Premier Guitar Articles

So, you’ve moved to a new town or perhaps found that your current guitar or amp tech isn’t quite up to your standards. Maybe you have a particularly special project that you simply would not trust to just any repair shop. If you live in a larger city, you may have the luxury of having access to several decent facilities to choose from. If not, perhaps you’ll be scanning the internet and be considering shipping your beloved instrument to someone in another town, state or even country.

Temperatures are warming, music festivals are on the rise, and summer is officially around the corner. Working bands will be hitting the road and taking to the sky, spreading their music across the world. But is their gear up for the task? Gear is the lifeblood for any band—without it, musicians cannot do their job and make a living. And while no piece of gear is completely “bullet-proof,” there are steps we can take to ensure our gear possesses the most important quality it can have on the road—reliability.

So you are in the market for a new tube guitar amplifier. Perhaps you are new to the electric guitar and need your first amp. You may have decided to switch from a solid-state amplifier to a tube amp. Or maybe you have just outgrown, or need a change from your current tube amp. With all the choices out there, there are a few guidelines to consider. Let’s start by figuring out what our goal is, and then look at amp characteristics and their effect on performance.

For years I’ve had an internal struggle. On one side, Ilovevintage amplifiers—the designs, the tones, the vibe, often the quirkiness and yes, even the musty smell. What I don’t like about old amplifiers is the regular maintenance necessary to keep them in top running order and the noise (both electronically and, in combos, the box crackle).

For the past couple of months, I’ve found myself acting as bass player for a new band. It’s been a bit of a change of gears for me as I’m usually playing guitar or lap steel. In playing bass, I found myself with aneedfor feeding my desire for headroom—a need that can only be satiated with lots of big power tubes and stacks of speakers. I purchased an Orange AD200 bass head with their matching 4x10 and 1x15 bottoms.

Premier Guitar: The Vintage Supro Clone (well, kind of) February 2009 by Tim Schroeder. A couple of months ago, I checked in a pile of amps for repair/freshening up for a band that was going into the studio to record...