It's been a rough week of working day jobs we don't particularly like. In my frustration, I convinced myself I needed a new guitar amp. For several years I have used a Mesa Boogie Mark III, an incredibly heavy tube amp. I fantasized about the Fender Jazzmaster Ultralight, a mere 10th of the weight of my rig at 7.5 pounds. I could take the subway to gigs! But alas, I have spent the last 11 years distancing myself from solid state amps, preferring the warm tones that only obsolete technology can give. This is not without its price. There is the aforementioned heft of tube amps (you simply would not believe how heavy this thing is), but there is also the cost of maintenance. A solid state amp is fairly reliable for years, there just isn't enough stuff in there to break. The tube amp, on the other hand, is rife with points of failure; I have him them all. Several times the amp has literally caught on fire, which while a good thing metaphorically, is less so in practice. The tubes themselves can be expensive and you're supposed to take it in for re-tubing and biasing by a professional, something I intend to do when the economy recovers.

Yes, the solid state amp sounded like a great idea. But before blowing another wad of money on more equipment I thought I should try to approximate what I'd be dealing with before submitting that order on musiciansfriend.com. So I switched on the Mark III and turned the gain down to get a clean sound, then ran a variety of distortion/overdrive pedals through it. My first real amp was solid state. But it was also a 500 watt Sunn head driving a Kustom cabinet with 2 15" bins. And even then my overdrive of choice was a Tube Driver, which has a little tube in it for authenticity.

Anyway, five minutes into this test I knew I wasn't leaving the Hallowed Halls of Tube. In short, it sucked. Tone sucking, to be specific. Whoa nelly. By not utilizing the wonderful albeit accidental tonal properties of the tube amp, my sound was reduced to a decidedly narrow sonic range. The guitar sounded like it was being pinched, the way a voice sounds in a megaphone. But then I realized, that's what stuff sounds like through the average guitar amp.

As you may know, my band has but two members. Since I'm the one with the 'melodic' instrument, it's up to me to cover some bases that other instruments normally would cover, namely the bass. What's been so great about the setup I have is that the Mesa gives great response through a huge variety of frequency ranges, obviating the need for a bassist (okay, that's debatable but throw me a bone here!). When I set up the amp, solid-state style, all the range collapsed back to the usual frequencies one would expect of a single electric guitar. It was all twang and no oomph. Sure it would probably cut through the noise of a band but without that low end, well, it seemed pointless.

Was this a conclusive test against buying a solid state amp? No, I mean, I suspect that some solid state amps paired with the right speaker can deliver all the stuff I'm talking about and probably some stuff I didn't know I needed. But the experiment built back some of my appreciation for the rig I have now; in effect, it just saved me $1000. After good guitar tone, nothing moves me more than saving a load of dough.