Amps, PA systems, speakers, gremlins!

[Tim Armstrong]

It was in interesting weekend!

I had a duo gig with my brother on Thursday night that was uneventful. I played my "Pinky" Musicmaster through my Yamaha Magic Stomp modeler into the PA system, all went well.

Friday and Saturday night were band gigs at our favorite Ocean City watering hole "BJ's On The Water" (keep your mind out of the gutter, Billy J. Carder owns the joint!). My SWR Workingman head is ailing and I bought a new amp via eBay (an AMP BH 420, more on that in a minute). Unfortunately, the seller sent it USPS and it took its sweet time getting here, not arriving until today, so I had to go with my Magic Stomp into my PowerBlock into an old 60s Guild single 15 cab (my only 8 ohm cab, which is what the PowerBlock wants to see). Friday night, no problem, sounded like a million bucks.

Ah, but Saturday night, I got this annoying crackling noise as soon as we started playing the first song. Man, that sucks, trying to first identify where the noise is coming from and then which component or cable is the culprit. I THINK that I might have been running the Magic Stomp too hot into the PowerBlock, and hence the lineout to the PA system was too hot as well. Anyway, I may have negatively affected one of the PA main speakers. It sure sounded like that was where the sound was coming from. However, today I noticed that the 15" speaker in my bass cab was loose (only two of the screws were holding it in, and it was definitely moving around!), so that may have had something to do with it as well...

So today the AMP BH 420 showed up. It's an amp from the 1980s, designed by Steve Rabe later of SWR and Raven Labs fame along with Russ Allee who had a lot to do with Eden amps, and it's kind of the missing link between the classic 70s Acoustic 360 (which these guys worked on) and their later amps. It's also the amp that Dave Funk based his Thunderfunk amps on.

Mine looks just like this one:



400 watts into 4 ohms, very tweakable. Damn, it's loud! I might break down and get a bigger speaker cab (I'm running it into my 4 ohm 2x10 Steel Sound cab, and I can easily imagine blowing the Eminence Delta speakers in it!).

I'm gonna gig it on Saturday, and will report back!

Cheers, Tim

[gweimer]

Sounds like a cool rig.  I'm one of the old Acoustic 360 disciples.  I've found in the past decade or so that a big rig is overkill for most of the places I play.  I've got the Ashdown MAG 200w combo w/1 15" that suits just about everything.  I upgraded, and got an Ashdown ABM 500w combo w/1 15, but haven't had the chance to gig with it yet.  That may happen soon.
In my downtime, I somehow managed to put together a big rig set-up.  I've got a Phil Jones Bass Buddy, running into a Crown UT-2020, which drives a Peavey 1x15 JBL cab, and a Sunn design folded 18" cab w/Cerwin Vega.  I have no idea where I'll ever use that rig, but I've got it if I ever need it.

[Dave W]

I'm glad the AMP 420 arrived safe and sound. But after the problems with the SWR let's hope your Saturday problem wasn't with the Powerblock head itself. It's always good to have a working backup.

[Chris P.]

I like the seventies look of the AMP!