The Guitar Magazine – July 2019

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Port City Pearl $1,999, Dr. Z EZG 50 £2,199,

Morgan SW22 £1,599

A sophisticated, superior-sounding

8 /10 pedal-platform amp with gorgeous reverb

overdrive creeping in. That may not seem
like a lot of leeway, but by that point, the
Studio Signature is really shifting some air.
Next, we turn the master control down a
touch and compensate for the volume drop
by increasing the gain. Rather than getting
an immediate increase in overdrive, we find
that the gain control can now be advanced
beyond 10 o’clock before overdrive onset
and an accompanying midrange push makes
the tone fatter and slightly smoother.
Going back to our original cusp-of-
overdrive sound, we flick through the
gain-structure settings to get a sense of
what they do. It really is mostly about gain
and touch sensitivity rather than frequency
response, with the Matt Schofield signature
setting immediately putting the Studio
Signature into overdrive and the Blackface
setting sounding cleanest of all. We can
imagine the latter being a good bet for clean
tones with hotter pickups, but we find the
Traditional Two-Rock front end best suited
to Fender-style single coils. It’s louder,
clearer and more dynamically responsive.
The way the tone controls operate and
interact with the frequency boost switches
is key to what the Studio Signature is all
about. Although straightforward to operate
and understand, there is clearly some
sophistication here. Because the amp’s core
tone is so good, the tone controls aren’t
merely there to help you dial in a usable
sound. Instead, they provide seemingly
endless variations on crystalline clarity and
refined excellence, because wherever you
set them, you’ll find wonderful tones.
The three frequency boost switches
impress, too, because there’s no attempt
to justify their inclusion by making them
too powerful. Two-Rock has targeted
three genuinely useful frequency centres
and provided just a sufficient boost. Used
with the equalisation controls, the Studio
Signature finesses tone much like a high-
end recording channel handling a mic signal.
Combining Schofield mode with mid-
boost is the easiest way to coax the Studio
Signature into overdrive. It doesn’t do
metal, but if clear and smooth overdrive
with impressive sustain and harmonic
bloom sounds appealing, that’s what you
get. That said, you only get it with the gain
and master controls cranked.
The half-power option was a feature we
really appreciated on the Classic Reverb
Signature – spending most of our time in
50- rather than 100-watt mode. The Studio
Signature only has a push-pull pair of 6L6s,

so a similarly configured power switch

isn’t an option. If used as a pedal platform,

it’s not an issue. Yet if you like some or all

of your overdrive from the amp, consider

whether the venues you play will allow

you to run the Studio Signature at the

required volume levels. Using an attenuator

may be the solution at smaller gigs: we

get some great results using ours. Plus, the

Studio Signature sounds just as good with

overdrive pedals; entirely as expected.

If you like your guitar tones rocky and

rough edged, this isn’t the amplifier for you.

But it’s a stellar pedal platform and offers

pristine clean and edge-of-breakup tones

in the contemporary West Coast style,

with the addition of a lush-sounding and

three-dimensional reverb.

A pair of 6L6 output

valves powers the

Studio Signature

Every Two-Rock

amplifier’s internals

are meticulously

hand-wired and

road-ready

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