Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott S
Sure it was. The Deluxe is just making its 10 watts or so at 3 on the dial. It would have been trivially easy to design the gain stages so that a guitar signal made its clean, undistorted 10 watts at 12 on the dial, but then you could never reach that same volume with quieter instruments. Gibson and other companies solved the problem by having a separate higher-gain microphone channel -- as dangelico can attest, the normal channel can be pretty wimpy by comparison! 
- Scott |
This is the answer right here. The amp had to be versatile. They weren't just guitar amps at the time they were, guitar amps, bassamps, and sometimes even the PA.