Modest Mouse are selling a ton of gear on Reverb, including “one of the most complicated guitar amplifiers anyone has ever seen”
Indie-rock stalwarts Modest Mouse have opened an official webstore on Reverb to sell off some of the gear they have stockpiled over the years. And there is a lot of it.
The Official Modest Mouse Reverb Shop goes live on 21 September, with Reverb promising some 150 items of gear will be listed. If there is not quite something for everyone, it sure comes close. Modest Mouse super-fans looking for a particularly special item might be drawn to the Yamaha DS-49 II reed organ, painted teal and emblazoned with the band’s logo. That offers some visual pizzazz.
But with much of this gear having featured on the band’s albums and on tour, there are arguably more items of greater significance to Modest Mouse history.
Those looking for a vintage guitar amp won’t lack for choice. Modest Mouse are selling off a pair of Fender Super Six combo amps. The Super Six is under-celebrated in the storied canon of Fender guitar amps.
Sure, it is a little unwieldy, sending 100-watts through a half-dozen 10” speakers. It is not much fun getting the 98lb up the stairs. Indeed, the band describe the Super Six as “the most awkward combo amp ever made.”
If these two Fender Super Sixes could speak, they would be advised to keep their mouths shut
But that didn’t stop them using them to create a sound. The Super Six is the sound of Modest Mouse, and they are selling off two of the Silverface models.
“We dragged these amps all around the world for the first 10 years of the band, and they were used on the This Is A Long Drive, The Lonesome Crowded West, Interstate 8, and Building Nothing Out Of Something recordings and tours,” said the band. “If these two Fender Super Sixes could speak, they would be advised to keep their mouths shut.”
Another vintage tube amp worthy of attention, and perhaps one that requires some time and patience to get to know, is a Magnatone M20, which the band acquired 10 years ago, and believe to be a prototype.
It is one amp that might just require a manual and a spare weekend to fathom – the M20 is the amp that Modest Mouse have declared “one of the most complicated guitar amplifiers anyone has ever seen.” But undoubtedly it has tones in it, and offers a five-channel platform with reverb, vibrato and stereo vibrato.
“This was a tool that was used when we were cooking up the sounds for Fuck Your Acid Trip from The Golden Casket,” write the band.
Elsewhere, there is a lesser-spotted Line 6 Variax Acoustic 700 acoustic electric guitar, which the band used while touring Good News For People Who Like Bad News and We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank between 2005 and 2010
An odd choice, but practical.
“There was always an effort to get the best acoustic tone live on stage, and these offer lots of options and adjustments as the venues changed,” said the band.
Other items include a set of Tannoy Super Gold studio monitors that the band sourced from Doug Sax at the Mastering Lab, a Wunder Audio console, with more items to be announced when the shop goes live. To sign up for alerts on when the Modest Mouse store goes live, head over to Reverb.
