Re: [Harp-L] RE: Joys of Solid State - Now Cheap Amps

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Bill Kumpe" wrote:
<Our club has several members who are not ready for investment in a tube amp.
<They are just beginners and hobbyists.  Some are on fixed incomes and others
<are blue collar with limited income.  Some play garage sale specials,
<pawnshop oddities, etc. One guy showed up at our jam last month with a great
<sounding old off brand solid state amp, complete with reverb, that he bought
<for fifteen bucks at a garage sale.  My "knock around" amp right now is a
<Behringer GX-108 which appears to be Chinese knockoff of the old Danelectro
<Nifty Fifty.  Does anybody on list have any useful experience with these
<bargain basement solid state amps and if so what wisdom would you pass along
<to the beginner, kid, senior citizen, etc. who only wants to spend a few
<bucks to play amplified?  With your permission you may be re-quoted on our
<club website, since I intend to post an article on this subject there.

The lowest-priced entry point amps that sound good for harp are the Roland Microcube or Vox DA-5, either of which will do reasonably good amped and clean sounds at more than sufficient volume for practice and light jamming (no heavily amped guitars/bass/drums) for less than $150 new. I prefer the DA-5.  (The low-end Behringer amps don't work very well for harp in my opinion, and they're not much cheaper).  An additional advantage of the Roland and Vox amps is that both come with reverb and delay, the two most important effects for amped harp. A step up from these amps is the Epiphone Valve Junior at about $150 new, $250 with a louder half-stack speaker setup.  I'd buy the Epiphone new to make sure you don't get one of the older models that had problems with buzzing circuits.  At about $325, the Fender Super Champ XD, which has a modeled preamp and effects, is also worth considering.  As these brief examples show, you get a lot more for your money in the $250-$350 dollar range, so if possible I'd encourage buyers to save up for something in that range.

In my opinion, it's a lot easier to find decent mics for less than $50 than it is to find a decent amp for less than $150.  You might get lucky at a yard sale--I certainly have--but you can't count on it, and you might well find that the amp that looked like a bargain at a garage sale is just wasted money when you play a harp through it.  On the other hand, almost any vocal mic, including mics by Nady and others that sell for less than $30 new, can be used to make a decent harp sound.  You can't say the same about an amp, and there are so many makes and models out there that it's often impossible to predict whether any given cheapo amp model will sound good with harp.  So if you're trying to save money on an amped setup, I'd start with the mic.  That said, if you've got $100 for a mic, you've got enough to get either a Shure SM57 or an Audix Fireball V, either of which is a quality instrument that will make great music for decades.

Regards, Richard Hunter
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp