For love of the amp

For love of the amp

In the beginning, man had guitar. Then he wanted guitar to be louder. Then he wanted the loudness to be better. Then, he wanted it to sound like heaven and hell. Then, he wanted it to play itself, tune itself, clean itself, and re-string itself. And so the story goes.....

Mankind’s long standing love affair with amplification is no mystery and the myriads of amplification devices are no less mysterious than that love. From Jimi Hendrix’s screeching feedback caused by excessive volume to the subtle waterfall tones of Eric Johnson’s clean, Stevie Ray Vaughn’s biting slightly distorted strat to the chorused out plucked acoustic tone of Stills’ tree top flyer. It’s all good and necessary as tone is the very essence of individuality in music, particularly when it comes to guitar.

I myself am considered a dinosaur of sorts because of my choice in weaponry, my rig consists of a ADA Classic Pre-amp module with tube or solid state voicing options, run though a clean 200 watt power amp, into a Marshall 4x10 model 1960A and B, half or full, I love the versatility this set up gives me, digital foot controller also eases channel switching which is an art in of itself, run in line through a Banshee voice wah module, then through a classic crybaby wah. This allows me to go seamlessly from Metallica to Aerosmith, then onto The Doobie Bros. No wireless allowed! It diminishes tone like a dying battery in a pedal! No active electronics either! (Don’t how Zak Wylde pulls it off?) But most actives have clearly diminished volumes?! If I was in an all original screamo thrash band then yea, life would be simple and I would only need one tone; Loud and Heavy! Playing covers forces you to accept and learn different tone styles and techniques that can then be applied to more creative versatile song writing down the road.

Being in a 3 piece cover band for years has led to an evolution of my gear and the young kids still make fun of me when I come rolling into a club or studio with this set up, I hear the jeers and jaunts “Hey, look at the old man, he likes to move furniture, ha ha.” With the advent of “POD” system and digital interface with stuff like pro tools and whatnot, I could see why they think this way. But in the end, I almost always have one or more of them come up to me and say, “Wow, dude, your tone is simply amazing!” or “How do you get your cleans to sound so clean and yet still have a major crunch on the heavy stuff?” To which I reply, if you want to have big muscles kid, you gotta move some furniture.” It’s a bit of smart assed-ness, but I really believe it too, no matter how much technology changes the way we play, in the end, if you want big, you just got to go big? Plain and simple!