Let's just say, you had an amp company that could create any kind of amp you wanted for your Chapman Stick. It could be anything! Live, studio, wherever - but a single solution for both sides would be a requirement.

What would it be?

Well, I think the StickAmp that Virna designed came pretty darn close, unfortunately if I remember correctly there were som issues that never seemed to be ironed out, so it never took off.
Otherwise my Coda + and TenX2 minitower by Acoustic Image is close to perfect for live use.
In the studio I don't use an amp anyway...

If you ask me it already exists and looks like this:

Add one or two active full range speakers and your ready to go!

Pretty much. Put it through a Mesa 20/20 power amp, and you'd be golden.

mmmm.
Thats a tough one Gene. Definately different for every player. I most likely could not come up with any ideas better than anything that already exists. I like volume myself, so theres got to be lots of power. I like to move air as well......so a 15 or 18 should be in the mix.

Ok, so for the sake of fun........take an Ampeg 8x10 cab, put a 15 in the bottom and two 12,s and a horn in the top. Integrate a powerful 2 channel amp in the top 4 inches of the cabinet at the front. The sum of both channels is fed to all speakers.
Ya its big but who gives a shit? Its got wheels on the bottom and the rolly handle at the top.


That being said I think my current outfit kicks f%#^*n ass. The Fishman Soloamp is awesome too but just not loud enough.

cheers,
kev

So many different players, different goals. I'd like to walk in wireless, swipe my Muse credit card, and play the room, in mean literally play the room. Computerized guidance and control would sense which rafters, panels, windows and frame structures to amplify and which to damp, altogether producing the parameters of perfect sound to player's preference - a huge, vertically enveloping sound with just the right natural reverb.

Emmett, I bet what you just described will happen within the next 5 years; maybe 10 at the latest.

In one of Isaac Asimov's books of the Foundation series there is an odd dictator called "The Mule". In one passus the Mule gives a fantastic performance on some kind of instrument that not only "plays the room", as Emmett put it, but it also plays every listeners mind in an almost telepathic way. That chapter made a huge impression on me when reading it, and the impact still lasts; wondering what that instrument should be in the real world?

Fun to hear people's ideas, bSharp kind of upped the ante...

My dream Chapman Stick amp would have two integrated amplifiers, hot swappable speakers and processing that could be controlled via mobile phone / voice activation.

AMP
The amplifiers would have separate heads for bass and melody sides. The MELODY side would have an identical tube configuration to a bassman with a matched set of 6L6Gc's. It would have volume, gain, high, mid, low and reverb knobs.

The BASS side would have a tube preamp with 2 12ax7s with the option to blend solid state of tube pre-amp sounds. It would have an identical set of knobs for as the melody side in addition to a 7-band equalizer. The bass side reverb would have an option to blend out lower frequencies.

Each amp would have a crossfade option to blend bass and melody sides to emulate a mono sound. The amplifier cabinet would clip to the top of the speaker enclosure or could be stacked on top of one another (like Lego).

SPEAKERS
Speakers would be hot swappable and would require no cables. The speakers would "clip" into the bottom of the amp similar to that of a 9V battery (no heat lost in the wires). Any variety of speakers could be used for either side -
a 2x10 cabinet with bass going to one of the speakers and the melody side going to the other
a 2x10 cabinet for the melody side and 1x15 enclosure for the bass
a single 12 cabinet through which both sides could be played.

The cabinets could be played straight up or tilted.

PROCESSING
All processing would be done via a mobile phone app, the phone would just clip into the top of the amplifier. All processing would be true stereo with true bypass and allow custom configurations for bass and melody sides. Processing could be called up, triggered, modified or randomized from through voice activation by the players headset.

The unit would use GPS to identify the location where the user was playing and offer a variety of basic sounds. The user could then dial in variables like the number of people in attendance, the other instruments that were playing in the ensemble. the weather and of course, it would have a yelp like feature of players that had played there before with a variety of preset sounds that could be called up instantly. This could be done via phone, laptop, tablet or through the voice activation feature.

It would have a team of 3 super models that would set it up, break it down and care for it's internal mechanisms and customize it's physical appearance based on the gig. They could trick it out with Texicali graffiti, hook up external monitors to the exterior of the cabinet that would display groovy images based on the user's input or trigger light shows / smoke machines / fireworks displays all based off user input.

A built-in 8 channel stereo mixer with channel inserts and XLR outs to go to PA mains.

200 watts/channel, bi-amped like the SR amps.

a stereo speaker cabinet, 2 x 12 ,ported, with concentric tweeters...