I’ve been playing for quite a while, but have mostly been involved in the studio and recording side of things for the past few years. I started playing with a local band again a while back (as the bassist) and was switched over to guitar after their guitarist suddenly left. I QUICKLY had to find a guitar amp “worthy” of practice AND gigs. BUT,..(there’s always a “but” right?) I had to find one that I could AFFORD. And like everyone else these days, money was not something I had a lot OF. So, I went down to the local G.C. and played on (literally) every single amp they had in the store. New, used, shiny, beat up, I didn’t care, as long as it SOUNDED good. I LOVED a (shall remain nameless) tube amplifier they had. The problem was one-it weighed about as much as a VOLKSWAGON and two-I would have to get several pedals on top of buying the amp to get the sounds needed to do our set-list. I was then re-directed over to the Line 6 area. I plugged back into the Spider IV 150, found a few presets, and made my decision right there. It had the power, the portability, and effects AND the affordability I needed. And that’s what I’ve been playing on with the band ever since.

Now, here’s my take on old vs. new; since I was actually more USED to playing on valve amplifiers, I new how they reacted. Not only to their own inner workings and different speakers, but how they reacted to different guitars, different ways of playing and different acoustics. The Spider was pretty much my first real experience with a solid-state amplifier. What I found to stand out most to me, was that I couldn’t “manipulate” the feedback of an over-driven channel as I could on a valve amp. I seemed to lose sustain more quickly as well, over-driven or not. It also had a very “moody” volume threshold in any given room. A hair too little and you couldn’t hear it, a hair to much and it was cutting heads off. It didn’t really react to my playing styles either, or roll-backs with my volume knobs on my guitar. The built-in effects are GREAT, don’t get me wrong. Line 6 saved me probably HUNDREDS of dollars in pedals and what-not. It’s also equally nice to have a choice of amps, gain-stages, etc. The lighter weight is a God-send as well (I’m ain’t gettin any younger). I don’t know, it just seemed to lack that,……….character, or”flavor” a valve amplifier has. No matter if it’s a plexi, a high-gain, a tweed, a “boutique”, what ever. I think it’s absolutely AWESOME that Line 6 has married the two technologies together.

Now a person can have the character, the warmth and the singing “voice” of a valve amplifier, but have the convenience of changing amp-types, have built-in effects, multiple parameters on pretty much everything that’s there in front of them, AND have the ability to edit any one of those functions via a computer (talk about WOW – yeah I’m still trying to wrap my brain around THAT). Now the hard part, trying to save up the eight or nine hundred dollars I’ll need to GET one. So there ya have it Tone-Magestys , that’s my old school/new school story. Hope ya liked it.

(Sorry, really didn’t mean for it to be so long)