Shrinking...

 

"Are you talking about old guys' height or what happens when you get into cold water?" you ask.  Neither, but thanks for asking.  Music gear, specifically amps and PAs keep getting smaller.  A few years ago, an amp less than 50 pounds and anything smaller than a Great Dane would have been considered "a toy."  These days, I have a PA that isn't much bigger than breadbox and only weighs 15 pounds... and it sounds good.  I have a guitar amp that is less than 10 pounds and is the size of a shoe box... and it kicks, and can be plugged into a bigger sound system.  When we saw the BoDeans last Friday, the bass player had an amp that was barely knee high; back in my rock 'n roll band years, the amps were as tall as the musicians and weighed well over 100 pounds.  Smaller works these days.

Here's an example...

That is two Spark amps, stacked.  The two together are just a bit bigger than the drinking glass to the left that olds a 16oz drink.  The top one (white) is mine, the bottom (black) is Marks.  I stacked 'em up to make it look impressive.  LOL  They are about a 6" cube and they have thousands of guitar setting options, thanks to being able to be connected with an app to the internet.  Will you get volume to fill an auditorium with those little amps?  Of course not.  But, they will fill a small room with sound.  In fact, Joan uses that amp more than I do, as her blue tooth speaker, to listen to music.  Multi-use.  ;-)  And that cylinder shaped thing to the right is the Spire Studio that I have mentioned in the past, that handles my recording.  You don't need a giant console with a thousand knobs and sliders to handle 8 tracks for recording.

For the record, I remember when a computer at college took up the footprint of a full-size van and had less computing power than my iPhone.  What?  Yeah, that was A LOT of years ago.

Mark and I had a good time together this afternoon.  He sold an amp that I brought today... that's 3 down and 2 to go.  The items left are the Yamaha 12-channel mixer and the Epiphone SG electric guitar.  We also learned a BoDeans song: Closer To Free... yes, that is the big hit from the band we saw last Friday night.  He also gave me some instruction on how to get the most out of that Spark amp.