Producing 4 watts, with just three knobs on the panel, the Raleigh’s secret weapon lies in a split personality that delivers everything from glassy, spanky ’60s American blackface tones to juicy, sustaining Brit-voiced overdrive, all at the flick of a switch. Fire it up for low-decibel apartment jams or mic it for the easiest clean-to-scream studio tones you’ve ever tracked, all with the full, rich, dynamic sound and feel of a much bigger amp.
The Raleigh’s aural opulence comes courtesy of a single EL84 power tube in a pure Class-A output stage, driven by two 12AX7 preamp tubes in the front end. The simple Volume and Tone controls keep the signal pure for optimal clarity and touch sensitivity, while a flick of the Clean/Overdrive toggle ramps up the gain and brings in the Master control for saturated lead tones and singing sustain, right down to hushed neighbor-friendly volume levels.
Despite its simplicity, the Raleigh is nevertheless built using Carr’s acclaimed point-to-point, hand-wired circuit construction and a hand-crafted, thin wall Baltic Birch cabinet that brings this stylishly retro 1x10" combo in at a mere 21 lbs.