Got the tube amp I was looking for: an Alamo Montclair Reverb, which is pretty much a Fender Deluxe Reverb without the price tag. Alamo apparently made amps in San Antonio (of course) from the late '60s to the mid-'70s. It's a sweet amp--with tremelo. I can get a variety of good tones out of it, as well. I've heard that it distorts nicely when pushed, but I haven't been in a position to check that out lately. A 12AX7 and two 6V6s, for you tube snobs keeping track at home. I can think of a few maintenance things I'd like to check out on it, but I'm quite satisfied.

I should mention that I found it--of all places--on ebay. I watched it for a week and nobody bid, so I ended up getting it for the minimum the dealer was willing to let it go for (no, not $1). Apparently, a lot of sellers make their money when auction novices decide that a) they have to have the item, no matter what, or b) the point of an auction is to "win" an item, or both. I always thought the point of an auction was to get a bargain. I'd think one should set one's maximum at the point past which the item won't be a bargain anymore, and if someone else wants to pay more, let them.

I got a good deal on the amp, and I was talking to a friend about this weird phenomenon with all the good cheap musical equipment we bought back in the '80s. (These would be guitars and effects that were unfashionable then, but decent--the kind of equipment that you're glad is cheap, because it would be easy to pick up another if you found one.) It seems that over the past, oh, five years these have all been hiked way up in price. Univox guitars come to mind. Really good guitars for the pittance they were going for. Now they're somewhat harder to find, and very hard to find at their still-a-deal price (say, around $100). Of course, some of that scarcity could be explained by Kurt Cobain smashing so many of them. (The kid who had my Hi-Flyer before I bought it seems to have tried to set it on fire and smash it, until he remembered that he was just renting it and would have to pay for the whole thing. Why are these things such smash magnets?) I've seen ads on Usenet looking specifically for Hi-Flyers. These shouldn't be guitars one sets out to find; they should be guitars one finds unexpectedly, as a pleasant surprise.