Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

I sold off my Bandmaster Reverb head and cabinet a few years ago. 69 head, 68 cab (big Bassman style) - weighed 90 lbs. Back in the early 80s I had routed out two holes in the front of the head cabinet (took off the ripped grill cloth), one for a box fan and one for a little 4" speaker. Of course I blew out the speaker in no time flat. Th efan was good as those old power tubes got hot as hell. I also drilled out some holes in the front of the chassis (through tha tsteel wa some job!) and mounted a couple of switches (power and standby) in series to the rear-mounted ones. Of course little did I realize back then that if I had left it stock (it had been recapped in the mid 70s), it would be worth much more. To me it was just a beater gigging amp. The head weighed 45 lbs by itself.
When I moved to my house, they sat unused in the spare bedroom an dI would plug them in once a year to shake the dust off - until I got married.
The tubes were ancient (whatever Radio Shack sold back in the day) and it owuld have cost me about $150 to replace all of them, and with no need for its volume, and no desire to move that beast around, I sold the cabinet to one guy and the head to another.
Of course now I'm jonesing for another Fender valve amp ...

I always seem to miss the mark with my amp purchases. I only have one tube amp, the Vox Night Train (looks like a toaster). It's nice, but extremely noisy just to plug in and try to compete with a drummer. The background noise sounds like a waterfall. I know I need to try upgrade the tubes, since it came with lousy Chinese made tubes. No money for that at the moment.

I didn't really learn about tube vs solid state until recently. I just bought a Fender M-80 in 92 for $300 for Christmas and it lasted me 17 years . It suited all my needs and it worked great with all of my Boss effects pedals. It could crank up enough to play with drums and bass. I finally got around to using the clean channel, which basically sounded like CCR. Then it died.

I've bought 3 solid state amps in the last 8 years and my uncle gave me a Marshall that's quite nice. He bought it in 2000 and it's made in England. Only problem is it was the first generation of amps with built-in fx and frankly, they suck. Built-in in fx sound better on a $100 amp these days. But I carry 12 pedals in a tool box, so I don't use that stuff.

I got a Fender FM 212 DSP, which is really handy for rehearsals or small gigs (potentially, I don't gig).
It's a 2x12 combo with the exact same controls on both channels. You can dial in settings that are almost identical on both channels or switch from C&W to Slayer. The amp models are cheesy. The fx are cheesy. The hardware is cheap, plastic pots. I'm not kidding. But I enjoy it for what it can do. This is one of the amps that fights my fx, though. I can't just plug in my Boss Octave pedal and wail like I did with my M-80. This thing turns into Christine and acts like "I have built-in fx, so F your stuff".

I also got the bottom of the line Marshall half stack with the smallest 4x12 cab in the biz. It has reverb plus 4 fx settings. These are better than the Fender. The chorus effect is actually pretty cool. I didn't know what chorus was when I started buying all this stuff. A lot of my favorite bands use it. Cuts through the mix on a demo. Can be overdone, like anything else. The half stack is nice and loud, but I hate the tone and only use it with a Boss Metal Zone pedal inserted in the fx loop. That pedal is great, because I can dial the mid frequency down and make it sound like Ziggy Stardust. Not bad. I was using this amp 2 practices ago, experimenting with different fx. It sounded great just clean with the EHX Cathedral reverb. I was sending everything else to the Marshall 2000 (2 distortion, tremolo, phaser). Tried recreating it Sunday with the drummer, couldn't hear it. I used to play every note through mics, mixers, compressors, headphones. Playing without it leads to the volume wars.

On that note, I'm very interested in the Jamhub. Anyone tried that?

Other amp I got was a Vox VT-50. Yet another one with amp models and built-in fx. That amp wamazeballs, but I killed it. With just 50 watts, it couldn't compete with drums. I usually used it with another amp in my chain, but it died pretty quick. The tone was incredible. It had such a nice break up vs crunch ratio. I got the Night Train based on this, but with gear built in Vietnam, what the hell do I expect?

That's my sad, strange relationship to loud speaker box thingies. I'll save the bass and acoustic amp for another day......