I've heard having tons of big gear is to make up for having a tiny weiner.

In the days before decent PA systems, a large setup was necessary in large venues. These days there is no point except for vanity and/or a false sense of "It's Rock 'n Roll".

Tinnitus? I've got a nice case of it in my right ear, some I attribute to Todd's being on my right side for many years.
I now play through a 1x12 50-watt combo. Sounds loud to me.

I play with an 85-watt Mark IV through either a 4x12 or the occasional 1x12. It is plenty loud...I keep it at about 5 and it can fill a mid-sized venue with loudage. When I play outdoors or there isn't a decent PA, I run it on 8, full power instead of tweed. Works plenty nice.

Lots of amps and shit to me has always been for Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Guns N Roses fucking "wankers." Most of it is aesthetic anyways. A wall of Marshalls is a bullshit thing to have. Waste of space.

Weirdest shit I've ever seen was a band play with their instruments on Wireless systems with Pods through the PA...guitars sounded processed and they just look stupid with no amplification at all coming from the stage. So there needs to be SOMETHING to keep the feel real.

The only band I've ever seen with a ton of amps that used them was Lightning Bolt. Stacks of cabs...all with sound pumping fucking major shit into my skull.

I can understand slaving a Marshall cab or two off a Fender amp to get a variety of sounds to mix together, but the half-dozen J Mascis uses is ridiculous.

I wonder if he had a half-dozen in 1991: The Year Punk Broke like he does now.

A few years ago, a friend of mine saw <very popular thrash metal band>, big festival, huge stage etc. After the show two roadies came and picked up the (empty) Marshall stacks, revealing a 50 watt H+K combo.

I think some of it might have to do with 'because I can'. Someone's springing for eight roadies and a guitar and bass tech? Fair enough, I'll take the whole dang studio.

In case anyone's interested. I love the Fender for the 'offstage guitar tech'.

About 20 years ago I was working on the stage crew at First Avenue, the bill was WASP (headlining... barfff), Metallica and Armoured Saint.

AS had eight Marshall cabinets mounted in steel frames, four whole stacks, straight and angled cabs. One for each guitarist. They were all empty except for one cabinet.

And they sure sucked. I have to say though, Metallica was pretty awesome that night, in the middle slot.

One of my instructors worked live sound at some shows where there were 6 4x12" for each guitar player, and only 1 was actually plugged in. You get the sound from the PA. It's there for looks.

I have a 125watt head into a 4x12, played tons of practices, basement shows, club/venue shows, and outdoor shows... and I've never turned it up past 4.

I saw dino jr. in 1988 at Bunrattys in Boston. J had (as I recall) two full Marshall stacks (2 heads, 4 cabs) They were all ragin'. It was F-in loud. I doubt there was much guitar in the PA that night.

i'm gonna be playing through 3 amps tonight. it has nothing to do with impressing people with size. the biggest of the 3 cabs is a normal-sized 2x12. my penis is, from what I understand, pretty average sized, and i'm not bothered by that.

something folks may or may not understand is that amps have a character all their own. they make different sounds. maybe that's why a guy like Steve plays through 2 amps when he could play through 1, or 5, or anything he wants. there are sounds you can get from one amp that you cannot get from another. you can combine them to get textures that any one amp will not be able to produce on its own.

I have a 50w "marshall" that is mostly cranked, for my nominal distortion sound. it's always on. if I want clean, I play softer. then I have two other amps that I use, either one or the other or both of them, on top of the "marshall". the 30W amp is cranked, and gets me a nice sustaining dirty sound. the 90W amp is not cranked at all, and gets me a nice crisp, defined sound, which is a great compliment to the dirt that the "marshall" is producing. I don't think there's a good way to mix crisp and clean with amp-dirty (as opposed to pedal-dirty) other than using two amps. parallel signal chains maybe.

if you're talking *only* about the 10-marshall-stacks thing, then yeah, that's just for show unless you're talking about playing a 20,000 seat venue where stage volume is gonna be hard to produce.

the nuts and bolts of it though, is that the sound of an amp is better to my ears than the sound of a pedal. the textures you can build with multiple different types of amps are more interesting to me than the textures I can build with one amp and that's all. and i'm willing to do the extra work it takes to lug around extra amps and cabs, if it will get me the sounds i'm looking for.

another thing... the settings of the knobs on your amp, especially the volume knob, are the heart of your tone. at what point is it gonna distort? at what point will it feed back? the volume knob controls the clean/dirt element of your sound, on pretty much any tube anp out there.

I like to have a rig that makes the sound I want, in any reasonably large roon, without the aid of a PA. I can do it with just the 50w into a 2x12 and the 90w into a 2x12. but I also like the dirt and sustain I get from the cranked 30w, which is not nearly as much a sorce of volume as it is a source of tone. so I will lug the extra head and cabinet to the club tonight. nobody is gonna say "ooooh, his amps are so big!" because they're not. with two 2x12's and a 1x15, speaker-wise i'm barely bigger than a half stack. it's all about the 3 amps providing different tonal components. not about "big" or "so loud".

the expression "touch-sensitive", meaning how the amp responds to the nuances of your picking intensity, is something you can't really *really* come to know without playing through a nicely balanced tube amp. the mix of clean headroom and distortion-producing capability is what defines an amp, to me. that and what power/loudness level is it at when it's in its sweet spot.

Don't get so wordy 'n defensive. Nobody's talking about playing through a few amps, at least I'm not.

I'm talking about playing through a pile of stacks.

I use amplifier distortion. I have played through several amps at one time. Most guitarists I know, who have more than one amp, have done so.