670: Spinal Tap Amps
Blaisepascal (Talk | contribs) m (→Description: 859 compliance, and renaming Description to Explanation.) |
m (changed 0670 to 670 so link to xkcd would work) |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{comic | {{comic | ||
| − | | number = | + | | number = 670 |
| date = December 2, 2009 | | date = December 2, 2009 | ||
| title = Spinal Tap Amps | | title = Spinal Tap Amps | ||
Revision as of 00:17, 13 September 2012
| Spinal Tap Amps |
 Title text: Wow, that's less than $200 per ... uh ... that's a good deal! |
Explanation
This comic is in reference to the 1984 mock documentary This Is Spinal Tap about the tour of the fictional rock band Spinal Tap. Here we see lead guitarist Nigel (a character portrayed by Christopher Guest) explaining to Cueball how the volume dial on his amp can be increased to 11. This is impressive to Nigel since guitar amplifiers generally only go to 10, leading Nigel to believe humorously that his amp is one louder than other amplifiers. In the 3rd panel you see a knowledgeable engineer wasting everyone's time by explaining in boring jargon that the amplifier has no units so 11 only represents a level higher than 1 through 10 on this specific amp. The numbers are not comparable to other amplifiers. This point is lost on confused Nigel. Going back to the 2nd panel we see the actual scene from the movie where the character questions the necessity of going to 11 for the very reasons explained in excruciating detail by the engineer in the 3rd panel. Lastly we come to the final panel, which features the smart engineer who understands that Nigel does not care to understand arbitrary scales so he offers to sell him a amp that goes to 12 and Nigel would believe to be one louder more. The humor is that the engineer would simply alter the numbers on an existing amp (that presumably only went to 10) to now read 12 as the highest value. The amp would actually not be louder but the smart engineer would be able to charge more from simple Nigel regardless.
add a comment!