PinkMohawk

I 100% agree. I'll even offer up an alternative perspective. Currently, I'm doing the Sound, Light and Live Event Engineering course at Derby Uni. One of my lecturers is a guy named Jon Burton. You might not know this name, but odds are good you've heard his work, he's spent the last few decades as The Prodigy's touring sound engineer. He's also engineer for Biffy Clyro, and a number of other acts I won't bother naming because I haven't got the time. Last year, we as a class went to have a look at the Biffy Clyro shows in London, where they were playing their first few albums in full, a different album each night. During his explanation of what was going on, the guitar tech started checking the guitar rig, and you would not believe the amount of volume coming out of the cabs. Simon Neil runs three separate rigs, and when he wants to add more intensity, he doesn't swap to another amp and cab, he simply adds them to what he was already playing through. Naturally, we all wanted to know "Why are you using amps when you could just use modellers and have a quiet stage?". He told us they'd tried it, and they hated it, but they persisted for a while because they thought that they had to. Until he came in and said "Well, if you hate it, just use your amps, we'll figure it out at the desk." Anyway, moral of the story is, the right engineer can work with you to make sure that you're comfortable on stage, and that you're sounding your best, even if you want to drag your big rig with you everywhere you go. He intentionally sacrificed a little vocal clarity to make sure that the performers were as comfortable on stage as possible, because he knew that it'd make the actual performance that much better.

I do think there's a visual loss with the move to modellers over traditional amps. Unless a lot of time and thought has gone into a stage design, to the point that having your amps and cabs on the stage would actually take away from the overall look of things. But, on the other hand, as Red says, it's now also a lot more possible to get to gigs in smaller vehicles, less vehicles, etc. which is a big money saver for a lot of people. Perhaps the middle ground is venues buying cheap empty cabs to fill the back wall of the stage with?

That's got to be the most phallic headstock I've ever seen that wasn't just a cock.

Some of you may remember Verellen Amplifiers, the guy who made the Meatsmoke, and other such good and tasty valve amps. Well, seems like he's not been idle since shuttering Verellen Amps and has formed Verellen Devices, which just popped up on my Instagram feed with this post: Given his past work, I'm inclined to think this might actually be quite an interesting item, at least for those of us who are still running valve heads and feeling the sting of the constantly shrinking availability of said valves.

Yeah, assuming he doesn't throw a tantrum and press the big red button because he didn't get his way. You're right, hopefully the US market will really pick up on these, frankly any of these new releases and not just the bass amp, will show them that this is the right move to make, and keep them going.

You know, that's a good thought actually. We all know how bulletproof the old Peavey gear is. Yeah, you're sadly right, I spoke to the guy who came up with the idea of reissuing it, according to him it took a good year to get some movement on the project, and even then it took another engineer picking up the project and working on it before it got OK'd. I imagine the pedals were an easier sell, but hell, even the Decade reissue, that video of Josh Homme bringing it out as the secret weapon was a couple years back wasn't it? If it took them that long to bring out a guaranteed money maker like that, it doesn't fill me with hope. Likewise, I'll not be sending my money across the pond, no matter how much I might want to (Damn I want one so bad) but sometimes, you just have to stick to your principles.

Old Peavey gear was something really special, I've got a lot of love and time for the old gear, from the aesthetic to the sound. Them moving away from those old designs was disappointing, though I suppose that, in the US at least, they were so ubiquitous that everyone was just tired of them. I do hope that this is the beginning of a move towards that older school of design that made them a staple though, with a modern twist since they do need to cater for the modern audience. After all, there's only so many doom players willing to drag walls of amps to gigs anymore.

For anyone wondering where to get the kind of battery box that has the integrated contacts, I believe you'd be looking for the Gotoh BB-02 for a press fit box, BB-04 for a screw in box, and the BB-04W for the 18v (2x9v) box. Other manufacturers may make their own, but that's the one that came to mind.

Your drum tech mate should stick to tub thumping. Slapping an extra bit of wood to the front of your bass isn't doing anything for the tone one way or the other. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that any tonal difference due to wood selection is minimal anyway, but that's another can of worms. Either way, taping a bit of extra wood to the front isn't going to make your tone suddenly crap.

NS-2 was my gate of choice, and I ran a lot of gain. The separate input for your instrument, while keeping the gain pedals in the loop is a game changer.

Looking better on the leg than it does isolated in photos, though I couldn't see the whole body at once due to the vertical phone screen editing for Shorts like that. Definitely sounds good though.

Hahaha yeah, I ran one of the old 2x15's for quite a while. I got so sick of the crap wheels they'd included on it that I went and bought some big and smooth ones from Blue Aran. Good lord it was so much more pleasant to move around after that. And just in case anyone is wondering, the ideal wheel replacement for an Ampeg 8x10 is using skateboard trucks, not wheels. Makes a great place to grab hold of when you're humping it up stairs too.

To be fair, impractical cabs is a very Peavey thing to do. The 3620 was a Peavey creation after all.

Likewise, I realise it's not the same, not really, but that classic style and design language is something special. I've spoken with the guy who made the push for this to happen, he thinks of it as something like his baby, getting this made. With any luck, we'll see some real numbers move for Peavey with these throwback releases and they'll start making a move back to the classics. I've still got a pair of old Century Bass heads in storage that need repairs, but I loved those amps when I had them working.

I enjoyed my Bass Terror while I had it, though that was a while ago, and I was always a "All the gain, all the time" kind of guy, so I never really messed with looking for that sweet spot, but I've no problem believing it, it had a great distortion, especially when I hit the front end with a DS-1, I think that's what I was using at the time.