Sunday, March 20, 2011

Nic Clark playing a Bantam amp



Nic Clark with Another Kind of Magick. Nic is playing through his vintage Fender Bantam amp, using a Front & Center crystal mic.

The Bantam is a cool bass amp, with a wild speaker: Yamaha, asymetrical trapezoid shaped w/ white styrofoam cone.


Note: Everybody in this band is under 17 years old.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Shrimp Daddy


Mike Reid is playing an Astatic JT-30 mic with 151 crystal element through a Harpking 6x10 100-watt amp. Great tone!

Friday, March 4, 2011

The Blues Allstars - Live at Ziggies


I'm playing through the Mission Chicago 32-20 amp here. Steve Mignano on guitar, Mahlon Hawk on bass, and Bruce Collins sitting in on drums.

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Blues News

I've been elected to the Board of Directors of the Colorado Blues Society.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Champ at Work

Our gig at Jazz @ Jacks in downtown Denver last night had one of those load-ins you dread: Up on the 3rd floor and with long carries. So, I decided to take my lightest amp, the 1971 Fender Champ. I played it at band practice the other day and was impressed by it's nice tone.

Holy crap! When I got it in the big room and cranked it up the little Champ came alive. It was very crunchy and compressed, like you'd expect out of a Champ, but more so. Like a Champ on steroids. It was filthy. And I mean that in a very good way.

This ain't yer daddy's Champ.... It's been modded for harp and has a 10-inch Weber speaker. Bruce Collins at Mission Amps in Denver put in Paper in Oil caps and tweaked the tone stack. He installed beefier transformers and even added a choke. It is twice as powerful as a normal silverface Champ, and way way nastier. It is the junkyard dog of Champ amps.

The gig went well; lots of comments on the harp tone; lots of hyperbole about the band. Our next show is this Saturday at Dazzle Nightclub in Denver, but I plan to play my regular gig rig, the Mission Chicago 32-20 amp. More color and not quite so much grit. But the Champ was a stone blast for one night, and it made the load-in and -out a breeze.