Bailey
OverviewLike the Kingsley Keep, the Kingsley Bailey is a 15 or 30W tube head built into a small chassis and covered with a steel cage. Its power amp is cathode biased with no negative feedback. As an alternative to the Keep’s single tone control, the Bailey has individual treble and bass controls. The Bailey is great for both clean and overdrive sounds and its simple controls allow this with minimal tweaking.
For its tube compliment the Bailey uses a 5AR4 rectifier tube, two EL84s (for the 15W model) or four EL84s (for the 30W model) and three 12ax7s in the pre-amplifier.
FeaturesThe controls are: volume, treble, bass and master, as well as a 3-way mode switch and a 3-way power switch (full, half and quarter power). The mode switch has bright, standard and EQ lift modes. In EQ lift mode, the treble and bass controls are removed from the circuit for a very fat, rich sound. Also, when in EQ lift mode the treble control becomes a power amp cut control instead, thus still allowing control over the tone.
Like the Keep, the Bailey also has two inputs. Input 1 is the cleaner of the two with the fattest sound. Input 2 adds a gain stage for more pre-amp drive.
The rear panel features speaker jacks for 4, 8 and 16 ohms, a footswitch jack and jacks for pre-amp out and power amp in. While not a buffered effects loop, this patch point between the pre-amp and power amp allows better performance for delay and reverb pedals, as opposed to running them into the front of the amplifier.
Dimensions: 16" wide x 7.5" tall x 8" deep. Weight: Bailey 15: 22 lbs, Bailey 30: 25 lbs
OptionsFoot-switchable attenuation
The amplifier is also available with an optional footswitch that controls the output of the amplifier. It features a 3-way switch that lowers the output from full power down to quarter power in three steps. This can be used as a boost feature, or as a volume cut feature. This can be useful for players who like to vary the amount of dirt in their sound by riding the guitar’s volume control. Lowering the guitar volume cleans up the amp sound, but of course it also lowers the actual volume of the amp a bit too. When the guitar volume is raised for more overdrive the volume also goes up. However, by stepping on the footswitch to attenuate the sound, overdrive volume and clean volume can be equalized. Footswitch cost: $100
Reverb
This digital reverb circuit sounds very spring-like, with a medium decay. The circuit mixes with the pre-amp signal in the power amplifier. As such the reverb circuit is non-obtrusive, meaning that the basic sound of the Bailey is not changed at all by the addition of the reverb circuitry. Cost: $200
1 x 12 combo
The Bailey is also avaiable as a 1 x 12 combo with a Celestion G12H30. Upgrade cost: $500
Other options
For more custom options, see our "Custom" page.
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