In response to Richard Hunter,
"<....My feeling is that I'd rather practice with a relatively cheapo Amp <and mic just in case I do something to screw it up, and put what money I <do have to spend into what I think of as "quality" gear at this point - <the harmonicas themselves."
.....was my statement, not Andrew's.
and then Richard responds:
"The only point in buying gear, at any price, is to get something that sounds good. "Cheap" does not necessarily equate to "bad sounding." There's plenty of good cheap gear; in the 35-plus years I've been playing, gear has never cost less or sounded better. But if the only consideration is price, there's a good chance that the buyer will end up with something that doesn't sound very good with harp. That's why there's no point in buying any old 10W guitar amp that happens to be on sale cheap. Most guitar amps don't sound very good with harp, and with the really cheap ones, it's hard to modify them so they do. And an amp that doesn't sound good has two big problems: 1) it's not inspiring to play through it, and 2) when other people hear you playing through it, you don't sound very good to them, either.
It should be possible to find a decent used small (5-10W) class A tube amp in the neighborhood of $150-$200. As an alternative, an inexpensive but very functional amp modeler like the Digitech RP50 can be bought for about $70, and you could add a 10-15W keyboard amp to that for $100-$150. You'll have to put in some hours with the amp modeler to get a good sound, but there are plenty of good sounds in there.
It's not easy to find something that sounds really good with harp for much less than that. And if it doesn't sound really good, I just wouldn't buy it.
Regards, Richard Hunter"
....much obliged. That is my feeling too. I've never equated "cheap" (I
prefer inexpensive) with "bad" either. (I'm one of the world's best shoppers
<g>) I'd also heard offlist from someone else who believes as you do and
uses similar equipment, but I certainly appreciate all the information I can get
and your taking the trouble to educate those of us who have no knowledge of
gear and want to start off slowly at first.
Something else I'd realized on reading many of the back and forth responses,
especially those mentioning keeping an Amp for "50 years", was that a lot of
younger players seem to assume that a "newbie" is always young. Ain't
necessarily so. I played harmonica as a child and then didn't play for 30 years.
I'm no kid, and while I doubt keeping an Amp that long would land me in the
Guinness Book of World Records, it'd still be quite an achievement if I was
able to raise harp to lips then....let alone hauling around an Amp.
Elizabeth
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