----- Original Message ----- From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>
Come on Steven, you need the top of the line Marshall stack, maybe even three of them, to get state of the art distortion---you know, the kind where your ear says "uncle" and the pain makes you run for the exits. That has to be state of the art because that's the sound I hear at most concerts now.
No...that is for ROCK guitarists! Too many of that bunch mistake "loudness overkill" and "number of 128th notes played rapidly in succession" for musical competence...since both seem to win equal amounts of applause from audiences of "average musical ignorance"...!
Remember that the distortion I'm trying to acheive was first produced by bluesmen whose gear depended on what the pawnshop had that week! As a result, old "dispatcher mikes" plugged into beat-up (tube) guitar amps were the usual standard equipment...!
And, I suspect, much of the current "rock audience" enthusiasticlly endorses the "my ears are DYING" sound for one (or both) of two reasons! In the first place, that's the level at which they hear it once they get into their auto-mobiles (with the paired 1KW amps serving each stereo channel...!)...in the second place, that sort of listening has so thouroughly fried their ears that anything less is effectively inaudible for them...
Steven C. Barr