Dude. Okay, it’s probably gonna get a little nerdy, slash, geeky on this episode. Gonna be talking about amps, yeah, guitar amps and uh, so let’s get into it. I started playing guitar in 1993, technically 1993, technically so 1993. Man, was that seriously? My no, no, it wasn’t my first amp. Okay, so the first amp I had was probably some kind of crate half stack. I don’t remember the exact like model number of it or whatever, but I had a crate half stack. It did the job, whatever. You know, it’s kind of like my first like big amp. I’m sure I had like some practice amps, which I don’t. You know that whatever, that doesn’t matter. You know, my first kind of big amp, I believe, was a crate half stack.
Uh, my next amp this, you know, a running uh thing I’m gonna be saying here that I wish I still had, not because I would necessarily play it or or like playing it, but only because it’s basically like a collector’s item. I had a marshall 25th anniversary combo amp and it was pretty sick. It had three channels. Um, you know, I think it came out in 1994 or five, I can’t remember, but it was blue and I only know this because I was told that. But, um, yeah, three channels. It had like all separate controls for everything. It was insane, like the reason why I got it. My cousin used to make fun of me because I was like, dude, look at all these knobs, like, look at. I was like, look at how much you can control all the sound on this. You know, um, again, I wish I had it only because it’s more of a collector is not because I think I would like the sound of it for my style playing. That is so the next.
The next amp that I had and this is how I’ve always gone down the road with my amps is I got a rock Tron chameleon preamp. This is probably. It could have been 1994, but it was definitely 1995 if it wasn’t 1994. I had a rock Tron chameleon. This thing like was before there was amp modeling. The Chameleon was basically trying to like digitize an amp sound, but I don’t think it would necessarily say it was trying to model an amp. But, like I said, it was the first. Not necessarily the chameleon was the first like digital amp. I’m not gonna say that cuz I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m just saying it’s the first digital amp that I had and from there on out and I always played a digital amp and I’ll get more into that, which I think affects the way that I play, which is either good or bad. I’m not quite sure the jury’s still out on that, but I’ve always played digital amps. So, anyways, I had the Rocktron Chameleon.
The thing was sick so I ran that through a parametric equalizer and then through a sonic maximizer and then into a power amp. It sounded disgusting, it was gross. It was awesome anyways, and it has seven, seven bar parametric eq on the thing it was. It was awesome. It was all rack mountable gear. It was awesome. Um, after the rockton, after the chameleon, I sold that and I got this amp made by digitech called the johnson millennium. Now that amp was doing modeling, they they would, the presets were called specific amps and stuff it. It was very interesting. Again, digital amp here’s. Here’s my thing.
The way that I play guitar is very light, it’s very gentle. I don’t beat on my strings at all, like I’m. I’m very light on the strings and so, like I think that’s because I’ve always played digital amps and you get just that big sound, no matter what. It’s not like playing a tube amp where you know, depending on how hard you pick and stuff like that. You know it affects, like, your tone and everything. So I think it’s affected my playing. Like I said, it’s either good or bad, I don’t know, but I’m just saying I’ve noticed that over time, like it’s had to affect the way I play guitar.
So I had the Johnson Millennium amp and then I, you know, I ended up quitting, you know, playing guitar for a long time. Whatever, and right back to form, what I did is, uh, I ended up even though it’s old school, the thing worked and it it worked for me. At the time I got a um 11 rack and I set it up, just like I set up my chameleon and I was rocking that for a while. So, always played digital amps, I’ve I’ve I’ve never well, other than the Marshall, but I’ve never like owned a tube amp and like used it as my main amp ever. I’ve never done that. So maybe someday I’ll, I’ll give it a whirl, but I’ve just always been a fan of kind of like the amp modeling and the digital. I don’t know, that’s just the road I’ve always gone down.
So how about you guitar players? What do you think? What do you think of amp modeling? Is it good, bad? Has it ruined guitar amps? What’s your opinion? You know, email me at hello at embracestormcom. Don’t forget the dashes are in between EmbraceYourStorm. Visit the website. Create an account, let’s get talking. What do you think of amp modeling? What do you think of digital amps? What do you think of tube amps? Let’s get the discussion going there, everyone. Thank you for listening. Thank you for downloading. Don’t forget to Embrace your Storm, see ya.