Contingency plans
Last night I told my wife that I was going to go out shopping for a little while today. “Oh, where are you going?” she asked.
“Guitar stores, to look at amps. I’m getting frustrated with the DC30 and thinking about just buying an amp.” Sad, but true, I was really down on the DC30 today, especially power scaling. I’m not sure why, but this is something I want to include in the amp but it’s just not working out for me. I needed a break, and I needed a contingency plan.
“Oh, okay. Where are you going?”
“A few different shops in New Jersey, why?”
“Maybe we can go with you and I can pick some things up while we’re out.”
“I’ll be out for a while, and I might be in some of the stores for an hour or so, but you can come if you want.”
“Oh. No, that’s okay, we’ll stay home.” She was disappointed. Sorry, sweetheart I really needed to get out on my own and check out some other amps to help me figure out what I’m doing.
So off I went. I’m fortunate in that there are two well stocked Guitar Centers, a Sam Ash and a couple of large independent music stores all within 20 miles of where I live. They’re mostly in northern New Jersey, so traffic can be a bitch on Saturdays, but what are you going to do?
The amps I wanted to look at—the Crate V30 and V32, and the Mesa Lone Star Special—are similar in many respects to the DC30. They’re all cathode-biased EL84s and at 30 watts each, they’re all medium powered. The Lone Star Special has two channels, plus enough bells and whistles to keep any knob tweaker happy. The V30 is more stripped down, and only about 1/3 the price of the Mesa.
The first Guitar Centers had a Lone Star Special, so I played that first with a Gibson SG and Les Paul Studio. Impressions? Well I didn’t like the SG as much as others I’ve played, but that’s another story. I found the Mesa had good tones in both channels and it was easy to dial in clean sounds up through ‘a bit ‘o hair’ on the clean channel. The second channel was very similar, but kicking in the drive control took the tone from ‘bit ‘o hair’ right up to classic rock crunch. I liked the ability to switch the drive in or out. I also like the 30/15/5 watt power selector, though at lower volumes the difference between the three were small. I think I had the clean channel set to 30 watts for the most headroom, and the dirty channel set to 5 watts for early power tube distortion by the time I was finished. The tone controls - presence, treble, mid, bass - were very effective and it was easy to dial in bad sounds as well as good. A bit too easy, perhaps, as the Lone Star Special had a plastic sign clipped on with recommended settings for different kinds of sounds so customers would have a workable baseline to start from. I also liked the reverb, though I had it turned off most of the time. Overall, I was very impressed. I could probably be happy with this amp except that the master volume was very sensitive at lower volumes. The difference in changing the master from 2 to 3 was more like an on off switch, which was a real drag. That and the $1700 price tag…
The first Guitar Center didn’t have any Crate V30s, but they did have V32 combos. (The V32s are just V30s with cream tolex and gold hardware made specially for Guitar Center, functionally, they’re the same amp.) Unfortunately, the display with all the V16s and V32s was without power so I didn’t get a chance to do more than look.
Moving right along, I tried to drive to another Guitar Center in northern New Jersey. And, Jersey roads being what they are, got stuck in traffic for 20 minutes, lost for another 15 minutes, then missed the exit and had to spend another 20 minutes getting back to the store. Did I ever mention that New Jersey passed a law some time in the late 20th century, stating that road signs must be intentionally misleading and confusing? They want you to get lost and never leave. Their efforts to misdirect the unwary are redoubled when it comes to larger roadways such as routes 17, 80 and 46. It’s true, look it up.
When I finally got to the second GC, they had another Mesa Lone Star Special for my playing enjoyment. But they didn’t have any guitars that were close to being in tune. Go figure. I find it hard to tune by ear, even at home, but having six or eight guys playing in the background didn’t make things any better. I must have tried three our four guitars, but I just couldn’t get this amp to sound as good as the first, though the master volume was much more linear so playing at low volumes was possible. It seemed like the tone had been sucked out, even with the amp on Mesa’s recommended settings. Finally, as I was getting ready to leave, I plugged in a black Strat and was rewarded with wonderful, juicy blues tones that none of the other guitars would give up with this amp. It was wonderful, better than the first Lone Star Special. I also looked at the Crate V32 and found, much to my surprise, that it didn’t have a master volume. It sounded good, but it was late in the day and my family was expecting me home for dinner so I didn’t spend to much time trying to dial the amp in. I guess I really didn’t give it a fair shake, but gold hardware and no master volume diminished my interest.
Sam Ash? Yep, stopped there too. Didn’t see a thing that made me want to stay so I went home for dinner. When I got home, my wife asked if I found anything interesting. Yes, I had. She asked how much it cost and “expensive” was my answer.
“Go ahead, if it makes you happy.” God, I love my wife. Did I mention that? She’s great.
I’m still interested in the Lone Star Special, but this is very much a try-before-you-buy kind of amp and I’m not ready to plunk down $1700 for an amp until the DC30 is up and running. I can sell the Ceriatone and buy something else if I’m not satisfied, but I need to get it running first.