Thunderbird Club

[BklynKen]

For those of you who use practice/smaller amps (100W or less), what do you like and why/why not?
Also, are any of the smaller amps built into real wooden cabs any more?

Probably comes as no surprise, but when I had my GK MB150S-112 at a studio space, I picked up a used GK Backline 110 (70W) combo for home and it's great. Plenty loud for a practice amp and sounds great. Not too familiar with their current combos, but I bet they're great, too.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Back in the day opened the door to leave the house and thought 'weird light innit' just as lightning struck the tiny park across the street. Every year we have multiple close strikes -- you hear them coming, with the flash and the bang getting closer together until they are simultaneous.

We lived on a hill in the country 20 years ago. The former owner had put up a 30 foot tower with a tv antenna right by the house. That and the house took a hit one night. I was in an interior room. Everything went bright then dark as bulbs and breakers blew then really bright as the walls glowed then dark til we turned power back on. Thankfully all my computer gear was well protected but my Ross flanger died.
The walls glowing? Super eerie.

 

[GonePlaid]

Probably comes as no surprise, but when I had my GK MB150S-112 at a studio space, I picked up a used GK Backline 110 (70W) combo for home and it's great. Plenty loud for a practice amp and sounds great. Not too familiar with their current combos, but I bet they're great, too.

I've mentioned this b4, but this is my practice amp 'cos I ain't gruntin' the damn thing into the van no more.

 

[PillO]

For those of you who use practice/smaller amps (100W or less), what do you like and why/why not?
Also, are any of the smaller amps built into real wooden cabs any more?

I have a little Blackstar Fly Bass by the couch for quiet noodling. Has some compression and OD that doesn't sound horrible. Casing is plastic. With volume at 2 O'clock, it starts to fart out. I have the computer connected to the aux in so that bass in yoot oobs etc. comes through. I treat it as a bluetooth speaker (OK two of them) that doesn't have bluetooth but does have really good bass and that I can plug a bass into.
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I also have an Ampeg BA110. It is a good little practice amp. The scrambler drive circuit is actually really good. It sounds good until you start playing a B string; that is weak. You need to do some extra EQing to get a low B to sound good. But for an EADG bass, it sounds good. I think it is actually made of plywood; if it isn't, then the MDF is really solid and heavy.
Ampeg: Bass Amp Series - BA-110

 

[JIO]

Back in the day opened the door to leave the house and thought 'weird light innit' just as lightning struck the tiny park across the street. Every year we have multiple close strikes -- you hear them coming, with the flash and the bang getting closer together until they are simultaneous.

That quality of light too... tornado's had some overlaps weather-wise, the 'calm-before-the-storm' sensation.

 

[PillO]

Sound travels @ ~344m/s, therefore a mile is closer to 5 seconds. It a wonder you're not all crispy.

Yeah, I remember as a kid that the rule of thumb was 3 seconds was a kilometer distance.

As a kid, I would sometimes be out when a front rolled in and watch the wall of downpour crossing the field I was standing in. I was going to get cooled off and wet, and it was a straight line of when. It was dead calm and hot and humid, then cold and wet and blowing. When it had blown through, it would be fresh and warm and clear. Each one had a smell to go with it.

Did each smell also have a colour?

Same for me but in the desert. Unless it was a thunderstorm; there was nothing tall anywhere so lightning hit everywhere and I had to go in, but only once it got really close.

Dust storms, too.

Yeah, I avoid kayaking when thunderstorms are threatening. Don't want to be the tallest thing on the lake...

I lived through a couple of sandstorms during Desert Storm. They are something; you can see them coming. And no matter how well you protect everything, really fine sand ends up everywhere.

 

[PillO]

We lived on a hill in the country 20 years ago. The former owner had put up a 30 foot tower with a tv antenna right by the house. That and the house took a hit one night. I was in an interior room. Everything went bright then dark as bulbs and breakers blew then really bright as the walls glowed then dark til we turned power back on. Thankfully all my computer gear was well protected but my Ross flanger died.
The walls glowing? Super eerie.

Lead paint is conductive?

Or the tints used in the paints are complex organics with phosphates that absorbed and released a lot of energy? I have no specific knowledge, just offering possible explanations. But I have noticed the 'afterglow' that fluorescent lights have for several seconds after being turned off.

 

[JIO]

We lived on a hill in the country 20 years ago. The former owner had put up a 30 foot tower with a tv antenna right by the house. That and the house took a hit one night. I was in an interior room. Everything went bright then dark as bulbs and breakers blew then really bright as the walls glowed then dark til we turned power back on. Thankfully all my computer gear was well protected but my Ross flanger died.
The walls glowing? Super eerie.

Wow, that's crazy - supernatural.

 

[JIO]

Yeah, I remember as a kid that the rule of thumb was 3 seconds was a kilometer distance.
Did each smell also have a colour?
Yeah, I avoid kayaking when thunderstorms are threatening. Don't want to be the tallest thing on the lake...
I lived through a couple of sandstorms during Desert Storm. They are something; you can see them coming. And no matter how well you protect everything, really fine sand ends up everywhere.

One of the reasons I've never wanted to do Burning Man out here -

 

[Gaolee]

Sound travels @ ~344m/s, therefore a mile is closer to 5 seconds. It a wonder you're not all crispy.

The good ones were when the flash and the bang were simultaneous. Those were usually good and loud, too. Maybe we are all crispy. It would explain a few things.

 

[Gaolee]

I've had a couple of close calls ...

As long as they were close calls and not hits, all's well. Best to avoid those direct hits whenever possible.

 

[Gaolee]

Here, instead of cooling things down, it becomes a sauna.

You can keep Florida. Thanks. I kinda like the lizards, though. It's the little boy sneaking out from where he has been hiding for the last few decades.

 

[Gaolee]

We would have loved if a bolt hit a tree within eyesight!

The other one was the air raid siren that would go off at the volunteer firehouse about two miles away when there was a tornado somewhere in the area. I grew up in an old farmhouse with third floor dormers. The house was on a hill, which meant that going up to the third floor to look for the tornado was what the siren meant we had to do. More proof that God looks after idiots - my brother and I never saw a tornado, let alone got hit by one.

 

[Gaolee]

Did each smell also have a colour?

No. It may have had a color, but never a colour.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

I've mentioned this b4, but this is my practice amp 'cos I ain't gruntin' the damn thing into the van no more.
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used my SVT II with the 1540 cab at an outdoor party at my place on Saturday....needless to say it sounded GLORIOUS.....that said, I thought I was going to collapse after wheeling (with help) it from the garage to the yard and setting it up with the head......waaaay too heavy....guess it's one way you pay for good tone as nothing comes close to that in your chest thump..

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Yeah, I avoid kayaking when thunderstorms are threatening. Don't want to be the tallest thing on the lake...

Or the deadest in general. We had a vicious storm hit quickly Sunday. A 20+ y/o kayaker out in the middle of a nearby lake didn't make it to shore. They appear to still be searching for her. There were straight line winds in excess of 80MPH, plus lots of lightning.

I lived through a couple of sandstorms during Desert Storm. They are something; you can see them coming. And no matter how well you protect everything, really fine sand ends up everywhere.

I was a weird kid (if you can imagine). During second through fourth grade, sandstorms rolled in a few times during recess. Three or four of us would go to the hurricane fence on the side the storm was coming from (typically east or southeast). We stand by the fence (no holding on!) until the wind blew us over, then curl up as we fell. Usually this meant we started rolling like tumbleweeds across the playground (a giant sandpit) until we hot something. Amazingly we never got hurt badly.

Everyone with any sense had of course gone inside. We'd laugh our heads off and spend an extra 10 minutes getting rid off all the sand from our clothes, hair, ears, etc. Of course there was always some in every crack (ahem) and crevice, up the nose, occasionally under an eyelid, in the mouth, etc. And by the end of the school day, more had come out of our clothes and hair. The teachers weren't nearly as amused as we were.

I'd tell my kids about this. By the time they were teens, I'm not sure they believed the storm could be that bad. Then my son spent a tour in the Sandbox and my daughter married a guy who'd spent a couple of tours there.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Lead paint is conductive?

Or the tints used in the paints are complex organics with phosphates that absorbed and released a lot of energy? I have no specific knowledge, just offering possible explanations. But I have noticed the 'afterglow' that fluorescent lights have for several seconds after being turned off.

Could be. But I suspect it's primarily that hundreds of megavolts at many thousands of amps can ionize almost anything. I can't swear it was the walls; it might have been the air. My hair definitely stood on end. It was a bizarre feeling.

I wrote a program to model lightning for a professor in college; the behavior is interesting. One strike is actually multiple strikes within a very brief time frame, helping to explain the pattern I saw.

 

[Gaolee]

used my SVT II with the 1540 cab at an outdoor party at my place on Saturday....needless to say it sounded GLORIOUS.....that said, I thought I was going to collapse after wheeling (with help) it from the garage to the yard and setting it up with the head......waaaay too heavy....guess it's one way you pay for good tone as nothing comes close to that in your chest thump..

One thing does the chest thump even better.
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'Bird + 360 = liquefy, even at low volumes.

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

One of the reasons I've never wanted to do Burning Man out here -

it's done anyway...they should either move locations or something cause NV wants to build a wall around the event and search every vehicle entering the site....I went in the mid 90's and it was truly a phenomenal experience...Instagram Influencers broke it..

 

[Chucky Stiletti]

Could be. But I suspect it's primarily that hundreds of megavolts at many thousands of amps can ionize almost anything. I can't swear it was the walls; it might have been the air. My hair definitely stood on end. It was a bizarre feeling.

I wrote a program to model lightning for a professor in college; the behavior is interesting. One strike is actually multiple strikes within a very brief time frame, helping to explain the pattern I saw.

we were trying to implement a lightning sensor from an Austrian company called AMS into a top smartphone so they could use it as an app platform....pretty nifty little sensor that gave you the distance of the storm with 1km resolution up to 50km...