If you don’t know already, I have a serious case of GAS, aka Gear Acquisition Syndrome, and my enabler is the Pensacola Craigslist marketplace. Digging though pages of listings to find the perfect deal is my favorite daily hobby. Most of the time I come up short, but the odds were in my favor this week.
I wasn’t scouting out for anything in particular, but I stumbled across these two deals that seemed nearly incredulous.
M-Audio Profire 2626
The first was a set of two M-Audio Profire 2626 audio interfaces. Now, I run all my digital via ADAT from my RME digiface, so normally interfaces are a dead end for me. After doing a little bit of digging, it turns out that these guys work great via ADAT in standalone mode and are very capable/configurable as such. In fact, they use the exact same preamps and converters as my workhorse M-Audio Octane.
It ended up being a perfect fit, and is actually going to enable me to do some cool stuff going forward. Did I hear somebody say 32 analog channels? Sorry to tease, but more info on that soon.
I picked up the two units and a small handmade rack to go with it from a new friend, Richard, at a fraction of what it would cost for a single unit on Ebay. What a steal!
Yamaha B-100
This was something I wasn’t expecting to pick up. I already own the bass amp of my dreams, a 1968 Fender Bassman. I couldn’t really ask for more… but tube bass amps have certain limitations that solid state amps can overcome. One of those is clean headroom. It’s really difficult to get past a certain level of volume on the Bassman without adding in some crunch (though it is nice crunch).
I was watching this listing with a group of amps for a week or so because it included a 1970s Yamaha B-100. I didn’t really know much about this amp head, but dang did it look pretty. The price wasn’t quite right at the beginning, but my patience paid off because it only took a week for it to dip down to practically spare change. Though there were only a few examples online of this rig in action and nearly all of them were poorly recorded on a smartphone, I figured I’d give the amp a shot.
I drove out to Loxley to meet up with a friendly fellow, Tom, to hear the Yamaha in person, and I was pleasantly surprised. It seems to amplify the bass very honestly with enough options in the EQ to dial in the tone you’re looking for (it’s a 4-band eq). The built-in distortion is nice too, but it’s not going to be replacing my Big Muff anytime soon. Now, it definitely doesn’t have the immediate character that the Bassman has, but I can see it being a useful tool/option in the studio especially when working with bassists who are looking for a brighter, more direct sounding tone in the mix.
That was this week’s roundup! I don’t necessarily succeed in my CL pursuits every weekend, but expect an update every month or two regarding this kind of stuff. I also do a lot of retro video game collecting, but that’s mostly rummaging through thrift store bins rather than Craigslist posts and I’m not sure if it would fit on the site.
Anywho, have a great day and happy Craigslisting!