		4.0 (2)
	Add a review

Bogner Alchemist Series 112 40W 1x12 Tube Guitar Combo Amp Black

Alchemist produces a mystical, otherworldly sonority from common, earthly elements. Articulate, sparkling cleans, touch-sensitive leads and a bright and colorful crunch are coaxed from its power section and poured from premium Celestion® speakers. ...

Price: $699 to $1199

Compare Prices

at 2 stores

Searched Bogner Alchemist Series 112 40W 1x12 Tube Guitar Co Amp Black in Reviews

Incredible Amp

Sound	I use an Ibanez Proline 2550 (alder), and a Fernandes Dragonfly Elite (mahogany). I run through a board with around 7 effects. My previous amp was a Mesa Boogie F30 (great amp, decided I want something different). Let me start by saying I only run it in 20 watt mode. I've heard complaints that it's muddy, but I haven't noticed anything offensive. The clean is really nice, it's not shimmery, but I don't go for shimmery. I like something that has a little meat to it. The bright switch helps with dark guitars, and the deep fattens things up. The crunch mode is great! I love having an amp I can switch modes and keep the eq the same. Invaluable. It does add a tiny bit of volume, but I usually use the volume on my guitar to compensate. The second channel leaves right where the crunch mode left off. Plenty of great crunch/lead tones. When push is engaged, 80's shred heaven. The bright and mid-boost switches are handy as well. The effects are pretty good. The delays are nice, I've found a little of the onboard reverb is better than too much. One last note. I tried swapping the Celestion Vintage 30 with an Eminence Patriot. That switch was an improvement for my F30, but didn't sound good on the Alchemist. I also swapped out the one Chinese tube for a tung-sol, and believe it or not, it sounded better with the Chinese tube. I add that to say, Bogner knows what he is doing, it's as good as it can sound!
Reliability	I've had no problems so far.
Customer Support	Support is through Line6 which was a bit of a headache to deal with. I bought the amp open box, and tried to contact them to see if it had still had a warranty. Simple question. Not exactly, I had to speak to a few different people before I got an answer (yes it is).

Liked about it	I love the fact that all four modes are very useable. I love all the tones in this amp. I really like the 20 watt switch.
Didn't like	I wish you could switch the modes via the footswitch.

Overall satisfaction:

5.0

By Robotalk
Oct 18, 2009

Ask Robotalk a question about this item.

Was this review helpful to you?
Yes

Report this review

Price: $699 to $1199

Compare Prices

at 2 stores

Almost a good amp

Sound	I played this with a JS1000 for several hours over a period of 3 months when I was researching to buy a new combo amp. My biggest complaint was that it took a lot of effort to get a moderately good tone with it. I played with the knobs quite a bit to try and find a chimey clean and eventually got something that was good enough. The controls are very touchy, responsive, but there's a lot of muddiness to the amp that was difficult to dial out. I liked the amount of gain available. It will get to 80's metal levels and some modern gain tones but for truly brutal distortion, you'd want to boost it a bit further with a pedal. As with the clean channel, the controls eventually yeilded some nice sounds, but it took a lot of tweaking. I really tried to like this amp, but I gave up after several attempts trying to make it sound better than "good." I was hoping for something that could deliver Fenderish cleans with a Plexi style distortion channel. It might, but I gave up after several failures to find those tones. The effects offered add to the tone, but I prefer to use dedicated pedals. If you don't mind some loss of flexibility and control, the effects were pretty good. Clean with chorus was nice and a little delay on the distortion made a good lead tone. It's loud enough for small gigs but I feel the tone really suffered at lower volumes so it wouldn't be a suitable bedroom amp.
Reliability	I never purchased it, but there were a few time I came into the Guitar Centers where I lived and found one or two of the Alchemists to be broken/not working. I'm not sure what the problem was but it happened on a few occassions and I let the staff know that one of their displayed amps wasn't working. They took it away and brought a new one over but this scene occurred more than once.
Customer Support	I haven't ever dealt with them.

Liked about it	1. The concept of a 2 channel tube amp with some built in effects and a lower wattage was very appealing. 2. I liked the look of the amp, very boutique.
Didn't like	1. Required a lot of time trying to get a good tone out of it. I really tried to like this amp and figure out how to make it sound great but in the end, I could only get it to give me one good clean and one decent distortion.