Rickenbacker 1958 15 Watt Combo

You read that right! This amp is a 1958 Rickenbacker 15-watt amp that has one knob. The vesatility of this knob is wonderful because it does two things: It turns the amp on and adjusts the volume. I hate effects and love tubes. Well, this has two tubes, one 8" speaker, a knob, an input jack, and a little green light that tells you it is on. I got it from a friend's mom who had it in storage since the day it was bought. Looks very brand new and sounds perfect.

I plug my Epiphone Casino into this baby and have a blast. No hum, but a very nice warm sound at low volume levels. If you put it between 6 and 7 you get a really nice edge, and 8 to 10 is some awesome classic distortion. It gets just loud enough at 10 that I have to leave the room to protect my hearing, but if I break into "Revolution", you would swear you are listening to the Beatles' single.

40 years of storage and it looks and sounds new? What else can you ask for? I often turn it up to 10 and run through a 30-minute practice session, and it just gets sweeter by the second. It doesn't even have a cooling fan and it never overheats.

I don't think you can find many of these left, since most have long been gutted for tubes. My nice, big, expensive amp is in hybernation until this little one blows up. Not that anyone is going to go out and buy one, but be forewarned that this amp sounds bad with solid-bodies (who wants to play a solid anyway). It is fun to watch my friend fiddle for ten mintues between songs to get the tone he wants with his 10-button/knob amp when I seem to be able to just think the sound in my head and it comes out in this amp. Maybe I will just mic this one up through my big amp at the next gig.