Well this has been an interesting rabbit hole . I keep me gig gear completely separate from my practice stuff . And we also spend a lot of time caring for my mother-in-law , so I have a practice rig at home , and another at the in-laws . Most of my practice time is at the in-laws .
My current in-law practice rig has been a little GK MB200 (recently repaired) into a tiny Phil Jones cab . I also use a tiny Hotone as a headphone amp . At home I’ve been using my backup GenzBenz head into an Ampeg 210 AV .
So one will now replace the GB head (also serviced last year) . I managed to find the manual for the SWR , and was thankful because that little thing is loaded . There’s two aural enhancers , all of the eq pots also have a sweep , and there’s a compressor in there , and a tube preamp . And despite all that I managed to find a tone that I liked ., and then went to compare it to the little GK . Surprise , surprise , I had two very different amps sounding pretty much the same . I guess we all carry around a concept of tone we like . I used several Danos and two shortscale Gibson basses for the shootout .
I’m going to continue comparing the two this week (no decision before it’s time) , but I think I still slightly favour the GK , so it will stay with the Phil Jones cab , and the new (old) SWR will reside on top of the Ampeg cab at home . We’ll see . It’s easy to switch these little heads around .
I think that little SWR is one of my luckier kijiji finds . I got it for a hundred bucks . I’m aware that it will not be simple to repair if it goes down . But I don’t think it’s seen heavy use , should be fine for years .
