Bogner Alchemist

The company and their product range have expanded considerably since those early days. Bogner amplifiers are characterised by careful craftmanship coupled with exacting design standards, resulting in amplifiers that are renowned for their flexibility and their precision control of the player’s sound. Like all essentially custom-built amplifiers, Bogner products have occupied the higher price points and haven’t been that widely available in the UK. However, by utilising the cost benefits of Chinese manufacture and by continuing the relationship with Line 6 that began with the Spider Valve hybrid amplifier, Bogner’s latest all-valve Alchemist range will be distributed worldwide by those masters of modelling, which means that you’ll now be able to find a Bogner amplifier with a more wallet-friendly price tag in a store near you.

Taking its inspiration from classic Californian amplifiers, the Alchemist range comprises 1 x 12 and 2 x 12 open-back combos, a head (all-twin channel and 20W/40W switchable) and a 2 x 12 extension cabinet, all of which are pretty attractively priced by Bogner’s usual standards. Mind you, Reinhold Bogner isn’t giving up his place at amplification’s top table and his other amplifier ranges continue to be available through the Bogner Custom Shop, where prices remain reassuringly high.

Construction, fit and finish are exemplary, as you’d expect from Bogner, and the initial impression is that of a pretty high-class amplifier. The control panel is cleanly and logically set out, with clear white legends, although the tiny voicing switches that sit under the rotary controls might not be that easy to make out on a darkish stage. The two channels are genuinely separate, but share a common Boost function, with their signals only coming together as they reach the Delay and Reverb effects loops. The Alchemist eschews such common labels as ‘Channel 1’ and ‘Channel 2’, preferring instead the names Gold and Mercury, complete with their alchemical symbols.

Starting on the left of the control panel, you’ll find the Input jack, followed by the Gold channel’s Gain, Treble, Middle, Bass and channel Volume controls, all of which function exactly as you’d expect. Underneath these lie three miniature toggle switches, the first of which switches between Clean and Crunch modes. The second brings in the Bright treble boost, and finally there’s the Deep switch, which adds a low-mid and bass boost.

Clean mode stays pretty clean with a Strat’s single-coil pickups and has the open, chimey sound of a Fender at its heart, which thickens up nicely with increased gain settings. Stick a humbucker down it and you’ll find a lovely, growly blues tone sitting in there. Crunch mode brings in a Tweed-like break-up, but with a tighter, heavier bottom end that Bogner liken to a Hiwatt’s thicker sound. No matter its ancestry, the Crunch mode on medium gain is a great rhythm sound with single coils and is equally pleasing backed off a bit on a humbucker. Like all good amplifiers with this kind of channel setup, your guitar volume pot is actually the most important control in the signal chain, and time spent experimenting with various combinations of mode, channel gain and guitar volume settings will pay real dividends, as you’ll find that you can move from clean to crunch using the controls on your guitar, rather than those on the amp’s front panel.

The Bright and Deep switches come into their own in voicing your guitar to the amplifier and the volume and tone settings that you prefer. Darker-sounding guitars may well benefit from the increased high frequencies in the Bright setting, while guitars biased in a more top-y direction could be helped by the Deep’s low-frequency boost.

Between the two channels sit the common Boost and Channel select switches, both of which are overridden if the supplied footswitch is connected. On the Gold channel, boost gives a small increase in level while also bringing in an increase in the low mid range to thicken your tone up a bit and to help you push through the rest of your band. Channel select is just that, switching between Gold and Mercury. When the boost is active, the blue LED next to it lights up; Mercury has a red LED sitting just above and to the right of its Gain control, and Gold has a green LED in a similar position.

Mercury takes up more or less where Gold leaves off in the distortion stakes, and is capable of going from a gain-y rhythm crunch right up to high-gain lead sounds that have all the necessary aggression for modern metal while retaining musicality, rather than delivering all-out mayhem. It has the same control layout as the Gold channel, with its three voicing switches being a two-mode Punch, a Bright boost and a two-position tone stack Mid Shift.

Punch is an interesting voicing; switched to the left and with less extreme gain settings, it gives Mercury the mid-gain rhythm and lead sounds familiar from cranked Fender amplifiers. Switched to the right, it brings a high-gain, Marshall-flavoured tonality to the proceedings, which really adds something in the higher gain settings. Bright is the usual treble boost, while Mid Shift broadens the frequency ranges covered by the tone controls and comes into its own mainly at lower volumes.

The Boost switch doesn’t do very much at all to Mercury’s volume, but serves more to fatten up the overall tone of that channel. As on the Gold channel, this is a fairly subtle effect, and depending on your guitar, pickups, gain and voicing settings you might not notice very much at all. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that if I could hear it and liked what it did, then I probably needed the boost to be in there.

The built-in delay and reverb, which are switched on and off from the footswitch, are digitally modelled effects that are applied in parallel with your dry signal to preserve maximum dry tone. Delay comes in three flavours — Ducking, Analog and Tape — and these are controlled by the Delay level and Repeats controls, with the delay times being set by the tap-tempo function’s front-panel momentary push button.

Ducking is a clean digital delay that reduces in level when you play and increases in volume when you stop. This means that your playing sounds cleaner while you’re playing, with the delays coming in when you stop. Analog is a model of an analogue delay pedal and is akin to the legendary Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man. The Tape setting gives you the effect of an old tape echo unit with steadily darkening delays and the characteristic inconsistencies of tape. The available reverbs are Plate, Spring and Hall, and these are pretty accurate, studio-grade representations of these three classic sounds. The single Reverb level control is all you need, and is therefore all you get.

The front panel is completed by the On/Off switch, above which sits the three-position Standby switch, which lets you choose either 40W or 20W operation. The rear panel is a pretty spartan affair comprising only an effects loop, with its associated Level control, and the speaker output jacks.

Taking off the upper back panel of the Alchemist’s open-back cabinet reveals a very classy chassis featuring a couple of large transformers and a cage around the output valves. Speakers are a Celestion G12M Greenback and a G12H Anniversary — two great-sounding speakers that I’ve used in combination before and know well.

At the 40W setting, the Gold channel has a very attractive clean sound that stays uncompressed, open and warm with plenty of headroom until things get pretty loud, at which point the headroom starts to shrink and the sound thickens and starts crunching up. This isn’t surprising in a 40W valve amplifier, and the Alchemist certainly stays cleaner for longer than my old Fender Vibro-King. Switch into Crunch mode and you’ll find everything from a slight edge up to Marshall 50W Plexi. For the player, this is a very responsive channel to play on, with guitar volume and pick attack really affecting the amount of crunch and meat in the sound. As I mentioned earlier, to my ears these sounds aren’t exact recreations of their vintage counterparts, but are like an updated, more modern take on these sonic territories.

The Mercury channel is a bit unusual in that its basic voicing is of a much darker character than that of its Gold partner. There’s still plenty of clarity available in the Bright switch to give Mercury the necessary aggressive edge, but its darker nature keeps things smoother and more musical than they might be otherwise. The distortion starts around the point where the cranked Gold’s Plexi distortion starts to max out, and continues up into a creamy, screaming tone that is just made for soloing. Mercury starts to compress pretty early on in this journey and you’ll find that you can produce notes and feedback that sustain forever with very little effort. I found myself using Mercury in bright mode on the ‘British’ Punch setting almost all of the time, which probably says more about my sonic preferences than the amp’s abilities. Again, this channel has what I can only describe as a more modern character to its sound and, like Gold, remains responsive to your touch, and is especially effective at pulling out mid-phrase harmonics.

One thing that I did notice is that this amplifier is happiest being played at volume, especially in the 40W mode. It’s nice enough run relatively quietly, but crank it to stage levels and the amp’s tone really comes to life. You won’t be exactly neighbour-friendly if you want to get the best out of it in the confines of your bedroom. A powersoak might be a good investment!

Drop the output to 20W and although subjectively the volume level doesn’t change all that much, there is a definite change in the tonal character of both channels. Bogner claim that what you get here is the ‘brown sound’ made famous by Eddie Van Halen after he started running his mid ‘60s Plexi Super Lead from a Variac, reducing the 120V US domestic supply down to 90V in order to protect that particular ageing amplifier. The lower voltages in the amplifier’s output stage resulting from the decreased mains voltage mean that although the output valves can be driven into distortion, they can’t produce enough output to saturate the core of the output transformer. The end result is that your distortion sounds clearer, more detailed and subjectively tighter, as more of the subtler harmonics produced by the distorting valves aren’t squashed out of existence by saturation in the output transformer’s iron core. Since EVH got his tone from output valve distortion, this ‘voltage reduced’ version was named after the ‘brownouts’ resulting when the mains voltage drops — a common occurrence in many parts of the USA.

The modelled delays, especially the ducked delay, work well sat in behind the dry sound, but with no tap-tempo facility on the footswitch you’re a bit limited when it comes to changing delay times on the fly on stage. The three reverbs also work well, but I found them a wee bit sterile for my taste. Personally, I’d happily trade both sets of virtual models for a real spring reverb, so I patched my reissue ‘63 Fender Reverb into the effects loop and had a blast.

Somewhat uniquely, the Alchemist owner’s manual suggests experimenting with various different gain levels in the preamp valves. However, you don’t get told which 12A*7 valves can be used, but all you need to know is that if a 12AX7 has a gain of 100, a 12AT7’s gain is 60, a 12AY7’s is 45 and a 12AU7’s is 20. Have fun!

Although harking back to Californian inspiration and British aspiration, I think that the Alchemist has managed to transcend its antecedents and delivers a really modern sonic take on them. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I keep getting this impression, and it may be simply down to a really good and solid power supply allowing the amplifier to respond more quickly than its ancestors.

The 20W ‘brown sound’ mode brings in an older, more organic vibe, and if I were to own one this is where I’d be all the time for studio use. The 40W setting can deliver all the power and cut that you’d need on stage, but the lower power is just somehow more ‘right’. However, as the Alchemist sounds at its best when being run at volume, I’d advise budgeting for a powersoak of some kind.

We’re getting spoiled these days by the plethora of new amplifiers that are designed in the West and manufactured in China, thereby giving us more and more bang for our sadly devalued bucks. The Bogner Alchemist is a worthy new contender in this somewhat congested market and you should try to audition one if you’re in the market for a really good guitar amp that can do what the Bogner Alchemist does so well.  0