Hey everybody—Curtis here. In this demo I’m checking out a gorgeous Tex Amps Texosound Model EF86, an approximately 20-watt, British-vintage-inspired amp that has its own unique flavors and sounds absolutely wonderful. I start the video on my Novo Cirrus T (Tele-style bridge pickup) and I keep the amp set clean at first, mic’d up with a Sennheiser e906, so you can really hear the character of the EF86 front end before we start pushing it harder. A big part of this amp is how interactive the controls are—even though it’s super simple: volume and a single tone knob. That tone control isn’t like any other I’ve encountered. When you pull it up, it adds a bass boost (which I used right away with single coils), and the sweep doesn’t just change brightness—it also changes the nature of the breakup and gain structure as you crank it. After exploring those ranges, I bring the volume up into that rich, harmonic, aggressive crunch. Then I swap to my 1982 Gibson ES-335 with stock humbuckers and run the same kind of tests—tone sweep, bass boost, and then more volume—so you can hear how it reacts with different pickups. Tony at Tex Amps builds these one at a time in Toronto, and the attention to detail is second to none: point-to-point wiring, NOS paper-in-oil caps, carbon comp resistors, and a great Celestion 12" speaker. If you’re after inspiring vintage feel with a unique control set, this one’s a tone machine.