When did separate "bedroom amp" and "gigging amp" become a thing?

[Chud]

The left wall of my NYC bedroom. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

 

[Daddydex]

And what about all those travel guitars?

Dan

 

[Drew617]

It’s a pretty crazy mix of opinions and struggle to bet on the best long term living strategy.

One being that many of the most fiscally fit work in places they really don’t enjoy, doubt stuff that stresses them out. But then the money pays for home comforts and vacations etc.

While many but not all who chose trades actually look forward to the work day, but have to make some compromises on housing and luxuries, or in many cases put money into recreation but forget retirement saving.

Choose are area where housing is affordable and you get lower pay, or live cheap and doubly stress commuting 30-50 miles to a stressful office job.

I eventually chose to commute about 35 miles into Cambridge Brookline etc where carpentry brought literally double the rate.
While housing was more like triple or quadruple.
My truck insurance alone was $3500/ year not even counting the purchase and maintenance.

Maine potentially allows less stress height quality of life, but because I live by the ocean there are lots of home buyers offering Boston income based prices for second homes while locals are literally driven off our land as valuation requests big prop tax while local jobs pay small money.

Now I have plenty of space (sort of) but fewer musicians really near me who maybe play the non record bin approved stuff I play.
Brooklyn had more of the fringe musicians but once again, I got quickly priced out of my loft as young entrepreneurs with trust funds showed up in the new settlements.
So the yuppie like crowd drove out the broke artists and musicians, but us poor white folks had been just as guilty of driving out the even poorer Hispanic families who settled for crack dealers on every corner because it was what they could afford, and to some degree what they expected as their lot in life.

Along the way in all the places I tried to fit my life around, I never ever had a bedroom amp!

Gentrification and displacement are tough. A lot of us end up playing some role in those systems, of course very few really intend to. Any of them are problematic except that of the displaced, and most people will do what they can do avoid being displaced if means are available... feeding the problem. IME, it's not fruitful to attempt to reconcile my part or the situation at large against personal ethics, but I don't feel good about ignoring it either. Like churn in an economy, it just is. Short of undoing some basic governmental features, which I'm not prepared to do, I think little to do but play my hand as well as I can and assume the next guy will do the same. I think your drive for city rates is probably one of the smarter compromises available.

A few years ago I worked for an LA-based company and would visit and work out of those offices a few weeks each year. I've got a handful of old home and Boston friends scattered around the NYC boroughs now. It's funny to get their complaints about cost of living, typical expectation is that there is less economic pressure here. At once, I think that's less true than it used to be (excepting most of Manhattan, Park Slope, etc.) and to my own native Ohioan perspective, totally ridiculous. We're talking about incidental difference between numbers that are stupid high, almost theoretical to me.

I come from steelworkers from Youngstown and Braddock and it can be tough to accept that I'm a member of any privileged class. Convenient to believe that if I've done any "better" for myself, it's because I'm scrappy and half clever and used my GI Bill, and therefore don't feel too bad about occupying space in whatever neighborhood I can afford. That's not really it, of course - far more relevant that I'm a white American male.

I'll accept it more readily when I can bounce that Twin off garage walls without any cops showing up.

All of the above is heavier than the thread calls for. My arguments for bedroom amps, and my actual bedroom amps, do go way beyond "functional," so the "turn your big amp down" people aren't wrong in that sense. Since most of my playing is in that setting though, I do find it worthwhile to have an amplifier suited to it.

I actually owned a SFTR in High School in the 90s, just because it was cheap and loud as hell. They weren't affected by collectors then, barely are even now. We practiced with that thing in a literal shed, and I played crappy punk covers through it at the VFW hall. With a Hondo II flying V! Breaks all my iron-glass-speaker criteria, but somehow a Twin can be totally okay at bedroom levels.

 

[cyclopean]

Now they are the same thing again. Pretty much every venue and sound tech wants you to play at bedroom volume on stage.

where? i've been playing an hd 130 4x10 at 4 for the past couple years.

 

[cyclopean]

a bedroom amp is what we used to call a practice amp, and it used to be a champ or worse, and we didn't really expect it to sound all that great? For example, I used to have a 120Watt Ampeg head with a 4x12, but I used a tiny little amp of one sort or the other at home to learn songs with, that was what I would have called a practice amp.

Now we want a practice amp that gives us some undefinable thrill such as we would imagine playing a cranked up amp would...hence the bedroom amp and... what pedal should I have use to make my... blah blah blah bedroom questions.

In reality practice will give you great tone at any volume.

is practice going to give you clipping and compression?

 

[El Marin]

My JCM900 (and 800) definitely sounded better when loud, but my mindset was (and still is, I guess) for practice at home, all it has to do is work so I can hear myself. I figured at a gig is where the tone really mattered, and that just sort of took care of itself when I turned it up to hear it over everything else. At home I'm not thinking of tone, dynamics, "sag", all that stuff - I just want to be able to hear it so I can make sure I know how to play the songs so that when I do go in front of people, I don't look like a dork...

Yes, sure. I did it too, I practiced too at home at low levels with the JCM900, then I took it to the rehearsal studio, and used a Champ clone during many years, better tone at low volume... then in 2012 (I believe) Yamaha released the THR10 and since there, for me, IMO, is the best option at home. Not only as amp, I can play over music too, in the old days I used the 900 and the turntable, record music too. For me, the THR10 has been the best "new" thing of the decade hands down

 

[985plowboy]

Just as soon as the necessary discretionary income came available.

 

[bromdenlong]

And who that no longer lives with Mom & Dad plays guitar in the bedroom?

People living in studio apartments play in their bedroom.

 

[telemnemonics]

People living in studio apartments play in their bedroom.

That still doesn't make sense to me?
What do these people have in the living room area?
Entertainment centers?
Video games?
Posters and potted palms?
Who not a nice Twin Reverb?
Doubles as a coffee table and triples as hip decor.
Quadruples as entertainment center and almost affords video game status.

My suspicion is: Guitar players hook up with hot chicks that demand they only play (guitar) in the bedroom, and dictate the rest of the home/ apt decor!
I mean really, guitars and amps look great!
Music is for everyone!

WTH is up with so many having to hide when playing music???
Crazy I tell you just crazy!

 

[Mexitele Blues]

That still doesn't make sense to me?
What do these people have in the living room area?

They have beds, because studio apts are one room.

 

[telemnemonics]

They have beds, because studio apts are one room.

Ahhh, issues of semantics again!
So when those who live in studio apartments have friends over, they tell their friends to come over and hang in my bedroom?
Or do they say come over to my apartment?
When did "studio apartment" become "bedroom"?

Is a studio apartment amp really a bedroom amp?
Or more of a multi use kitchen/ LR/ bedroom/ practice amp?

 

[KATT]

Never realized it was a thing I've got 4 a 100 watt 50 and 2 15s one of the 15s has a head phone jack

4 ≠ 1 + 2

 

[telemnemonics]

The left wall of my NYC bedroom. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

View attachment 797353

I had a similarly packed bedroom in the mid '80s when I had the lease on a 3br apt and put a deadbolt on mine since I had a revolving cast of roommates.
My bedroom amps? 40w, 50w, 180w. IIRC!
The next 3br apt I moved in with two musician friends and a film student who became by GF.
We made the LR into a music room including my new drum kit and all our amps, but we mostly kept guitars in bedrooms though none were locked.
Fortunately the downstairs neighbors were huge Gwar fans and the noise was mutually tolerated.
Around then I got my first real 100w Marshall.

So can we agree that having amps in the bedroom is not the same as having "bedroom amps"?

 

[Mike SS]

In my gigging band days my amp stayed at the rehearsal space, or the drummer's basement. I did not want to drag it back and forth since it was large and heavy.

 

[Mexitele Blues]

Ahhh, issues of semantics again!
So when those who live in studio apartments have friends over, they tell their friends to come over and hang in my bedroom?
Or do they say come over to my apartment?
When did "studio apartment" become "bedroom"?

Is a studio apartment amp really a bedroom amp?
Or more of a multi use kitchen/ LR/ bedroom/ practice amp?

Forest for the trees my man.

 

[Chud]

So can we agree that having amps in the bedroom is not the same as having "bedroom amps"?

Semantics...

 

[carpenter]

4 amps a line 6 100 watt a peavy 50 watt a marshall 15 watt and a ac15 clear now?

 

[Strebs]

And who that no longer lives with Mom & Dad plays guitar in the bedroom?

I don't play in "the" bedroom, but I play in a bedroom that's essentially my home office. Volume has to be very low or I either annoy the rest of the family or wake up my daughter.

 

[Rob Robson]

There are ways of making one amp do double duty, but you have to be willing to think outside the box. Rather than drag a big amp around and constantly battle with soundmen and bandmates for decibel domination, just use the smallest amp that delivers the tone you want, mic it, and leave the tonnage at home (or sell it). Taking this a step further, add a tube line driver / DI to your pedal board and call it good. Some day you'll run into a gigging situation where you have to go direct anyway, so it's better to optimize for that and get used to it. Some tube pedal amps and preamps sound indistinguishable from the real thing, whether you're feeding the PA or a set of headphones. Your gigging rig and practice rig CAN be one and the same, and your back will thank you for it. This situation is exactly why I developed the Stomplifier.

 

[Terrygh1949]

Back in the 60s most people I knew had an amp and a guitar. When I had only my Twin Reverb it was the amp I played at home. A lot of times I do not plug in. "Tone" is something I think about at the gig, not at home. At home I concentrate on technique.

Yep, couldn't have said it better.