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Why does this scare me (waaay) more than it probably should?

#41
Killing Floor said:
I got scared last night when one of my big cedars fell. I don’t think a new amp would be that scary. Sounded like thunder and the house shook. And cedar pollen makes my eyes itch. Amps don’t do that. Especially creamy Tolex amps.
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It got rough in Panama City Beach with multiple confirmed tornadoes. The footage I saw looked more like hurricane damage. Not sure how widespread the damage was, but the footage appeared to all come from the beach side of the bay bridge between PCB and the city proper. We are a couple hundred miles inland and got a crap ton of rain and a few lively straight line gusts. Not far up the road, a tree fell through the roof of a home into a bedroom where three kids were sleeping. Thankfully none of them were hurt...
But I agree, creamy Tolex amps never made my eyes itch. :D
 
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#43
One or two of the old Gibson amp circuits are used today by DIY'ers who build their own guitar tube amps. There's only a handful of amp designs they generally go for, so the Gibson's must have been pretty good in their day to warrant such attention 50 years later.

I've never played through one, but I really like the design of several of the different Gibson amp styles (and there were a bunch, it seems!)
 
#44
Michedelic said:
Bring back the Atlas!
View attachment 5312174 View attachment 5312175
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I had a Titan head like this for a while:


upload_2024-1-10_10-53-22.jpeg
 
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#48
Jefenator said:
Every time I get some new tube toy and I think I'm finally the coolest kid on the block, a certain guitarist shows up with something like this: a Gibson amp from the freakin' 1930s. (And I love him for it...)

View attachment 5312397

If Gibson wanted to put out a new tube bass amp with a half power setting - or a combo that looked something like this - that would be fine with me.
:bassist:
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I have a little Gibson guitar amp. It's not as old as that one, but it's plenty old. It's a 1949 BR-9. Only issue is that it's a bit pungent when it's on, and my wife hates the smell.
 
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#50
This is the guitar amp that I have. It's a 1967 Gibson Skylark GA-5T 10" combo 10 watts class A with a 6BQ5 (EL84) power tube. Has built in variable speed tremolo.

It sounds amazing clean, but push it at full volume and it breaks up beautifully with some delicious crunch.

20230813_062830.jpg


I don't see any reason why Gibson shouldn't start selling "reissue" or "retro" inspired tube amps again. I think they'd be a big hit.
 
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#51
dbsfgyd1 said:
I played through a borrowed Gibson bass amp when I was starting out back in the 60’s. The owner called it instant death as it was always at the repair shop.

Calling @agedhorse ..

My thought is if it is nothing more than a rebranded Mesa amp, it should be better than what they put out in days of yore.. But if it’s a case of “the more you have to sell, the more you sell” and nothing that sets it apart from what else is on the market, it will have a short run.
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It’s not a rebranded Mesa amp, Randall was tasked with creating some new Gibson amps inspired by the circuits, tone, feel and cosmetics of their old designs.
 
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#55
Jefenator said:
Every time I get some new tube toy and I think I'm finally the coolest kid on the block, a certain guitarist shows up with something like this: a Gibson amp from the freakin' 1930s. (And I love him for it...)

View attachment 5312397

If Gibson wanted to put out a new tube bass amp with a half power setting - or a combo that looked something like this - that would be fine with me.
:bassist:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I got one of those. You can get a real gnarly Neil Young sound when cranking it. Charlie Christian reportedly played 'em a little on the loud side, but not too loud ... going into distortion was not viewed at the time as a desirable sound ;).
 
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#56
Manticore said:
My first amp. It got the job done at the time.
w0y5cptdccjbe5dthcbe-jpg.3138729
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Nice looking amp! That looks a lot like the Standel bass amp combos. Standel had been shipped defective parts and had to replace every amp they sole with those modules. Gibson bailed Standel out in about 1971. They kept them as Standel for a couple of years and then closed the Standel factory. They then released some SG amps (SG for Standel/Gibson) and finallly just incorporated the Standel features into their own Gibson amps. Prior to their acquisition Gibson amps looked more similar to Fender amps with a different grill - at least the ones I saw back in the 60's. Would your Gibson be from mid to late 70's?

Here's a Standel Bass amp combo from the early 70's
StandelBassCombo.jpg
 
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#58
Jefenator said:
Every time I get some new tube toy and I think I'm finally the coolest kid on the block, a certain guitarist shows up with something like this: a Gibson amp from the freakin' 1930s. (And I love him for it...)

View attachment 5312397

If Gibson wanted to put out a new tube bass amp with a half power setting - or a combo that looked something like this - that would be fine with me.
:bassist:
Click to expand...

Behringer beat them to it. They even named it Thunderbird.

IMG_0385.jpeg
 
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#59
Rip Van Dan said:
Nice looking amp! That looks a lot like the Standel bass amp combos. Standel had been shipped defective parts and had to replace every amp they sole with those modules. Gibson bailed Standel out in about 1971. They kept them as Standel for a couple of years and then closed the Standel factory. They then released some SG amps (SG for Standel/Gibson) and finallly just incorporated the Standel features into their own Gibson amps. Prior to their acquisition Gibson amps looked more similar to Fender amps with a different grill - at least the ones I saw back in the 60's. Would your Gibson be from mid to late 70's?

Here's a Standel Bass amp combo from the early 70's
Click to expand...
It's quite a bit more complicated than this... The G series were manufactured for CMI (Chicago Musical Instrument) under the Gibson brand since CMI had acquired controlling interest in Gibson. CMI also was the exclusive distributor of Standel which when Standel shut down was acquired by Randall. Randall's head designer was a guy named Gary Sunda who later went on to found Orange County Speaker Service. Gary designed follow-up models under both the Standel and Randall brands including the SG series. I knew his son Bryan from the OCS days. All of these later amps are only loosely connected to the old Gibson brand.
 
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