Tone King

Tone King was founded in 1993 by Mark Bartel in Kingston, New York, after he studied vintage Fender amplifiers with blues guitarist Ben Prevo, and moved to Baltimore in 1994. The brand built a reputation for amps with the feel of vintage American designs together with modern features.

Its best-known idea is the Ironman, a compensated reactive-load attenuator built into the amp so that it can be played at any volume. Models that carry it include the Gremlin, the Falcon Grande, the Sky King and the Imperial. The Falcon is a low-wattage 12-watt, 1x10 amp with two 6V6 tubes in an ultralinear setup, and the Imperial is a 22-watt 6V6 1x12 combo.

Premier Builders Guild owned the brand until it went out of business in 2016, when Tone King was sold to Boutique Amps Distribution, which builds the amps in Huntington Park, California. From 2017 Mark Bartel has built amps under his own name. Guitar Radar follows new Tone King amps and reissues.