Matamp handwired turret boards

This is what the inside of an Ashdown Cotton Club Blues amplifier looks like. You may not have heard of it. It dates from around 2005. It was entirely hand made with top quality components. These amplifiers were very expensive and few were made. I was lucky to get mine in 2012 from PMT in Birmingham for under 400 pounds because it was new old stock - 7 years old! - and nobody really knew what it was. The interesting thing is that it was made by Dave Green when he was still at Matamp. In fact it is the same as a Matamp except for the name. I have a Matamp 1224 made for me by Dave Green in 2006 and the layout is almost identical.

steel chassis, four 6V6 valves and hefty transformers

Typical Matamp chassis layout

This is a beautifully made stunning amplifier based on 4 6V6 valves, which can apparently be swapped for 6L6 valves. It has a single channel with the typical Matamp rotary filter switch along with hgh and low gain inputs, trebble mid and bass controls. gain and master volume (with a defeat switch so you can run it like an old style valve head before the era of master volume amp). It also has a great reverb. Mine is in a 1x12 combo with a single Celestion Vintage 30 - there was also a head version. It runs in pentode or triode mode switching from 30 to 15 watts. Like all Matamps it has its own sound, quite unlike a Marshall or a Fender. It has an amazing warm clean sound, perhaps a bit like a Matchless. With the gain flat out the overdrive is relatively mild but it sounds superb with pedals. Also like other Matamps it is very solidly built with a thick welded steel chassis and handmade transformers. It is heavy!  It also has points and controls for valve bias adjustment.

However, do not be fooled into thinking that the later 'Hayden' Cotton Club Blues is the same. Hayden was adopted as the Ashdown guitar amplifier brand name when Dave Green subsequently left Matamp acrimoniously some 2 or 3 years later. He went on to design a range of amplifiers for Hayden although I understand that some of these, including the later versions of the Cotton Club Blues, were made in the far east and were of lesser quality. In fact the later Cotton Club Blues is a very different design with PCBs and is a cheaper amp, even using different valves.