General
Ola Englund is known throughout the world for his extensive videos on YouTube about all sorts of amp heads, guitars and effects pedals. He's also well known, of course, for his guitar playing in the bands Six Feet Under and The Haunted and Feared. Over the years, the Swede has tried pretty much every metal amp known to man. He, along with Mike Fortin from the highly renowned brand Fortin Amps, is responsible for designing Randall's Satan. It'd come as no surprise then if the Randall Satan was referred to as the ultimate metal amp head. That can already be seen on features like the separate inputs for passive and active guitars, for the best signal possible.
Randall Satan: Trinity of gain
With 120 watts of raw tube power, the Satan has enough output to blow your audience away. Unusually, channel 1 on this 2-channel amp head is the overdrive channel. For the ultimate high gain experience, this channel features three gain controls: 6irth, 6rind and 6ain (girth, grind and gain). With the 6irth control, the lower frequencies can be adjusted, while the 6rind and 6ain controls adjust the low frequencies and the overall gain, respectively. This allows you to shape your tone using the gain controls alone, which is ideal for lower tunings and guitars with more than six strings. The channel also has a sweep control, a 3-band EQ and a kill switch, as well a volume knob. Sweep gives your sound a different character, while the kill switch boosts the higher mid tones.
Shaping and tweaking
Presumably, there are places in your music where you'll want to play clean passages. For this purpose, channel 2 is clean and features controls for gain, volume, a 3-band EQ, and also has switches for brightness and shift. The shift switch has three different settings, each adding their own different character to the clean sound. As well as these, the amp has further controls for depth and presence, and a master volume control so that you can customise your sound to perfection. An FX loop with an adjustable level control gives you the possibility to connect your favourite effects pedals in series or parallel.
Devilishly good tubes
The best overdrive sounds can really only be generated by using tubes and this is something Ola knows only too well. That's why the Satan has six 12AX7 tubes in the preamp. 12ZX7 tubes have been used in tube amps for decades and are renowned for their drive. Two 6L6 tubes and two KT88 tubes in the power amp are responsible for giving the brutal preamp sound sufficient volume. Both of these tube types produce plenty of power and offer lots of headroom. That means overdrive full of definition and brightness for a sound that simply can't be ignored.
There's more...
An amp head is nothing without a speaker cabinet, of course. The Randall Satan has four connectors for 4, 8 and/or 16 ohms, making it compatible with pretty much any speaker cabinet out there. A foot switch is included so that you can easily change channels and activate the boost for additional tone options. There's also the possibility to add an FX loop foot switch, which is not included. The emulated and raw outputs make it possible to record in silence. If you're looking for the ultimate metal sound, the Randall Satan Ola Englund 120-watt amplifier head delivers.
