The dust has settled...

And after buying & selling close to 30 pieces of gear, here's where I netted out in amp-land...

• On the amp front, I'm actually up to five amps from four amps but somehow ended up putting $ back in the bank. How did that happen? I've got three heads in the studio (Egnater JTM45, H&K Switchblade, Zinky Superfly) and two combos in the living room (H&K zenTera 2x12, H&K Edition Tube 1x12). Tonally, each has its niche... The Switchblade and Superfly are ultra-modern high-wattage tube amps. The Switchblade has a bit more edge along the lines of Marshall/Soldano, while the Superfly is extremely smooth along the lines of Fender/Mesa Mark-series. The Egnater JTM45 head and Edition Tube combo represent the other side of the spectrum... relatively stripped down designs with high gain at relatively low tube power levels. In this case, the JTM45 is smooth and Marshall-esque (an atypical combination) while the Edition Tube is raw, gritty, and Vox-esque. Finally, the zenTera fills in the gaps with a wide variety of modeled tones that sound good at a variety of power levels with no tubes to be found.


• On the cab front, I've downsized a bit, putting the Rocktron 4x12 up for sale to pick up a Randall 2x12 (loaded with Celestion CL80's), which is a good fit with the Randall 4x12 XL (loaded with V30's) that I already owned.


• On the effects front, I sold the Digitech GSP1101 processor, Control Two footcontroller, and a few random pedals. While I still kept a few pedals (Fulltone wah, Sparkle Drive, Carl Martin compressor), all the digital multi-FX I have now are integrated into the zenTera and Switchblade amps... no more rack gear, no more massive pedalboards!


• Net, I'm now (with the exception of a couple random modules to sell) completely out of the Egnater modular amp system. Clearly things have been simplified a bit, as I also have a giant bag of unused George L's patch cables that were previously used to wire up the rack and/or pedalboard.
  
• Finally, in addition to having the new amps available in the studio, I traded in the Behringer V-AMP on the Line 6 Gearbox Gold bundle, which includes both a direct box and software plug-ins for amp & effects modeling. It'll definitely come in handy for recording demos & scratch tracks, and who knows... maybe it'll show up on a few finalized tracks as well.

What's next? Certainly no more amps! I've still got a few pieces of amp gear, a couple guitars, and a bit of recording gear to sell. So over the next few weeks I'll be focused more on unloading some gear on e-bay, craigslist, and other forums and less focused on getting new toys. But, of course, once everything has been sold, I'm sure there will be some new acquisitions on the horizon. In the mean time, here's a pic of a mountain o' amp love piled up in the studio...

--B