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Thanks to Coda Music, Tone King - one of America's top boutique amp brands - is now available in the UK, and it coincides quite nicely with founder Mark Bartel's first design aimed at reproducing classic British looks and tones. Enter the amp formerly known as the Majesty -- after a last-minute discovery that rights to this name were already owned, the Majesty is now called the Royalist, making this review amp a very rare Tone King indeed!

The Royalist cabinet benefits from deft styling and extreme attention to detail, with vintage grille cloth and an offset control panel evoking the very earliest JTM45 models. The dimensions are on the large side, however, but the Royalist is quite portable, thanks partly to its aluminium chassis, and balances nicely on its single carry handle.

The electronics are a long way from being a simple clone. Most of the small components are attached to two very high-grade printed circuit boards, with wires leading to chassis- mounted pots and switches. The wiring is extremely neat, with straight runs supported by tiny 'P' clips on metal standoffs, ensuring that wires remain where they're put.

A third, smaller board supports the Royalist's built-in Ironman attenuator, which goes far beyond the simple power resistors often referred to as attenuators. The overall impression is one of sophistication, elegant design and bomb-proof build quality. But it's an amp that is pretty enough to grace your living room, although under the skin it's as hard as nails and built to take non-stop professional touring in its stride.

In this demo, Chris Vinnicombe puts the Royalist through its paces with a Gibson ES-335 and Fender Stratocaster.

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