Benson Amps Tall Bird Plus

Tube Driven Spring Reverb & Optical Tremolo

The Tall Bird Plus is Benson's flagship all tube driven spring reverb and optical tremolo. It is a ground up original design with the goal of attaining the classic 60s sounds but with added functionality and improved noise characteristics.

From the Manufacturer:

"Back in 2023 we were approached by The Beach Boys to create a limited edition reverb-tremolo unit called the Surf’s Up, based on the classic Fender circuits with some upgrades, which was exciting because it allowed us to slay some dragons in the form of abiding tech problems with that type of circuit. The Surf’s Up project ended but the journey was far from over.

After the dust settled, we realized the dragons could be deader, threw out the 60s schematics and performed a ground up redesign of how WE would achieve the classic sounds with even more versatility and lower noise…and also have regular AND harmonic tremolo in one unit. After trying a few things out we settled on a path that eventually led to the Tall Bird Plus!"

A few key improvements:

- Independent WET and DRY controls. The dry control can be used to overdrive an amp, or remove the dry signal completely! Straight up and down is typically unity volume. The SIZE control creates a high pass filter...turn it down for classic drip sounds, or up for cavernous hall style reverb.

- A three-pole adjustable oscillator to drive the neon lamp for extremely slow or extremely fast tremolo settings Switchable optically driven standard OR harmonic tremolo...

- True bypass tremolo takes the optical circuitry completely out of the signal path to prevent the volume loss issues of the original circuits

- Tube driven output buffer for driving long cables.

- Dual LED footswitch and included TRS cable for turning the effects on/off

- A grounding schema lifted from the world of hi-fi stereos that prevents noisy ground loops while maintaining a direct wire ground connection to the chassis.

- The reverb bypass disconnects the send signal to the reverb tank, allowing for trails rather than a hard cutoff of the reverb tail.

A couple interesting quirks:

Benson noticed, even though the Tall Bird Plus has a flat frequency response, it performs similarly to a high quality buffer and makes treble frequencies pop more than the user might be used to. They added a switch on the back that compensates for this...use the Hi-Fi setting for the technically unaffected tones, and Smooth for more of what you might be expecting...we prefer the Smooth setting most of the time but Hi-Fi has its place especially with pedal steel.

* When the harmonic tremolo is engaged, but tremolo depth is all the way down, you might hear some light bass throbbing...if this is bothersome, simply select the standard tremolo. Or just turn the tremolo completely off via the footswitch (recommended).

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:

Tubes: 3x12AX7, EL84
Fuse: 1A Slo Blo

CONTROLS:

Dry, Dwell, Wet, Size, Depth, Speed, Standard-Harmonic Tremolo switch