Revisiting an old friend and the RP355

I haven’t seen Derrik Huffsmith, lead guitarist, lead singer, and leader of Derrik and the Dynamos in Driggs, ID, for a couple of years. I heard he was playing a local Democratic Party rally in Victor, so I went to the rally with my daughter, Derrik and I got to talking, and I ended up playing his first set with him.

I brought a minimal kit to this event:

A Seydel soft case with 18-20 diatonic harps in various keys and tunings to support a range of styles and material, including my solo pieces.

An Audix Fireball V mic with XLR cable and lo-to-hi-z transformer.

A 20-foot heavy-duty 1/4″ mono cable.

A Digitech RP355 loaded with my patch set for Digitech RP and the power supply for same.

A 6″ long plastic AC adapter that’s very useful for plugging fat wall warts like the RP power supply into skinny spaces.

I threw all that stuff into a black nylon satchel-type Wilson shoulder bag and went on my way. At the event, it took less than 5 minutes to find a spot, plug the power supply, mic, and 1/4″ cable into the RP, and attach the power supply to power and the 1/4″ cable to the PA input. It took less time than that to tear down. The PA itself was a small self-powered unit with two thin speaker columns and a small Behringer or similar mixer.

Portability coupled with a lot of sonic power is why I like the RPs so much. The RP355 is my resident Idaho RP, and I haven’t used it much since I started bringing the RP500 to Idaho. But for this gig extreme portability was very desirable, and I didn’t bring the RP360XP to Idaho (why would I, when I have a 500 and a 355 here already?). So the 355 was it.

Like I said, I haven’t used the 355 for a while. I was glad to hear that it still sounds great. Derrik was playing this gig solo–acoustic/electric guitar and vocal–so for this event I stuck with one patch throughout–the ChampB, a Fender Champ amp model coupled with a Bassman 4×10 cabinet model. (That 4×10 Bassman cab makes any amp model sound good with harp.) I also considered my ChampC (Champ amp model with 1×8 Champ cab model) and ChampD (Champ amp model with Deluxe 1×12 cab model) patches as alternatives. All of them gave the harp plenty of punch and body, but the warm tone of the ChampB patch was the winner.

Fun gig: western swing, a beautiful Chuck Pyle tune, Beatles (Here Comes the Sun), and more. Derrik sang and played brilliantly, as usual. Nice to see Democrats on a beautiful day in Victor. Fun to get re-acquainted with the things we like.