“I am going to take a lot of s**t for this”: Joe Bonamassa reveals he’s using digital amps for his new tour
Just a few months ago, Joe Bonamassa was “beta testing” Fender’s Tone Master amplifiers. Then he admitted he “really wanted to dislike” them, only to end up impressed by how convincing they sounded.
Now, the experiment appears to be over.
The blues legend has revealed that he will be taking Fender’s Tone Master digital amplifiers out on his upcoming summer tour – a decision he reckons is bound to ruffle a few feathers among gear purists.
READ MORE: Joe Bonamassa thinks Eddie Van Halen wouldn’t have been as “cool” if he’d used a Quad Cortex instead of vintage analogue gear: “People hear with their eyes”
Sharing a photo of four Tone Master Twins lined up and ready to hit the road, Bonamassa writes in his latest Instagram post, “I am going to take a lot of shit for this but my tone-master high power twins are ready for the summer tour and the backline truck just got a hell of a lot lighter.”
As expected, it didn’t take long for the comments to roll in. When one user suggested he should “get a Tonex pedal and call it a day”, Bonamassa fired back: “Fuck those guys”. Fellow guitarist Andy Wood, meanwhile, joked, “cue the apocalypses”, prompting JoBo to reply: “locusts and frogs falling from the sky!”
It’s quite the turnaround for a guitarist who’s built a reputation as one of the industry’s biggest vintage gear enthusiasts. Earlier this year, Bonamassa revealed he’d been quietly beta testing Fender’s digital amps on tour, before later admitting he was surprised by just how much he liked them.
“I’ve got to be honest with you and admit when I’m wrong,” he told MusicRadar in a recent interview. “I still have my other tube amps behind me. It’s just that the [Fender ‘59] high-powered Twin is now a Tone Master. When I first plugged into it, I realised this shit’s good. I wanted to dislike it, I really wanted to dislike it! But I couldn’t.”
Bonamassa also explained that his production manager, sound tech and fellow guitarist Josh Smith all preferred the Tone Master, adding that the key to making digital amps feel authentic is still “moving air” through a proper speaker cabinet.
View this post on Instagram
Learn more about the Tone Master range over at Fender.
The post “I am going to take a lot of s**t for this”: Joe Bonamassa reveals he’s using digital amps for his new tour appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
