My rad wife got me a neat little gift – a Fender Champ 600.  It’s about as simple as an amp gets, 1 12AX7, 1 6V6, a high & low input, a 6″ speaker and a volume knob.  It sounds pretty great – especially the high gain input.  I’m pretty sure I’ve got some nice old tubes laying around that should make it sound even better.  At 5 watts, it’s loud enough to annoy the neighbors but not so loud that you’ll get evicted.

This little fella has a big purpose though – I’m going to use it for demoing all my effects.  I figure it eliminates as many variables as possible for hearing what a pedal does.  No worrying about eq settings or whether I’m using the effects loop or whatever.  It’s just guitar > pedal > amplifier.  Pretty excited to get started.  Of course, all my recording equipment is in moving boxes, but I might try and get some very simple clips up in the meantime just to get a feel for how the whole process will work.