Well, my lovely 65 Amps London lovely (I think I already said lovely) cabinet received its first of what will more than likely be many battle scars this Sunday. *Sigh* It’s just gear, it’s just gear…. that’s what I keep telling myself. And the looks do nothing for the sound, I know. And usually I’m really good at this. I almost always buy things for their sound, and couldn’t care any less about their looks…. provided it’s not a bright pink ’80’s glamrock BC Rich Warlock or something…. nothing’ll take a congregation out of worship faster than the sight of a glammed-up BC Rich, no matter how it sounds. And I’ve gotten so much great-sounding ugly stuff over the years, that I’ve come to love the beat-up look.
But then, something like this will happen:
Now, that may not be your cup o’ tea in a guitar cab, but for me, it just happened to be my exact taste in looks. And when I say, ‘just happened’, that’s exactly what I mean. That’s how I fall hopelessly and stupidly in love with some of my gear, is because…… it just happens.
I was searching for a solid ply, Baltic Birch 2×12 cab, with a Celestion Blue paired with a Celestion G12H30, constructed in such a way that the speakers are not ‘sitting’ at the bottom of the cab. And I found this one, and it totally fit the bill. But see, the pictures weren’t much to speak about…. maybe the guy I bought it from had a cheap camera, or maybe I just glossed over them in my exuberance to actually find a cab secondhand that was exactly what I wanted. Either way, I had no idea I would fall in love with the classic, yet just clean/modern enough, & original, but not overly busy, type of design and looks this thing sports. So when UPS left it on my porch, I opened it up, took it out, saw it, and was like, “Blast. I’m going to have a problem acting like an overprotective gear freak while gigging this.” And so I did.
I know, I know, I’m dumb. Gear is for me what cars are for most guys. So for me, this is one of those things that I ask God to scratch or dent for me so that I stop obsessing over a chunk of wood with some tolex. And what does God usually do when we pray things we’d rather not pray? Ya…..
Big old smash right at the top middle of the amp. It actually hurts my body physically to look at it. See, in order to lower stage volume, but still keep tube-goodness in tone, we run our amp heads on stage with 50 foot speaker cables to our cabs in closets, and mic our cabs there. The problem arises when you try to explain to the youth pastor why you need a 20×10 closet kept empty for your guitar cab…… which I probably don’t, but think I do, because then the mic can pick up the ambient space, and of course the whole congregation can tell the difference when there is ambient space being mic’d and when there are storage boxes in the room. Right. The youth pastors and stage managers and the like don’t buy that……. and they’re probably right. However, the storage room in which we place our cabs has fast become waaaay above capacity…. and no matter how many times I clean it out and re-organize, people go in and say, ‘Cool! More space for my ministry’s other stuff!’….. and they’re right, the closet if for storage. But it’s pretty bad……. monitors are on top of stools stacked on boxes sitting on more stools piled on more monitors and barrels of coffee….. ya, I’m serious.
So I meticulously set my rig up Saturday afternoon, turn my amp off of stand-by, dig into a chord, and there’s some ambient noise coming from the closet, but nothing in the house. So I check all the microphone cable connections on our two 50 foot mic cables connected together so they can reach into the closet, everything’s good…..check the board, everything’s good…..everyone else has sound in their instruments…..
I open the closet, and find my cab lying on its back on a now bent speaker cable, with the microphone stand lying on its side a few feet away, and a stage monitor splat on the ground right in the middle of them. (I’m going to choose to say that it wasn’t my rig being inordinately loud that caused sound vibrations to rumble all the stored stuff and cause it to crash down upon my cab. You may think differently.) So it was pretty bad. I’m lucky it didn’t break my speaker cable jack, or cause the speaker cable to come disconnected, which could have then blown my amp. But I set it all back up, and everything worked, and all was right with the world.
It wasn’t until I tore my rig down after the services on Sunday that I noticed the large dent, not just in the tolex, but in the wood itself. It might not look that big, but it’s huge to me. Sorry, sweet cab; I should have taken better care of you. I’m hopeful, though, that it will scab over and heal itself in a couple weeks.
So God does answer our prayers. And now that it has a battle scar, I am free from being a jerk about who carries it and free from gazing it at in my office with the lights on at an ambient glow. Maybe. But in all seriousness, it is freeing when these pieces of wood and metal that we value so highly stop weighing us down. My 65 Amps London cab will not be in Heaven with me. I know that sounds cheesey, but that’s the long and the short of it.
But cheer up, beloved cab. You’ve got a long way to go before you reach this hallowed ground:
I have never had a pedal with more mojo. This thing actually worked, despite it having seen both World Wars, and probably serving on a submarine for one of them. I sold it, stupidly, so if you ever see it on e-bay, let me know.
Splendid.
Karl
Guitar for Worship 