New Gear

A couple of new effects pedals and a combo amp have been added to my collection. Although I was only going into Guitar Center to buy some strings I wanted to test out the Jim Kelley Amplifiers' Furr Pedal prototype on some of the amps there. On the rack of small combo amps, I saw something that I didn't know existed, a combo amp from Acoustic called the B20 (it's 2oW amp with a 12" speaker). Some of the forums I'm on have bassists raving about the old Acoustic Control Corp. amps from the lates 60s, early 70s. Jaco Pastorius used an Acoustic 370 back in the day and I've been on the lookout for one if it was a good deal.

I like my big rig but I don't always want to play at that volume so I've had in the back of my mind to get a small combo practice amp. I played the Acoustic, Peavy and Fender combos around the same wattage and price range. But I kept coming back to the Acoustic with it's classic lowercase logo and powder blue piping. I ended leaving with just strings but when I got home to research the combo I found it was $30 cheaper online. So I just had to make an order. I don't know how much the new Acoustic company has to do with the old one, but I hope they start making a reissue of the old Acoustic amps. While being a really cheap amp, I'm surprised by the quality of sound it produces. A real simple, "plug and play" design that works.

For effects I bought a pair of Electro-Harmonix pedals, The Clone Theory Stereo Chorus/Vibrato and the Small Stone Nano (it's a small version of their famous phase shifter). On their own the produce some neat sounds but when working together in series they can produce some really trippy effects. I can't wait to experiment with them in stereo mode and use them on some new recordings.

My Double Muff just isn't working for me so I plan on selling it and getting a new distortion/fuzz pedal or perhaps building one myself. A clone of the Big Muff Pi might an easy project to do.