2009 Carr Viceroy head

History:

Carr is an American guitar amp company started by Steve Carr in 1998 and based in Pittsboro, North Carolina.

Steve attended Purdue University for Aerospace Engineering and finished his degree at University of North Carolina in Physics. He also played in bands, recording and doing live shows.

The Vincent was Carr’s 7th model, first released in 2006. In 2008 Carr had to change the name from “The Vincent” to “The Viceroy” for trademark reasons. The Viceroy was discontinued in 2018.

Use:

JT’s Carr Viceroy head was shipped from Carr’s shop to Corner Music in Nashville, TN on October 15, 2009, where it was eventually purchased by JT. It became his go-to amp head for smaller sessions, and would be set on top of his amp rack for bigger sessions.

JT had a blue Carr 1×12 open back cab with an Eminence Wizard speaker that was likely bought along with the Viceroy head. Though the blue cab matched the head, JT would use a red Carr 1×12 open back Artemus cab with an Eminence Red White & Blues speaker with the Viceroy head in smaller sessions.

Specs:

The head measures 21″ x 10.5″ x 11″ and weighs 34 lbs. The amp pairs a mid 1960’s Fender style preamp and tone stack with a late 1950’s Fender style power section. When playing through this head, the guitar signal is first amplified by half of a 12AX7 preamp tube, then goes through a passive tone stack. After that the signal level is recovered by the other half of the 12AX7. The signal is then sent to reverb with a 12AT7 and returned from reverb with a 12AX7. With the drive knob up that extra amplification can be routed around the reverb and back into the main path for an extra clean boost in the middle of the amp to push the power tubes harder. Signal then goes to a third 12AX7 used for the phase inverter. At this point the signal goes to the cathode biased power section comprised of two 6L6GC tubes. And finally, the signal exits through the 8 ohm tap on the output transformer and from there goes through the cable to the speaker cab. This head has one speaker output jack meant for 8 ohm cabs, but will work with 4 or 16 ohm cabs with the side effect of a slight loss of power.

The Viceroy does not have a tube rectifier. From Carr’s website, “The Viceroy amp uses new technology Ultra Fast Recovery solid state rectifiers in combination with tube simulation circuits for the best of both worlds, resulting in dynamic and expressive tone.”

The Viceroy is a 33 watt amp with a 7 watt low power mode. The amp also comes with a footswitch that activates a boost by bypassing part of the tone stack and making the tone knobs have little effect.

Cathode Biased:
Means the power tubes self-regulate the amount of current flowing through them. When the guitarist hits a note, the tube calls for more power. A convenient side effect of this is the power tubes can be changed without needing to manually re-bias the amp.

Carr’s components:
Carr makes a point to use certain components he believes to be the highest quality. Around the time JT’s Viceroy was made, these included:

-Polypropylene filter caps
-Mallory 150 series tone caps
-12 gauge aluminum chassis
-Canare shielded cable
-Custom wound interleaved paper bobbin transformers
-Hospital-grade power cord
-Dovetailed pine cabinets built in-house
-Hand-made leather handles by Rocky River Leather Co.
-Point-to-point hand wiring
-Analysis Plus Clear Oval speaker wire