So I was wondering how many of us on this board currently own a 6BQ5 50 Caliber, what type of music you all play, and your thoughts on this ,ittle amp. Mine was originally finished in 10/1987. I use it for Country as well as Rock and Christian music, though I found a setting that is sweet for clean jazz.
I have an EL84 cal .50 combo. I am an acoustic guitar player, but have this cal .50 and a Triaxis, plus a seafoam green Warmoth strat.
My amp is really valuable to me because of the story. The original owner, my friend and bandmate for 10 years, has passed away years ago. Back in the day he sold this amp to another common friend of ours, to fund his next rig - Triaxis, 2:90, two 1x12" EV Thieles, plus TC2290.
Few years later we heard that this friend is about to sell the cal .50, and we got worried, because we knew that EL84 cal .50 would be pretty rare and all, so we contemplated a rescue operation - we bought the combo off this guy to us, split the cost and agreed on joint ownership. Neither of us really needed it, he had this Triaxis/2:90 rig, I was playing acoustic in our band, thru a small rig of Rane AP13 and TC1140 5-band PEQ. However, we felt the urgent need to save this combo from ending up wherever, not appreciated. The more Boogies, the better - right?
Again, few years later I bought my friends 50% share, so the amp would be all mine. Didn't really have a context where I'd play electric so the combo was there at our rehearsal room, under the table. I was just happy that I had a Boogie, that had belonged to my friend and we had saved it together.
We shared a rehearsal room with another band, good friends, also playing prog like us. The other band's drummer also did some sound reinforcement, and was about to go out for a few gigs with a third band, also somewhat familiar guys from this town. He called and asked if they could borrow my cal .50 for a couple of gigs - I said sure, it's there under the table. Their gigs went just fine.
Few years later, our keyboard player was involved in whipping up an impromptu wedding band for one of their friend's wedding, they had a guitar player, and our keyboard guy called if they could use my cal .50 for rehearsal at our place. I said sure, it's there under the table.
Except it wasn't. They didn't find it, searched high and low, no such luck, and they had to resort to other options. I started to ask around from friends sharing the rehearsal room and the drummer doing sound for this one band who had borrowed it for the gigs. They said they had returned it to the rehearsal room, and I trusted the guys, didn't have a reason not to. The amp remained missing, and the mystery remained unsolved. Mentally wrote off the combo, and moved on.
Fast forward to 10 years later: my drummer friend messages "call me, there's some especially good news". Did just that, and he said "your Boogie has been found".
Some guys on another rehearsal room in town had called him because "Janne knows all the Boogie ppl around here" - the drummer guy actually has a blue stripe Mk III and some other Boogie gear himself. These guys, bandmates and friends of the original guitarist borrowing my Boogie 10 years earlier, had been cleaning and inventing their rehearsal room, found an EL84 cal .50 behind some Marshall stack, and started to finally wonder what that box is, and who does it belong to.
The current users of their room didn't know anything, the Boogie just had been there for the longest time, somebody had used it a bit at some point, but basically it had just been there laying around for 10 years. The cleanup/move operation at hand, they had reached out to my drummer friend, "because he knows all the Boogie ppl around here", and asked if he'd know who's amp would this be. Well, he did know exactly! 10 years earlier we had pondered this long and hard together, who to ask, how to track what happened - then without any result - so he knew right away that it's my amp.
Now, my amp had been found in a perfect condition, and I got it back. What had most probably happened, was that leaving for those gigs back then, they had borrowed a bunch of stuff from two different rehearsal rooms, and in the heat/hassle of the moment, my Boogie had been returned to a WRONG place. The long time between the borrowing, and the reveal that it's missing, we didn't think this outcome when trying to find out what happened, bunch of different factors - but anyway, this case ended on a positive note.
I still have the EL84 cal .50 and later got the Triaxis from my friend's rig after his passing. I cherish these to the max for the memories.
All the best,
Pasi
from Oulu, Finland
