L.A. Amp Show

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And so it came and went, attendance was pretty low and from what I heard it was considerably less than last year's (I wouldn't know as this was my first show). The best part of the event for me was, as usual, seeing friends, and so it was great to see my buddy Chris S. which flew down to L.A. for the weekend, Billy, Professor Geek MacDaddy, Lauren, Norm and Moss at Brown Note, Andy Fuchs, and I know I am missing other suspects, for which I apologize. Sorely missed: Brandon, Gary and Scott. NAMM y'all? I sincerely hope so, guys.

As for what I saw, hard to get too enthused about things the older I get, but there were some very good moments. Like always, I liked the Brown Note amps, and heard quite a few of them: non HRM, 40W BM, Scott's own 100W BM and a Rocket-inspired amp that Norm put together. Of course, hearing Chuck D. playing those amps is always a humbling, finger freezing experience for me! I also stopped by Andy's booth and tried the HRM amp, and it sounds terrific at that sound -- total Marshall vibe, very well executed. Loved the "secret compartment" at the top of the cabinet, which allows easy access to the infamous HRM trimmers! Then we heard a demo of the Clean Machine, and it is simply incredible. Clean, clean, clean, 3-D sounding, great reverb and.... ungodly loud. The Twin that Fender didn't build.

Also stopped by the Fender booth and got a chance to play the Princeton reissue, but as much as the amp has that sparkly Fender vibe to it, there was a raspiness to the sound that made me wonder whether there was something wrong with the amp, it sounded like something was broken ... not my cup of tea. Tried the Tweed Deluxe amp, and that didn't do it either... and finally tried the Tweed Twin and I liked that much better, however, not an amp for me. Along bluesy lines, we stopped by the Club Amps booth and heard a variety of models. Some of the amps sounded very nice, didn't even know they existed.

Now, the unexpected surprise came when Chris and I walked into the Peavy room. Those guys have revamped the looks of their amps and they look very nice indeed. Then, I was unaware that Peavey now has a Dumble clone model, but as Chris pointed it out to me, I had to try it. I used one of the EVH (not sure what they are called now) type guitars an plugged in... Hard to say what's inside the amp, but the sound was non HRM with a bit of an aggressive character to it. There is a YoutTube video of Tom Anderson demoing on of his LP type guitars through an ODS, and the Peavy reminded me of it. They seem to have left out the Mid and J/R switches, but mounted on the front panel what I think are the pre OD trim and the post OD treble bleed circuit (which is labeled as Lead Prersence, or something similar to that). The boost is pretty radical, they may have done something like the mega boost in that amp, and it works just fine. The amp has a signal interrupt FX loop, so it would require a Dumleator to work well with FX, and lists at $1,599. So, it seems that we've reached the point in our lives where the Dumble inspired amps are being mass-produced... Who would have thunk that a mere 10 years ago, when we emabrked on this life changing adventure!

Anyway, that's about all I can remember. Once again, I was very pleased to see a bunch of great people, it made the show worthwhile.

Cheers,

Gil