rob s wrote on Fri, 19 October 2007 00:33 |
garnet amps that have the stinger section are basically a guitar amp w ith a built in herzog. in fact BTO got its name from the garnet amp. Big Time Operator was a 100w model with the stinger as used by randy bachman. they date back to the mid 60's. man, they are beasts.
|
Garnet amps are great! They were built really well (asides from the speakers which were usually not the best), and eventually in time (some are realizing this now), they're becoming some of the holy grail. A Herzog is certainly becoming a holy grail of sorts (a pre-preamp....a fuzzbox in the guise of a head. Heavy to carry for what's essentially a fuzzbox, but a damned good one). Even a Sessionman or something like that will sting you for some big $$$ these days, if you see one of those for a decent price, pick it up, 'cause you'll likely never see one again, if and when it's not going for insane prices.
Gar Gillies passed away in December of last year...very low key, it wasn't really mentioned that much, which was sad, but he really knew alot about tube amps and I think took a hit to the pocketbook when he still made mostly tube amps in the transistor amp heyday in the 80's. He did make a few models of transistor amps, but his models were mostly tube.
My bandmate has a very, very early Garnet head from the 60's....I don't even think it was an actual model, just an early head. Gar, himself, offered him a grand for it (which my friend declined), someone else offered him 2000 bucks for it, and he wouldn't take it. I'm pretty sure that it's in the thousands of dollars range and is probably within an unknown holy grail....I think Gar said that there were only a few made. Meaning that most people don't even know that it exists....holy grail, indeed.