Not sure what girls and amps have to do with each other, except that they both still excite me. I've ventured further into my search for the "holy grail" amplifier. I was once a member of what my friend Flip Scipio calls the "tube amp Mafia." That has changed for me with my discovery of a few 60's transistor amps that sound killer. I should add, however, that I've found an amazing tube pre-amp called "The Gas Cooker," made in England by Ridge Farm Industries (Richard Thompson uses one.) It has two channels of beautiful tube warmth and it greatly warms the sound of either tube OR transistor amplifier. Also, I just got a new tube compressor from Electro-Harmonix called "The Black Finger." OK, let's see, tube pre-amp, tube compressor, tube amp, tube mic into a tube pre-amp and LA 2A tube compressor into whatever recording format-I think that's enough "tube-ness" wouldn't you say!?
I've found a number of cool old amps with a lot of personality that I'll mention here later. (P.S. watch out for ebay-it's addictive!) For now, here's my latest discovery, a 50's Danelectro called "The Leader", a one 12" , low wattage amp with beautiful soft "break-up." Someone had hand painted  "Larry" on the front many years ago. It had my name on it, so to speak.

I went on the holy grail search for amplifiers after I made "Vibrolux" and got back into performing again. I wanted to re-create the tremolo sound that was all over my CD so I took my Fender Vibrolux to a few gigs with me. Unfortunately, it doesnt work with an acoustic guitar. First of all, the feedback was a problem and most amps are made for the high end screech and scream of rock music. Not sure what category you might call what I do, but I wanted a richer fuller sound. I tried various solid state acoustic amps. Though they all had a clean undistorted sound, I missed the warmth of the tube breaking up. One day at Chelsea Guitars on 23rd St. in New York , I happened upon a small off-brand amp for $100 that no one wanted. It had a nice tremolo, a 12" speaker, that I like for full rich bass response, and it was all crammed into a very small cabinet. It was made by a company called Sano that no one seemed to have heard of. I now know that this was an accordian importer in Cranford, New Jersey and the amps they made for accordians work beautifully for a full range sound on guitars, electric or acoustic. They have just the right amount of clean sound and tube break up and on 10 they crank up with the best. I now have 3 of them in different speaker configurations and they are a real secret, still sitting there dusty and unwanted in most music shops.