I don't own an amp or a mike at the moment, and I know absolutely nothing about the subject other than what my ears tell me. I hear various sounds and pedals. Some sounds I like but don't want myself, but really the sound I'd most like to have at the moment is that of Stanley Behrens (so far I only know him from My Name is Earl, but I'll check him out more when I have time). I've decided that I don't like delays, but to avoid the totally dry sound, I'm guessing Behrens uses a little reverb. Most amps offer that internally, or used to, so that would be cool if I could be satisfied with just one amp. (I'm being compulsorily retired on my 50th birthday, so I'm not branching out into any spending spree right at the moment!). And I guess I'm limited to about 2 Watts, otherwise I'll have severe neighbour wars on my hands.
I'm wary of pedals and effects because you don't want them to be in control of your sounds, you want to be in control of them, and even back in the Seventies I knew guitarists who had pedals but couldn't really use them (I recognise the flanger sound when I hear Satan play), so I've been a bit of a cynic about them since then. (In fact I made a fuzz box for a friend. I even used two operational amplifier chips inside it, but it still wouldn't clip much - I don't know if it's because the chips' factory spec was poor or because my friend's guitar had a really low output - the humiliation! Maybe all this is just sour grapes, lol!).
At the moment Jason is the only harp player I know who is the master of his hardware (that sounds very categorical. I intend no offence to any other harp players), but I wouldn't want to try to imitate Jason. I like the way he imitates the guitar, but If I tried the same thing, it would just be a poor imitation of Jason, and I think the world is only big enough for one Jason. I was thinking the other day maybe I'd like to imitate Robert Johnson's guitar instead. I'll have to check that idea out some time.
Do you think this is cool (but maybe a synth would be cheaper)?
I agree effects when used too heavily sucks, Don't matter if guitar , harp or whatever. Getting a good amp and mic combo much more important. I know others swear on more expensive effects but I use cheap Danelectro and I use the delay sparingly. I have a Dan Corned Beef Reverb that's pretty good. If I don't overuse them they work fine on either the small or big amp. I used to use the reverb but switched to the delay when I got the bigger amp
