Last night, while discarding several bags of trash and old phone books in the alley, I lifted up the lid of one Dumpster and saw what looked like a small guitar amplifier. It was dusty but relatively clean, and looked intact - no broken power cord, burned parts or fried insulation smell - nor any dried vomit in the speakers, which is always a plus.

[Amp shown here, with Jezebel for size comparison. Just so you know, I'm not too proud to scrounge decent electronic goodies from the rubbish bin: it's my way of minimizing the size of my WEEE Man.]

I took it home, cleaned it off and fired it up: I plugged in my bass, and it worked perfectly. Not quite enough low end for a bass practice amp, but the chorus channel is very nice - it gives a light "faux-fretless" detuning effect to harmonics and higher notes. So, I now own an "apartment size" 10 Watt Peavey Audition Chorus amp as part of my Found Equipment Arsenal. Peavey discontinued this model in the late 80's, but it apparently still has a reputation as a clean-sounding, loud, reliable little amp. Now all I need is the electric guitar to go with it: I'll keep my eyes open, because one might show up in the Dumpster next week.

Why someone would throw out a perfectly good guitar amp is anyone's guess. Maybe they found Salvation and were cleansing their lives of all Instruments of Satan. Maybe the discard-er's boyfriend/girlfriend dumped them and they wanted to get rid of anything left behind by THAT PSYCHO. I don't know.

[Dumpster Diver's Tip #5: an ideal time to search for good stuff is a day or so after loud, public breakups in your building. The day after a neighbor's moving day is another, but people seem to throw out better items post-breakup than post-move.]

I do know that there was a small desktop TV in the Dumpster as well, but I didn't need one of those right now. You're welcome to it, if you like.

---