I'm giving up hope. I'm this close )( to gutting a combo and making my own.
I think MAPete just got himself a 25 watt Archon combo in a black paisley trim. Looked pretty sweet to me.
I generally prefer heads to combos, too, but for some bizarre reason when I ordered a Mesa Lone Star I ordered the combo so I wouldn't have to deal with finding a spot for the head AND another speaker cab in my studio (at the time I had the heads in my workstation area, and the cabs farther away in the room in a spot where I have the ceiling treated with extra sound absorbing insulation) and had nothing to put another head on near my workstation anyway.
Actually, having a combo isn't too bad - it's actually pretty nice, sounds great, blah blah.
Here's the bizarre/stupid part; let's call it giving a mouse a cookie (you know that old kids' story, right? You give a mouse a cookie and pretty soon he's going to want a glass of milk...):
I didn't like the idea of having the combo in the control area because the ceiling is treated for extra absorption in the
other area, where I had the cabs. So I put it with the cabs. But the PRS heads were still in the control area. Amp controls in two different spots? I couldn't live with that!
So I decided that for consistency's sake (consistency being one of the hobgoblins of my little mind), I'd put all the amps back in the amp part of the room so all the controls would be in the same area.
Thus, I commenced moving the PRS amps there, along with the heavy desk they were on. I have those teflon furniture glides. Moving it was easy. But..
lifting it to put the glides under the base (the desk has a rack thing built into it and has a base, and the work surface is double layers of wood for strength, it's very heavy)?
That was the stupid part. Or...should I say, one of the stupid parts.
As I was working and setting up, suddenly the idea of putting the heads on the cabs, old-school, appealed to me, which meant I could use the desk
as a desk! I'd have a place to do guitar setups, little tweaks to the pedalboard, etc.
"Do you even set up your own guitars, Les?"
"Actually, no. I send them to Jack or the PTC."
I told you this was a bit crazy. Anyway, back to the tale of not ordering a head...
This meant even more furniture, amp, and cab moving. And of course, I had to experiment with where each cab seemed to sound best in the room. More amp moving. Now I had to move my storage cabinets. Well, they have wheels. But I didn't unload them first. That made moving them on carpet kind of an effort. But what's a little extra effort to Superman?
All of this moving was done by me, Les, an old man who sometimes forgets that he is no longer 18, weakened to a degree by recent surgery, and not in the best of shape in terms of physical strength. I didn't want to call a friend or one of my brothers. I can do it all, Heck, I'm Superman, right?
Thus, I pulled a muscle in my groin. And I hurt my back. After a month it
still hurts like hell.
The moral of the story is to get what you know is going to work for you instead of making a compromise.
