Fender Stage 100 DSP. (Bench Tests).(Product/Service Evaluation)

If you've ever gigged in a city like San Francisco, you'll know what I'm talking about. You fight for a parking place high up on a steep hill, load your back with enough gear to make a pack mule groan, and then carefully wheel your prized Fender combo down to the club below, cringing with each tube-rattling crack in the sidewalk. The most recent time I made this downhill pilgrimage, however, I decided to lessen my load--as well as any tube-related worries--by leaving both my pedalboard and my Deluxe Reverb at home. In their place, I brought out Fender's new Stage 100 DSP ($699 retail/$499 street).

The Stage's exterior--with its "blackface" control panel, numbered black knobs, and silver grille cloth--very much evokes a classic Fender tube amp. Sound-wise, however, this solid-state marauder defies its traditional looks by producing a truly modern range of tones and offering a host of digital effects. Whether I was playing a Jeff Beck Strat with Lace Sensor pickups or a Gibson X-plorer Pro with hot ceramic magnets, I was always able to get a commanding tone with the Stage--although it particularly excels in smaller ensembles where the guitar is a primary focus. When playing in a large group that featured a keyboardist and a horn section, I was still able to get a satisfying tone, but I had to fight a bit harder for my slice of the sonic pie.

Cleaning Up

The Stage delivers the warm, iconic clean tone that decades of guitarists have come to associate with the chrome Fender logo. The sound isn't quite as full as that offender's better tube amps, but it's very musical. Playing rock, R&B, funk, and blues tunes on a Bigsby-equipped Hamer Monaco, I was able to cut through the bashing drums and rumbling bass with plenty of sparkle, chime, and headroom. The best part--which is directly attributable to Fender's new Dyna-Touch dynamic response circuitry--is that the more you tax the Stage's power amp, the more it responds with natural sounding compression. (Although at 100 watts, it stubbornly refuses to break up, and provides only hints of power amp grind.)

Playing Dirty

Press the Channel Select switch, and the Stage puts everything from subtle overdrive to frothing distortion at your fingertips. Invoking fluty blues tones and hard-driving lead screams is a breeze. Hit the More Drive switch and full saturation greets your ears, making it easy to attain heavy rock tones and soulful sustain. And when I let a buddy sit in and play an extended version of Hendrix's "Who Knows," the amp passed another test with flying colors: Out in the audience it sounded warm, fuzzy, and biting. My only disappointment was the amps Mid Contour feature--it revoices the Drive channel's signal as a fully scooped, nu-metal tone, and the resulting sound is overly tinny.

For Effect