even solid state rectifiers have more headroom and power reserves and don't experience sag (think Twin Reverb). The Tweed and Brownface with their 5Y3 rectifier and small output transformers are classic examples of a low headroom, highly dynamic and touch sensitive amps. And CTS managed to really hit the target with their Falcon pedal.

In the words of Crazy Tube Circuits: 

A bit of backstage info… back in 2016 we built a custom amp that was designed to morph between the sounds of a 5E3 Tweed Deluxe and a 6G2 Brownface Princeton. We liked the sound and feel of the amp so much that we decided to capture it in a pedal format.

Falcon was designed as a painstakingly close emulation of the circuits found in these amps. With every detail in mind we copied the behavior, sound and feel of the preamp, phase inverter and power amp of both these designs. Applying JFET technology we managed to recreate not only the overdriven sounds but the lower gain / clean sounds as well.

The most important part was emulating the compression and sag coming out of the power amp and tube rectifier respectively. This effect enhances the pedal’s dynamic, musical feel and makes it very responsive to your picking attack. Depending on amp mode setting and your guitar / pickup’s output this effect can be more or less pronounced.