Aerosmith News

Premier Guitar
Gary Guzman

 

If only one monkey can wreak havoc and cause a commotion, just imagine what three monkeys can do! In the world of amplifiers, the three monkeys in question would be Brad Whitford, guitarist from Aerosmith; Ossie Ahsen of the famed Blockhead Amplifier Company; and Greg Howard, guitar tech for Aerosmith, Black Crowes, Green Day and many others. These three have joined forces to build amplifiers with original designs and classic rock-based original sounds. 3 Monkeys’ goal is simple: to create the best dynamic tone possible. They have already achieved that with the first amp they created, the Orangutan, and just did it again with their new Grease Monkey amp. 

Nuts, Bolts and Monkeys

The Grease Monkey amplifier is designed for higher gain, and is built for players who want an aggressive sound while retaining dynamic range and extreme touch sensitivity. It is a 30-watt amplifier with four EL84 tubes in the power section and three 12AX7 tubes for the preamp. It is hand-built, with custom-wound transformers and hand-wired military-spec components. It also has selectable preamp gain response, which is a signature feature that allows for high or low gain settings at the flip of a switch. It is a non-master volume amp with zero negative feedback. 

The amp has a unique, retro kind of look and features a powder-coated aluminum chassis, a control panel with chickenhead knobs, and braided silver piping. The black tolex covering is standard, although other colors are available by request so you can customize the look to your liking. 

The front panel is simple and straightforward. Besides the power and standby switches, there are controls for Bass, Treble and Volume, which controls the loudness and gain of the preamp. There are a couple of cool tone-shaping controls on the amp that expand the variety of tones even further. The first is a Cut control that varies the presence in the power amp section, similar to what is found on the Vox AC30. It can also be switched out of circuit by turning the knob counter-clockwise. Also, a unique Shape function lets you select either Bright input, Normal input or Low input. 

The Grease Monkey’s simple back panel consists of an AC input, fuse and three speaker outputs—one 16ohm jack and two 8-ohm jacks. An Input Gain switch lets you toggle from high or low gain.

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