Bass amp for guitar use

[SierraTango]

Although I'm a classic-era Pininfarina fan, this Bertone beauty is an all-time favorite of mine. Your gear must have been heavy, judging by the raised suspension. Also extra protection under the oil pan? My early '70s car was a Lancia Flaminia Berlina 2.5 litre. Six seats and ample trunk space, but at that point my short career in a rock band was but a memory from bachelor days.

Yep, in addition to my gear in back seat, I was giving the keyboard player a lift to the gig when this picture was taken. The small trunk was fully packed although someone else took some of his stuff.
Sump protector was a stock item,was very helpful to have around LA.
I've always loved vintage Lancias before Fiat took over. Very high quality.
Later in life I owned a Alfa GTV 6.
Awesome car!

[Danny W.]

My solution during the mid '70s


When the Army rotated me back to the states I was only allowed to ship one item, but I had four: '61 L-4C, '65 Jaguar, '64 Twin Reverb and JVC Nivico 2x12". A Sgt who played in what he described as a "Sh#t-kicker band" loved the Gibson and Twin, paid a good price for them, and a fan of my jazz group bought the JVC, so I shipped the Jag. The only amp I had left at home was a '64 non-reverb Deluxe, but I wanted something with more oomph.

My new bride and I drove her '67 Plymouth Valiant from our temporary domicile in VA to Sam Ash in Brooklyn, where I had bought everything except the JVC, and after trying out various new Fenders, left with the Bandmaster shown in post #15. I had not been in a US music store in three years and was only familiar with the Bandmaster cabs from the earlier part of the decade--I had no idea how much bigger the SF cabs had become. There was no way it would fit in the car with its original packaging so we were out on the street with utility knives cutting it off, and then discovered that the only way to get it in the trunk was to balance it on the fuel filler pipe that slanted down through the left side of the trunk, leaving no room for anything else.

This is the only three photos I have of the BM at a gig, in which the camera had a feed failure and all three shots wound up on the same slide:



Danny W.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Although I'm a classic-era Pininfarina fan, this Bertone beauty is an all-time favorite of mine. Your gear must have been heavy, judging by the raised suspension. Also extra protection under the oil pan? My early '70s car was a Lancia Flaminia Berlina 2.5 litre. Six seats and ample trunk space, but at that point my short career in a rock band was but a memory from bachelor days.

In 1974, the federal government passed a "safety" law that all passenger car bumpers had to be between 16 and 20" above the ground. The only way many non-US manufacturers could meet this was to raise the ride height of their cars, so everything from MGs to Ferraris had the body jacked up on the suspension to get the bumpers that high. The GTV you're looking at was actually delivered from the factory like that. But many models were simply no longer exported to the US, and some were discontinued if our market was too small a share of their overall sales volume to justify any expense on modification.

This was the beginning of the end for the old school beauties from Europe that we loved. Alfas looked like California dragsters with a reverse rake, and MGs had the stance of grasshoppers in heat. Our bumpers changed from separate chrome appendages to integrated "impact absorbing units" over the next decade. Between 1973 and 1982, the rules mandated a transition to bumpers that could take a 5 mph hit without damage. The Reagan administration then rolled this back to 2.5 mph, but the shift to energy dissipating design and construction was permanent and cars never looked the same again.

Ironically, the initial law was intended to minimize the cost and consequences of minor accidents. Instead, it spawned bumper systems that raised both production and repair costs far above anyone's wildest dreams.