Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

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MrShake
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Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by MrShake » Sun Sep 11, 2022 10:45 am

Just to nip it in the bud, I DON'T have gear shame, I just didn't know how to sum it up in a thread title.

So, this is all just a thought experiment. Which means, feel free to muse.

I recently got a Crate 2x12 combo. It's great for a free amp. Loud, clean solid state. I broke down and got the foot switch and have had fun goofing on the mega-gain channel.

But I want to personalize it a bit, visually. I have three options I like that suit the band. But they SEEM like they'd be hiding or removing the logo. Which would be because I like the way they look, not because I'd want to obscure the fact that it's a lowly Crate.

So, I don't care if people look down on me for crap gear, but I do care about them getting the mistaken impression I'm the kind of brand snob who'd strip a Peavey of its points.

Option 1: the "Haw Haw, it's a Crate, ain't that a goof?"
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Option 2: the "Darth Vader/Stealth Amp"
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Option 3: the "Nuclear Option"
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I like them all, and I'm not doing the stripes with the plate back on, because then I'd think it looked like Crate made it that way and that might be too dorky for even me.

So, like, I clearly don't care abt people's brand snobbery, and while how I sound is the most important factor, I admit to having a perverse pride in my Trash Stack of gigging amp garbage.

Which one do you think looks best? What are your thoughts on brand snobbery? How do you combat it - your own or other peoples'?

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by Firecat » Sun Sep 11, 2022 11:12 am

MrShake wrote:
Sun Sep 11, 2022 10:45 am
So, I don't care if people look down on me for crap gear, but I do care about them getting the mistaken impression I'm the kind of brand snob who'd strip a Peavey of its points.
I'd say do whatever you want, it doesn't matter what people think. I have a friend who put a piece of black tape over the Fender logo on his AVRI Jazzmaster, so people think he's playing a Squier and hiding it. Whenever somebody asks him about it, he just confuses them even more by telling them Squier never made in a Jazzmaster in that colour, always makes me giggle ;D

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by marqueemoon » Sun Sep 11, 2022 12:58 pm

Of these I think I like the caution tape look best.

Some sort of stencil thing on the grille cloth could also be cool.

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by Dave » Sun Sep 11, 2022 4:27 pm

I vote you cut a sheet of thin galv steel like 30ga flat stock to the shape of the faceplate, drill nice and square for the pots and just memorize the function of each knob or go full ham and make custom labels with a dymo label maker.

The nuts behind the pots/jacks will hold it in place plenty strong.
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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by MrShake » Sun Sep 11, 2022 5:06 pm

I love you beautiful iconoclasts.

I like the caution tape, and it would match my extension cab, which has a stripe of that, too. But sitting in my living room "bare" today, the blank look is growing on me.

"What kind of amp do you play?"
"Black and rectangular."

Sort of a minimalism thing.

I'd considered something on the grill cloth too. My wife suggested an atom or the radiation symbol, which would suit the band, I suppose. But I'm hesitant in case I change my mind later. I'm not much of a craftsman, so the work it would take to re-cloth or something like that, however cool, may be more work than this amp is worth to me, or maybe I'll want something super clean.
Dave wrote:
Sun Sep 11, 2022 4:27 pm
I vote you cut a sheet of thin galv steel like 30ga flat stock to the shape of the faceplate, drill nice and square for the pots and just memorize the function of each knob or go full ham and make custom labels with a dymo label maker.

The nuts behind the pots/jacks will hold it in place plenty strong.
Dave, you are the best kind of maniac. That sh!t is WAY beyond my city-boy abilities or equipment, but sounds, frankly, awesome. A blank everything... mmmm. I'd have to rehouse my pedalboard to bare boxes too. That's my aesthetic DREAM setup.

But, that faceplate would conceal a... no, *THE*... selling point of this amp.

The previous GX212 was a solid state with spring reverb.

The later GFX212 had a significantly more advanced FX section.

The "L" in GLX212?

... LIGHTS!!

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Image

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by JSutter » Mon Sep 12, 2022 4:59 am

Stip of duct tape and write Dumble on it.

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by LVC » Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:28 am

I like all 3. #1 reminds me of Amanda Palmer's subtly altered Kurzweil keyboard...

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You could also rearrange the letters so they spell "REACT"... or "CARE", or "TEAR", or "RAT"...


That being said, I'm a big fan of deliberately and ostensibly playing affordable gear onstage as a big punk-rockish fuck you to gear snobbery. 8)
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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by MrShake » Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:37 am

LVC wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 5:28 am
I'm a big fan of deliberately and ostensibly playing affordable gear onstage as a big punk-rockish fuck you to gear snobbery. 8)
JSutter wrote:
Mon Sep 12, 2022 4:59 am
Stip of duct tape and write Dumble on it.
You people get me. I love it.

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by sessylU » Wed Sep 14, 2022 1:42 am

My Jet Cit combo sounds much better without the big, horrible, circular logo on it.

I had originally planned on recovering the blue part of it (not out of snobbery, but because it lives in my living room and has to look at least reasonably not terrible), but in real life it's a much darker shade of navy than the blue you see in photos. So I've left it.
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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by sal paradise » Wed Sep 14, 2022 2:08 am

I must admit that I took the Harley Benton logo off my V30 2x12 cab.

Not that anyone cares except you & the guitarists in the other band. But, ya know.

Touring with a Laney GH50 head for a year or so taught me to leave my gear snobbery at the door. But I could still feel the eyes on me after people took their Orange & 5150 heads off the cabs.
I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion?

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by jvin248 » Wed Sep 14, 2022 3:00 am

.

+1 Boldly show you get your great tones from cheap gear. It's the player not the gear!

The other option is to get fabric in some fun design, a theme that fits you or your band, and run it over the logo plate like your caution tape test or all the way down over the whole grill cloth region and logo plate. You'll want thinner cloth (not upholstery) so the sound can get through it if you cover the speaker. You can go to the usual suspects of craft stores or even some of the larger format Walmart stores carry a section of sewing/art supplies.

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by Shadoweclipse13 » Wed Sep 14, 2022 4:47 am

jvin248 wrote:
Wed Sep 14, 2022 3:00 am
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Oh man, any of these would make the coolest cabinet grill cover!!!
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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by MrShake » Wed Sep 14, 2022 5:12 am

Those fabric samples are lovely - I've always been impressed by people who take their personalization to that level. I have to confess, I'm such a minimalist, it might not suit me, but I love it.

Much like the Jet City situation, I think that's my thing - it's not that I mind that it's Crate, it's that I just don't like THAT logo. I'd probably not think twice about it if it were the "classic" blocky Crate logo. It's not about branding for me, it's aesthetics. I actually may have come up with a "representation" solution, I'll keep you updated

And as far as feeling the eyes, I hear you. It bothered me in my early 20s, until I realized that I wasn't a great guitarist, but my old-ass Peavey beater and Blues Driver got me better sound from '02-'07 than half the bands I was seeing at gigs playing the fancy gear I wanted. And as I met more and more musicians and moved to a much bigger city, pretty easily sorting the real artists from the poseurs, all the people I really admired liked having fun with gear but really had a "whatever works" mentality. It was the people who obsessed over the specifics and brands and all that who seemed to make the music that was least interesting to me.

I sorta undercut myself with my Squier Jag. I didn't çover the logo because it was a Squier, I covered it because I was just sick of the "sounds pretty good for a Squier" comments. Which is a compliment, I guess? If anyone asks, oh, I'm proud to cop to it. "Oh, yeah, it's a Squier, it's fantastic, even compared to my AVRI!" I just put some black tape and wrote "F*cker" in my approximation of the Fender font.

But I holler til I'm sweating, I throw my guitar across the stage, my drummer is a cute chick and pounds her enormous '70s concert toms like a barbarian, and we end in a strobe light feedback delay-loop noise jam that usually ends in me ripping strings off the guitar, leaning it against the amp, she knocks over her kit, and we walk off the front of the stage while it howls.

I don't feel guilty covering it up, because I've done a bunch of mods to it, aesthetic and technical, but if other guitarists were too busy reading, they weren't listening.

I mean, if they're not listening, screw 'em anyway. Because we're really loud.

Also, we like to bring some colored LED spotlights and strobes and sometimes logos really leap off the background with the right contrast.

I prefer my gear to be as visually uninteresting as possible, (except my Jaguar, lol, I guess?) so that it's just tools. I have all the fancy name brand stuff at home for ambient washes of apartment sound, or to be utilized at better gigs or in fancier bands. I DREAM of a board full of nothing but bare enclosures into a blank black box.

If I can show up and sound like Hawkwind at Ragnarok through a bunch of unmarked/no-name brand gear, the only thing onstage for anyone to notice is the sound or what we're doing.

Or the Jaguar, lol.

Also, Update #1:
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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by Zork » Wed Sep 14, 2022 5:51 am

I've got an Unimog badge on my bass amp and Trabant badges on two of my cabs and I think it's funny. For that amp I would probably look for a Ford Focus or Chrysler PT Cruiser emblem.

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Re: Personalizing My Amp / Brand Shame?

Post by MrShake » Wed Sep 14, 2022 6:36 am

A new challenger!

I... think I like it.

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There are more stickers showing up this week, so we'll see how I feel about 'em.

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