All this talk of the Harvard and whatnot got me thinking. Last night at the jam a guitarist got up to play through my amp. I was using the PA and had the amp on standby (Bassman RI). So he plugs it in and starts trying to play and nothing's coming out. I point to the volume (which I tend to have set way too low for guitar) and he turns it up and I go back to playing. I'm still hearing nothing and about halfway through the song I realize what the problem is. I finish the solo, reach back and hit the standby switch. Bingo. This guy had some pretty good chops and had played for some time, but he was visiting from overseas and I didn't know him personally. I had to hit the switch again when he unplugged the guitar and layed the "live" cable down on my amp. He looked at it and joked, "That's [the switch] that makes it work." So I'm wondering, are Fender amps the only ones that have standby switches? This guy played blues pretty well so I figured he would've been around equipment like this at some point, or at least something vaguely similar, but now that I really think about it I run in a circle of guys that use primarily old styled equipment, so this seems like a very natural thing to me. I just thought it was really weird that he didn't realize my amp might have a standby switch. It's right there on the top of the amp.
