I wanted to hate it.

Background: I have been looking for a low-wattage tube combo amp for a long time. I originally thought I would love the Fender Deluxe Reverb ’65 Reissue or the new Fender Princeton ’65 Reissue. After all, they have 22 and 15 watt designs, respectively. But after traveling to Sweetwater’s showroom and trying them out, my take-away is that they’re just TOO DANG BRIGHT. I like more fullness and tone out of my amps.

While on that trip, I was able to find two amps that I liked. One was the hand-wired Vox AC15 ($1399). I thought it was a very serviceable sound that could do a lot of things. But the one that sent me home raving was the Bogner Duende 1×10. I LOVED that amp. It had the perfect marriage of clean gain, full tone, and grit from the overdrive channel. Alas, the Bogner Duende 1×10 is freaking $2500!!!

Today, I traveled to Indy and went to Guitar Center. In the center display was something I wanted to make fun of – a Bugera V22 combo amp. I thought to myself – let’s plug it in and see what kind of shihacky sounds I can get out of it.

You see, I was prejudiced against the amp. Bugera (whose name sounds like you took a few of the most popular boutique amp makers and put them in a blender…primarily Bogner, Egnator, and Rivera) is made by parent company Behringer. Yes – THAT Behringer. The Behringer that got sued for reverse-engineering some of Mackie’s most popular mixer designs. The company that spits out dirt-cheap electronics products by “borrowing” from industry leaders. The Behringer that is well-known to be the “bottom-feeder” of music store gear.

I WANTED TO HATE IT.

But I didn’t. I sat there for nearly 30 minutes putting it through it’s paces – looking for weaknesses, comparing it to other amps I’ve played. But you know what? I actually liked it. I liked it a LOT.

Know what’s funny? The amp had a sticker on it that read, “$349”. Yes. Really.

You can read more about the amp here: http://www.bugera-amps.com/EN/products/V22.aspx

WfX Notes

I just got back from attending the Worship Facilities Convention & Expo at the Indiana Convention Center. Here’s some preliminary thoughts:

It was my first WFX, although I’ve been to other tech conferences such as NAB a couple of times. In comparison, WFX is SMALL. I was expecting it to be a lot bigger. For example, here’s a pic taken today at the Apple Booth (click for bigger image):

Pretty lame, huh? At NAB, Apple’s was one of the biggest, best, and most interactive booths.

But I did see some cool stuff. Our church owns a couple of JVC HD100 cameras, and I stopped by the JVC booth to ask about battery packs, hard drive recording, and wireless packages. They were very helpful and, in fact, had the package I was looking for on display:

The Anton-Bauer battery pack would extend battery life to approx. 3-4 hours instead of the current 40 minutes with the stock JVC battery. The AB batt would also power the ProHD 100GB hard drive addition, which uses the FireWire output of the camera and records in native QuickTime format for FCP users. This means the end of CAPTURING! Yay! Just plug the hard drive into the computer and begin editing immediately. The 100GB drive will record 8-12 hours of QuickTime format depending on CODEC.

Another cool thing I ran into was two of the newer digital mixing desks: The Yamaha PM5D and the Allen & Heath iLive Console. SWEET!

On the video side, I was in awe at the Renewed Vision booth. These are the guys who create the programs, “Pro Presenter”, “ProVideoPlayer”, and “ProVideoSync”. I got a detailed, in-person run-down on ProVideoPlayer and ProVideoSync and I was vey appreciative of the time he spent with me. I feel like i have a good grasp on the two key ministry tools now. If you don’t know, ProVideoPlayer is software that allows you to do the huge widescreen backdrops on stages as seen at WillowCreek, Granger, NorthPoint, Catalyst, BigStuf, Passion Tour, etc. ProVideSync is software that allows you to playback multiple video streams in sync for a multi-site campus (a la Buckhead).

Well, that’s about it. There was a lot of typical boring church stuff. Architects, builders, pew companies, a stained glass company, etc. And there was the usual sound installer companies and lighting distributors, and a few manufacturers (a couple LED fixture companies were there. Interesting – but the technology is just not quite there yet in my opinion.)

Enough for now,

Jerm