Reinhardt The 18 Mini Review
AudioPaal's Reinhardt The 18 Mini Review
I have owned this amp for some time now, and it never seize to amaze me. The tone in this thing makes you go mad for not being able to crank it at home :lol:
The 18 is Reinhardts first product, but still one of his favourites. It comes as a 1x12 Combo and as a Head. I have the Combo version. It's based on the Marshall 1974X, with a few circuit changes. Do not confuse with the original 18 watt Marshall amp, this amp has all that, and much more.
The first channel, or normal channel is based on the stock amp, nice chimey cleans to a killer smokey blues. Great feel and dynamics. The second channel or bright channel is the hotrodded channel. This channel has had the tremolo removed, and another gain stage and full range EQ added in its place. With a master volume on this channel, it can go from amazing chimey clean to nice crunchy gritty blues, to a killer classic and hard rock tone. No over the top heavy muddy gain here, but a killer hot plexi level.
Amps come standard with a custom blend of JJ. TungSol RI and EH tubes.
This amp uses 3 12ax7/ecc83 preamp tubes, 2 el84/6bq5 power tubes and a 6ca4/ez81 rectifier.
Transformers are Heyboer copies of the original Radio Spares trannies. Sozo Vintage series and Mallory 150 caps, 1% tolerance resistors, all teflon wire and shieled input cable for low noise.
This amp sounds wonderful, and the cleans rivals the best Vox tones.
The bluesy and rock tones are the best I've heard, and the hardrock and plexi-like tones will make you riff till sundown and beyond! :)
It has four inputs, two for each channel (High and Low).
I have played it with several pedals, and it takes them all VERY well.
I've also used this in a live situation, where it performed beyond my expectations. 18 Watts for a live situation you say..!? YES! 
More than loud enough for a small gig, and you can always mic it up for larger ones if need be.
All in all, one of the best amps I have ever tried, and I've tried a few 
I would recommend this to anyone wanting a good amp, for practice, recording and playing live. You really can't go wrong with this baby :)
For soundclips you can check out: http://www.steelbender.com/spotlightreinhardt.html
