The early Fender tweed amps and their Brownface successors hold a hallowed place in amp history. But let's face it: few of today's players could get by with just a small tweed Deluxe. They are notoriously short on headroom, which makes them poor pedal platforms, and the interactive volume and tone controls can be baffling. At the same time, these 12-watt, cathode-biased fire breathers can be too loud once they hit their sweet spot. So if you like to visit Tweed Town but don't want to live there, the Crazy Tube Circuits Falcon is your ticket.

We've played plenty of tweed and tweed-inspired amps, and it's uncanny how well the Falcon nails the grind, burly low end and touch sensitivity of a '55 5E3 Deluxe. As on the original, the Volume knob is really a gain control, the Tone control interacts with it and adds volume and harmonic richness past noon, and the Output knob tames all that mayhem to a sensible level. Few amps clean up like a tweed. You can be raging along at full tilt and rein it in just by rolling back your guitar's volume, which is why so many tweed players simply dime the amp and ride the guitar knob. The Falcon responds exactly the same way.

Think of the '61 Brownface side as a kinder, gentler tweed. As rock grew louder, Fender chased more clean headroom and volume, and the fixed-bias Brownface amps were an evolutionary step toward the "louder, cleaner" Blackface series. The Falcon's '61 mode is brighter and tighter than the '55, with more headroom, less bass bloom when pushed and a sparklier top end. Brownface amps were short-lived and often overlooked, but they occupy a sweet middle ground between molten tweed grind and bright, spanky Blackface clean.

The Falcon is a total blast. It lets you experience the visceral, organic feel of early small Fender amps without rebuilding your rig or giving up flexibility. In a crowded field of Klon, Screamer and Dumble-style clones, the CTC Falcon stands apart, delivering tones usually reserved for rare vintage and boutique amps.

Tech note: What is "sag"? Sag is a momentary drop in the voltage feeding the power tubes, which briefly compresses the tone before the amp recovers. Hit a big chord and the amp demands an instant surge of power that the tube rectifier and power transformer can't fully deliver. The result is compression, mild clipping and a push-pull feel between player and amp. Bigger amps with beefier transformers and solid state rectifiers (think Twin Reverb) have more power in reserve and very little sag. With their 5Y3 rectifier tubes and small transformers, the tweed Deluxe and Brownface Princeton are classic examples of low-headroom, highly dynamic, touch-sensitive amps, and Crazy Tube Circuits hit the target with the Falcon.

In the words of Crazy Tube Circuits:

A bit of backstage info… back in 2016 we built a custom amp that was designed to morph between the sounds of a 5E3 Tweed Deluxe and a 6G2 Brownface Princeton. We liked the sound and feel of the amp so much that we decided to capture it in a pedal format.

Falcon was designed as a painstakingly close emulation of the circuits found in these amps. With every detail in mind we copied the behavior, sound and feel of the preamp, phase inverter and power amp of both these designs. Applying JFET technology we managed to recreate not only the overdriven sounds but the lower gain / clean sounds as well.

The most important part was emulating the compression and sag coming out of the power amp and tube rectifier respectively. This effect enhances the pedal’s dynamic, musical feel and makes it very responsive to your picking attack. Depending on amp mode setting and your guitar / pickup’s output this effect can be more or less pronounced.