I spent a fair bit of my meager spare time over the last couple of weeks tending to a Trace Elliot SMX 350 amp I bought. I used to own it and felt it was the best sounding amp I had ever used for a Rickenbacker bass and a more famous Ricky player than I said the same thing without any prompting from me when I lent it to him for a gig where it was "take it or leave it." I did not say a word, except to say I was lending him that amp because I needed my Orange for another gig. A life-long Ampig, He used it and loved it
Anyway, after fetching the amp back from a local pawn shop, I cleaned and blasted what I could and replaced a few parts.
But today I'm wondering if anyone outside of any of us OLD FFIGGIN GEEZERS even can tell the difference between me playing a Ricky 4001 through my hugely tubey Orange versus this lovely old Trace?
Or, as our lead guitarist once helpfully noted, "Why bother changing bases? It's all the same, it's just bass."
I just bring this up since we recently played at a gig where they asked us to keep our sound level down to a level where the patrons could carry on conversations. Thanks to our remarkable sound man we did .
But given that we face more and more jobs like that, why even bother having a nice amp or even a nice bass? Seriously, this really sucks.
Maybe I am glad that I am old.