Yes, it's loud. Crazy loud. And heavy. Forklift heavy. But then there's the sound.....

Even with a recipe that's concocted from familiar old-school Fender elements, the Vibro-King sings with a unique voice that’s suited to a variety of blues and classic rock settings. As it evolved it’s found favor among some very high-profile players, most notably Pete Townshend, who uses them as the foundation for his stage tone, but also Tom Petty, and Gary Clark Jr.

First off is that the tremolo and the reverb are absolutely incradible. The clean tone even at low volume is just gorgeous, warm, full, lush and harmonically rich. And then you try to up the volume to get a bit of overdrive. And it gets loud. I mean LOUD!!! And you feel embarrassed as to how loud it really is. But then you get to the level of edge of breakup and it is delicious! Might be the perfect blues/edge of breakup tone. Fantastic bright, full, round cleans. That said, even at low volumes it just sounds great.

CSR4 is the Vibro-King's model number. There was a handful of designs in Fender's "Custom" amp division of the 90s - Dual Professional, Prosonic, Rumble Bass and Tone Master were a few other models. Each model had a different model number. These are often referred to the "Zinky Era" amps, although other people were involved with the design and development of these amps.

The 3x10 configuration is simply awesome. It responds very fast and really fills the room. The 3 knob reverb is great. The reverb is before the input, just like Fender did it before the Blackfaces with the separate reverb unit. The "effects loop" is actually an insertion point between the 3 knob reverb and the amp's main preamp/tone stack. So you can put that reverb to use with other amps or bypass it altogether for a slightly cleaner tone with less noise. The power section does not have negative feedback - it feels great and it has more character and less control than Silverfaces and Blackfaces. The Vibro-King is it's own thing but I think of it as being Blonde-ish with Fat off and Tweed-ier with Fat on. Fat is a tube based mid boost.