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Eventually, as a band was together for a while and learned more about what they were doing, the upgrade bug took hold. Most band members started out with less than adequate gear. Guitars, amps, drums and keyboards were inexpensive imports purchased from stores like Sears, JC Penney, Arlans, Montgomery Wards and the like. This was partly due to financial constraints, but lack of knowledge played a part too. What made for a quality instrument was an elusive concept for many. Misconceptions abounded. More pickups on a guitar meant a better guitar. More knobs on an amp led to better sound. More inputs on an amp meant you could plug more stuff into it. Often the appearance of something would fool the uninformed buyer. Marketing hype could lead to wasted money on an inferior product.
The money end of things came into play when players had to buy their own gear instead of being helped out by Mom and Dad. Some had summer jobs to help acquire the necessary funds. Others had allowances or paper routes. Some had real good friends. When faced with the choice of a $285 guitar and a $125 guitar and amp combo, the inexpensive stuff won out. Slowly they learned and as they learned they acted on that knowledge. |
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Often the first thing to be upgraded amongst band members were amplifiers and PA equipment with instruments following close behind. The amp upgrade came about due to a couple of factors. One was being loud enough to fill a gymnasium with sound. When practicing in a relatively small space like a basement room, garage or family room it was easy to be loud enough–often too loud if parents were consulted about it. Playing in a high school gymnasium for the first time was a wake up call for many as the 15 watt amp they were using proved to be woefully inadequate. Quite often a player wasn’t just amplifying his instrument, the amp was acting as a PA also. Running a mic along with a guitar or organ into an amp was not unheard of at the beginning stage of the game.
Many times how to get the vocals out was an afterthought–along with the misconception that if there were 4 inputs on an amp one could use them all. Small amps with only 15 to 30 watts of power were not made to run flat out with all the inputs in use. Cranking the amp to 11 is what most had to do to get the vocals loud enough. Distortion happened way too soon and amps often gave up the ghost when placed under such heavy demand. |
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| Another upgrade factor was to keep up with other band members who had already went to a more powerful amp. (If this sounds like a vicious circle, it sometimes could be.) Everyone knew they weren’t where they needed to be amp-wise, but each had different sources of income. The lead player would get a new 75 watt amp which left the bass player with his 30 watt amp and the rhythm guitarist with his 20 watt amp to play catch up. If the group was getting playing jobs that made the upgrade a bit easier as money earned from playing out could be put toward a new amp or instrument. If not, upgrading could be a frustrating struggle. |
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Instrument upgrades were an interesting and involved process at times. The misconceptions of what made a good instrument as opposed to a great one were prevalent. Going to music stores to try out different instruments helped us all to sort out certain things like playability and sound, but sometimes this approach fell short on evaluating quality. As an example, a friend of mine had a Gibson Melody Maker guitar and wanted to upgrade. Now the Melody Maker was a good little guitar. Sure it only had one pickup, but the build quality and electronics were very good. He traded it in on a Conrad thin acoustic/electric with 3 pickups. Now the Conrad was most likely an import guitar and so it's quality was somewhat suspect, but it had THREE pickups! In many respects this was a step backwards for my friend. At the time though it seemed like a real good choice due to our limited knowledge on these things. If he had had a better understanding of what made a quality instrument, he probably would have purchased a Gibson ES 335 or Guild Starfire—which were the quality equivalents of the Conrad he bought. |
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Russ Musilek (on early PA endeavors with the Suntimers): We were playing microphones into second jacks–not even second channels–sometimes just second jacks of the guitar amplifiers, You know to have a $20 microphone was a big deal!
(with Liberty) We rented the PA. At the time we would often use Brian Wolf’s Tremolux with two 12s and use that as the PA amp. It had four (inputs) in it to plug four mics into it. We would kind of prop that in front of us to help with the feedback thing and turn the treble down. So we had lots of mid and lots of bass and no treble–it wasn't pretty. |
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| Brian Oeffner (response to PA question with Jury): No, we didn’t have one as a matter of fact. We rented the PA from either Denny Allen or Carl Dorner. You know Carl had that Kustom bottom. I don’t know what else we had on the other side (of the band). We rented a PA for quite awhile until we could afford one. |
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| Mark Boehm (on the question of PA with Spazz): At that time we basically plugged the microphones into our own amplifiers, because we didn’t have the money to buy our own PA system. A couple of times we rented out a Kustom amplifier from Denny Allen. Usually (when we used our own amps) we would put an auxiliary speaker out front so they could hear the sound a little better, but it was still all one big sound–not like it is today. |
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