I have played a lot of transistor, or solid-state, amplifiers, but my relationship with them is somewhat troublesome. More often than not a feeling that my guitar-playing is without both sting, expression and inspiration, creeps up on me when I end up plugging into an amp without tubes.
Cut to a concert in one of my favourite establishments two weeks ago. For a number of years, I have had the pleasure of being invited back to play at what is maybe Sweden's best venue for free music, BrÖtz in Gothenburg. Since 1993 BrÖtz have insisted on presenting free music to a small, but interested audience. This evening I was especially happy to see several young people, taking a seat in front of the stage, that is, by the way, unpacked and mounted from a storage room somewhere in the house. The reason is that the venue is in use for other creative purposes the other days of the week. The pop-up quality of BrÖtz in my mind adds to the feeling of creativity and purpose.
The only thing I never liked is their guitar amplifier. The have one, and it is the simplest, most boring transistor amp I know. I once owned one and used it in front of people, but never lamented that I got rid of it, it must have been back in the early 90ties. Before now.
Having fist decided to bring my own app on the train ride from Oslo to Gothenburg, I finally decided to give the club’s Roland Cube 40 watt a last chance. I had decided to bring a couple of boost pedals, and see if one of them could extract some energy from the little orange amplifier. The train was severely delayed. This and the reason we decided to have something to eat before going to the venue, killed our last chance to get a sound check. This also resulted in my decision to go for my most radical idea. I unpacked only my Zvex Fuzz Factory pedal. Put it in the signal chain between my guitar and the amp, turned the gain down to almost nothing, adjusted the crazy pots on the pedal that are known to produce a number of sinister squeaking, howling noises, turned the volume on the pedal up, and was shocked. From that moment on my Aria guitar, with .09 strings, sung, wailed, and screamed vividly throughout the evening.
When I got home I tried to create the same effect using a tube amp., to no success. Next I tried it on my old Ibanez solid state, an amp. I have never managed to a decent guitar sound out of but never the less did gig a lot with in the early 80ties. And it worked. Suddently there was life in the tone. I have not yet tried the same thing on a stronger tube amb with decent headroom but that's next up.
