So what's a tonal newbie like me to do? Play a bunch of amps, of course. Be they tube or transistor, point-to-point or circuit board, US or British, the time is nigh to get my grubby mitts on a fair selection of sound-amplifying, tone-shaping devices and find out what I've been missing all these years. Ideally, such exploration would happen in an environment free of ticking clocks, clingy salespeople, and noisy customers. Fat chance, right? Improbably, there exists such a place here in New York, and it is called Ultrasound.

Ultrasound is actually a rehearsal studio, noted by local bands for its ample backline of vintage and boutique amps that can be had for as little as thirty or forty bucks an hour. Both a reggae guy and a hip-hop guy who are friends of mine knew the Ultrasound name as soon as I mentioned it. Show up with your axe and a sixer of Schlitz, and for two hours you're as richly amplified as Bon Jovi. Among other things, Ultrasound owns not one but two Dumble Overdrive Specials, amps so fetishized by those who know amps that surviving models fetch upwards of $20,000 in the unlikely event they do change hands. While I highly doubt that the Dumbles are available for public fondling for the price of two lap dances, just about any other amp you can imagine really is. And if you find one you like, Ultrasound doubles as a dealer -- and in one case, an exclusive distributor -- for many of the amps they stock in their rooms. Not only that, but up to six hours of rehearsal time is deductible from the tab for the amp you ultimately purchase. It's such a better arragement than the local music megastore, it's just silly.

Ken Volpe, the sales manager at Ultrasound, hooked me up with a plush, acoustically treated love nest of amplifier porn, piled from wall to ceiling with tube-powered goodness. Nary a transistor was to be found, and even circuit boards were sparse. There majority of these beauties were point-to-point-wired examples of amplifier perfectionism. A quick cocktail napkin estimation suggested that over $75,000 worth of vintage and boutique tone and cabinetry awaited my eager fingers, if only there were enough hours to play them all.

Since of course there were not, and since perception is highly mutable anyway, I'd be recording the demos through a handy MXL USB.006 microphone for later scrutiny. While I'm aware that a Shure SM57 is the de facto transducer for recording guitars, I was looking for simplicity. The MXL is digital and bus-powered, so there's no preamp to lug around, and no drivers to install -- just plug into the Powerbook, and go. The MXL even comes with a cool zip-up pouch that contains a 10-foot USB cable and a small, though flimsy, tripod. Cheap and functional, kind of the Old Navy of field recording.