Archive for March, 2008
It was a Crate night….
SO….. BxN learned a valuable lesson last night about back up equipment. At least we learned this on a weeknight and not 3 songs into our set at the Festival of Fire. Our band has a long and on going debate on solid state versus tube amplifiers. Both Norm and Jim have really high end tube amps (ie: Mesa, Bogner, Ampeg) whereas I teeter in both realms with my hybrid tube/solid Vox half stack. Depending on the size of the venue we’re playing I’ll sometimes bring out my old trusty Crate 2×12 combo amp. The classic line is that it is a “Crate night” and usually that will coincide with me having my stones crushed for a good 15 minutes or so about my “crappy solid state tone”. Well… that old Crate and me have seen some days. It may not have the greatest tone in the world, but with the rest of my gear it is often more than sufficient. It’s never let me down through literal rain, frost, dust or anything else thrown at it.
Last night Jim had a tube fail on his Mesa rig, fortunately, at the end of our first set. You had to see the glee in my face as the only option we had available was for Jim to play out of the Crate and have me just sing. I would have taken pictures if I had a camera. JD was not happy with that Crate. -laughs-
The more important lesson that we’ve come to understand is one that Norm has already got. We have to carry backups for our amps, regardless. We’re probably going to get a cheapo solid state 1U guitar pre/power amp and have that always available in my rack case just in case something goes wrong. Better to be prepared than to have to settle for a lackluster solution or no solution at all.
With that…. to Jim… “It was a Crate night.” 