With iconic garage-punk trio the Oblivians, with the Parting Gifts (his collaboration with the Ettes’ Coco Hames and Jem Cohen), with a legion of other one-offs and defunct projects, and, for the past 13 years with driving rock ‘n’ soul revue the Reigning Sound, Greg Cartwright has chased various traces of American rock and pop to arrive at something singularly his. Still, with his legacy perfectly well cemented among garage-rock aficionados and discerning vinyl-heads, Cartwright is still chasing the unexpected. The Reigning Sound’s latest album, Shattered, is the band’s sixth proper full-length, a follow-up to 2009’s Love And Curses, and its debut for Merge. Cartwright will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on him.
Cartwright: I’m assuming that you’re all music fans and that a healthy number of you are also musicians like myself. Probably about two-thirds of the former group are guitarists. How’d I arrive at that estimate? This is not a science journal, buddy, so let’s suspend that kind of petty fact checking right here. OK? OK. So like I was saying, a lot of us play guitar and next to finding the right guitar the most important thing is finding the right amp. Funny enough, sometimes the right amp for gigging is not necessarily the best amp for recording. Especially if you’re band is hella fucking loud and playing in smaller venues. You need an amp that puts you on equal footing with the rest of your band. Recording extremely loud amps is a tricky business though. Try using a smaller single circuit amp that breaks up fast. Something with a small speaker. They get a great fuzzed out compression that is nearly impossible with a larger amp unless it is ear-splittingly loud. It may not be for you if you like a real loud and crisp sound. But at a lower volume these smaller amps can achieve pretty convincing clarity akin to a larger Fender Twin or something similar. My favorite amp these days is a small Premier amp from the early ’50s. Pretty much an identical circuit as the Fender Champ from the same time period. Almost identical sound-wise, too. But the price is about a third of what a Champ goes for. Exactly how much is that? See disclaimer above. One more thing, if you’re playing at a venue where the sound man is going to drop a microphone on your amp, these amps sound great for gigging as well. You can dime the volume knob and the amp will sound ferocious. The added bonus? Guaranteed, the sound man will not keep telling you to turn down. Thank you, tiny amp.
