Tonefiend Forum

My first amp was a Crate, in fact my first 3 amps were Crates. I still have a 60w combo that I use for a test bench amp, and a gt-200dsp 2x12 combo that I plug in from time to time.

I started on a Rage 108. Actually found ways to like it in the end by using it for lightly but distinctly distorted and edgy sounds. Probably would have worked for covering Joy Division and early New Order. Gave it away in part to not have to deal with an intermittent input jack.

Do the recent solid state Vox Pathfinders fit? Really like mine, a fun plug and play that somehow captures some AC-30 attitude, though you're not going to fool anyone who really knows. Takes pedals well, nice but shallow trem, and good enough reverb at low settings. There's a well known mod to remove the LED clippers to increase headroom and nix the metal-fuzz gain behavior -- gonna do that before I ever try to play it out and about.

Some of the early seventies Gibson/Lab Series solid-staters are pretty great sounding, and surprisingly reliable for the era (looking at you Fender Zodiac series). Heck, BB King used his Lab Series amps for about twenty years. The old Roland Cubes from the eighties are remarkably toneful and reliable, as well.

Wow — did you save any of those bungee recordings? I'm familiar with the notion of moving the mic around the amp by swinging it by its cable and such, but it never occurred to meto move the amp around the mic.

Except:

I did a bunch of session in the ’90s using the Rocktron Banshee, their version of the Talkbox, but with a LOUD internal amp. I'd play guitar while swinging the hose around a pair of stereo mics for a chaotic, quasi-Leslie sound.

Quote from joe on September 15, 2012, 19:25
Wow — did you save any of those bungee recordings? I'm familiar with the notion of moving the mic around the amp by swinging it by its cable and such, but it never occurred to meto move the amp around the mic.

Except:

I did a bunch of session in the ’90s using the Rocktron Banshee, their version of the Talkbox, but with a LOUD internal amp. I'd play guitar while swinging the hose around a pair of stereo mics for a chaotic, quasi-Leslie sound.

I think so somewhere, I transferred most of that stuff to CD many years ago. To be honest it was a sort of a weak wah sound, I mainly did it because I had very little extra cash to spend on pedals. I did a lot of weird stuff to work around my lack of toys back then. I didn't so much move the amp rather than open and close the amp case to change it's frequency response. We did at one point hang the mic by it's cord and rotate it to wind the cord up then hit record and let the mic spin as it unwound while playing a previous recording of the bass parts,it sounded like a wonky phaser.

In the first starwars movie they did the lightsaber sounds by recording the sound of the high voltage supply in tv. It made a very buzzy electronic sizzling sound. Then they played it thru spkrs in the studio and swung the mike like a lightsaber while recording to get the final recording a very primitive but effective method of sound production.

By contrast the available digital FX and soundfile manipulation is far more useful at least to me. I never would have tried any of the things I did back then (1981) if had access to even the freeware tools available today. I wouldn't even have had a 4 track cassette had I not been able to borrow it from the place I worked. I mostly used a pair of cassette decks and a crappy Heil mixer. If I did any of that today it would be to use it for a digital model.