The Benson Monarch is Chris Benson's flagship design. Everything else that's been created afterward is pretty much voiced after this original circuitry. And it really sounds fantastic. As Chris says on his website, it's not based on or copied from any other one amp, but really just an influence of 30 different types of things that he's liked over the years, which gives this amp a completely unique sound and vibe.

Very simple functionality, volume, tone, reverb.

Chris uses a really great spring in here it doesn't get in the way of your playing and we have this great American British voicings switch on the top. So if you want to get a bass cut, you can switch down to the British voicing to really get those top-end lead tones. He's using a Weber speaker that he designed with Weber. So it is Benson branded and these amps have a low noise filter because of the DC filaments that he's using.

The cab is constructed from pine and it's quite a bit deeper than most combos, which gives it a great bass response. This is a 15-watt amp, but it's plenty loud to play over a band and also gets that great natural overdrive at a level where a sound guy can put a microphone in front of it and you're not sacrificing tone for volume. These are high quality, constructed, completely original, great-sounding amplifiers. I really, really love them.