When I was a kid growing
up in Maryland, I loved
going to concerts and seeing the
big walls of amps onstage. You’d
always see a towering stack of amps
behind bands like Van Halen, Y&T,
or Ted Nugent. Because I wanted
to emulate those guys, of course I
was motivated to buy the biggest,
loudest amps I could find. In the
late ’70s, I saw a magazine ad with
Eric Clapton playing through three
huge Music Man HD-130 amps.
They stood taller than him, and a
curly cord dangled seductively from
the input of one of the heads. I had
to have one. In the ad, his Gibson
Firebird also gripped a cigarette
between the strings and the headstock,
and this looked every bit as
cool as the guitar itself. (Fortunately,
it didn’t encourage me to take up
smoking.) While I was still in high
school, I saved up my gig money
to purchase a Music Man HD-130.
The head sported EL34 tubes and it
was my first really professional guitar
rig. To mimic the Clapton ad, I
bought two of the 4x12 cabinets and
stacked the head on top. It was all
about the look.
(Left to right) Roger Eaton, Derek St. Holmes, and Rich Eckhardt jam at the ReTune Nashville
Charity Concert,
October 23, 2010. Photo by Dave Dudek
The 130-watt RMS rating was
way more amp than I ever needed.
In hindsight, I would have been
better off with Music Man’s Series
65 head—the 65-watt version of the
130. But I was convinced louder
was better, and if Clapton was using
the 130, it was the amp I had to
have. I’m convinced if someone had
made a 500-watt amp, I would have
bought it and wondered if a 600-
watt amp wouldn’t sound better.
I’ve since learned you can do a
lot more with smaller amps. Their
power tubes overload more easily,
and that breakup gives you a much
fatter tone at the right level. Even
though big amps look cooler than
a monkey on a dirt bike, you rarely
need enough volume to single-handedly
fill an arena. On those
gigs, your amp will be mic’d and
run through the PA anyway.
A few weeks ago, while performing
on a Nashville benefit show, I
had the pleasure of sharing the stage
with my longtime buddy and fellow
axe man, Roger Eaton. Roger
has played with some of the biggest
names in country music, including
Barbara Mandrell, Joe Diffie, and
Tanya Tucker. He showed up on the
gig with an impressively compact rig
consisting of an Ugly Amps 18-watt
head and cabinet. The tiny, 2-channel
Ugly had two EL84 power tubes
and two 12AX7 preamp tubes,
and it just plain smoked on the
clean country stuff. Additionally,
he brought a beefed-up Fender
Princeton-style combo made by
Rick Hayes at Vintage Sound Amps.
It kicked out about 15 watts with a
12" Warehouse Guitar speaker.
Roger ran everything through
an imposing pedalboard that
allowed him to cover a variety of
straight-ahead tones, as well as a few
specialized sounds. He also brought
an assortment of Clayton and
KSM guitars—one of which was a
custom-made instrument he’d just
picked up on the way to rehearsal.
By contrast, I played a Les Paul
Standard and filled the left side of
the stage with a 100-watt Marshall
JCM900 and a 4x12 cabinet. My
Marshall’s previous owner was
more of a collector than a player,
and he’d only turned it on four
or five times in 17 years. It’s one
of the early 900-series amps that
still has the warmth of the classic
vintage Marshalls. I’ve only had this
amp for a short time, and I’m still
learning all that it can do. A rare
find, it’s one of the best-sounding
Marshalls I’ve ever played through.
But two guitarists can get
onstage with substantially different
setups and sonically complement
each other, rather than battle
each other for space and volume.
Approaching the guitar parts with
two completely different rigs, Roger
and I knew it didn’t have to be the
fight of the week:
In this corner,
weighing in at 122 pounds, 6 ounces,
is the World Champion Marshall
half-stack! And in this corner, at a
scrappy 40 pounds, 1 ounce, is the
legendary Fender Princeton. Ding,
ding, ding—come out fighting and
keep it clean, boys!
Roger and I took two different
approaches to the same gig, and
that gave the show so much more
character and diversity than if we’d
both played through the same
make and size of amps and used
similar guitars. The Eagles have a
rule of thumb: If one guitarist is
playing a Strat, the other should
be on a Les Paul. By following this
principle, Roger and I brought a
lot of depth to the band’s sound.
The show featured a wide variety
of artists, and we covered everything
from old Patsy Cline to Ted
Nugent—and we made it work.
Next time you find yourself in a
similar situation, consider this mix-and-match approach. It’s a great
way to make your music sound as
good as it can.
Rich Eckhardt is a
Nashville guitarist who has
performed with singers
ranging from Steven Tyler
to Shania Twain. He currently
plays lead guitar for
Toby Keith, and also works
as a spokesperson for the Soles4Souls
charity (
soles4souls.org). His new album,
Cottage City Firehouse, is available at
richeckhardt.com and
CDBaby.com.