jimmarchi1's forum posts 8022

ah, but alienS is a Cameron film

while Blade Runner has nothing to do with Phillip K Dick's novella, I still love it, every version

When I was still in the biz, it went radio, single via video, single for sale via iTunes/physical, then an official album release date where iTunes and stores got it at the same time. Its not a rule, but sony, who distributed my band's label, did it that way.

Fane was the OEM Sound City and Hiwatt speaker as well as being OEM for Arbiter Vox (same parent company as Sound City ;-)... they are british and aggressive but different than celestions. There are a illion varieties of Fane and Hiwatt changed up frequently so its hard to pick a Fane just by magnet weight and wattage. 50s and 75s seem t be the Hiwatt speaker of choice, but a lot of sound city cabs and some early hiwatt cabs came with 25 and 30 watt fanes and they have a sound too. Then there's the cone and dust cap style as well as the basket (cast aluminum versus pressed steel). The ones I am looking at look like older 25 to 30 watters, but they have large H dust caps and what may be a cloth surround 'bass' cone in stamped steel baskets... they are unusual for havng come from a hiwatt cab. Low wattage, smallish magnet, weird cone. I might pass. Old Fanes are a crapshoot. But Fane discontinued all the 70s models and then their factory burned down (I thnk in the 80s) and they lost the secret formula for most of the discontinued Hiwatt speakers. They make a series called the Medusa series, but they are more like early 80s fane speakers that went in some Biacrown Hiwatt cabs and the Audiobrothers Hiwatts.... people are down on the 75 watt weber Thames and Reeves Purple back clones. Hi-Tone offers a pretty well regarded copy, but only in their cabs (which are pricey, though I would love to get a Hi-Tone 30 watt Jimmy Page model and matching 2x12 someday soon).

The MIDI setup is a work in progress. I am ditching the Nova System in favor of a top of the line Yamaha foot controller, the Nova Drive and the X4... I may get my modulation on via the X4 since it has some secret chorus settigns that sound awesome. I just can't get on with Nova System. Its just okay. I basically had it relegated to chorus, detune and 1 subtle reverb. Waste of $250 as well as pedalboard realeastate. I am considering a vintage Korg or Roland digital delay for "U2" echo so I can just rack that, shove the nova and X4 in a drawer and run mytuner and Yamaha controller on the floor.

the standalone X4 and Nova Drive are the real mind blowers in my rig right now. Just damn good. The Nova drive is SOOOO powerful. You can even run the TS9 and Rat in parallel. I am getting a hard-on just thinking about all the magic drivey-ness it can accomplish. Also, it really loves the Traynor. The rat side has this "extension of the amp" quality.

Overall I am glad I took a chance on this Traynor based on the schematic. Its redefined my expectations of big, fixed bias, A/B circuits. Even a vintage fender pales in comparison to its snappy response, deep bass, sparkly top and fantastic saturation. I don't know why hiwatty circuits are a backwater of modern amp building...

https://youtu.be/jWDh55aUPI4

Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, Jeff Tweedy, The Edge, Derek Trucks... I could go on.

But yeah, I used to think the SG was a pointy, metal guitar until I actually bothered to play some... its not perfect, but its light, extremely musical, has great fret access and the ebst heel ever as opposed to a strat or jaguar that have that stupid fender bolt on heel. If I wanna play up high I play my SG or MR1000

I was just referring to film style. Polanski may or may not have done what he's charged with (if so, I hope they nail him even if hes 100, but not without a trial.... fleeing for decades does tend to make me question his protestations of innocence, but fair is fair, if I am ever accused of anything I would prefer not to be judged by public opinion until after my trial)... I am a huge Kubrick fan going back to Spartacus, don't get me wrong, but EWS kinda set out to be a Polanski-style steamy thriller with a little "Story of O" thrown in to make it extra controversial. It just fell flat at that. You want 2001 or full metal jacket? Call Stanley. EWS just showed the limits of the man's range...

I found eyes wide shut to be a piss poor thriller or a mediocre skin flick. Kubrick is too much the artiste to make a porno but as far as the actual story telling he was working way outside his usual idiom. Roman polanski he ain't.

Not that I can make a better movie.

4x10 vs 4x12? Too broad a generalization. They move 4 inches less air, are a few inches smaller every direction than a 4x12 and generally most 10" speakers are less efficient than a comparable 12" model (when there is a corollary at all). None of this is a rule though. I lost the auction today at the last minute. I wasn't willing to pay jack shit for that cab so i let the guy who was willing to bid have it without a fight.

I am hovering over some pressed frame 70s fane speakers right now. They have unusually large dustcaps and i amnot sure if i should drop 200 bucks on them...

Epiphone hasn't produced more than a handful of decent guitars (and this by luck) since about 1997. Epis made in Korea at the Peerless factory are okay, 80s MIJ epis are usually good, but mostly you see casinos, Sheratons and rivieras, not SGs (Gibson type models made in japan were marketed as Orville, Epi MIJ was onlyfor epi models until the end of the 80s when Korea got involved).

it took me 'til I was 30 to warm up to Gibson's SG, then I got next to the idea but had to hunt up one that suited me. Now I get it. Its less of a plank than a tele. But what's wrong with a plank that sounds good? I'll take on your tone with one of my planks any day, SG or Tele. Don't get me wrong, I like my les pauls and 335s and my strat.... they are curvaceous and nice But there's nothing those guitars have that the SG, Tele and Esquire do not. The 3 planks all play and sound fabulous.

but to reiterate, a recent epi anything -SG, Les Paul, 335, whatever- is an investment in disappointment

are those pedals mounted on a repurposed cutting board? if so, hats off to you! badass.

"Terror couple kill colonel!!!!"

when Bauhaus first reunited I went to see them at the electric factory... I was not yet a huge fan, but I left the show a lifelong devoted follower. I really enjoy certain Love and Rockets stuff, its kinda like the other guys from Bauhaus trying to do their own New Order and I like that about it. Also, Daniel Ash is a really nice guy. I don't think I was aware of an NIN tour with Bauhaus as the opener. How odd. I just don't see that working. I actually really dig NIN, Ministry, KMFDM and Thrill Kill Kult as a piece of youthful nostalgia. They are the bands that got me turned onto a lot of other, more avante guard industrial like Neubauten and Skinny Puppy. Sometimes I really enjoy putting on March of the Pigs, Head Like a Hole, Wish or Perfect Drug and banging my head like a teenager again. Downward Spiral was a real technological and artistic milestone by anyone's yardstick. It cool these days tot rash TrentReznor, but the man's not without his talents.

What you describe sounds just like the toxic waste delays yours is based on... I don't trust anything that obliterates the tone of my guitar like that. I'm a musical narcissist when I'm playing and as much as I like t indulge in sound design with synths and stuff I just like t hear myself play the guitar too much to bury my tone in warbly washy echo-verb.

I can confirm that if you don't know what its supposed to do then its going to be confusing to get an ideal sound from an effect.... I found real oil can delay to be pretty baffling when I got a working one. I had to have an older guy confirm it was not broken because it just sounded so fucked up to me. I never managed to please my ears with it and after finding out it was full of toxic waste and then getting a Chorus Echo on long term loan from a friend who moved out of philly I just disposed of it with the broken ones. If they are valuable now I am kinda kicking myself.... but I just did not get the whole thing with the oil can echo. Major WTF effect.

you can't go wrong with plain old CTS pots and traditional wiring. I am just thinking with how much higher end your rig is now you might prefer a gussied up DS1 over a stock one. We are not talking about a big price jump to get the MXR version. For me the rat is just the crown prince of distortions, though having a version with treble and bass controls is really doing it for me right now. Its really a great ac30 pedal, I guess having toured with Marshalls I got away from it and more into vintage fuzzes, but with a mainly ac30 arsenal (and the voicing on the traynor being on the voxy side) I am back in camp rat for my sludge. The rat (well, TC Nova Drive) seems like my no-brainer source of pedal dirt right now since I probably won't buy any more amps that aren't ac30s or Hiwatts (yes I am tempted to buy an actual vintage hiwatt dr504, I am such a junky because everything is beter in pairs when it comes to amps). I think I justs cored an open-backed peavey classic series 4x10 on the bay for 100 cruddy bucks. Speakers are probably junk, but it'll be good to have around. I have been missing my old marshall 4x10s I used to use, but I really wanted something open backed with a floating baffle like a tweed bassman cab. And here this was. I am starting to think I would enjoy playing 3 amps at once thru different speaker configs. One can always be louder....

In short, theres a world of good SGs at good prices made by gibson. There are also some decent 80s clones from japan that canbe had for about the price of an epi pro. Then you have my current production fave, the reverend sensei. Bang for buck there. When I bump into a silver sparkle sensei at the right time i plan to buy one. Either that or a vintage guild s100 or s300. But in your price bracket? Sensei dude.

Its not a promise,just a cheap thing to check. I would think about trading her in towards a legit ac30 asap.

Eno's original rock solo album with 'needle through the camels eye" still nrings a smile to my face just like i am hearing it for the first time in highschool. Moreso than roxy music, it still sounds fresh.

I amnot surprised to read you are big into echoand the bunnymen and the cure.

Bauhaus? They just missed my top 5.

I have a number of friends who live right near you (hollywood, pasadena) who are die hard neubauten fans since... well, before you were born. And before I discovered them when Tabula Rasa came out. You just need to meet more people. Neubauten are hugely popular. Did you hear their comissioned ww1 piece? Whoa. Challenging stuff.

I wouldn't recommend the sg as a weapon. The neck joint isn't sturdy enough to survive more than 1 or 2 blows. If your victim has more fight in him when it breaks you will regret using the sg over a fender.

I certainly wouldn't count on a chinese made guitar to be a reliable bludgeoning tool.

I guess the rat is a little smoother than the ds1. Try out the mxr 77 custom badass distortion. Its a hot rodded 70s spec ds1. Ds1 guys prefer it to a stock ds1. I didn't care for it, but i don't like the ds1 much. I much prefer the od250 and rat in hard clip distortions.

A master volume marshall is still loud as balls. The master neuters the amp below 3 or 4. Maybe the new 25 watt jubilee head would suit you though. Its got a great 80s marshall sound at a somewhat lower output level than a typical marshall 40 to 50 watter. I have never enjoyed any marshalls at home. They are stage amps. Even the studio 15 and 20 watt lead and bass were excessively loud for apartment (flat) use. The studio 15 just loved to be turned up. The master and the attenuator really took its balls off.

doorstop.... firewood

I would guess its the single preamp tube. Try putting a fresh 12ax7 in there 1st and foremost. It could also be a dying speaker. Weird speaker noises can sound like an amp problem.... or it could just be inherent to the ac30vr? Hybrid circuits are weird

You really prefer the DS1 to the Rat? wow

I picked up a Traynor amp from the 60s. Its pretty damned similar to Pete Townshend's signature Hiwatt. I really like it, but its also pretty damned loud. I got a Nova System, a Nova drive and a flashback X4 as well. Surprisingly I really don't dig the Nova System. The standalone Nova Drive has more comprehensive controls and just sounds a little better to me and the delays n the X4 are way better than the Nova delays. Go figure. I am already selling the Nova system. Its not bad, just not great.

but anway, I officially have a lot of amps again. I can never stay under 5 for very long.

Miles Davis Quintet (Kinda Blue era with Bill Evans on piano)

Einsturzende Neubauten

The Beatles

The Spiders from Mars

Television

wait, can I have 6? I forgot Portishead

www.gilmourish.com

625 seems like a lot of US dollars for a Korean, Indonesian or Chinese guitar, then again I think Gretsch's asking price for an MIJ professional series Duo Jet is outrageous (and I owned one). Its a good guitar but I know the markup is pretty extreme. People bitch about USA Gibsons, but I guarantee you their labor cost and and therefore profit margin is lower. Gretsch is a new ending cash cow to fender.

hrrmmm. I woulda cared more about this when I was 13

I forgot all about the xotic SP compressor.... everyone likes that thing on the web but no one I know uses it... its really darned small.... that can be good OR bad from depending on yer point of view

EDIT: I think I would get a tried and true dynacomp used on ebay and then buy a new Xotic SP and shoot em out at band practice, then sell the one that was weaker for my particular application. You better have a sturdy and reliable board for the Xotic because of the diminutive size.... I used to have a CB Hyperpak for solos on a country and wester gig and until I put a pedalboard together I used to knock that itty bitty mini OD onits side all the time, but it seemed silly to have a pedalboard for a tuner, OD and tap switch for my slapback echo... so eyah, little pedals? no good without a dedicated pedal board AND still easy to knock over when velcroed down with anything but the strongest lock-grippy latch-and-hook material.

Off to work. meh

Probably....

I know that the during the heyday of hiwatt and orange in the 70s the awesome and unmarshally hiwatt and orange 4x12 cabs came loaded with either 50 watt or 75 watt Fane ceramic magnet speakers (usually cast frames but later the pessed frames like in some 70s voxes, not sure if there's a difference apart from the frames and in the case of orange sometimes they had celestion H magnets)... but I have encountered a quad of 70s Fanes w/o Hiwatt, Orange, Sound City or Carlsboro badges, just generic fane logos. Look like early speakers. The owner says they are 25 watts but I don't know where he got this because they don't have the sticker with the wattage handling, impedance, magnet gauss and model number on them. The magnet looks small for a 50 watt or larger, it doesn't stick out over the back of the frame at all which makes me think 15 watt to 30 watt. 50s and 75s share a magnet but have slightly different voice coils that change the power handling and voicing.... the 15 to 30 watt range is typified by a medium weght magnet and varying voice coils per model, but hell if you can tell the difference between models with the same magnet but different power handling just by looking. This seller says they are from an old, deterioriating hiwatt cabinet. There are records of very early hiwatt cabs with 25 waters and sound city cabs made by hiwatt for the amps Dave Reeves (of hiwatt and before that Mullard tubes) designed for the brand before hiwatt took off in its own right have the 25 watters sometimes (if they weren't the more common 100 watt cabs with 50 watters that paired with the big dog L100 model everyone used back then)... my Sound City/Super Who style head is a 50 watter (probably does more like 65 watts RMS, its POWERFUL with a capitol P).

So I am trying to figure out if I should buy these. Will they have that Hiwatt/Fane magic? could 2 of them in my 2x12 handle the 50+ watts of my amp? Or are they too small and weak to do the business? Will they sound great blow out? There's 4 available but 2 are poorly reconed with the wrong cone and dustcap (and I don't have or want a 4x12 anymore)... I am considering slapping two of them in my existing 2x12 wired up with a weber 100 watt speaker motor so that the dummy load from the weber cuts the wattage to the vintage Fanes in half, but maybe it won't even be needed? maybe they are fine at handling a good 50 watts as a pair? Do they sound better pushed or underpowered????

Anyone??? Even me, Mr Vintage, is stumped. I know mainly what I am looking at but don't know ABOUT these speakers. I don't know what their rating is, what their power handling is IN PRACTICE or even if I should expect the chewy yet chimey sounds of the bigger Fanes or if these smaller magnet fanes will be a totally different animal. there's nothing wrong with my closed back 2x12 now with the early 70s G12M and early 70s CTS alnico, but hey, the grass is always greener and I am contemplating a pair of vintage fanes like these for a Tommy era sound with this new amp or a mix of an old JBL K series or similar Altec with maybe an EV12L or Fane Crescendo for a later 70s live Pete Townshend Hiwatt response.

Maybe I should leave well enough alone? I know if I load the closed-back 2x12 with fanes or Lansings and like it that way I will wind up buying an open backed 2x12 or a combo cab for the Matchless head so I can use the CTS/greenback combo I spent so much time discovering by trial and error (g12ms are notoriously hard to match for efficiency and to compliment tonally when mixing and I am such an inveterate speaker mixer I can't play thru 2 of the same 12" unless they are something really exotic and special like maybe a Fane or an Altec 414C)....

vintage Hiwatt guys and devoted Who fanatics, you must be out there.... HELP MEEEEEE!

So its Thor. Thor would just beat Storm to death. Thor has a code of honor as do all Vikings, but I've never heard of a Viking feeling dishonorable about beating, raping, murdering ladies like a modern man would... it was more of a point of honor to abuse as many women as possible when you were out raiding. After Thor finished with Storm he might drag her back to asgard and give her to his dad as a present. Odin would get a kick outta that.

sure, I try to be thorough as I have owned and used virtually EVERYTHING at this point in my life...

I am very partial to the Dynacomp for the flattering presence lift and slight bass cut and owned a 90s example for years. Best thing about 'em is they are stupid cheap for such a reliable box.... though the attack and release is hardwired, you can easily mod them if the compressor isn't grabbing the way you like.

Also, Pete Townshend used one for his elad boost from the late 70s until the Who stopped touring for awhile in the 80s and 90s. Pete likes simple stuff that works well in a band mix on stage and he wouldn't have gone with a dynacomp if it didn't cut the mustard.

For bedroom work it may "color your sound" too much, but I have elarned that sometimes that's exactly what an effect needs to do when you want to lift outta the mix on a crowded stage. "Uncolored" effects often cause you tog et buried when you stomp on them unless you have them set for a ridiculous output boost that might anger the soundman or your bandmates' significant others. There was a lot of wisdom in some of the frequency shaping circuitry in old effects. Its not trendy now, but a lot of the old designs (probably all of them) were made with loud, stage use in mind. The bedroom rocker wasn't a phenomenon, no one was talking about getting cranked tone at whisper levels, PAs sucked and needed to reproduce nothing but vocals and maybe kick/snare and therefore LOUD was king (hell, even in the 90s when I was cutting my teeth, LOUD was what it was all about, miss those days, I love to be loud but seldom get to really use my firepower anymore)... and there were no internet forums where middle-aged, amateurishly unmusical podiarists in basements could get together wishing they could sound like Jimmy Page wthout pissing off the wifey.

Speaking of loud, all I wanna do today is wind the master on my vintage, Canadian not-a-hiwatt/soundcity head past 5 and HAVE AT IT, but its not to be. Too many neighbors home on Sundays (I do not need the police t my door today) and I worry that if my toddler got too close to the cab he might spontaneously combust or maybe explode into a pool of bloody goop like when they stake a vampire in True Blood... and I am back to work in a mere handful of hours with very little rocking accomplished all weekend. Life is unfair sometimes.

still, I think she would just be mustering a massive storm when Thor would knock her block off with his hammer VIKING STYLE (you can't remove the physical element of this fight because even if you asked Thor to refrain from punching her I doubt he would be able to restrain himself unless you made hi swear some kind of Viking blood oath first -- even then, Vikings were masters of escaping their oaths via technicalities when they had an urge to rape and pillage in contravention of their word)... also, thor's thunderstorm powers are kinda instantaneous (he'll just swing that hammer and nleash who knows what) and Storm has to kinda build up the pressure systems, even to zap you with lightning... her only defense would be gale force winds to keep Thor away from her.... I don't think her lightning bolt trick will deter Thor's Scandinavian, berserker fury.

I just see Thor opening up a can of whoop-ass. If storm gave the whole world bad weather fighting him it would just serve to piss him off more. I think you would want to give Storm a helper to take on a guy like Thor. Someone who could keep Thor at bay while she out-weathered him. Although I don't know how that would effect him, you know? Her ebst bet would be to blow him away because the lightning would just tickle him, hes the god of THUNDER. And Vikings sailed all around the world in all sorts of elements I just don't know what sort of weather would bother him.... maybe unseasonable heat and humidity? Hes kinda overdressed for tropical weather, maybe you could give him heat stroke while he chases you around with that terrifying war hammer?

Nothing can negatively color your sound. It either sounds good or doesn't. But everything you put in-line WILL color your sound. You sound like me, a guitar----> amp guy who flirts with toys but always prefers his direct tone. We are not right or wrong, that's just how we like to hear ourselves. Instruments, amps and especially effects are all just tools of self-expression and if it helps you express yourself then its RIGHT. I get down on the young guys who seem to be holding themselves back by puttering with a pile of toys instead of just having at it for a while until they squeeze all the tones from a basic setup. Its a personal tic. I think kids should pay their dues like I did in the age ebfore easy answers on the interweb! I get more and more crotchety about "talent boxes" every year, but every year since I was a boy with my 1st fender strat in hand popular music with guitar gets weaker and weaker... guys like you and I sound like ourselves because we took a meandering path thru the forest of gear. It probably made us stronger players too, all that searching and struggling to get the sound in our heads. I distrust easy answers, so get ready!

On to your surprisingly complex question. I'ma write you a book without (I hope) getting overly technical about detection circuits and gain reduction methods!

First off almost every guitar compressor is the same basic style. The genesis was the Ross Compressor and dynacomps CS-2s, boutique compressors from most fancy-pants dudes? They all just riff on this primitive design adapted from the entry of transistors into broadcast technology. With very few exceptions, the awesome, famous compressor styles like Tube Limiting amplifiers, opto, fet, VCA and what haveyou? They are studio units running at +4dBV line elvel and are unsuitable for guitar without a direct box or unless you are shooting for a really colored sound (and then its a direct to mixer thing and not great into the front of your amp as the elvel is VERY hot and your amp is presenting the compressor with an improper impedance load, changing its tone and losing some of its true character). You CAN put a studio unit in the effects loop of some amps if the loop is buffered for line level. This is not commonly done for slide though and I am generally down on effects loops.

HWAH? huh.... moving on to brass tacks:

A lotta folks I know swear by the classic MXR Dynacomp or a clone of the Dan Armstrong Orange Squeezer (MXR is still in production, think clean, bright... Armstrong's only available as clones, kinda dirty, midrangey and NASTY) for slide as well as everything else you might want compressed, though one cat I know uses the Keeley. Mostly the gussied-up boutique Ross Compressor clones like Wampler's Ego compressor, the Barber comp, analogman Bi-Comp and the aforementioned Keeley (the big K has got a ton of versions with varying degrees of control, but under the hood they are all based on the 70s grey Ross circuit) are country chicken-pickers. I am not much of a side player but I have had luck evening my slide tone with a stock, block logo dynacomp as well as an old Boss CS-2 or a boss limiter, both 80s. Bare in mind I was playing Marshall superleads the last time I played slide seriously, so it was hella loud, midrangey and kinda compressed already and the dynacomp as I recall was set very subtley.

I recently tried an MXR Studio Compressor pedal that knocked my socks off. Didn't sound like the same old Roaa/MXR style circuit (which, again, almost ALL compressor pedals are). If you want to get fancy the Cali 76 is a scaled down, pedalboard version of the mighty 1176 FET compressor you have ehard on a zillion tracks. People love it. The manufacturer (Origin Effects) even makes a version with two Calis in one box for rhythm and lead that they named (get this) THE SLIDE RIG. I've not tried it, but I know people who are over the moon for the Cali 76. People used to just plug their guitars straight into the old blue line 1176es and then go direct in the late 70s, particularly for slide. If you are looking for THAT latter-day slide tone and not something more Allman or Chess Records flavored? Then that's your box.

In fancy, CLASSY pedal compressors my favorites for non-slide have for years been 1) Joe Meek's discontinued compressor in a stompbox (its expensive and ahrd to find, but I ahd one and it was sweet if you like that sort of thing)... 2) the Teletronix LA-2A model on the Line 6 POD HD and M series. If you want nothing but compression it would be worth getting the littlest M series stomp used for about $150USD. It only does 1 effect at a time, but its got good AD/DA and I am 99% sure it has the LA-2A model in there. Or you could get an M9 and get some nice delay and verb simulations (as well as passable fuzzes and ODs).

A beat-up, old MXR dynacomp with the less desireable block logo though could do you fine. She's got a slght presence lift that can be really flattering when lifting lead lines out of a mix, particularly if you knock your tone control back a smidge for slide to reduce string talk.

An AC30 normal channel or tweed deluxe normal channel both make a growling, nasty compressor direct in for slide. Both amps compress like crazy even set clean and the darker channels suit slide work beautifully. I own many AC30s and have owned a 5D3 tweed deluxe and similar vintage Gibsons. Both designs slam a lot of power into sweet sounding alnico speakers with low power handling and the speaker compression adds to the whole effect. But be prepared for LOUDNESS. Even the 15 watt deluxe can be a real ear bleeder when setup for slide work. Another classic recipe is plugging straight into a tweed champ for slide. The little amp breaks up early, compresses beautifully, and the tiny alnico speaker starts compressing before the amp even gets much hair. This is the sound of Clapton and Allman on the Derrick and the Dominos LP everyone loves so much. Just an itty bitty champ pushed to meltdown. The Blackface and silverface champs are cleaner and punchier. Putting a bigger or more efficient driver in the champ ruins the effect though as the speaker retains more dynamics only being hit by 5 measley watts. The Gibson GA5 will do this trick admirably too as will most small, single ended practice amps that were made in the USA during the "golden age." Any small old amp that's popular with harp players will generally be a good choice for a compressed slide sound with no external effects.

WARNING, if you favor true single coils like I do the compressor will make your singles unuseable on stage due to the amplified buzz!

A Viking god trumps a mutated human any day of the week in my book (and twice on Thursday since Thursday is named after him). He's a GOD... and a FUCKING VIKING. Storm would get her ass handed to her even if she decided to wear her badass Mohawk again for the throwdown. You do NOT want to face down a Viking in single combat. As an army they are rather undisciplined fighters, but they are masters of single combat (since they decided a lot of disputes this way) with equal parts cunning, guile and berserker rage and in asgard the gods fight for kicks all day in Odin's corpse hall. A human Viking you might disarm and defeat if you are lucky, but Thor can just summon his hammer right back. He's a god. And Thor is the mightiest Viking god. Even as a watered down superhero he can take storm down.

its really moot since we all know Professor X has the mind wipe trump card and there's not a single telepath in the avengers strong enough to stop him.... I think Dr Strange would have to combine his magic with a "tonne" of Tony Stark gadgets in order to stop Professor X's astral onslaught, for real, no other x-men would be needed. Unless Magneto flipped sides maybe, but Magneto has a negative history with the Avengers dating back to that Atantis Rising miniseries from when I was a fetus... his relationship with the x-men can be fraught with tension but it has barely been antagonistic since the 80s. He would turn up and fuck up any technology play by Tony Stark and then the Prof would mind rape all the Avengers in the Multiverse into thinking they were 2 toed sloths...

you can't plug ANY tube amps into a sound system and run speakeless without A) a specialized loading device like a Palmer, mesa, Two Notes or Radial tube-amp DI box with speaker simulation and a reactive load or B) risking blowing your amp up (and also sounding piss poor while doing it). Not from a line-out jack uness the ehad specifically says that the line put jack is for SILENT RECORDING where a massive power resistor is put in line whenever you plug into said jack. Otherwise its a line out from the preamp and the amp is running with no load and will striahgt up die if you keep up that sort of abuse to it.

There is no point in plugging a solid state amp into a solid state PA as far as I can tell though because it basically IS a solid state PA with a little shaping circuitry tht the mixing board could easily mimic with parametric EQ. The only thing giving a solid state amp any character at all is typically the pedals and the speaker. You just eliminated the speaker. I guess get a high end DI box for your pedal board or buy a used POD... or play somewhere other than church where they understand that the electric guitar is supposed to be LOUDER than the drummer and easily able to cut the mix in the biggest of bands, that's why they invented pickups in the first place. There's too loud, and there's having your balls taken off by a whiney, controlling, old sound guy who thinks that we musicians can't balance ourselves in a musically appropriate way. Many people can't, but many of us are real musicans and we understand to turn down and to use our firepower in service of the music, not as a full scale nuclear strike on our own bandmates.

I am not sure why anyone would plug an amp right into a PA anyway, it defeats the purpose of having a dedicated instrument amp. They make products for this sort of thing though, they are just expensive for the good stuff. A good tube amp is actually cheaper. If someone told me to plug my amp into the PA I would look at them like they're uncle is also their father and I also might take my ac30 and go home.

suit yourself with the swede, it seems like a lot of money for a modern, far east copy f a mediocre vintage LP copy.... if it were cheaper I would be like "what what? sign me up!" I can tell you just like it because its got some deangelico look to it and you are fixated on their new line of solidbodies.

The Greco is just an okay guitar. It has features that EVERY DECENT ELECTRIC in the Gibson camp oughta have, but none do any more.

on your friend's overfuzzy sound, has it occurred to you that the amp and the fact that hes slamming that lineout into an extremely high impedance input while leaving the power section operating without a laod, a virtually INFINITE impedance, and not a matched low impedance inductor like, say, a SPEAKER like it was designed to work with JUST MIGHT have something to do wtih the fuzzy response from his gear and maybe not so much the Gibson he has? that and Kustom has never made great amps, just awesome cabinets.

Okay, done. Just put that stuff about amps into PA systems in the back of your mind before you do anything weird with YOUR gear.

that all makes sense, I just think the avengers function well as a unit and have so many part-time members allover the damned galaxy that the dysfunctional x-family would be implode under its own tensions while wave after wave of honorary-avenger cannon fodder rolled in... of course, that's if Professor X didn't just mind-wipe all the avengers in the first 30 seconds. It would depend on his mood. He acts all rational and kind, but Xavier is a moody little gimp and I would not want to be on his bad side when he's having a hissy fit.