That’s what the British Rock Group Procol Harum (also one of my favorites) called it on their enigmatic tune “In Held Twas In I”.
And that’s what I was so blessed to experience through music and sound these days. After a period of uneasy waiting, desperately seeking for something to do while my only motivation was to expand my musical environment in order to take the next step – now the really best amplifier I ever heard with electric guitar finally hit my studio. And it’s mine.
I suppose only few of you can imagine how – well, non-materialistic, almost spiritual such an experience can be. Unless you are infected by the same virus as me, it may be just an amplifier to you, designed to annoy the neighborhood.
But it’s much more. It brings a vision into life. It fulfills a lifetime dream of mine, one I didn’t even really know I had, for lack of knowledge. Well, I only knew this amplifier’s bigger brother, the legendary AC 30, when I was young, but nevertheless this is the final point of a several years’ research, of my search for the right amplifier. This one has the smoothest and most pleasant high frequency response I ever heard. It’s just the right size for my studio and it makes any guitar shine…
To explain the cult around a thing one could consider as a simple tool: for electric guitar players the amplifier is just an extension of their instruments, almost part of these or rather one out of two instruments played simultaneously. A tube amplifier kind of develops a life of his own, reacting to the dynamics of the player in a very individual and vivid way.
So it’s no wonder the whole thing turns me (the player in this case) upside down. It will also take some time until things get settled in order to record new material with this new equipment for the blog. I have several amplifiers here to be tested in different settings with different speaker cabinets, some of them being loans. Everything needs to be built up from scratch now, until I will hopefully regain command over my equipment.
While I am feeling like a pioneer and an archaeologist at the same time, delightfully plunging into sound, I must have you waiting. There are some posts on stockpile, though. So as you can continue listening and looking here, you will now know what I’ll be doing in the meantime…
The Vox AC 15 Heritage is an anniversary reissue of the very first Vox amplifier which was introduced in 1957. With the lights low, you can see the tubes glowing behind the “diamond pattern cloth”. Much better than watching TV!
