TC Furlong Custom - The History of SPLIT

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THE HISTORY, EVOLUTION, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPLIT

by TC Furlong

Development of the SPLIT musical instrument amplifier really began in 1971 when I was in school and very interested in providing a better sounding and more practical amplifier solution for gigging musician -- specifically guitar players. In 1973 I started a small company that made a line of high quality musical instrument and sound reinforcement speakers called Steamer Cabinets. They were named Steamer because they looked a lot like the old fashioned steamer trunks that were used in days of old. My big idea was that you could build the flight case as the speaker cabinet, thereby saving the extra expense and weight of a separate case. I built and sold quite a few, mostly in the Midwest. Things were going along fairly well... and then I discovered the pedal steel guitar.

I was totally enamored with the sound of this instrument. I bought one for myself and before long I got a gig playing in a pretty great country rock band four to five nights a week. I slowed down the speaker building and eventually shut down the commercial space that I was renting and built custom orders only in my basement. Life was good. Eventually the band took off and I was playing nearly three hundred shows a year. We even had a hit record and toured for a few years. That time presented a unique opportunity to learn about how others were taking care of amplification. Rented backline had me playing through every type of amplifier, whether or not it was a good choice for pedal steel guitar. My main amplifier was a Fender Twin Reverb with JBL D-120 12” speakers. In the early eighties, I discovered the first real boutique combo amplifier for pedal steel. It was called a Webb amplifier. It was solid state, sounded really nice, and had a 15” JBL speaker in it along with a 225 watt amplifier. There were other brands but I thought the Webb was really cool. I played through a Webb for many years until I started doing less touring and band gigs and started doing more recording and jobbing dates. I wanted something that was small and lightweight so that I could handle it easily, so I got a solid state rack mount guitar amplifier called a Pearce, added a digital reverb, and made a small lightweight open back cabinet for a JBL D-130F. That worked fine for a number of years but I was still thinking about a lightweight amplifier that had the beautiful tube sound that my Fender Twin Reverb delivered. As I got older, had a family, founded and ran a professional audio company and stopped all touring, I continued recording and found myself always thinking about that tube sound.

In January of 2004, I decided to start the quest for tone. At the time, I had no idea how involved and overwhelming this would become. Here was my original goal: Build a lightweight, small, great sounding self-powered speaker for the pedal steel guitar. I ended up acquiring just about one of every kind of steel guitar amplifier, tube preamp, amp modeler, vintage tube amp, solid state preamp, and any other thing I could find including power amplifiers and raw speakers. It was nuts. The idea was to find out and quantify what was good about each model. I also acquired a bunch of pedal steel guitars to learn about what made one different, better, or worse than another when it came to tone. Then I started putting different models of amplifier with different models of pedal steels. I learned a lot about what I now call THE SYSTEM. This refers to the mind of the musician and the ear of the listener AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN. So for a pedal steel guitar player, THE SYSTEM would include the following components. Player’s mind (talent and desire), ears, hands, picks, strings, guitar body and neck, changer, keyhead, pickup(s), cables, volume pedal, preamp and tone controls, effects and/or reverb, power amplifier, speaker(s), speaker cabinet, room acoustics, room position, listener’s proximity and hearing, listener’s mind. So I started taking the system apart piece by piece in order to determine which one or two components of the system had the biggest part in the player’s tone. What I have concluded is that everything plays a part, but there are three things that need to be there in order to deliver great tone. Without a doubt it is THE PLAYER, THE INSTRUMENT and THE AMPLIFIER. So out of these three components of a great pedal steel sound, which one would I be most likely to understand and improve? I decided that because my life has pretty much been dedicated to making good sound for people with sound reinforcement, I would concentrate on the amplifier and leave building instruments and players to others.

So what is it about an amplifier for a pedal steel guitar that makes it great or just good? That is the really big question. I think that a great sounding amplifier has a few things going on. One is a musically pleasing preamplifier and tone control. There is something very special about the way vacuum tubes interact with the instrument’s pickup and the way the signal for the instrument gets tonally shaped in the preamplifier. There are a few really nice tube preamplifiers, but the one that really stands out is Sarno Music Solutions Revelation Tube Preamp. This is the preamplifier I used most in developing the SPLIT. I found that in order to be able to hear all of the really good stuff in the Revelation Tube Preamp and in the pedal steel guitar, I needed to work hard to remove all of the peaks and dips in the natural response of the speaker and cabinet. I also needed to develop a power amplifier that was very neutral sounding, not to mention lightweight and totally reliable. No small task. I tried out many types of power amplifiers. It was very interesting to learn about how different two different brands or even different models can sound. I settled on a Class D amplifier design because it sounds great in the frequency range I needed and it is very lightweight. I am very happy with the particular Class D circuit that I now employ. It, along with the speaker and cabinet design, allows the voicing of the preamplifier to come through unmolested. That’s the key.

Getting a musical instrument speaker cabinet to do this goes against all of the commonly held desires for six string guitar players. Most “underarm” electric guitar players want the cabinet to have gigantic peaks and the response and power amp section to have varying degrees of distortion. And that’s fine. That’s what gives an electric guitar its attitude and character. With a pedal steel, the instrument is more like a human voice than a manufactured, colored sound that a modern electric guitar might have. The amplifier’s job is to make that clear voice louder and enhance the harmonic structure by keeping things relatively stable. There are exceptions like a distorted pedal steel or extra edgy sounds, but for the most part, it’s still a good thing when a pedal steel has a clear, clean voice.

The TC Furlong Custom SPLIT Model CB12 is the culmination of three years of intense research, comparing, testing, measuring, and, most importantly, listening. Not only have I listened, but dozens of musicians from everyday gigging players to top recording professionals and engineers, both in the studio and live, have weighed in on the sound of the SPLIT. To date, reviews have been very positive. Everything from “that sounds nice” to “what are you playing through? That sounds fantastic!” And the real compliments start when the person picks the cabinet up and it feels like it is empty. My goal was to make a small, uncolored, powerful, self-powered speaker cabinet that would allow the pure clear singing sound of the pedal steel guitar to be delivered and keep it under 30 LBS. And with the help of some very talented friends and associates, I did it. Many thanks to all who helped with the development of the SPLIT.