I keep an electric guitar and an amp next to my computer whenever I can. Five years ago, while working at the SF Examiner, I purchased a cheap acoustic Fender guitar from the pawnshop around the corner to leave beside my desk for anyone who might pick it up in need of those moments that require the inner solitude and introspection a guitar can bring in a place of chaos. Several months after I’d left, a former co-worker told me what she missed most was the quiet sound of the guitar while she wrote her daily quota of news.
My guitars and amps give me great pleasure. I’m especially pleased with the instruments I've managed to rescued from dis(re)pair. Pictured above are a Gibson The Paul and a mid-60s Fender Showman cabinet I was able to resuscitate. The Hi-Mu 5.5 amplifier is another story, it came to me whole and full of life.
I purchased the Gibson for $125 when I was working as a production artist for the SF Weekly back in the late 1990s. It was cheap because someone had started to dismantle it for future improvement.
The future turned out to be too far away for the fellow that started the project.
Originally the guitar was black but when I received it the former owner had scraped off most of former paint. The pickups and other hardware also were random replacements so I didn’t have any hesitation finishing his strip job, re-contouring the body, adding an after market mother of pearl headstock logo, refinishing the guitar in antique cherry, replacing the pickups with Fralin humbuckers and the hardware with vintage original gold plated Gibson equipment. It’s not collectible but with a decent set of strings it sings and looks good.
The Fender cabinet, sans speakers, was a similar find for $50 on Craigslist. A pair of inexpensive and dysfunctional mid 60s Jensen 15 speaker were sent to Audiovex for re-coning with Celestion Greenback cones and for less than $200 I had a great sounding if a tad ugly cabinet. Someday I'll recover it in new tolex.
The Hi-Mu wasn’t so easy, but then again, it didn't need anything. Using my research skills I traced down the original builder, Barry Breisch, at home. He stopped building amps in the late 1990s but it turned out he no longer was playing his personal amp and offered to sell it to me for a reasonable price. It arrived in immaculate condition, as though it had been carefully lost in the mails in the mid-90s and magically arrived on my doorstep a decade late.
Not a day goes by that I don’t turn the amp to ten, the guitar to a similar level, and create a quiet empty peace in my head, letting the amazing, cleansing sound wash over me. It’s renewing in a way that only holy music played loudly can be.
This post was originally written for my other blog, which is typically about politics. If you're interested in a LIBERAL perspective on the world you are welcome to check it out at www.tourettesdujour.blogspot.com
Be well and live in peace.
1 comment:
A little 2019 HiMu owner check in, probably for nobody but... Every once and a while I do a google search for HiMu or Hi-Mu because I have owned one since the 90's and see what's out in the interwebs about HiMu which continues to be practically nothing, no surprise.
Barry made so few of these amps and nobody famous ever claimed to use one so they are basically unknown.
This really was one of the very first boutique amps before boutique was even a thing for amps and pedals.
I have a 7W head with all the bells and whistles, not always a good thing as you can spend a long time just messing around with it rather than really playing guitar.
Mine has had two failures in the 20 plus years I have owned it. Back in the 90's the dc heater circuit failed so I simply wired it for the more usual ac heater setup most guitar amps have. Not really any noticable noise increase, if anything changed at all maybe the amp sounded a tiny bit better. Could be just in my head though.
Just a few years ago the amp blew up again. This time it was the output transformer which is pretty crucial to the amp's sound and totally proprietary to the HiMu. I thought the amp would never sound original again with a non-original replacement transformer so I called Mercury Magnetics and they built an exact replacement from the dead original!! And for a great price to boot!!
The amp continues working and sounding like it always did. I actually managed to buy an empty HiMu cab from a different seller than the head about the same time back in the mid 90's. The cab has a Weber Signature Series 12" in it now and it's damn loud for a 7W amp!!! Still way more under control than most larger amps though so I can crank it up and have the amp actually work the speaker and only be really loud rather than being at totally insane volume levels.
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