Heavy lifting

[Chris Harwood]

Reading all the posts of lugging stuff up 2 flights of stairs...any steelers ever use one of these back when we had youth and spunk?
Our bass player had one and seems like it would melt any Peavey, that might be on stage!

[Ian Rae]

That was the state of the art 50 years ago (when people had servants to move stuff)

[Jack Hanson]

I had one of those that I purchased at the local Music-Go-Round for a song back in the mid-90s as a bass amp. Got tired of lugging it around, and gave it to my high-school-aged son's pal who was a budding bass player (and a good one). Never plugged a steel into it, but it stomped for a bass amp. Most likely make a decent amp for pedal steel if you have a truck and an 18 year-old to lug it around for you.

[Ken Morgan]

I bought and used the successor, 371 rig with the folded horn 18 cab. Twas a beast, but still fit in the trunk of mr car then (64 Olds Jetstar 88)

Sounded great 50 ft away, up close kind of average.

[Chris Harwood]

...snip
Sounded great 50 ft away,...

Lol. I'm getting that "Back to the Future" scene in my mind...where he turns up the amp and is blown across the room!

[Bill A. Moore]

I used to do sound for other groups back in the day, one of the guys in a R&R band had one. I didn't mic the bass but he kept turning the thing up during sound check. I finally patched 2 18' cords together and had him play from the dance floor. He had no idea he was killing the band's sound with his volume! (Said he couldn't "feel" it onstage!)

[Jim Kennedy]

Wayyy back in the day size mattered.S hortly after buying my ShoBod Pro 1 20 years ago, I started looking for a Fender Twin. I could not find one , but did find a Quad Reverb. Same electronics as a Twin, but with 4 12 inch speakers. Asking price was only $600. Guy said it wouldn't sell because nobody wanted to lug it around. I jumped on it. As long as it was on flat terrain it rolled around nicely. I could roll it up to the back of my Toyota pick-up and tilt it in, easy as pie. I did see the writing on the wall though. Steps, rough terrain, were going to be a no go. The chassis is now in a Rick Johnson cabinet, and I play through a Webb cabinet that I got a great deal on. Not exactly light weight, but manageable. And Loud.

[Karl Paulsen]

There was a time when playing bass with my first country band (other groups before that)that I lugged around a Carvin 8x10 and a Peavey VB2 (225 watt tube bass amp) to any gig bigger than a small bar. Though I had been gigging a perfectly good Ampeg Portabass head and cab (first gen lightweight bass amp) I felt I needed something impressive looking and it certainly was that.
Total weight 175 pounds.

Looked awesome but really quite impractical and totally unnecessary. I downsized to an Avatar 4x10 NEO cab (back when they did custom colors) that sounded better, was near as loud, looked better and weight about half.
Total weight 122 pounds.

However, in my last group I gigged bass almost weekly for 4 years and only brought an Ampeg Rocketbass B100R combo. Heavy by modern standards for combo, but it has casters and sounds amazing. Never once brought out the Avatar.
Total weight 65 pounds.

This year I gave in to a good deal and bought a V3 Fender Rumble 100 combo that sounds almost as good as the Ampeg, and weighs 22 pounds!

[Ken Pippus]

A little surprised we’ve gotten this far without someone mentioning the Ampeg SVT with the 8X10 cabinet.

Hernia on a handcart.

[Chris Harwood]

Karl...next year you'll just bring a direct box! lol!

[Chris Harwood]

Ken...those had handrails on the back and built in rollers. TOTALLY practical!

[Ken Pippus]

I had the Rumble 100 until shortly before I got this one. 120 Watts. 16 Pounds. And I’ve gigged with it on steel.

Does not make me pine nostalgically for my Session 500.

[Charlie Hansen]

I played in a band in the 70s with a guy that had one of these Acoustic cabinets and a Traynor Mono Block head. It was disgustingly heavy unless you were travelling on flat ground.

[Erv Niehaus]

Jim,
You mentioned a quad Reverb.
I have one of those along with a Reverb with 6 speakers.
I bought it from a Guitar Center on the east coast and it was shipped to a store in Minneapolis.
The boys that helped me load it wondered what was in that big box.
They had to turn it a certain way to get it in the back of a Jeep Grand Cherokee!
Erv

[Larry Jamieson]

One of the 1st gigs I had as a young man was playing bass in a country band. I lived in a 2nd floor walk up. Like a fool, I went out and bought a bass amp that had a cabinet with 2 15" speakers. I carried that up and down the stairs 3 or 4 times, then went out and traded it in for an Ampeg BN15 flip top, a great amp and much easier to move around.

[Paul Wade]

Had a Marshall 4×12 stack in the 70
Ton of fun!!!!

[Gil James]

From 95# to 2#
Ain't technology great!

[Ken Morgan]

Yeah, man…a big factor in my ‘do I like this amp?’ decisions are based on how much I like it loading back in the truck after a 4 hr gig.

Last bass gig was Aguilar Tone Hammer head direct…latest 6 string and last steel gig direct…

Recently had a guy contact me to play six string in a fill in thing. Asked me to bring a Twin Reverb. Told him if he wanted a Twin onstage, he needed to bring it.

[Karl Paulsen]

Karl...next year you'll just bring a direct box! lol!

Ha! The year after that, I'll just hand over a flash drive of backing tracks!


Seriously though, I'm not old or in bad shape, but these days weight is a major factor in most gear decisions and it's not even at a premium price point anymore. It blows my mind how lightweight and affordable gig worthy great is these days.

[Mike Bacciarini]

Jerry was saying….

“Oh, you have a double stack? That’s cute.”

[Doug Beaumier]

The heaviest steel amp I ever owned was a Peavey Session 500... it was about 90 lbs! What a back-breaker. I hauled it to gigs for six months and got rid of it. It's no wonder that Peavey discontinued that amp after one year. Nowadays I have four Quilters! TT-15, TT-12, Mach 3, and a spare Tone Block 202 head. The amps weigh between 21 and 37 lbs.

[Dave Hopping]

My only Acoustic bass amp was a (I think) 126 combo. Single channel, 1 15. Big but not very heavy and reasonably portable. OK for small clubs, but underpowered for big venues. Broke down a couple of times and I ended up trading it. Didn't want to buy another Acoustic. Haven't done a bass gig in a really long time, but I do have a '90s Peavey DataBass. Heavy but compact and as muscular as I'll ever need.

[Jack Hanson]

From 95# to 2#
Ain't technology great!

I hear ya' Gil! I went from this Ovation Danny Partridge Model...


...to a BAM200 atop a Phil Jones Bass C2 cabinet:


Uncertain how much weight it saved. When I set the Ovation cab on the digital scale, the readout said "ONE AT A TIME PLEASE."

[Jerry Overstreet]

We have an Ampeg VT22 212 combo. It really should have cup handles on each side for 2 people. It's that heavy. As someone else stated, when you go to pick it up, it feels like it's nailed to the floor.

It's an ungodly loud 100W, at least, beast with 7027 tubes, I believe. It doesn't get used much due to the heft and because it has some minor issues and the reverb doesn't work.

[Steve Lipsey]

I have a formula...your amp should weigh no more than [100-(your age)]....at 30,, I had a Twin...now....I have a Milkman "The Amp", 2.5 lbs., will keep me for a while!