Rescue Story: It's not a puppy, but...

I believe I've mentioned at some point my interest in Acoustic Control Corporation brand musical equipment. The company was formed in the late 60s and, through the early 80s, made some really top quality gear---mainly guitar and bass amplifiers, but they also made P.A. gear (mixers, speakers, amps) and had a line of guitars and basses built for them. Because their amps were for the most part solid state technology, they have largely avoided becoming sought-after "vintage" amps, although there is some indication that within the last year or so they have started to gain some cachet.

Acoustic 125 and Acoustic 150/104 rig.

Although the original Acoustics are getting a little long in the tooth now, they were great amps, and for the most part still are, and many of them are still fully functional. Some years ago friend gave me an old broken-down Acoustic model 136 bass amp, and although only one channel sort of worked and it had fewer features than most modern amps, when I actually used it I discovered that it was really a good-sounding amp. Now it's been cleaned up and had some wiring issues repaired, and it has become the go-to amp for band rehearsal in the basement. A couple years ago I picked up a model 370 bass amp head, and that began my period of limited Acoustic collecting. I now have several bass amp rigs (a 370/301 rig and a 220/406 rig, and the 136 combo), a couple guitar amps (a 150/104 rig and a 125 combo), and an example each of the Acoustic Black Widow bass and guitar. They're good-sounding, cool-looking, solid, quality amps and instruments, and inasmuch as they are examples of the state of the art from their era (70s) and mostly unappreciated today, I feel that in a certain sense I am acting as conservator of these classic pieces of musical history.

The Acoustic 370/301 rig and Black Widow bass.

Although Lord knows I've accumulated plenty of music gear, in most respects I don't really consider myself a collector---I've got different guitars and amps because either they have distinctive sounds, or they were things I wanted to try: some I've loved and kept; others I've sold (or intend to sell). But certainly, I've had guitars that a collector would have kept, because they were collectible, but I didn't. The Acoustic gear, however, is an exception: this stuff I've collected partly for its inherent utility, but also just to collect because I like having them. And as I said, I feel I am conserving them.

So far, I've been able to justify having these amps on the basis of being things I would use or might theoretically use if I got a gig of a certain type---for instance, if I was playing a big outdoor gig without PA support for the bass, I might need that 370/301 rig. That's a somewhat far-fetched possibility, but the probability is greater than zero, so, there you have it.

Recently, however, I was forced to abandon any reasonable pretext of utility, when an Acoustic 890 mixer showed up on craigslist. Back in the day, this was Acoustic's top-of-the-line mixing board, and it's a big, cool-looking old-school mixer. It comes with a "snake" that's part of the unit, which has a cable 100 feet long, so you can put the mixer at the back of a room to mix a band on stage. (It also has a shorter cable for putting the mixer at the side of the stage, or for recording.) From this page, you can read about the 890 on pages 27-30 of the 1974 catalog.

The ad ran on craigslist for several weeks. When it first appeared, I alerted the crew on the Unofficial Acoustic Forum and urged somebody to get it, because it was a really cool, well-preserved old unit, but not something I really needed. The gang there pretty much agreed that it was cool, but nobody bit.

After a while, the seller dropped the price, and I decided to take the plunge and get it. The other day, when explaining to my loving and indulgent wife why I had brought yet another bulky piece of music gear I didn't need into the house, I was surprised by my own eloquence in defending that purchase, so I figured I would post it here:

Remember, this was a very high-quality piece of gear, and although it's old now, it's still fundamentally a good, solid piece of equipment. I don't think there were a whole bunch of these out there to start with, and there are definitely not a lot of them left, and even fewer left in good condition. If you don't have the snake you can't really get full use out of this board, and I have heard that sometimes the boards get separated from the snakes. And, this set came with road cases for both the snake unit and the board. As the price started dropping, I had visions of some group of stoned kids getting this for use with their death metal band. Having bought it just because it was a cheap mixer, they would not treat it with any respect---they would probably spill drinks into its circuitry; they would break and lose knobs and graphic sliders. (Missing graphic EQ sliders are the bane of the Acoustic collector's existence, and this one still had all 27 sliders on its three graphic EQs!). If stuff went wrong, they would not fix it, causing a descending and accelerating spiral to the point where it would end up being left in some practice space when they moved out, to be discarded by an unfeeling landlord.

And I just couldn't let that happen. So I bought it, and it's now in my basement, in its road cases. And hey, if some day my band plays a show where we need to mic up more than vocals and need to bring our own PA, I could use it! Yeah, that's going to happen any day now!

The Acoustic 890 mixer, with the remote unit and snake in the foreground.