Milkman and Benson have teamed up to create Benson The Amp, a convenient and portable solution for those wishing to achieve the Benson sound in a portable and versatile form factor.
At its core Benson The Amp takes the high voltage tube preamp circuit of the Monarch/Chimera amplifiers and couples it to class D 100 watt power amp which boasts enough power for any situation. We’ve added some appropriate effects like a gain boost, a spring reverb, a “room” control and an analog cab sim for direct recording or silent stages.
Controls
The BASS and TREBLE controls are from the Benson Chimera and Monarch preamp which are known for sounding good and useful at every setting. There are no wrong places to put them. Big changes can sound subtle but upon further inspection can yield big differences in tonality and feel. They’ve been tuned to work for any guitar or instrument you choose put through them.
The VOLUME control on Benson The Amp might break up sooner than you might be accustomed to. You can achieve natural tube breakup by setting VOLUME at higher settings and backing down the OUTPUT to normalize the volume level. If distortion is not wanted or needed, simply turn the VOLUME level down and turn the OUTPUT up to compensate for volume.
Reverb
REVERB is a DSP spring reverb sound developed especially for Benson/Milkman by Keeley Electronics. REVERB is foot-switchable on the top of the unit.
The ROOM effect gives life to direct recording or guitar on silent stages. It mimics the early reflections from an amp sound in a nice room or studio and livens up the signal and improves the feeling of playing guitar without the benefit of a cranked speaker behind you. There are internal trim pots (behind the right wood side panel) to change this reflection time to achieve a slower slap back effect. If the room effect is not wanted or needed you can adjust the setting to a standard slap back delay. Even though ROOM is intended to integrate with the cab sim output, we’ve made it available to come out of the speaker cabinet as well. The ROOM effect comes out of every output on Benson The Amp.
Boost
The BOOST is a clean opamp based signal boost before the tube preamp of Benson The Amp. You can use it to overdrive (or further overdrive) the 12AX7 tube stages to get even more natural saturation if desired. It is capable of a full 24db of boost. The BOOST is also foot-switchable.
Cab Simulation
The CAB SIM on the rear panel by the XLR output simulates a speaker cabinet for direct recording or silent stages. Benson captured their favorite mic’d up cabinet frequency response of their oversized 1×12 cabinet loaded with a Benson Ceramic 30 speaker with an AEA N22 ribbon microphone in front and emulated this sound using a no-latency analog circuit. CAB SIM can be bypassed on the rear panel via a toggle switch.
Benson The Amp also shares many of the great features of The Amp series including a studio quality line output with cabinet simulation, pedal level output, speaker output, headphone output and universal power.
- WATTAGE: 50W 16ohm Outpu, 100W 8ohm Output, 200W 4ohm Output
- DIMENSIONS & WEIGHT: 8-1/2″ W x 3″ H x 6-1/2″ D 2.5lbs
