these past few days saw me trawling through the pages of eBay UK. i can’t exactly put a finger on what prompted me to do so. some time in the april of last year, i came across a guitar amplifier which had a £350 price tag on it. it was a hiwatt and i can’t exactly remember whether it was a custom 50 or 100. it was a second hand head which had the wear and tear seen most likely as a result of years of gigging. lmsn rds would’ve killed to get the head but at that point in time, i was in the store to bag myself a fender telecaster which was going for cheap. i just shrugged the feeling off and drove home happily with the tele in a spanking new gig bag.
and for some reason, i began thinking of the hiwatt head again recently. a tinge of regret perhaps, but it wasn’t financially viable for me at that time when i was in that converted barn of a store in castleford. why do i want another amp? do i really need it, or is it just a want? spending a few hundred quid on a want requires some very long thinking, or a very deep pocket.
i have, at the moment, a marshall valvestate 100R. i got it in 1998 from a store in sheffield for a mere £311 (they gave me an 11% discount). it is a hybrid amp, a single 12AX7 valve (or tube, in american-speak) in the preamp section before a solid state power stage. 3 channels, one clean and two for crunch. gigged for probably 5 times. ‘blew up’ once during lmsn rds’ RATM cover band’s performance.
