MusicStoreLive.com | 1 decade ago

The Metropolitan is a truly magical guitar amplifier with a sound all its own. The lightweight, resonant speaker cabinet is tuned and voiced as if it were a musical instrument unto itself, producing the perfect balance of warm, woody resonance and elastic feel, as well as power and punch. The ultra-pure signal path and automatically balanced and calibrated phase inverter give you an unusually effortless sustain, even on perfectly clean notes, and a bell-like clarity.

The Metropolitan is built to the highest standards of quality with only the finest materials. From the cabinetry, to the upholstering, to the electronic assembly and testing, each amp is entirely hand-built by designer Mark Bartel in his Baltimore, MD craft shop. Not satisfied with using off-the-shelf parts, Mr. Bartel works with skilled fabricators to develop custom components such as transformers and speakers in order to craft his totally unique and musical creations to his exacting standards.

The revolutionary Phase-4 power control system gives you the ability to achieve the true sound and feel of an amp cranked up and driven into natural overdrive and power tube crunch, at any volume - even "bedroom" volume - by providing a usuable output power range of 0.1W - 40W.
Over the years, scores of approaches have been devised to achieve this end (master volumes, power scaling, attenuators, etc.). Tone King designer Mark Bartel has tried them all, but has never been sufficiently satisfied with any of them to consider including them in his designs - until he developed the Phase-4 power control system.

Tone King's breakthrough Phase-4 power control technology is light years ahead of these older approaches in its ability to retain not only the tone, but also the tactile feel of the amp's natural power tube overdrive, even at very low volume.

The Metropolitan has two distinct preamp channels - the Rhythm Channel and the Lead Channel. You can select between the two with either the front panel channel switch or the footswitch.

Input Gain Switch
The input gain switch controls the gain of the 1st stage of both preamps. This switch helps to tailor the overall gain of the amp to match the gain of the amp to the output level of your guitar's pickups.

Rhythym Channel
The Rhythm channel includes a 2-position "bright" switch as well as Volume, Treble, and Bass controls.

Lead Channel
The Lead Channel includes Volume, Tone, and Mid-Bite controls.

Reverb
The Metropolitan's all new single-knob reverb circuit has been meticulously tuned to be the best sounding reverb circuit of all Tone King models. The reverb control on the front panel sets the reverb level for both preamp channels. In addition, the reverb may be turned on and off with the footswitch.

Output Power Controls
Two output power controls are included on the front panel - one for each preamp channel. They allow adjustment of the output power from 0.1W to 40W, continuously. Having separate power controls for each channel allows you to set the amp for a clean tone with lots of headroom on the Rhythm channel, and an overdriven tone on the Lead channel, while matching the volume level when you switch between channels.

The Metropolitan's newly-designed Rhythm channel provides an even wider variety of great clean tones, from the more "mid-scooped" sound of the original Tone King rhythm channel, to a range of new tones with an additional measure of midrange girth and chime.
The Lead channel draws heavily from the designs of past Tone King models, but is infinitely more useful, because it can now be used to dial in anything from fat, greasy tweed overdrive to the kerrang of crunchy early-Marshall power chords, at any volume level.

The Metropolitan's light, resonant cabinet is an integral part of its unique sound and feel. Warmer than the Imperial, More elastic and three-dimensional than the Meteor/II, it achieves the perfect balance of looseness to punch, and three-dimensionality to focus. It is voiced to have its own unique sound, lending character and dimension to any type of guitar sound.
Designer Mark Bartel worked with Eminence Speaker, LLC to develop a fantastic new paper-cone speaker for the Metropolitan. This new speaker has its own unique sound that mates perfectly with the voicing of the cabinet and the amp circuitry. It has a lot of character, defined mostly by it's prominent, vocal-like midrange and bell-like top-end (think more chime and less crushed-glass shimmer).

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