Amps

My first amp was an 18 watt Lectrolab ordered from the Bennett Brothers Catalogue in fall 1965. It was probably a model R600C.  It had two channels, a 12” Jensen Speaker and tremelo.  I thought it sounded really good, but it didn’t have the umph to hang with the loud drummers I was beginning to play with.  So for the next several years I was on a quest to get better amps. 

Between 1967, when I graduated from High School, and 1970 when I got my Twin Reverb, I played through a variety of amps including a solid state Silvertone with 6 10” speakers, a Blackface 2--12 Fender Bassman, and a Baldwin Exterminator. 

The Exterminator was kind of interesting.  It stood about five feet high and had six speakers--2-15" speakers, 2 - 12" speakers and 2 - 7" speakers. It was very loud, and had colored push button tone controls.  It weighed a ton and didn’t really sound very good.  The only person I’ve heard of who uses one is Neil Young.  I’ve never actually seen one except for the one I had.

In 1970 I got a silver face Twin Reverb.  It came stock with JBL speakers, and as a result weighs a svelte 115 pounds.  I still have the amp, but don’t use it much anymore.  It’s just too heavy to move, even with the castors that I put on. However that was my main amp until about 1986.

Other amps I used along the way included a Carvin X series amp that was basically a copy of a Mesa Boogie, a Fender Stage Lead SS amp, a Peavey Bandit, a Fender 30 tube amp, and a Peavey Backstage Plus which was an amazing little amp.

Sometime in the early nineties I got a Fender Silverface Vibrolux Reverb amp and that has been my main big amp since that time.

Most of the time these days I use small solid state amps however.  I have a Fender Princeton 65 DSP that I use quite a bit, as well as a couple of Roland Cube amps--the 30 X series and the Cube 60.  Both offer modeling and various effects and in a band context sound really good.  In addition they weigh less than thirty pounds which is getting to be more and more of a consideration as time goes on.