The Clark Tyger

Tweed. It’s the sound upon which American country and rock music was built. It’s the sound that launched a million Telecasters. It’s the sound the Leo Fender originally conceived.

Today, you can purchase Fender tweed reproductions from hundreds of small shop manufacturers. Most of these shops produce accurate reproductions using kits purchased from Mojotone, Weber, or others. But a select few have risen to the top of the tweed reproduction business: Collins, Victoria, Clark. Each of these top-shelf manufacturers have unique facets that have put them above the rest, but they all have one unifying characteristic: quality builds.

In searching for my tweed dream, I spoke with the owners of each of the aforementioned shops: Mark at Victoria, Craig at Collins, and Mike at Clark. This, in and of itself, is quite telling. In total, these shops might produce 500 amplifies a year – and that’s not just tweeds. That’s their entire line of silver face, black face, Marshall repros, their own custom models, etc. These are busy men. Surely, they have crews working on their products, but it’s nothing like what you’d see in a Fender or Mesa Boogie factory. These are small shops, yet each man was easy to get a hold of. Each man returned my emails, took my calls, spent time and energy answering my questions and helping me learn more about my eventual purchase.

Craig Collins is here to build you the amp you want. He’s not interested in churning out clones, unless of course, that’s what you want. Rather, he wants to know what your tone dream is. If you want that low powered sag, with the ability to bring some high wattage headroom, Craig is up to the challenge.

Mark Baier at Victoria builds clones. If you want historically accurate components, built by artisans whose attention to detail rivals that of NASA space ship builders, talk to Mark Baier. Victoria has built their business on quality, accurate reproductions and the finest customer service in the business. While Victoria will honor custom requests, it’s not their bread and butter – read: you will pay for it.

Michael Clark of Clark Amplification began with a desire to build the ultimate clone. Like Collins and Victoria, Clark Amplification begins with only the best components: copper foil paper and oil capacitors, Sprague Atoms, Switchcraft jacks, Weber speakers, solid pine, finger-joined cabinets, NOS tubes and tube plugs. But after building a couple, he noticed what he perceived to be a significant flaw in the clone build: power. U.S. power supplies have greatly increased since the 1950s, and throwing a vintage power transformer on these amps was inefficient: the amp would be swamped with too much power, capacitors would run hot and full on the time. Basically, if the power wasn’t conditioned correctly to handle the new voltage, the vintage components would be working twice as hard and twice as hot.

So, he made his own power transformer. This worked so well, and was so widely accepted, that he started looking for additional “upgrades” to the clone model. He made his own reverb tank, made his own power attenuator, made his own overdrive. The resulting amps are brilliantly designed, but not quite authentic reproductions. Many owners actually prefer Michael Clark’s builds to the original tweeds. Personally, I’ve found that the essence of tweed is there 110%: that beautiful, sparkling, overdriven breakup made famous by countless musicians spanning from Muddy Waters to Pete Townsend to Noel Gallagher – that’s is there in spades. If given the choice to play my Clark Tyger or a vintage Bandmaster, I’d take my Tyger.

The add-ons that are offered by Clark Amplification: the Clark reverb tank and the Clark Regulator attenuator, are bonuses. The reverb is pro. It’s brighter than your standard silver face tone, so it compliments the tweed breakup perfectly. The attenuator doesn’t see any work in the studio or on the stage, but most definitely can be utilized in the home.

That’s why I bought the Clark Tyger. And I couldn’t be happier. I offer now to you, dear reader, an inside look at the Clark Tyger guitar amplifier, by Clark Amplification: