Louis Electric HS M12

The HS M12 was designed for legendary blues guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who played with such blues legends as Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. The HS M12 is loosely based on the '59 high powered tweed twin. It is constructed with a solid pine baffleless cabinet, featuring an eye catching speaker porthole instead of the usual front panel grille. With similar tone controls and inputs to the tweed twin, the HS M12 pumps out 35 watts into a Celestion G12H30 speaker. The amp's output stage is two 6L6GCs and the pre amp is a trio of 12AX7s rectified by a 5AR4. The four inputs (2 Normal, 2 Gain) are cleverly wired to provide different levels of gain boost when used in conjunction with the footswitch. Simply plug your axe into either gain input and use the Normal I or 2 jack for the footswitch. Think channel jacking here. The amount of grind is determined by what's plugged in where.

Since the HS M12 cuddles up best to humbuckers, plugging into Normal 1 exhibits the HS M12's slightly aggressive snarl even when keeping the volume down. While even the cleanest sounds have a little dirt around the edges, its voice is full, vibrant and focused and looms larger as you nudge the volume forward. All tone controls are extremely musical and unobtrusive, enhancing the instrument's tone rather than over-coloring it. With the footswitch in Normal 2 and the Les Paul Gain input I (volume about 5) the HS M12 gets nasty with a very articulate and organic breakup. As this input has more oomph the gain input 2, dimming the thing gets into a ferocious "Bluesbreaker" like tone with excellent power and pre-amp interaction for all the raw tones of the HS M12.