Watch Pete Thorn achieve clean and overdriven bliss with RedSeven's Duality 100 guitar amp

RedSeven Amplification recently introduced the Duality 100 guitar amp, which delivers, the Italy-based brand promises, “three independent channels of pure bliss for the ears.”

To demonstrate that RedSeven is true to its word, Guitar World hooked up guitarist extraordinaire Pete Thorn – who has played with everyone from Chris Cornell to Don Henley to Melissa Etheridge, as well as enjoyed a successful solo career – with a Duality 100 in order to put the 100-watt head through its paces.

And Pete does indeed give the Duality 100 a thorough workout, presenting an original instrumental that utilizes all three channels (Clean, Vintage and Modern), as well as a variety of the many rhythm and lead tones on offer.

Pete then runs through some of the amp’s top features, including the fact that it will take either EL34 or 6L6 tubes (his demo amp is loaded with the former), and that it boasts a back panel that offers a tube buffered effects loop, a line out with level control, 4, 8 and 16 ohm speaker jacks, master presence control and MIDI connectivity.

Additionally, a standard 1/4-inch footswitch can switch between the Clean, Vintage and Modern channels as well as kick in the lead boost and turn on the effects loop.

Next he gets to the heart of the amp – the front-panel controls. Pete points out that the Clean channel features its own separate EQ (bass, middle, treble) and three-position bright switch as well as gain and volume controls. The Vintage and Modern channels, meanwhile, share their own EQ and gain controls, and there are also volume controls and bright switches for both channels.

“So lots of options there for fine tuning the tone of each channel, with the three-way brights as well as separate EQs,” he says.

Next, Pete cycles through the tones offered by each of the three channels. The Clean channel, he says, “really remind me of American ‘60s amps. You can get lots of headroom going, so clean tones with single coils or humbuckers are no problem. They’re really clean and and clear and sparkly.”

Channel 2, Pete continues, “is all about vintage plexi. That’s what they were going for and I’d say they come really darn close. The amp has a little bit more of a robust, full low-end, but it’s got that basic plexi character going on.”

Finally, we get to Modern channel, which, Pete says, is exactly that. “Channel 3 overall has a little more of a modern voice,” he says. “It’s more gain-y, more aggressive.”

To demonstrate, Pete breaks down the different sections of the instrumental he played at the top of the video, highlighting the channel and setting he used for each part.

Overall, he remarks that RedSeven “did a great job on this amp. It offers a great range of tones, all the way from clean and warm and clear through to pushed cleans, on over to channel 2 for your vintage plexi and modded plexi tones, and then on over to the modern channel, which just adds more heat and more gain.” 

Plus, he continues, “you can kick the gain boost on for more saturation and sustain than you could ever need.”

What’s more, he adds, “Then you get that tube buffered effects loop, MIDI, the ability to use 6L6 as well as EL34 tubes, an included footswitch and bright switches on every channel. I was suitably impressed.”

The Duality 100, Pete concludes, is a “really nice option for a modern 100-watt, super-versatile high-gain head.”

To try one out for yourself, head over to RedSeven Amplification.