Here's today's Laz
Very Bad, No Good, Contrarian Thought Of The Day:
HXDAs look equally nice to me regardless what they're covered with. So do most other amps in good condition!
Most studios/amp spaces/practice rooms/stages are a hodge-podge of dusty amps in various stages of wear and tear, cables tangled on the floor, guitar and mic stands strewn hither, thither and yon, road cases, band stuff, hair balls, and nicknacks, guitars, or even goofy looking foam thrown haphazardly on the walls.
What difference
does a fancy covering on one amp make in a room peppered with badly-framed rock posters, Star Wars toys, lava lamps, and skulls with glass jewel eyeballs?
Anyone in the class know?
"Ooo! Ooo! I'll answer the question, Mr. Laz! Call on me!"
"OK. What's the answer, Billy?"
"Not much of a difference at all."
"Correct! You're going to work your way all the way up to a D-minus with this impressive effort, Billy!"
Even in my own neat-freak studio where I pay attention to decor like a madly obsessed interior designer, it's just a room with a pile o' big boxes with grille cloths and mediocre architecture!
It's never going to be a living room in Architectural Digest or a million dollar studio in
Mix. It's missing the million dollar part.
Black tolex looks as decent as anything else, and fancy stuff hardly improves the situation.
I've bought custom covered amps, and still have a few. While the choices seemed really important/cool/necessary at the time and I couldn't possibly have resisted ordering them, they don't really matter one damn bit in the end.
Clearly I'm either becoming more sane in my old age, or becoming more unhinged - possibly both, depending on the moment - but I wouldn't pay extra for a paisley amp, or spend any part of the two bits worth of time I have left on the planet trying to find one.
So ends my
Very Bad, No Good, Contrarian Thought Of The Day! 
"It was more like a rant."
"No it wasn't, It was more like a...um...a thought-sharing experiment."
"Rant."
"OK, rant. So?"
"How much of your two bits of time left on the planet did you spend on this rant?"
"Ranting is never a waste of time. It's cathartic. On the other hand,
reading my rants is
definitely a waste of time."
