Carol-Ann Tucana 3 Head

The Carol-Ann Tucana 3 amplifier head was created to be extremely versatile and cover many styles and genres of music for session and gigging guitar players, as well as home enthusiasts.  With the three channel architecture, Alan Phillips designed this amp to cover tones ranging from super clean to higher gain levels, yet still retain full note definition and separation even with complex chord passages, all while maintaining an ultra-quiet noise floor. Not at all an easy task!

The first new feature of this amp are the separate Input Level Controls for the Clean and OD channels. This gives much greater flexibility than any of the previous models. It is possible to set the Clean Channel for a little more crunch or for maximum clean headroom.  The overdrive range can be set very easily with the OD Input Level to suit the playing styles or musical genre from a range of blues through rock to modern high gain styles.

The Tucana 3 features Carol-Ann's new AutoBiasMon(TM) Bias Monitoring system, that constantly monitors the dissipation power of the power tubes by measuring the plate voltage, cathode current and screen dissipation in order to calculate the perfect bias point. This makes it a total breeze to retube the amp without the need for any tools or bias monitor. The other advantage of this system is that it automatically makes adjustments for changes in mains power at different venues. This ensure your amp is ALWAYS running optimally.

The Tucana 3 also comes with Alan's new upgraded 5 Button Foot Controller that allows instant, one action channel changing from any channel to another. The system also features a programmable FX loop switching system that allows you to program the foot controller to a) Switch Manually via the foot switch, b) Switch in when just CHA is selected, c) Switch in when CHB or CHC are selected or d)Switched in when the Lead Master. Programming it is as easy as it gets!  The foot controller attaches to the amp via a standard 3 Pin XLR-XLR Mic cable (any length works, BTW), making replacement at shows very easy if a problem arises.

For the power section, Alan chose to utilize a pair of KT88s running at a moderate 75 watts ensuring a long, reliable tube life. The transformer set has also been designed to retain a ton of warmth, as well as a tightness in the low end that has not been previously seen in the Tucana series.

The Tucana 3 is very forgiving on speaker choice and works well with many speaker/cab combinations.  Naturally, we recommend one of our Carol-Ann cabs available here:  Click here for Carol-Ann Cabs.

Controls:

CH A Input Level: This sets the overall input gain for the clean Channel.
CH B/C Input Level: This sets the overall input gain for the Overdrive Channels.
CH A Bass, Middle & Treble: Clean Channel Tone Controls.
CH B/C Bass, Middle & Treble: OD Channel Tone Controls.
CH B Gain: Overdrive Channel B gain control.
CH C Gain: Overdrive Channel C gain control.
CH A Master: Master Volume for Clean Channel.
CH B Master : Master Volume for OD Channel.
CH C Master : Master Volume for Gain Boost.
Lead Master: Lead Master Volume
Presence: Global Presence Control.
Footswitch Socket: Heavy duty 3 pin XLR connector for footswitch.
Foot Controller: CH A, CH B, CH C , EFX Loop Switch with 4 programmable modes of operation, Lead Master  with LED's
Efx Send and Return Jacks
Efx Send Level Control