Re: Post your amp collection
I've mentioned it in passing once, but I also have an Ampeg VT-40 head. The head came out of a 4x10 combo I had some years ago and went into the shell of an Ampeg B-25B head that needed tubes and a going-over by a tech. I never got around to it, so the bass head has been sitting in a storage facility since about 1989.
Maybe one day.
But the VT-40...
I had one of those Crate mini-stacks back in about 91/92. The little head with the 2 little 8" or 6" cabs, whatever they were.
I was over at a friend's house jamming, and his dad (and old C&W player) came in and offered me the VT-40 combo for the Crate because he needed a chorus effect. Why he didn't just go buy one...
At any rate, he fired up the Ampeg, and when I weighed the odds and evens (larger amp, but lack of distortion, but LOUD), I agreed to the trade.
The cab only had 2 speakers in it, which was fine. 2x10 with 60w behind it was much louder than the Crate. He was happy, I was happy.
I acquired a Digitech GSP21 Pro a short time later and ran that through the 40 for a few months, but then swapped the chassis into the bass shell and picked up a 1x12 cab. Easier to carry, and LOUD.
After about a year, it started losing volume, like a really sloooooow tremolo effect. The band I was in at that point was looking at gigs, and a reputable amp tech was inconveniently not available, so the Ampeg went into storage and I picked up the Peavey TransTube Bandit 1x12 I mentioned earlier in the thread.
In late '99, we moved into a new house, and lots of stuff was still in storage. The band was almost done with, due to work schedules and distance and my inability to remain civil towards others for long periods of time, so the Ampeg sat in storage some more.
I come home from work one day and Mom n Dad had been over to the storage place, with a truckload of our household goods to finish moving in (the small knickknack stuff that makes a house a home), and Dad mentions that they also brought some of my stuff (I didn't have much) and put it down at the bottom of the hill with some of his stuff (old-timey 1980s TV and electronics repair stuff that had been his life for over 25 years by that point).
Figuring he was merely referring to a box of 45s, maybe my old Polaroid, I thought nothing of it. No record player, no Polaroid film, what's the difference, right?
In 2003 (3 years and some change later), the pile of my Dad's old TV repair junk at the bottom of the hill that had been covered in a cheap blue tarp was starting to get exposed. We had torrential rains one year, 14" snow drifts the next, etc. Curiosity set in and I wondered exactly what he meant when he said back in '99 that they put some of my stuff down there with his stuff, so down the hill we go.
I pulled back the tarp and saw my Ampeg under it. 3 years of exposure to the elements just to save $20 a month on a storage building THAT STILL TO THIS DAY HAS ABOUT $5 WORTH OF YARDSALE FREEBIES IN IT.
Needless to say, I was not camping happily at that point, and left it for dead. Every time I thought about that over the last 14 years, it just pissed me off to no end. I'd look them up on Ebay and saw where I could have sold it for $850 at one point.
I went down there twice in the last few years to see if maybe I could save it, but by then the weeds and sticker bushes had taken it over along with everything else. There were things stored there that had simply disintegrated over time.
Not 30 minutes ago, I made up my mind to dig it up (by now packed into the ground) and see what's what.
The headshell is still there, but do I really need to say that plywood cannot survive 14 years of outdoor living.
While I haven't cleaned it up, I did at least move into an outbuilding so it can thaw out, and whatever's been living in it since then can either move out or be burned out when the weather gets better.
The tubes appear to be intact. One of the giant capacitors may have exploded. Or that's just some of the wildlife that attached to it.
Gonna need to replace the ground pin before I even think about plugging it up, too. I'll have Mr Electronics Genius (Dad) go over it with a meter and look for problems.
I'll also take before & after pics.
