Ad60vtx and blues junior
I'm thinking I would enjoy a highly complicated amp. My other amps are simple two channel set ups: a Marshall vs30r (at least about fifteen years old or so but in great cosmetic shape). I like it but the sound isn't steady on the distortion channel, which is really cool because it has a rotary speaker type unsteadyness and it seems like the reverb is half on when it's all the way off. All of the strings flow together into a tonal blend and chords don't stand out with any definition. Lots of tweaking leads to more standoutish sounds but you have to re mess around with it when you switch channels because the sound level is way boosted on the distortion channel. My other amp is a 120 watt twin 12" that is quite nice and I use a bad monkey and other things like a Boss OD-3 or a digitech Grunge. The grunge is pretty cool.
Evidently you can use lots of pedals with the VOX even though it has many built in effects. I was thinking it might not produce great results, combining the outboard and inboard effects. I like to put together effect chains, getting inventive and finding some tones I like a lot. That would be great if you could then blend in the Vox'es onboard stuff. I was listening to "My Life" from a relatively recent CSN and Young disk tonight, with Steve Stills really getting down with some intense tone using obviously some type of wah pedal with probably other effects included or added. Really intense, almost Hendrix type quality. I doubt if you could produce a wah sound like that with a pedal less wah. I can remember listening to Stills in the old days when he had his own band and played some really rocked up, highly musical arrangements. Remember, "Season of the Witch"?
Any way, enough digression; you guys are providing some great input and are giving me some ideas to think about.
Also, by the way, I'm planning on buying my son a new Epiphone SG bass. It has two pickups - a big bridge humbucker and a mini neck humbucker. Has a cool looking rotary pickup swith and vol and tone controls for each. Thinking about getting him an Ampeg BA-115 for that. It has a tweeter and a hundred watts. It's supposed to hiss but be a great bass amp nonetheless. Supposedly the piezo tweeter hisses as a characteristic of its design. I'm thinking an EQ pedal would moderate that. Some people don't seem to mind the hissing while others either like it, deal with it, disconnect it, or get used to it. I wouldn't disconnect it because the way my son plays, very musical arrangements with leads mixed in with bass lines, the tweeter would definitely lend tonal enhancements to the mids and trebles when he plays the higher notes. He is 16 and took piano lesson for about ten years. He knows where every note is on the bass. One day, shortly after starting bass lessons, the parallelism of the note steps and half steps just clicked. He now makes up a lot of his own arrangements. He is in a band, most often a trio. His current set up includes a antique white eighteen year old Fender Jazz bass, a bass grunge (that he doesn't like), a Ibanez digital delay, an 18 year old Peavey TNT 150, and a really cool black Washburn accoustic electric bass with the diagonal groove cuts instead of a round sound hole.
I'm thinking the Epiphone SG bass and the Ampeg BA-115 will add greatly to his tonal possibilities and there's nothing like some nice new stuff to stoke the musical fire within. He is also looking at the Epiphone Les Paul Studio bass. It will be interesting to see how these stack up to the sound of the Fender when we go down to Harrisburg to test them out. Plan on bringing the Fender along and using it to compare, if the dealer will let that happen.
I hope my long post is not frowned upon by the moderators. I didn't see anything about word count and I tried to stay on guitar/amp topics. My appology if I'm not tuned in to the forum format.
As always, any feedback is most appreciated.
