Olie, I've been taking His Large Red Self to several jams at local clubs for the last several weeks, and it's been a real hoot to utterly reverse the ceremony you speak of, that has happened to all of us:
I'll walk in with that big case. Hook up with the ringmaster and get my name on the list to get called up on stage. So I just sit there with the case closed, nobody knows us, and wait for them to call me up (I've already got it tuned and ready to roll). So they call me, I open the case, grab him, and head for the stage.
I'm virtually always following some poor schnook with a Fender or Fender clone (I almost feel sorry for them . . .). EVERY eye in the place is on all that red-tinted quilt all of a sudden. I plug in, they'll call out some blues tune and away we go. Suddenly, they can HEAR the bass, and I don't mean just loudness: The bottom of the note, the smooth mids, the firm highs rolling from the newly installed FatBoy update. This is absolutely the end product that Ron had in mind, right there for all to hear.
Well . . . all I can tell you is afterwards, NOBODY volunteers their Carvin, or anything else!
The crazy thing is, this has happened EVERY time regardless of how good or half-assed an amp I wind up with. I feel like I'm taking a Beretta to a knife fight.
I've really found that HEAR it first / ask questions later really eliminates . . . questions later!
J o e y
