Hartke Systems, Model 1400 Bass Amplifier. I have it now and it is an excellent unit with built in compression. It seems to be an excellent substitute for the Ampeg, but does lack the warmer overtones. I’m just informed there is still some confusion as to how compression works. It is nothing more than electronically narrowing the difference between loud notes and quiet notes. Newer TVs have this built in so all channels and commercials play at the same volume. The fact it took fifty years to offer this features kind of tells you what you are dealing with.
The Hartke is hefty and lacks carrying handles. It looks rack-mountable. The reason I took my sweet time testing it was because the guy that owned it and his buddies, although I’d place them in their late twenties, had definite punk rock styles (but not looks). Upon closer inspection all their equipment showed signs of heavy road usage. I had to be sure any damage was superficial. It was. The inside of the amp was pristine, I doubt it had ever been used much. This cuts down my equipment weight by 30%. And, the Hartke uses a standard female computer power cord.Then I headed for Snapper Creek. Left to his own resources, JP would go out only to clubs patronized by heavy-set middle-aged tough broads. With cackling laughter. His low self-esteem around women is legendary, and he thinks these thick-waisted flabby-armed divorcees are his only hope. But since this time was my invite, I insisted we avoid Deli Lane and Hooligan’s. We went directly to the Titanic, because JZ says the place is full of college women. (Of course, I knew this could not be true. If it was, all the Ted Bundy types in town would be in there. They were anyway.)
They don’t serve real beer there. It is all homemade, expensive ($5 per glass, not a mug, a glass), and tastes a bit like cheap wine. I drank some of it anyway. There were no college women, but the average age of the women was twenty years less than JZ’s hangouts. He says we don’t stand a chance, I say so we don’t stand a chance where he would go, either. Here, at least they are easy on the eyes. The fact is, Titanic is not a pickup joint. Very few unescorted women. My point was to prove to him that there are still single women in the world and a change of venue is in order.
[Author's note 2016-05-06: it took me years to get JZ out of the habit of chumming around in bars full of old married women. Until he met me, he thought there was some rule that you had to chase age-appropriate women or feel like you are invading young people's turf. Like many, he forgets the large group of women from 18 to 32 and had little idea where they went or how to approach them. I was never entirely successful. To this day, when we walk into a place, I still go for the best-looking women, he still goes for the ones that look easiest to score with, no matter how fat, rough, or blurry-eyed.
I might add, folks, that although my initial criteria is good looks, I'm referring to wholesome good looks, not makeup. And once that hurdle is crossed, I'm then looking for personality traits, good education, and evidence of self-support. I know, good luck in Florida.]
At 10:00 P.M. a band fired up. I didn’t get the name, but they were as generic a bar band as imaginable. Lead, bass, drums and rhythm-playing vocalist. Studio trained, so every pose, every lick, every motion on stage was predictably stereotyped decades in advance. They played far too much blues, and it was white-boy blues. The bass player gave me a laugh, he played baby-bass. This is where he has the guitar strap short so the bass sits tucked up almost under his chin. This forces him to have his elbow in the air as he drapes his hand over the strings and play all the left-hand notes near the middle of the fretboard. It makes a grown man look like he’s hunched over the instrument, hence, baby-bass.
My ulterior motive was to get JZ to admit if he was not going to pick up women, we should at least go where he is not picking up young, pretty women. Twisted logic, but the fact is I attribute his situation to never having been a musician himself. He still takes the fortress by storm. I don’t usually say, but I will tell you for a fact that it takes me an average on one hour (and I always choose the prettiest one in the room) to get any woman into the sack. I’m not saying I don’t understand why other men can’t and I’m certainly saying if I can do it anyone can. I know most men just can’t seduce women (so they marry them). I just think they are going about things the hard way.
Then I get home to find a big note pasted on my door. It seems the office, who already okayed my extension, want a letter written describing why I want the extension. These Florida people, I mean, if anyone ever asks you why everybody who ever did anything in this state came from somewhere else, well, you can tell them. The locals are complete screwballs.
