Speck Mountain
  New Release ~ Badwater

Karl Briedrick and Marie-Claire Balabanian, the original duo comprising Speck Mountain, have been Swart proponents for quite a while and their latest endeavor, their third album, Badwater, is an excellent showcase for the pair's psychedelic, ethereal, dream scape numbers.   Marie-Claire's lilting voice and Karl's roam-the-canyon guitar is on great display once again, but now with a new backing band out on the road.  And Karl's itching to procure another low watt Swart solution to add to the mix so stay tuned. 

Karl talks a bit about Badwater and Swart:

"We went into this album with no limits, really wanting to experiment with gear and sounds we had never explored before. However, when it came to amplifiers, we couldn't get away from our Swart SST-30 & AST Pro. Either one or both are used on every track on our album.

"The Super Space Tone is so versatile and easy to dial in. I love being able to dial in just the right amount of overdrive through the volume control, using the Master volume to control the final result. There are a lot of leads on the album and every one of them is going through the SST or AST, with only a hint of tape echo in the chain. There is a lot of reverb in our music and nothing beats a swart for verb, not to mention the lush tremolo!

"We just concluded a three week tour of the American West. Every night people asked us about our amps and really flipped when they found out they were being made NOW. It was cool to see so many people respond to them.

"Swart amps have become a huge part of our sound and though we've been using them for years, we keep finding new and exciting tones each time we go into the studio or hit the road."