MATT SPATIAL: I did run into a kind of a staple of every guitar player's rig; just a normal Boss DS-1 Distortion. The cool thing about -- I mean, you know, I know that there's like bass distortions out there and -- at least I'm told but I've always just used that just because I think I borrowed it from a guitar player and never returned it. [LAUGHS]

PATRICK OGLE: Yeah. Typical bass player!

MATT SPATIAL: Yeah [LAUGHS]. I kind of adopted it but you know, the cool thing about the Boss Distortion which I can't seem to get in a lot of other distortion pedals is kind of like what I was saying before where you lose a lot of your low end when you put on your distortion with bass, and I've actually never really had that much of a problem with the Boss distortion for some reason.

PATRICK OGLE: But you would think the bass pedals would compensate for that, would be more designed for that but they aren't.

MATT SPATIAL: Well, the thing that I found is that they do keep the low end in but then you lose clarity and it's just more of a fuzz bass which is cool, I mean it's very David J, but for the style that we do, we need just a little. I need to keep that kind of bite in there as well, so that's where that Boss distortion comes in. So, from there, just running -- This is just the B2R. This kind of their -- it's their least expensive of all the models but -- and I bought it just because I've bought, you know, this is a 215 cabinet and I bought the two at the same time and had actually -- didn't really have enough -- I mean, you know, I wanted to get like a nice SVT head or whatever, and I was like, "Well, let me just get the B2R for now and I'll upgrade later," and I actually love it.

PATRICK OGLE: Right. As long as it's good, why upgrade? I mean, you don't need to upgrade just so like you can impress people like, "Look, I've got an SVT!"

MATT SPATIAL: Exactly, and that's I think like you kind of have that mind set like, "Well, it's not going to sound as good or whatever," but I actually -- I think it sounds great. I love it. I mean I think if someone were to give me one of the B4's or something like that, I would probably -- I would certainly try it, but I'm pretty happy with this. I have no plans to upgrade at any time soon.

PATRICK OGLE: I was it's like I can always predict the answer to, "What's the worst thing about these Ampegs?" and it's like, "I wouldn't carry it though."

MATT SPATIAL: Yeah! [LAUGHS] Boy is that true.

PATRICK OGLE: They sound great and they have a particular sound, but boy, try loading one of those up the stairs, you know.

MATT SPATIAL: Which I've done many times [LAUGHS] upstairs, downstairs, yeah. The which is what -- you know, we get to this bad boy the 215 cabinet. I opted for the 215's. I made them -- I'd gone into Guitar Center to buy it, and they had no -- they don't carry them in stock typically. They will carry like the 810's and the 610 or whatever, an they tried to give me a really good deal on the 810. I was like, "No. I want a really good deal," what I wanted on the 215. And, sure enough, I mean they went and ordered one for me, and a couple of weeks later, I picked it up and -- I mean the thing about, especially with bass and low end, I mean you're pushing really -- the frequencies are, you know, you got to really push the air, and you need bigger speakers to do that. I mean you have sine waves that are much bigger than the sine waves from higher end instruments, so I've always been a big fan of 215's. Actually, a friend of mine used to have a 215 cabinet, and I just remembered listening to his cabinet versus some of the other cabinets that I've heard other people playing, and I've just, you know, you can definitely hear the difference. And the cool thing is that you don't sacrifice any of the high end as well with the 215, but I feel, in reverse, you do kind of sacrifice some of the low end. And it's not like a drastic thing; I think it's more of a, you know, it's just more of a preference kind of thing.

PATRICK OGLE: What do you think of saying when you're talking about pushing the air? And it just seemed like, you know, these days is it's like kind of it's advances in technology and whatever, you can get small guitar amps and still sound pretty good. They may not have a lot of power but a lot of times, especially live -- you know, not especially live, in the studio or live, you're going to mic them, you're going to -- so it doesn't really matter that much. But for some reason -- I mean, you just got to have something big still for the bass. They don't have a big -- they don't have a booming speaker that's the size of your hand.

MATT SPATIAL: Yeah. And that's the thin. I mean like for the studio, I mean there's a variety of different speaker sizes, types, models, whatever, but you know I mean this is a live cabinet. I mean I use it in the studio to but I'm certainly on stage a lot more than we are in the studio.

PATRICK OGLE: That would be true hopefully for most people.

MATT SPATIAL: Yeah. So that being the case, I mean I think for a live situation is when you really need to be -- especially with bass because it's kind of -- I mean I was a drummer for years and never paid attention -- and then I was an aspiring guitar player for a while before kind of finding my instrument being bass, and it's one of those things that even sometimes on shows that we play, I'll hear a video tape of it back and, you know, the bass is always sometimes it's just low in the mix or whatever, so the nice thing about this is that I mean I can always -- there's certainly no problem for stage volume and just getting the sound out there, so.

PATRICK OGLE: You don't need the bass in the monitors when you're standing in front of that.

MATT SPATIAL: Absolutely not. [LAUGHS]