15 watts is all you'll ever need

  • Thread starter Thread starter MadAsAHatter
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I don't have answers to these questions that you will agree with or be pleased by. I can only say that gear quickly takes on a whole different light when you are in a gigging situation for a large part, or for all of your income. I'll leave it at that.
You can still say your opinion even if I may not agree with it.
Based on what you've said here I'm guessing it's something along the lines of seeing gear as a tool for the job and nothing more.
 
You can still say your opinion even if I may not agree with it.
Based on what you've said here I'm guessing it's something along the lines of seeing gear as a tool for the job and nothing more.
That's pretty much it. It's a tool for the job. Yeah, like anyone here I enjoy nice gear/tone but once it's something that is gigged i.e taking a beating, the parameters for what is of benefit changes. That's how I went from a half stack to a twin. It was born out of convenience for working in congested nightlife areas...

I see rooms full of gear as more of a hassle than a blessing, but that's also cause I exist on a musician's budget i.e a shoestring. A half dozen moves across the country makes you wanna pare it down to the essentials. I own less nice stuff, gear and otherwise, today, than I did 15 or 20 years ago but my gigging tools are much more dialed in that anything I owned previously.

I've often though about what I would buy gear-wise if I sold my house and had some spare thousands to blow and the answer is probably some speakers and a third Twin Reverb...redundancy (assuming I was still gigging). Maybe a Quad or a Showman. How boring. But really I'd probably rather have a new 4 wheeler so I don't have to haul firewood in a wheel barrow no more.
 
That's pretty much it. It's a tool for the job. Yeah, like anyone here I enjoy nice gear/tone but once it's something that is gigged i.e taking a beating, the parameters for what is of benefit changes. That's how I went from a half stack to a twin. It was born out of convenience for working in congested nightlife areas...

I see rooms full of gear as more of a hassle than a blessing, but that's also cause I exist on a musician's budget i.e a shoestring. A half dozen moves across the country makes you wanna pare it down to the essentials. I own less nice stuff, gear and otherwise, today, than I did 15 or 20 years ago but my gigging tools are much more dialed in that anything I owned previously.

I've often though about what I would buy gear-wise if I sold my house and had some spare thousands to blow and the answer is probably some speakers and a third Twin Reverb...redundancy (assuming I was still gigging). Maybe a Quad or a Showman. How boring. But really I'd probably rather have a new 4 wheeler so I don't have to haul firewood in a wheel barrow no more.

This can be said about a lot of things; tools, cars, shaving razors, pens, etc. Some people like having a "collection" for personal use and entertainment, others see things as tools for the job and only needing the essentials. Then there's the third option of both a collection and tools. All are reasonable and valid viewpoints; just a matter of perspective. Nothing upsetting about any of that.

I think my original point still stands. It doesn't matter what/how much you own, why you have it, or how you use it. The main thing is that you enjoy what you have and what you're doing with it.

Really, that's one of the draws of Rig-Talk over other gear forums. Unlike other forums **cough TGP TDPRI cough cough** no one gets shit on for what they do/don't have, how talented they are, or whether they're a pro or bedroom warrior. You just catch hell for blindly parroting something someone said on the internet once and talking out your ass.
 
When the tiny bar keeps telling you to turn down.
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I love big tube amps but my hernia scars hate them. I should be gigging with a Gorilla amp.

That brings back a nightmare gig from 1985(?) where a bunch of bands shared the stage at this festival. Some local music store offered all the gear (except guitars) as advertisement/sponsorship. Great, I'm not dragging stuff out. I get there, and they have this tiny-ass Gorilla amp up there, all nicely mic'd up. I can't tell you what it sounded like, because I couldn't hear a single note I played for that entire gig with that tiny amp and insufficient monitor feeds - sound run by some store employee - along with live drums and plenty of bass on stage.

I have live captures of that night from someone's boombox somewhere around here. They don't sound nearly as bad as I thought at the time, but still not sharing them! (The bass player - for some unknown reasons since he could hear himself though I guess he couldn't hear me - played 1/3 of one song in the wrong key! lol)

Sorry, I'm having PTSD from 40 years ago at the mention of that amp!
 
That's pretty much it. It's a tool for the job. Yeah, like anyone here I enjoy nice gear/tone but once it's something that is gigged i.e taking a beating, the parameters for what is of benefit changes. That's how I went from a half stack to a twin. It was born out of convenience for working in congested nightlife areas...

I see rooms full of gear as more of a hassle than a blessing, but that's also cause I exist on a musician's budget i.e a shoestring. A half dozen moves across the country makes you wanna pare it down to the essentials. I own less nice stuff, gear and otherwise, today, than I did 15 or 20 years ago but my gigging tools are much more dialed in that anything I owned previously.

I've often though about what I would buy gear-wise if I sold my house and had some spare thousands to blow and the answer is probably some speakers and a third Twin Reverb...redundancy (assuming I was still gigging). Maybe a Quad or a Showman. How boring. But really I'd probably rather have a new 4 wheeler so I don't have to haul firewood in a wheel barrow no more.

I suspect a lot of us were like that when we were younger and regularly gigging. Once I quit "trying to make it", settled down and got a "real job" (plus spent some years accumulating some money) I could afford lots of toys I couldn't while gigging constantly. I don't cycle through gear, like a lot of guys around here, but I have slowly accumulated it over the last couple of decades.

Since scaling back, I've only done a few hundred gigs and most of those have been small amps. I've mostly used an old Mesa .22+ or even a little Fender Silver Face Champ, each with a small pedal board. I've mostly avoided going direct, but have done that a few times. (Also pretty certain my direct guide tracks ended up on that last full CD I recorded - low in the mix to be sure, but I think they got left in, though I didn't do the mix or mastering, or even have copies of it now!)
 
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I think i'm finding my sweet spot with amps. Just my opinion but seems like 50 watts with half power options, etc seems perfect. I haven't had a 100 watt tube amp in years. I played thru a 100 watt Marshall DSL the other day and looked like a Cadillac sitting on the cab.

I just got the Fryette PS-2a which is 50 watts, two 6L6 tubes. As much as I like my EL84 Synergy 20 IR, when it comes to hard rock and metal, it just doesn't get to that full chug arena.

For gigging musicians, I think it is really difficult, especially if you are older. It is like I'd love to have two 4x12 cabs and a nice, loud tube amp. But the idea of loading cabs in a trailer and all of that just doesn't work for me. With that said, I try to find this balance between great tone and convenience. There are definitely options, but really becomes a rabbit hole.
 
I still love a Rivera M60 in half power mode with the bias run all the way up. It's like the B+ gets variac'd down to 220v, but only that changes. Sounds so good.
 
That brings back a nightmare gig from 1985(?) where a bunch of bands shared the stage at this festival. Some local music store offered all the gear (except guitars) as advertisement/sponsorship. Great, I'm not dragging stuff out. I get there, and they have this tiny-ass Gorilla amp up there, all nicely mic'd up. I can't tell you what it sounded like, because I couldn't hear a single note I played for that entire gig with that tiny amp and insufficient monitor feeds - sound run by some store employee - along with live drums and plenty of bass on stage.

I have live captures of that night from someone's boombox somewhere around here. They don't sound nearly as bad as I thought at the time, but still not sharing them! (The bass player - for some unknown reasons since he could hear himself though I guess he couldn't hear me - played 1/3 of one song in the wrong key! lol)

Sorry, I'm having PTSD from 40 years ago at the mention of that amp!
I gigged with a solid state Boss amp sitting on a bar stool in a bar in South Korea in 1990 and still don't know how I hear myself. I don't even remember what amp it was.
 
I found the amp. It was this one. How the hell did i do a show with this, lol:

 
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