| What in the heck is a Line 6 amp doing here with all these high priced amps? Not everybody is looking for a point to point vintage piece of gear. Not everybody has mega bucks to spend. There are even folks starting out, or folks looking for their kid's first amp. There are a lot of great amps out there today. There are classic amps in nice price ranges. Some of these are pretty well known ... the Fender Blues Jr. ..... the Peavey Classic 30. There are tons of amps at great prices on E-Bay too. So .... why did I pick this one? There are a lot of modeling amps on the market today. There are also a lot of nicely priced amps that do one thing, such as the amps above. The Line 6 Spyder 1x12 is an amp that I have recommended to a lot of folks. It generally can be bought for less than $400.00 at places like Guitar Center, Sam Ash, and the sorts of places that are not too far a drive from just about anyplace. This amp is compact and light. At less than 35 pounds or so, your teenager or even younger child, can toss this in the back of their car, or their parents car, and be off to a friends. They are rugged beyond comprehension. I cannot think of how many of these amps I have with clients, where they are the amp taken to the hotel room for messing around, song writing, or just practicing. They are a piece of basic gear for a lot of top groups. NO TUBES .... which means, no heat, less weight (no big power and output transformers) and no high voltages in places where hands can go. They do not need to be maintained like a tube amp, there are not worries about tube matching or bias. No tubes? What about sound? Well, I know a LOT of jazz players that swear by Polytone SS amps. There were a wall of Acoustic 260 and 360 amps up on the stage at 69 Woodstock, and a lot of us still listen to the soundtrack of that event. I grew up "borrowing" my brother's Standel SS amp, and played a lot of venues using Standel and Jordan SS amps. Before you get into too much of the tube versus solid state argument, listen to an amp. There are great tube amps, and bad ones. Same goes for solid state amps. Low Power Consumption .... This may or may not be a big factor, but for years I lived on a sailboat. It was not a big one, only 35 feet, but had no generator. I had a SS amp with me all the time. They run great off an inexpensive inverter. This amps is very good when it comes to running of an inverter. The Spyder is better than most, a compliment on their power supply. There may be amps that appear to do more ... or appear to do less. This is an amp that is easy to use, and gives the player the proper options, with a great human interface, as compared to many other amps in it's price range. This amp will cover all the bases. This is VERY important for a new player. As their tastes change, or as they wander toward experimentation, this amp will cover their needs. As an example of some of the features: It has a headphone jack ... playing at 3am will not wake mom or dad. It has a built in direct connection ..... meet me at the Universal Amphetheater and I can patch this little guy into the house system in about 30 seconds. Then you can stay up with the best of them, with a few kilowatts of house system, EQ and effects behind you. It does not have 1000 presets with all sorts of PC tools needed, or the need to step through eight levels of front panel programming to get the reverb turned on ! It is simple enough, that my dead grandmother could have at least gotten music to come out of it in short order. What amps and features doew it have? Well .... Clean .... to teach one how to play without a wall of distortion so great as to cover up all your mistakes. This is also a great jazz setting. Twang .... This is the sound of the Fender blackface era, 60's surf, and 60's and 70's rock. Blues .... based on the Marshall JTM-45, an amp based on the Fender Tweed Bassman. You can't do much better than this. Crunch ....here comes the Marshall model 1987 (the 50 watt late 60's early 70's standard). This is the Hendrix era sound. Recto ..... If you watch MTV and see groups with kids in it that are younger than my eldest son (he's 27), then you have seen and heard a Mesa Dual Rectifier. Insane .... extreme gain, hopefully not the wave of the future of music, but then again, I am getting too old for some of this maybe. As if this were not enough .... you get effects too. The effects in this amp, if purchased as stomp pedals for another amp, would cost more than this amp itself. These are built in, and work well. The Line 6 folks were also smart enough to keep things simple too, and know when to quit! Too many folks trying to follow in Line6's footsteps (they were the folks that invented this modelling stuff), just keep adding more and more and more ... and just like an artist who tries to mix all the colors on his palette, you just end up with a muddy brown. The Line 6 folks did this very nicely. You get REVERB. Everybody needs reverb. Maybe not all the time, but for a lot of folks, almost all the time. CHORUS ..... A major effect used by too many to mention. It is standard in every pro's pedal rig that use a pedal rig or effects rack. FLANGER .... hey ... if you are going to do 60's stuff, you've got to have a flanger. Sure, folks today use them all the time, but it was folks my age that did it first :) TREMOLO ..... Surf music anybody? Something more modern? Listen to "Sailing to Philidelphia" by Mark Knopfler for the modern use. DELAY .... TAPE ECHO ..... PING PONG ..... These three are in there too .... Pink Floyd anybody? Bottom line ..... A great amp, light, sturdy, reliable, full featured, fast and easy to use, and very fun to play. So .... next time you want to ask me what a good amp is for your kid, or for you starting out, or to take on the tour bus, I will probably talk about all this again. |