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*Yes, I am assured that "comboites" is indeed a real word, at least here in The Club, that is. Happy birthday, still-Fearless ex-Leader!
I am quite reluctant to say sooth. So, I'll let others have fun guessing at iago's birthday gift. But, I assure you, it's a good one!!
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I have two of those combos. One is in nicer shape but has the annoying tendency to stop working after about 5 minutes. The "local" shop could not figure out why and I've not felt like shipping it "home" to Cali. The other one is in ratty shape but plays reliably.
Neither have been used in many months because my Double Four does all I need these days.
So cool. When I saw Geddy Lee in a magazine add telling me all about how he used one of these, I was sold and wanted one so badly. I never did get to buy what Geddy was selling but boy did I crave.
Beautiful! My two are MBE models.
If an old amp isn't all beat to cwap, then it hasn't been used properly (as in: often enough).Beautiful! My two are MBE models.
View attachment 5467704
The one on the right is my first, which has been giving me issues. The left is the one that works consistently. But it's just so beat up!
*Yes, I am assured that "comboites" is indeed a real word, at least here in The Club, that is. Happy birthday, still-Fearless ex-Leader!
I am quite reluctant to say sooth. So, I'll let others have fun guessing at iago's birthday gift. But, I assure you, it's a good one!!
.
Nah, I don't buy it I think the last pic is just a second pic of the original B50.Here's the answer the millions of you wanna know. Okay, just 'Dog and M, but I'm ready to reveal for them. The birthday gift to myself arrived in the big brown truck this afternoon and while you may think of it as silly, it had great personal meaning to me. I'll tell you in pictures and words.
01) The first pic is of my original Acoustic B50C combo amp I bought back in the late summer of 2018 when I was young and naive. I was happy to see the box and hoped I'd like it, especially since it could be positioned as a monitor in my bedroom studio.
02) Here it is right outta the box. Kinda chunky compared to today's lightweights because the cabinet is MDF. Sadly, I found myself underwhelmed by its tone though, and was crossing fingers I'd get to like it as we both aged.
03) I decided to take the combo to school (for those new to me, I taught the upper elementary grades for 35 years with an additional year of subbing!) to help us with an experiment involving making up a big batch of Ooblik to demonstrate soundwave patterns to the students. At least in my head, it was gonna work. My fifth graders hauled our experiment down to a first-grade room because nothing gets little kids more excited about science than a cool experiment. They ended up loving it but for the wrong reasons!
My group prepped the combo by wrapping plastic wrap around the top of the angled combo (see pic 3) before pouring what we thought was to be a small amount of corn starch and glue. As we waited to view the speaker bouncing the Ooblik up and down off the wrap (check out this experiment...it's cool!), it failed to generate much movement. That's when I said to my crack staff to dump more of the white substance onto the tight plastic wrap, or it was supposed to be, and then we'd get it going. Funny, it never did what we expected it to do, but did begin to slip past the wrap and cover the speaker! At that point, we had to decide whether we should stop the experiment and admit defeat or sacrifice what I knew was a combo DOA. Ah, I chose the second one...
04) The picture says it all. I pulled the experiment's plug (literally), told the first graders to never give up unless it's hopeless, and proceeded back to our room where my kids wanted to keep trying, at least until we were out of Ooblik. I let them for another 10 minutes and then thankfully they all went home with stories to tell. Faithfully, I tried to clean it up as best I could but it was no use. The mess also seeped into the amp chassis and it finally wouldn't even turn on. I ended up giving it to our custodian as I found out he collected disasters. besides all the yucks here in the CC after posting Pic #4, I moved on with the whole thing. Except, I always felt guilty about ruining a perfectly good piece of equipment that could've gone to someone else had I kept it and not ended up liking it, and I've carried that around all these years. Until today.
05) Last Thursday, while surfing around for a birthday toy, I came upon a used B50C out of Manchester, Connecticut for $129 minus tax and shipping. The GC store said it was in "great" shape. So did the one in Florida at $169, but I figured this didn't have to cost $40 more dollars, so on a whim I purchased the cheaper one. It came today and is in excellent condition. No nicks, dings, or tears. No nothing. It seemed to have a few scratches on a couple of the knobs, but they came off with some Armor-all. Even the AC cord was brand new in a package. After looking it over and cleaning it up, I fired the amp up to find it ready to go; no noises, whines, or moans. Ran my Sire through it first and admittedly, was pleased with the overall tone. Lots of bass but no woofy at all. 4-band EQ with some ability to get creative.
After that, I tried my Hofner, and while it took dropping the bass knob to 9:00 (same as with the R40), I was also quite pleased with the tone. My guess is I didn't give the combo enough time to break in where this one has been around since March of 2019, and I've gotten better at dialing in what I like to hear. Otherwise, how could you explain my enjoyment of the Rumbler 40?
So there you have it. Did ya guess correctly, G'dog? I have a feeling you did. what's cool is I don't need this amp at all, but I'm very happy to have given it a home. Who knows, maybe some wacky science teacher would've bought it instead of me and turned it into some bizarre experiment this coming fall with Ooblik. Not on my watch, Buster!
Long live our combos
... ... ...
03) I decided to take the combo to school (for those new to me, I taught the upper elementary grades for 35 years with an additional year of subbing!) to help us with an experiment involving making up a big batch of Ooblikto demonstrate soundwave patterns to the students. At least in my head, it was gonna work. ... ... !
... ... ...
Long live our combos
Nah, I don't buy it I think the last pic is just a second pic of the original B50.
Congrats; enjoy.
I had a few working theories to start with, since you're such a mercurial character. But, for guilt and emotional shattering I finally figured nothing else held as much potential redemptive value as a second chance for the "li'l combo that might have could, but never got a fair chance" (Ok, teach, -10 points for bad grammar.)
Sweet looking, poor innocent li'l thing.
"It seemed like a good idea at the time!"
Glue?!? No wonder it didn't move! IIRC, my grandson's Science Fair Ooblek a few years earlier was just corn starch and water! And it worked great! Since it never occurred to me to put any of my amps anywhere near the yucky stuff we ended up using several very well sealed baggies of it for hands-on manipulation, some to gently poke or fold and some to hit with a hammer with no indentation! Amazing non-Newtonian behavior!
Glad this second chance has provided absolution, iago.
Wow! Such a deal! Congratulations!
That admission soothes my soul, iago. I have multiple ways to explain my enjoyment of my Rumblers. I'm glad you now enjoy yours.
Amen!
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Well, I would agree, because my old amp that I've had the whole time did not see as much action out as I would have preferred. But I take pretty good care of my stuff, so even my older gigging amp looks pretty durn good.If an old amp isn't all beat to cwap, then it hasn't been used properly (as in: often enough).
Dang! I thought for sure it was a sonic screwdriver.Here's the answer the millions of you wanna know.
Long live our combos
Dang! I thought for sure it was a sonic screwdriver.
G-Dog, I owe ya twenny bucks.
It's possible to send the ring tones from my sonic screwdriver smrtph to a Bluetooth receiver plugged into the AUX IN of my combo amp. My usual choice for a ringtone is either Derek Flint's red presidential hotline phone, or the CRM 114 Discriminator.
OPE, POE something like that, keep trying
(this is why my band makes certain I never have the mic)
I would love to have the Derek Flint tone in my flip phone. There's no known way to do it.(known to me anyhoo)It's possible to send the ring tones from my sonic screwdriver smrtph to a Bluetooth receiver plugged into the AUX IN of my combo amp. My usual choice for a ringtone is either Derek Flint's red presidential hotline phone, or the CRM 114 Discriminator.
OPE, POE something like that, keep trying
(this is why my band makes certain I never have the mic)
