DV Mark Eric Gales ‘Raw Dawg’ 60W Amp Combo
OLD-SCHOOL SIMPLICITY MEETS MODERN TECHNOLOGY.
DV Mark has a reputation for punchy, fully-tricked out heads and combos that serve a player’s creative needs no matter what those needs might entail. The range has at times been extensive, with a model for just about any situation imaginable. So it’s interesting to look at their website and see that these options have been pared back to just seven electric guitar combos and none of them have a confusing battery of knobs and switches. I guess the folks at DV Mark have recognised (before many others) that the whole “pedal thing” has returned with a vengeance, and doesn’t look like easing up any time soon, and their 50-watt Raw Dawg is a superb platform for our favourite gadgets.
The Raw Dawg 60 is Eric Gales signature combo, and Gales loves pedals. With an obvious “simple is better” philosophy, the Raw Dawg offers a 50-watt, single 12-by-12 combo with an absolute minimum of knobs but plenty of what counts. This amp harkens back Fender’s glory days, when the amps were simply, straight foreword power packs: think Deluxe/Bassman/Princeton/Vibrolux combos – amps that produced big, clean tones. But the Raw Dawg isn’t even that complicated. It has just five knobs (vol, low, mid, high, and reverb) and an on/off switch. How cool is that? There’s no clever switching or chained circuitry or cascaded anything to confuse or distract. You just turn it on, dial up your sound, and get to the business.
Having said that, the Raw Dawg has features that those early, much loved Fender amps never had. There’s a highly efficient neodymium speaker – 150 watts of power handling, highly efficient, and super lightweight. And it sounds great. I plugged my 1963 Vibrolux into it and there it was – that sweet, vintage tone. The Raw Dawg has an effects loop, which is great for chorus, delay, reverb, etc.
But it’s the Raw Dawg’s delivery that’ll really grab you. There’s a punchy roundness to the tone, and a sonic breadth that doesn’t emphasise any particular frequency range. The “secret ingredient” is, of course, the tube in the preamp stage: a 6205 vacuum pentode, originally designed for tube radios (the ancestor of most guitar amps). This is a sub-miniature tube that adds a lot of warmth to the tone and vibrancy to the feel. Flavouring up the tone at the preamp stage leaves the solid-state power amp to add the required weight to the delivery.
The test gear included a custom Anderson Strat (EMGs), a ’62 Strat, a Godin Summit, a mid-’60s Tele, a Godin 5th Ave, and a White Falcon. Each guitar has an inherent tone quality and these were never disguised or masked by the Raw Dawg. The front pickup sound of the Strat was woody and warm, and positions 2 and 4 are absolutely superb; the Summit displayed that LP-style front pickup roundness and rear pickup bite and drive; the Tele’s bridge twang was surprisingly traditional (given that we’re using some solid-state technology here); and the Falcon had all the chime and back pickup “grrrang” that you could want. If you’re a jazzer, the Raw
Dawg reproduced the sweet roundness of the 5th Ave (an ES-175-ish guitar) with gloriously detailed articulation – the most complex of chords had definition and body. It was quite surprising that the Raw Dawg was so adaptable to the various guitars because, with most other amps, there’s usually a compromise – which means some degree of knob tweaking for each guitar. Not this time.
The Raw Dawg is super pedal-friendly. In fact, that’s really the point of this amp. Its function is to create a great clean tone and allow the player to dress it up with a choice of effects. I used an old TS-9, an old DS-1, a Mesa Flux-Five, a Zendrive, and a Suhr Riot. Every pedal has its own “thing” and the Raw Dawg handled each without a hiccup, never compressing the response or colouring the basic character of each effector. This amp has a HiFi-style attitude without the clinical top-end, so the clarity is exceptional. And not just gain-based effects.
DDLs have a crisp and clearly defined echo and even my long-suffering CE-2, which just turned 40, sounds young again.
The Raw Dawg is a superbly built amp and a super easy lug at around ten kilograms. The controls are straightforward, the tone stack has plenty of scope, and the built-in reverb is excellent. There’s even a headphone jack and an aux input for those still working on their COVID lockdown blues.