I use in in my front living room and currently have one of my TVS3 echo machines plugged into it.
For the past few months I have been testing different guitars to try and find something that will do the job for me comfortably, since I now struggle playing some of my Strats because of their neck profiles. I do have two USA Strats that have the USA Deluxe necks and they are perfect for me, having a 9 to 14" compound radius which makes barring chords painless for me.
Other than those, my 'go to' guitars are my newly acquired D'Angelico models with 14" radius fingerboards and PRS with 10" radius.
Sadly all my vintage instruments with 7.5 radius are now impossible for me to play because of the pain in trying to play bar chords, so I tend not to favour those guitars any longer, in fact it looks like I'll be selling many great guitars soon.
But back to the point of this posting.
For many years I sought perfection in trying to replicate the sound of the early Shadows' records and spent a lot of money in trying different kit to establish the sound. it's well documented that I had hearing problems that I wasn't aware of that have now been put right so I can now hear what's going on and I know it to be accurate so I can tell you that at last I am able to plug in my guitar every day and hear the sound of those Shadows' records from the early 1960s, Using my TVS3 or any other echo through the Spark amplifier, set to the AC 30 tone, it is a very simple task and no need for any further equipment, so much so that I am going to take the Spark amplifier on a gig and plug it into an FRFR speaker to amplify it to the level required. The beauty of this is that not only will I achieve the old early Vox sounds as used by Hank, I will be able to use a Fender Twin Reverb sound or a Mesa Boogie or Marshall sound at the press of a button on my iPad, And all of this without any extra pedals or gadgets. I will be trying it this week so I will let everyone know how I get on but it promises to be a very interesting and beneficial exercise from what I am hearing playing in my living room.
This all happened by accident, as my D’Angelico guitars and the PRS guitars have humbucking pick ups with split coils and I was trying to get the split coils to sound like a Stratocaster. When I actually tried a real Strat I was amazed that the sound was so accurate compared with Hank's early recordings with The Shadows. If this works it will be interesting because Positive Grid are bringing out a smaller version of the Spark amplifier which is about 6" square and very affordable and runs on batteries. This smaller version has all the same attributes to get the sounds we love and to someone like me and people like yourselves is very attractive.
I will keep you all posted.
