amps - The ToneQuest Report

Transcription

INSIDE
Tonecraft
&
irony…
Our interview
with the Albert
Brothers
on recording
the Layla
sessions
Champology…
Our
search for
the ‘59 Champ
Reviews
Champ
Speakers –
Weber
Signature
Alnicos,
Jensen P8R
&
C8R
10
The
Fender ‘57
Champ
reissue
11
Victoria 518
13
ValveTrain
Amps…
Model 205
with
tortured tweed,
the Concord
&
Lexington reverb
13
Bakos 8 Ball
14
Exceptional
&
Affordable
Classics…
Jerry Jones
&
our Copperburst
19
3 Monkeys
Orangutan
23
Z Vex Mastotron
24
Kal David’s
Blues Guitar
Master Class
Mountainview Publishing, LLC
the
The Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone
$15.00 US, JAN/FEB 2010/VOL.11 NO.3
Report
TM
The Champ
“Eric fell in love with the damn thing, and George did, too.
I gave one to Eric, one to George, and one to Jimmy Page, ‘cause they all loved ‘em.”
– Delaney Bramlett on tweed Champs
At the first mention of a tweed Champ many players immediately associate Leo Fender’s diminutive runt of the litter and its big dog howl with the Layla sessions – perhaps the most poignant and
instructive study in tonecraft and irony within the entire history of rock music. Think about it…
Eric Clapton, the recalcitrant guitar god who forever transformed rock and blues first with the
Blues Breakers and then Cream wielding 100 watt Marshall stacks and a slew of powerful Gibson
guitars, forms a new band comprised of ‘unknown’ American players and arrives at Criteria studios in Miami
under the
watchful eye
of Tom Dowd
with a ‘56
Strat and a
tweed Champ
to record one
of the greatest
albums of all
time. As Don
Juan suggested in Carlos
Castaneda’s A
Separate
Reality, “The
average man
is too concerned with
liking people
or with being
liked himself.
A warrior
likes, that’s
all. He likes
whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.” Enter Derek and the Dominos, Brownie, and a
tweed Champ. As a point of reference, may we suggest you acquire or re-visit The Layla Sessions.
Clapton, Carl Radle, Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitlock and Skydog provide a positively rippin’ dose of
spontaneous magic, and every minute of it was fueled by tweed Champs. Bobby Whitlock on the
Layla sessions: “When you let a horse run a race, it will run its finest race on its own. When you
get some musicians and you get some creative people, you give them the opportunity to do what
www.tonequest.com
cover story
they’re supposed to do, and they’ll do just that. Given the
right circumstances, they’ll perform at their peak. They’ll
draw from the source. These songs don’t come out of your
head. They’re not something you sit down and figure out.
They’re things that flow through you – we were just instruments, just like the instruments in our laps. We were provided
an opportunity to lock ourselves away and let the creative
principle of the universe flow through us.”
Interviewed
about the
Layla
Sessions in
Sound on
Sound magazine, brothers Ron and
Howard Albert, the Criteria recording engineers who worked
the Layla sessions with producer Tom Dowd added, “If you
looked through the control-room glass, the piano was to the
left, and on top of the piano, which had the lid closed, were
our [Fender Tweed] Champ amps that Eric and Duane both
used. We had to be inventive. The room was not a large space,
so what we had to do was figure out a way to get everybody in
there. The piano took up most of the space along one wall,
and cue systems in those days were pretty basic. We only had
one stereo send and it was hard for everybody to hear themselves, so for acoustic purposes we used the little Champ
amps because they wouldn’t make a lot of sound in the room,
enabling us to get isolation between the drums and the piano
and the guitarists.”
Having read this, we were compelled to find the Albert
Brothers on your behalf, who remain active in the recording
industry having recently completed a new compilation of unreleased Manassas tracks titled Pieces, as well the Subdudes latest release. Ron and Howard also operate Audio Vision
Recording Studios in North Miami with their partner Steve
Alaimo. We spoke to the Albert brothers via a 3-way conference call in late December, and it was a great hang. Listen…
TQR:
As the engineers responsible for recording
Layla, what were your expectations in advance of
the sessions?
We weren’t really told anything beforehand. We were doing
about one act a month for Atlantic at that time. It was a machine,
and Atlantic had set up what was called Atlantic South at
Criteria Studios. Tom, Jerry and Arif would be present on a
rotating schedule, Ahmet might fly in on any given day, but
Howard and I were the staples, and to a certain degree Chuck
Kirkpatrick was the third member of that team, although not as
heavily involved. For the Layla sessions it was just another
group as far as we were concerned – business as usual, and
essentially
the setup
was the
same – we
had the
drums in
the booth
where we
would normally place
them, and we had this 9-foot Baldwin grand piano which was
always in the same place. The one thing that we did do differently, and I think this is where the Champ came in, was that we
stuck the Champs on top of the piano, and Eric had one blowing
into the back of his head like a set of headphones.
TQR:
Whose idea was it to use the Champs?
I think it was just circumstance. It certainly wasn’t the first
record that we ever used a Champ on, and for those sessions I
think one was Eric’s and the other one belonged to the studio,
and I believe that one might have been a blackface Champ. In
the recording studio, smaller amps were more the norm rather
than using bigger amps. We used to record bass through a little Ampex suitcase amp with a ten inch speaker – the bass on
James Brown’s “I Feel Good” was recorded through that little
Ampex, and that kind of thing was not uncommon.
TQR:
What types of mics did you use?
Mostly
Shure
SM57s on
the guitars,
and also
ElectroVoice 635s.
When you
Ampex 620
have a lot
of musicians in a small space, condenser mics are not your
friend. One of the things we had going for us at Criteria was
a huge backlog of experience in understanding which mics
would do what under specific circumstances, and we had tons
and tons of microphones because of Mack Emerman. If it had
been made, we had it. I can understand how your readers,
being guitar players, might think we pulled out some classic
condenser mics, but that wasn’t the case.
TQR:
We have actually interviewed guitarists who have
laid out pretty heavy dough to stock their mic closet with various Royer and Neumann microphones
to use for recording guitar…
And I look at those guys and think, “What are you doing?”
-continued-
2
TONEQUEST REPORT V11. N3. Jan/Feb 2010
Electrovoice 635a mic
cover story
We’ve specifically used dynamic mics like a Shure
SM57 on guitar because we know what we’re going
to get, and that mic gives us the sound we want. We
usually don’t have to EQ the track as much with a
57, and part of the magic of the guitar sounds on
Layla is due to the way the guitars were layered.
Dynamic mics give us the sonic space to do that.
On overdubs, in addition to the Shure SM57, we
might also use a condenser mic like a U47 set up
ten feet away from the amp and mix that with the
direct mic. We also turn the mics off-axis at a thirty
degree angle when close mic’ing. But we’d be
remiss if we didn’t mention that part of the secret to
that great guitar sound on Layla was the room – Studio B at
Criteria. It was a rectangular room with polycyndrical diffusers on the walls that were home-made with slats in
between them to break up high
frequency waves. The ceiling
height was something like 22 feet,
and the big thing that no one ever
talks about was the carpet… probably 90% of the sound was that
SM57
magic carpet (laughing…)
TQR:
Get out of here… But the diffusers were, for those
who may not know, designed to knockdown standing waves, correct?
Mack designed this room himself, and he just put stuff up
that he’d read about, made it up and it worked. The thing that
was amazing about that room was that the isolation was just
incredible, and I have never been in another room like it
since – ever. We’ve been in rooms all over the world and
nothing could touch it.
TQR:
And while a studio remains on the premises today,
that particular room at Criteria was turned into an
artists’ lounge… Seems like a crime.
It was a crime. You could understand the building being sold
and turned into a pizzeria or something, but to have lost that
room in a recording facility is a crime.
TQR:
How much did you adjust EQ on individual tracks
when you were recording Layla?
You almost had to EQ things as you were recording, because
we only had sixteen tracks total, and eight of them were used
for the drums alone, which only leaves about six tracks for
vocals and guitars. But we generally EQ when we’re recording, because if you get it right in the beginning, that’s always
better. “We’ll fix it in the mix” never made sense to us.
TQR:
Sixteen tracks should be enough for a rock
record…
Yeah, it is.
TQR: It seems
like music went
down hill as the
number of available
tracks increased.
You think?! Not only that, it went down hill when people
decided they needed twenty four tracks just to get four tracks
on a record.
TQR:
So you would EQ on the fly…
Yeah, and then we’d do a lot of bouncing and putting different parts together so we would wind up with three or four
guitar parts as one track among sixteen.
TQR:
What’s your take on the evolution of recording
from analog 2-inch tape to digital? When we interviewed Tom Dowd, he seemed to think that digital
was superior to analog, which was surprising to
hear.
I don’t agree
with that.
When we
switched
from analog
to digital we
chose the
Otari Radar
system,
which hapTom Dowd
pened to
sound fabulous, with very little difference in the bottom-end
or overall quality from analog tape. We A/B’d it all the time
and it just sounded fabulous. It was just really, really, really
good. Then they came out with Radar 2 which was even better… The first digital machine was 3M, and that sounded like
dog, and the $260,000 Sony 48-track digital 3348 was very
bright and brittle sounding, but unfortunately, most of the
masses initially went in that direction. Radar just sounded better, like an analog tape. Then when Pro Tools came out, it
became the industry standard very, very quickly, and one of
the things that helped Pro Tools was how bad the earlier
Alesis ADAT system had sounded. You guys are into guitars
and guitar sounds, but hip-hop is the leader in the recording
industry (and there are no Champ amps on hip-hop). The
other thing is that everybody can have a Pro Tools system
without spending $200,000, and the things you can do with
editing are invaluable. So, if you’re a professional these days
-continued-
3
cover story
you’re using Pro Tools. They
may have stopped by now, but
as recently as a few years ago I
know that U2 was still tracking on Radar. But if you’re any
good as an engineer and you
have a decent console, you can
make good sounding music.
Back to the circle of guitars
and Champs… yes, there are
some beautiful vintage amps,
but let’s not forget the guitar
that is plugged into the amp…
It all starts with the guitar. Part of our philosophy in making
beautiful sounding rock & roll recordings is layering different
types of guitars – whatever you got… If you have a Strat it
doesn’t mean you can’t use a Telecaster, a Les Paul, an SG or
a Gretsch with it. It’s cumulative… knowing what something
should sound like has been a big part of our success.
TQR:
Sure, although you did manage to pull it off with
the Layla sessions, which were limited to the
Stratocaster and Duane’s Les Paul…
That’s correct, but in all fairness to them, you also had two
completely unique guitar players with their own very unique
and different styles.
TQR:
What types of effects did you use on Layla?
We really didn’t have very many
guitar effects back then, but we
used EQ, compression and limiting, we had echo chambers,
and we used a little tape delay
with a couple of Ampex tape
machines. The Fender Leslie
cabinet also played a huge role
in the sound of that record. It
was an actual Fender ‘Leslie’
cabinet with an on/off
footswitch, but Howard and I
took it to another level by connecting a variac to it to vary the speed of the Leslie.
TQR:
And this Leslie cabinet was connected to what?
Either a Fender Super Reverb or a tweed Bassman. There
were two rental companies in Miami at the time – Howard
and I had one and Criteria created one later on when they
realized you could make money renting equipment. We had
everything… we still have Howard’s B3 that was on Layla,
all of the Aretha Franklin records and all of the Allman
Brothers stuff. The last time we saw the Baldwin piano was
at a Florida memorabilia exhibit, so it’s still around.
TQR:
Have you ever had to spend a lot of time trying to
‘get a sound’ for a particular guitarist in the studio?
No. Listen, Duane Allman
would come in, and all he
wanted to do was play, so
he’d leave it to us to get ‘the
sound.’ If you took more than
two minutes to get a sound
up, they would get frustrated.
All they wanted to do was
play – it was our job to get
the sound for the record. It
has never happened in our
sessions, but I have seen people take all day to get guitar
or drums sounds, and I don’t
understand that. When we
were doing Zakk Wylde there
were no issues with the guitar
sound. We set up three
Marshall heads in the control room with different cabinets
mic’ed up in the studio, and it was never more than a matter of
a few seconds to get a great guitar sound. We also have a pretty unorthodox method of recording vocal tracks, and we’ve
learned that it doesn’t matter how the vocal sounds alone –
what matters is how the vocal sounds in the mix – how it sits
with all the other tracks. Getting that right is not an easy trick.
TQR:
We’ve also had people comment on how they don’t
like to start a track on guitar and come back to finish it on another day, because it never sounds the
same.
That’s true, and we’ve
had to deal with that
many, many times.
Here’s a story… Jerry
Garcia was playing pedal
steel on a Stephen Stills
session – it may have
been Manassas, I don’t
recall, but Jerry shut it
down late one night not
having finished the track. He said he’d come back tomorrow,
and we’re still waiting (laughing). Stephen came in and finished Jerry’s pedal steel track playing a Gretsch and doing
the volume swells with the volume control on the guitar, so
you have this ‘steel track’ actually comprised of two parts,
and yes, we did have to do some work to get Stephen’s guitar
to sound like Jerry’s pedal steel.
-continued-
4
cover story
TQR:
You both also recently created and produced an allnew Manassas recording titled Pieces from unreleased tracks from the original sessions, and you
mentioned when we first spoke how surprised you
were to hear that warm analog sound again.
The first time we put
those tapes up and
pushed play… We
knew the songs, we
had worked on them
collectively for hundreds of hours when
they were recorded,
and while we hadn’t
heard them in 30
years, you think you
remember what they sound like – specifically the tonal quality of analog recording – yet we were just blown away.
TQR:
of the ‘cheating’
process that we were
very aware of. If you
wanted a loud, fat
record, you couldn’t
have twenty-four
minute sides. Look at
the Beatles records…
they were short sides.
In those early days
you had something
called variable pitch…
What that means is that you could vary how narrow or wide
the groove is depending on where you turn the knob in mastering. A good mastering engineer at that time would learn
the song and know where the big bass bumps were so they
could widen the grooves. There was no automation – they
would turn the knob, and if they had a twenty minute side
and seventeen minutes into it they missed, they’d have to
start over and cut a new acetate.
Can you describe the difference?
TQR:
Better. More bottom and more transparent. More depth. It’s
almost like recording a session with everything close-mic’ed
and also with room mics, then you bring the band in to hear
the playback with the sound from the room mics off, and the
ambience of the sound you are hearing is drastically different.
The digital sound is drier, versus this coating over the whole
thing that just makes it warm and gushy.
TQR:
You worked in an era where recordings were made
in the studio, and then the mix would be mastered
to an acetate, and sometimes a lot could be lost in
the process.
We had our own
mastering facility,
so we knew what
we were going to
get. Having all
those exotic microphones, we didn’t
have to send our
masters out to be
mastered. We had our own mastering guy, Karl Richardson,
who gave us an edge over a lot of people. At that time there
was a lot of EQ’ing going on in the studio to make it work
right on an acetate, because you had physical limitations… If
you went over twenty-one minutes a side on an LP, you had
to lower the volume because the width of the grooves had to
be narrower. If you had a lot of bottom end, which we always
had on our records, the wider the grooves had to be, and the
less volume you had. If you were to look at the elapsed time
of the sides on the Manassas records, for example, that’s part
And you were making judgments in terms of EQ as
you were recording that were critical to the mastering process.
Yes. Most recently, the record
company decided
that they would
also like to
release a vinyl
version of Pieces
as well. They sent
the recording to
Bernie Grundman – one of the most accomplished and
respected mastering engineers in the world whom we’ve
worked with for many years, and he said the recording didn’t
need mastering. It’s already been done.
In regard to mastering and making records sound good…
making albums was not the norm – it was a singles business
first, so worrying about the length of a side and all these considerations we’re talking about… no one really cared about
the album except for the artwork. When we were doing an
album a month for Atlantic, one month it would be Eric
Clapton and the next would be Herbie Mann.
TQR:
Yet you routinely recorded many versions of each
song and then assembled the final, finished master
using assorted pieces from all the different takes –
a composite of the best instru mental and vocal
takes you had recorded.
We always did that on everything, with everybody. The only
-continued-
5
cover story
example I
can think
of contrary
to that is
Greg
Allman,
and I’ll tell
you the
story…
You know,
the Allman
Brothers
literally lived in the parking lot of the studio in this old
Winnebago when they were in Miami. It wasn’t like Duane
was called down from Daytona Beach for a session – he was
living in the parking lot at Criteria, which just happened to
make one of the greatest guitar players in the world available
to us, and we very very fortunate to have him around.
TQR:
So were they were ‘hanging’ outside the
Winnebago with folding patio chairs and cases of
Budweiser? That kind of hang? Southern boys
would do that – turn any damn place into a porch is
what they do.
Yeah, something like
that. You see, so much of
what we did was done
after hours… Tom would
leave the session in our
hands, and we could do
the hang, and during that
hang time is when we
were able to develop our
sound and our recording
techniques. Some of it
worked and some of it didn’t, but we were free to experiment. So, Greg came into the studio early one day for some
reason and said, “What do you want to do?” It was just him
and I – there weren’t any record company people or producers around, but we had our shit together… The studio is set
up, the mics are set up and the lights are dimmed… We were
extremely professional and very much on top of our game.
So I said, “Let’s do this…” It was a song we’d recorded earlier called “Midnight Rider” that needed a vocal. So I put the
tape on the machine, Greg sings the song and at the end he
lifts his head, looks at me and says, “How’s that?” I looked to
my left and looked to my right and there is no Tom Dowd,
and I pushed the talkback button and said, “Yeah, that sounded good.” And that’s the vocal on the record – one take, and
it’s the magical one. Having said that, most of the recordings
we’ve made are composites.
TQR:
Do you really get to work that way anymore?
Yeah, we’ll do that for a guitar part, but there is not that
much live recording going on anymore as a whole band, so
it’s a little different, and I miss that kind of live recording.
There are also not a lot of people around anymore that are
knowledgeable and capable of working that way… the Johns
brothers… Eddie Kramer… us…]
TQR:
So you’ve done the new Manassas Pieces recording, and you just finished the new Subdudes
record – how did that come about?
Well, they
recorded the
initial tracks
themselves
in Colorado
and then
they sent us
the masters
and we did
some overdubs, mixing and finished the record with Al Kooper playing some piano. In the process, we all became huge Tommy
Malone fans.
TQR:
And so you should. There is no hip-hop on a
Tommy Malone record. It’s a deeper groove altogether. The deepest.
www.audiovisionstudios.com
www.subdudes.com
The Albert brothers’ comments
suggest that perhaps the decision
to use Champ amps can be
attributed to the engineers’
desire to isolate the instruments
in the small ‘Studio B’ space at
Criteria. Did Eric Clapton
approach these sessions with any
particular preference for the tone
of a tweed Champ over other
amplifiers that would have been
available to him? We wonder…
Nearly four decades hence, we guitarists continue to scour
the vast landscape of sounds and guitar tones new and old
that might allow, as Bobby Whitlock suggested, “the creative
principle of the universe to flow through us” too. Yet we
remain vulnerable to sometimes listening too closely to the
persistent buzz that holds the latest white-hot gizmo aloft in
our consciousness like a bad case of tinnitis…Dear God how
we hate to be the last to know what’s supposed to be ‘cool,’
-continued-
6
cover story
Bobby Whitlock
and as amp builder Roy
Blankenship wryly observed in our
February 2008 interview, “There
is a lot of dick-measuring in this
business.” Ya think? In this edition of the Quest we fix your
attention on bona fide sure bets –
instruments that can deliver on the
promise of lasting inspiration and
rapture at the cusp of the new
year. But first, some context is in
order…
Champology
We’ll not drag you tied to the rusty back bumper of Fender
history through every academic nuance and iteration of the
Champ since its creation in 1948, focusing instead on the later
‘57-’64 tweed models originally equipped with an 8 inch
Rola, Oxford or Jensen speaker. While the early Champion
800 and 600 amps are definitely collectable pieces of Fender
history, it’s the narrow panel tweed 5F1 circuit that delivers
the goods. Counted among these is the transitional ‘64 version
covered in black tolex with silver grill cloth – the last 5F1
Champ produced before the blackface model AA764 was
introduced in late 1964. Of course, you want to know how the
black and silverface Champs (and the Vibro-Champ) compare
to the narrow panel tweeds built from ‘57-’64… Well, you
guessed right – they are usually cheaper today, and their
sound is much ‘cleaner’ in keeping with the
evolution of the black
and silverface amps
overall. They can
sound very good in the
style of a lower powered, single 6V6 nonreverb Princeton, if
you can imagine that,
but they don’t possess
the mystical mojo of the tweed era any more than a silverface
Bassman sounds remotely similar to a tweed. We should also
mention that in addition to the modern reissue ‘57 Fender
tweed Champ reviewed here, other builders have been
inspired to develop their own worthy tributes to the Champ,
including Victoria’s model 518 featuring an optional Jensen
P12N speaker. If you are allergic to dealing with 50 year-old
relics, one of these modern alternatives may be the amp for
you, and we’re reviewing a ton of ‘em here.
The ‘59
Our initial search for a vintage tweed Champ was revealing in
an amusing or irritating fashion depending on your state of
mind. We started
out on GBase.com,
where a dozen or so
tweed Champs in
various states of
pristine originality
and musty decay
were listed with
instructions to bend
over and call for a
price. We actually
placed a couple of
calls on specific
amps – one droll stoner agreed to send additional pictures
(and did), and then informed us that they would need an additional 3% for PayPal and the rich asking price was firmer than
Tiger Wood’s putting stroke at the Perkins Pancake
Doublewide Invitational. Second dude promised to send pix
and never did. Are we having fun yet? Craig’s List turned up
nothing but a guy named ‘Champ’ looking for a hookup (we
didn’t call), so it was on to eBay, where we quickly located a
juicy-looking ‘61, only to find that it had been “professionally
serviced” with all new caps (every last one of ‘em). A few
days later a sweet, caramelized ‘59 appeared with a Buy It
Now price of $1299.00 and free shipping. We re-entered eBay
through the Bing.com portal, hit BIN and claimed an instant
8% cash back deposit in our PayPal account compliments of
Bill Gates to close the deal. About the best you can hope for
price-wise on eBay for a straight, relatively unmolested tweed
Champ is $900 and change if you want to hang in for the long
haul and play the bidding game. As always, we don’t want a
completely ‘refurbished’ old amp that sounds new, and it’s
almost unheard of to see Champs with replaced transformers.
Just avoid circuit boards that have been completely swept
clean of those Astron coupling caps and original resistors…
Deliverance
Our ‘59 arrived from Hendersonville, NC as advertised with
the electrolytics already replaced with the proper Spragues,
and the original Oxford 8" speaker complete with a well-done
toilet paper patch on the bottom of the cone where the AC
cord had probably punctured it. The Oxford sounded a little
tired but good – papery and throaty with lots of transparent
harmonic texture, and the Champ itself revealed everything
we had hoped for
and more – the kind
of vintage tone that
stops conversation,
only to resume with
heaps of reverent
praise and comments about how
that sound had been
-continued-
7
cover story
forgotten. And it
has. Well, you’ve
been busy…
The next day we
took the Champ to
Bakos Ampworks
to have the too
long, brittle and
stiff 2-prong grey power cord replaced. As Jeff worked we
discussed his fondness for his own tweed Champ and all the
tracks that had been cut with it over the years. With the new
cord installed, we fired up the Champ and immediately heard
crackling in the volume pot that hadn’t been there before…
What’s this? Jeff shook a tiny piece of old solder out of it
with a modified dental tool, but the scratchiness persisted.
Not to be deterred, he disassembled the pot casing looking
for any additional crap inside and reassembled it with no
improvement. “Sorry, man, but I think this pot is toast.”
Sooo, we were off to search for a switched 1 meg audio taper
pot, which we ultimately found at Weber VST for a righteous
price of under three bucks. While we were arranging that
transaction, we also asked the gang at Weber to send down
both of their Signature 4-ohm Alnico 8s for review in the
Champ, which they did. Things were looking up as we anticipated the article that was rapidly developing on your behalf.
When the speakers arrived we
eyed the box from
Weber with the
full relish of a
$200 pound of
golden Blue
Mountain Lamb’s
Bread circa 1972.
Irie. Well, not
quite irie… The Champ chassis wouldn’t clear the top edge
of the Weber’s Alnico magnet – no way, no how. But they say
right on their web description, “Fits a tweed Champ.”
Pondering our failed geometry problem with all the acuity of
a chimpanzee, we were, for the moment, stumped and flummoxed. We had acquired a couple of Jensen reissues that
wouldn’t fit either, and as we further digested this sobering
thought in front of the PC monitor while nursing a Sierra
Nevada Pale, we pulled up a picture of a mounted speaker in
another ‘59 Champ and stared at its position on the baffleboard for any clues to our dilemma… Gizzards and coco
puffs! Lookie there! The bottom edge of the speaker frame
was no more than half an inch above the bottom edge of the
baffleboard on that one, while ours sat two inches higher…
What the hell?
The baffleboard on our ‘59 was clearly original… Have you
guessed yet? It had been mistakenly installed upsidedown in
Fullerton! Ah, Lupé, look at the confusion and worry your
innocent distraction has caused us 50 years later! Was
Freddie Tavares whispering a naughty joke in your ear when
you screwed this one together? Well, bless you, wherever you
are… We flipped the baffleboard in minutes and the speaker
was now positioned properly to allow us to install the Webers
and pretty much any other 8 we wished. Viva el Champion!
Viva Lupé!
Giving Up the Goods
By now perhaps you’re thinking that the acquisition of a
sweet tweed honey dripper presents challenges better left to
others… that the unpredictable effects of time, chance and a
potential seller’s ignorance or obfuscation may leave your
wallet depleted and your spirit broken… Well, you certainly
can skirt the more adventurous path of hunting down an old
gem and buy something new – and you do have respectable
choices – but for those of you who relish the visual and sonic
patina that only a vintage classic can truly deliver, we urge
you to go for it. With a little patience you’ll likely find an
iconic example of this utterly stellar little jewel in the Fender
crown for a just a few hundred dollars more than a new version, and if you choose well, your investment will certainly
not depreciate in value over time. On the other hand, your
appreciation for the Champ and its absolute ability to inspire
exceptional music at comforting volume levels is virtually
incalculable. Wait… Read that last line again. Really? Yes.
We must tell you that we were shocked and stunned by just
how magical the ‘59 really sounds – and especially after our
speaker evaluations began…
Weber Signature Alnico 8
and Alnico 8S
Ted Weber’s untimely passing on
August 14, 2008 at age 58 marked the
end of a remarkably creative and
energetic life devoted to electronics, music and sound. Before
creating Weber VST, Ted
worked in research and
development at the
Delco division of General Motors in Kokomo, Indiana, and
later became Lab Supervisor of Technicians at Delphi
Energenix Laboratory. He retired from Delphi in April 2005
and expanded Weber VST well beyond the existing speaker
catalog to include amplifier components and chassis, custom
cabinets, attenuators, bias tools, amp kits and more, but it is
Ted’s contribution to guitar speakers that truly energized an
industry that had fallen back on its heels a bit in preceding
decades. Weber re-set the bar and awakened a new interest in
the importance of speakers as the final transducer that shapes
-continued-
8
cover story
our tone, and through his work and the information shared on
his web site, a new and robust era in speaker manufacturing
emerged. Ted’s legacy now lives on under the care of his son
T.A., who continues to manage the operation Ted created. Ted
was also an early contributor to TQR. Listen…
TQR:
Did you initially want to reproduce the vintage
speaker designs of the past?
Being an engineer, I
thought about how
often original designs
became watered down
in the front office or
accounting department. The belief I had
was that if we
remained small, did all
of our marketing on the Internet and kept our overhead low,
we could actually design and build engineered speakers –
products with very tight tolerances and a high degree of precision machining that generally isn’t possible with mass production. Our gaps would be tighter with better concentricity,
better magnets, a higher grade of steel, and our production
would be cellular rather then just throwing things together
on a high-volume production line. But I also knew that we
wouldn’t be able to do the typical 6-8 times build-cost-toretail-price ratio. We would have had a $300-$400 speaker
that would have become an expensive lawn ornament,
because at that time, the question would have been “Who the
heck is Weber?” Why would anyone pay that much for a
speaker built by someone they had never heard of? Mass distribution wasn’t going to work for us. Anyone can go to
Eminence or overseas to have speakers made, but I didn’t see
the point of that. There was no sense in building speakers
using generic parts – that wasn’t within our vision of producing speakers that the old designers would have created in a
perfect creative environment. And if one of those old speaker
designers were to come here today, he would find that we’re
basically shipping prototype speakers every single day in
terms of the quality of materials
and manufacturing tolerances. In
the old days, they
would have
machined all of
the parts, prototyped a specific
model and performed a cost
analysis on it.
That’s where the
original design
would be watered down for cost effective manufacturing and
competitive pricing. We’re taking that original speaker that
would have been designed and built in the lab and reproducing it every time.
Well,
now…
that’s comforting
words
indeed, and
we can tell
you that
given our experience with the Weber Signature 8s, Ted succeeded mightily in his quest, may he rest in peace.
Weber builds an Alnico 8 and a brighter 8S model for yer
Champ, and we started with the standard 8. The first thing we
noticed is that the volume increased over the original Oxford
by 20%. So much for originality… The Weber also displayed
a far richer, bolder sound – strong and vocal in the mids with
excellent frequency response and, as the online description
promised, a smooth response to higher volume levels with a
slight attenuation in the higher frequencies and moderate,
musical compression. We would choose this Signature 8
speaker for most guitars equipped with brighter single coil
pickups, and the improvement over the old Oxford was
astounding. Astounding? Really.
The Alnico
8S also performs as
described,
with much
more prominent treble
presence
that colors
the overdriven voice
of the
Champ with a brighter, sharper character overall. If you prefer
the sound of a brighter speaker, this one’s for you. The contrast between the two Weber speakers is very apparent, and we
personally preferred the thicker, richer sound of the standard
Weber Signature Alnico 8 over the 8S. Your results may vary,
and that’s OK. We simply loved the way the smooth cone
Signature Alnico 8 transformed the sound of our ‘59 Champ
into a magnificently bold little tweed with excellent clarity
(and this is important), exceptionally smooth, musical distortion, vivid second-order harmonics and phenomenal dynamic
response to pick attack. In our world, you really couldn’t ask
for more.TQ
www.tedweber.com
9
amps
Jensen P8R & C8R
We also arranged to receive a ceramic mag Jensen C8R and
Alnico P8R from CE Distribution to audition in the ‘59, and
it didn’t take long for us to give the nod to the ceramic C8R
for the same reasons we preferred the standard Weber Alnico
over the brighter S model. In a feisty little amp like the
Champ, we don’t want to hear a lot of high frequency distortion clashing over single notes and chords. The ‘59 Champ is
by nature a very transparent and revealing amp given its
small output transformer and speaker… Any dissonance
quickly obscures fundamentals, while the right speaker can
actually expand them through second order harmonics, creating a polyphonic vocal quality that can be experienced firsthand throughout the brilliantly crafted, ultimate demo CD for
the Champ – Layla. The trick, it seems, is to strike the right
balance of compression, frequency response and clarity,
while avoiding shrill, too sharp treble tones, muddy mids and
floppy low end. The Jensen C8R sounds strong, full and rich
with single coils (P90s are made for a Champ), but depending on the pickups in your humbucking guitars, we’re not
going to eliminate the brighter speakers mentioned here if
you’ll be predominantly using midrange-heavy humbuckers.
The good news is that all of these 8 inch speakers are relatively inexpensive, which makes experimentation a lot less
costly. Among the Jensen 8s, we prefer the C8R.
www.cedist.com, 480-755-4712 (wholesale)
www.tubesandmore.com, 480-820-5411
Lagniappe – Jensen & Rola Recones
Thanks to Mr. Valco, aka
Terry Dobbs, we were also
able to have Tom Colvin at
the Speaker Workshop in Ft.
Wayne, Indiana do his
reconing magic with a vintage Rola and Jensen 4 ohm
eight. Like the original
Oxford in the ‘59 Champ,
both of these vintage speakers produce a sound that is more ‘papery’ and slightly less
powerful than the Webers or modern Jensens, but their tone is
very true to the period in
which the tweed Champs
were built. The voice of the
Rola was a bit thicker and
more middy than the Jensen,
which displayed the typical
brightness unique to Jensen
Alnico speakers, and both
added more distortion than
any of the modern 8s
reviewed here. It’s also interesting to note that the Rola was
stamped with a Philco label.TQ
The Speaker Workshop, 260-426-8742
Terry Dobbs, www.valcoamp.com, 812-342-6684
The Fender ‘57 Champ Reissue
ToneQuest
Fender has established a long and
varied history of
building highly
respected modern
amps like the
Blues Deville,
Blues Junior,
Vibro King and
reissue tweed
Bassman, but they
have also not
ignored the enduring appeal of vintage classics, such as the
blackface Vibroverb 1x15 designed in cooperation with César
Diaz, the ‘57 tweed Twin, the hand-wired tweed Deluxe,
blackface Princeton Reverb, and the 5F1 ‘57 tweed Champ.
Given all of the low-powered amps that are available to guitarists today at virtually any price point, you might wonder
why an industry giant like Fender would bother to reissue a
5 watt hand-wired amp that lists for $1299 and sells for a
‘street’ price of $999… Well, it’s a Champ, and in case you
haven’t noticed, there seems to be a healthy reverence for
Fender history among the current management at Fender that
often transcends dispassionate business decisions that might
otherwise focus solely on the bottom line. We suspect the
overriding motivation for building a labor-intensive, handwired 5F1 Champ was simply that it deserved and needed to
be done. And as we have reported in the past in regard to the
tweed Deluxe, for example, you can be assured that the
development team at Fender assembled a respectable assortment of vintage Champs as they tweaked the prototype that
would ultimately provide the final blueprint for production.
As a consumer, tonefreak and prospective Champ owner, you
of course are single-mindedly interested in one thing, and one
thing only… How does Fender’s modern reissue sound and
compare to ‘the real thing?’ Fair question, and the very same
that prompted us to request a Champ for review.
As far as technical details go, the Champ is properly housed
in a lacquered tweed covered pine box, loaded with a Ruby
5Y3 and GT 6V6 and 12AX7 tubes, and the excellent Weber
-continued-
10
amps
Signature Alnico 4 ohm speaker (not the brighter ‘S’ Alnico
model). The globally compliant hand-wired chassis is much
busier than an original Champ inside, with redundant failsafe fuses on the fiber circuit board, shields over the internal
input jacks, and a compliant (and easily removable) cage
attached to the back panel that protects the user from those
smokin’ hot tubes! Features (or lack thereof) faithfully follow
the original design, with high and low sensitivity inputs and a
single volume control. Rather than using a switched volume
pot, an on/off toggle switch is employed. The ‘606’ transformer EIA codes indicate Schumacher, and this is good.
Give Fender a deserving nod for also including an authentic
brown linen vintage-style cover.
Tone
You’d think
an elegantly
austere and
simple circuit
like the 5F1
Champ
would be
easy enough
to reproduce
and dial in
tonally, and Fender has succeeded nicely. The voice of the
Champ is rich and throaty with surprising volume as it gradually succumbs to increasingly intense distortion and secondorder harmonics. Compared to our vintage ‘59, the new
Champ gets louder a little faster, probably due to a different
taper in the volume pots of both amps. Equipped with the
stock tubes, the modern Champ lacks a little of the clarity,
dimensionality and smooth dynamic response of our ‘59, but
when we swapped the GT 6V6 with an old RCA blackplate
and the 12AX7 with a vintage RCA, those qualities emerged
as you would expect. There is a difference between both
amps… the new
Champ sounds
understandably
brighter by a few
degrees, and more
assertive… like a
new amp versus
one that is 50
years old. But for
those of you who
prefer the reliability and no-maintenance peace of mind
offered by a new amp (with a 5-year warranty), we can recommend the new Fender Champ very highly – and especially
if you can get your hands on a fine NOS 6V6 and 12AX7.
Even at today’s prices for vintage tubes, optimizing the
Champ is an affordable and worthwhile upgrade. As for the
speaker, you needn’t worry about that – the stock Weber
Alnico selected by Fender is the one you want. Lightly used
reissue tweed Champs are selling for around $600 versus
$999 new. By all means, Quest forth…TQ
www.fender.com
www.kcanostubes.com
Victoria 518
ToneQuest
Mark Baier’s
replica of the
Champ faithfully
honors the original 5F1 circuit in
a slightly larger
pine box an inch
taller and deeper
than the original
cabinet, and no
one does a better
job of lacquering
tweed with an
amber patina than Victoria. If an eight inch driver leaves you
feeling slightly under-endowed, you can also order the Big
Bamboo – model 5112 – a tweed Champ in a Deluxe cabinet
loaded with an Eminence Legend 12. Our 518 review model
included a new old stock GE 5Y3 rectifier, new (and excellent) Tung-Sol 6V6 and an equally good TAD (Tube Amp
Doctor) 12AX7. If you ever find yourself wondering which
modern tubes offer the best tone and dependability, just look
inside amps built by smaller companies that really care about
tube tone. We can recall when all Victorias were shipped with
NOS tubes, if that tells you anything…
The 518 performs just as expected, with a rich, musical voice.
The stock Jensen Alnico P8R doesn’t sound as overwhelmingly bright in the Victoria as it did in our ‘59 or Greg Talley’s,
but we still prefer the heavier sound of the Weber Signature 8.
The 518 doesn’t spill into intense distortion and higher volume
levels quite as fast as our old Champs, but it gets there with
authority, and there are plenty of very usable tones present
before you reach ‘8.’ If you are under the impression that
Champs are only truly useful fully gassed on ‘10,’ you’d be
wrong. Their sweet spot is really well before hard clipping, and
yes, outboard reverb or tremolo quickly transforms them into
something magical that defies easy identification in a blindfold
test or a recording. Weaker Stratocaster pickups or a guitar like
our Jerry Jones Copperburst really bloom and breathe in this
amp – especially with the dynamic compression produced by
an eight inch speaker, while typical P90s, Telecaster and humbucking pickups produce a more linear intensity. Overall, we’d
describe the Victoria 518 as sounding slightly more detailed,
-continued-
11
amps
complex and musical
when compared to
the modern Fender
Champ with its stock
tubes. Load both
amps with RCAs
and you might have
a hard time distinguishing one from
the other except for
the slightly brighter
Jensen P8R. The 518 earns additional points on cosmetics with
its excellent butterscotch lacquered finish, and we like the traditional single, switched volume control. No, the switched pot
doesn’t ‘sound’ better – we just like the feel of the click as the
jewel light illuminates. By all of the typical criteria one might
apply to a booteek amp (tone and build quality), the 518 is outstanding at $1095 new. Our sole suggestion might be to add a
line out jack on the bottom of the chassis should you wish to
goose a bigger amp.TQ
www.victoriaamp.com, 630-820-6400
ValveTrain
As explained to
us during an
introductory
phone call,
ValveTrain
founder Rick
Gessner’s vision
for the
Revolution
Series was to
build high-quality, hand-wired
guitar amplifiers
in the USA utilizing American-made components at a street
price under $1,000. As he described his business model over
the phone, we couldn’t help thinking of the companies that
had recently adopted a similar, yet polar opposite approach –
to build hand-wired ‘affordable’ amps in China. Well, regardless of where they are built, the market for small, affordable
guitar amps has always been much more robust than most of
the bigger custom-built, hand-wired models we often review
in these pages, and this is nothing new… Fender built far
more ‘student’ models like the Champ and guitars like the
Duo Sonic and Mustang because that’s what sold the most –
ditto with Gibson and the Skylark and Melody Maker. Small
amplifiers offering lower decibel levels remain immensely
popular today for home, apartment and studio use not necessarily due to their low cost, but because so many players
enjoy the sound of variable degrees of distortion at moderate
volume levels. The remarkable growth of the pedal business
can be attributed to this same obsession with distortion at a
‘polite’ volume. Hey… we love Super Reverbs as much as
anyone, but when your ears are ringing hours after a brief
dalliance with those four tens, we understand. And who
wants to lift a Super?
We received three ValveTrain models for review, all an easy
one-hand tote well under 10 watts. Inspired by the cathodebiased 1955 Fender 5F2A Princeton, the ‘205’ model is built
with a pine cabinet two inches taller than a vintage Champ,
and features nicely aged “tortured tweed.” Additional features
unique to the 205 include both a volume and tone control, and
4 and 8 ohm speaker input jacks on the bottom of the chassis.
The presence of an 8 ohm jack might could open up a brave
new world of 8" speaker options for anyone bold enough to
look beyond the obvious… The majority of available used and
‘vintage’ eight inch speakers are 8 ohm, including some very
interesting 8s with Jensen, Magnavox (CTS), Rola, JBL and
Telefunken labels. A player with an 8 ohm Champ could have
a helluva lot of fun dabbling in some of the more obscure 8"
full-range speakers that have been made for various stereo systems – just be sure to limit your search to “full range” speakers
– not midrange drivers or hi-fi woofers. Every time we’ve
looked, eBay has been full of ‘em.
Like the Victoria
518, the volume
pot on the
ValveTrain 205
exhibits a slower
taper, so comparable volume levels
on our ‘59s are
quite different. ‘6’
on one of the ‘59s
might be ‘8’ on
the modern amps,
with a steeper increase in volume and distortion from ‘8’ to
‘10.’ This isn’t a flaw – the taper is just different, as Robben
Ford observed in our December ‘09 interview when we asked
him where he set the volume on his Dumbles. The handwired ValveTrain is shipped with a Weber Signature Alnico
8S, along with an Electro-Harmonix 12AX7, 6V6, and a
NOS RCA 5Y3 rectifier.
The sound of the 205 is squarely in the neighborhood with
the contemporary Champs we’ve reviewed – slightly tamer
by a hair played wide open, and no, the taller cabinet doesn’t
seem to affect the tone or fidelity of the amp one way or
another. Aside from great tone and crankability, the 205’s
strongest selling point seems to rest with that extra 8 ohm
speaker jack, in our opinion. Street price is $899.
-continued-
12
amps
ToneQuest
ValveTrain Concord & Lexington Reverb
At 6 watts, these single input amps fall
within the general
power and volume
range of a Champ,
but loaded with ten
inch speakers and
additional features.
Available as a 1x10
combo or compact
head, the Class A,
cathode-biased,
Concord operates on
a single 6V6, 12AX7 and solid state rectifier with volume,
treble and bass controls, two 4 ohm and one 8 ohm speaker
input and a Real Vintage USA-made 10" speaker. Compared
to the Lexington, the Concord delivers a thicker, heavier tone
with plenty of additional treble available, and moderate distortion levels from ‘8’-’10’ on the volume control that intensify significantly with stronger humbuckers. Overall volume
is comparable to all of the Champs reviewed here, but the
Concord displays
more clean headroom before breaking up, and maximum distortion is
less intense. Think
of it as a 6-watt
amp with excellent
fidelity and a good match with effects pedals. However, the
overdriven sound produces a mellower, jangly burn than that
of the typical Champ circuit.
The $700.00 Lexington Reverb 1x10 combo uses the same
cabinet as the Concord, loaded with an Eminence Ramrod
(one of our favorite 10s), dual EH 12AX7s, a single EH 6V6
and solid state rectifier. Features include volume, tone and
reverb intensity controls, a toggled high/low power switch
that cuts power from 6 to 1.5 watts, and a RAW switch that
increases gain and treble response. A reverb footswitch is also
included. We created some very usable and interesting tones
combining the trebly RAW setting with the neck pickups in
our guitars, but otherwise found it too bright and thin for use
with the bridge. We also really never warmed up to the 1.5
watt low power setting, preferring to play the Lexington at a
full 6 watts with the volume level on ‘7’- ‘10.’ Like the
Concord, this amp isn’t designed with a hair-trigger tendency
to jump into gonzo distortion levels, remaining clean well
into the rotation of the volume pot before quickly producing
overdriven tones beyond ‘7.’ The nine-inch Accutronics
reverb pan produces a
good spring reverb
effect that stops short
of full-surf splash, but
it adds depth and mystery to single coils like
it should. On a related
note, you may have
heard that Belton
recently acquired the
Accutronics Company
that has been building
spring reverb pans in
Cary, IL for decades. According to the corporate web site,
Accutronics reverb pans were to be manufactured in Cary
through November 2009. Log on to the Accutronics web site
today, and you’ll be greeted by the new ‘Belton’ Accutronics
page, with the company’s new address proudly displayed as
Geumcheon-Gu, Seoul, Korea. Our condolences to the people
of Cary, Il who are now unemployed so the new Accutronics
company may pursue a more contemporary vision of
American manufacturing excellence by fleeing to Korea to
pump up the company’s bottom line.
As for ValveTrain amps, they will not be made in Korea,
which was the entire point behind Rick Gessner’s desire to
build point-to-point amplifiers in the USA with parts sourced
from America. For low-volume dealing at a reasonable price,
he has neatly bridged the world of mass production and boutique amps quite nicely with many more models than we
were able to review here, so by all means, check ‘em out. TQ
www.valvetrainamps.com
ToneQuest
Bakos 8 Ball
Many of you are already familiar with our resident amp tech,
studio owner/engineer and advisory board member Jeff
Bakos. In his spare time, Jeff occasionally builds amps for
clients on request,
and lately he’s been
asked to build…
you guessed it –
small little biters.
Since his personal
GA-5 has been featured so often on
various recording
projects, Jeff toyed
with the idea of
-continuedTONEQUEST REPORT V11. N3. Jan/Feb 2010
13
guitars
recreating the Gibson GA-5 Skylark for a minute, but given
the fact that vintage GA-5s remain fairly plentiful, he ultimately decided to design his own simple take on a smallish
amp – the 8 Ball. Housed in a Mojo Champ cabinet, the 8
Ball is built with one of our favorite tens, the Eminence
Legend Alnico 1058 (that’s a hint), Mercury Magnetics trannies and choke, and premium components, including Sozo
coupling caps. With the bigger Mercury Princeton transformer set, the single 6V6/12AX7/5Y3 design is capable of
producing 10 watts of power. Features include dual inputs,
volume and tone controls, a front panel line out jack, and a
‘vintage’/‘modern’ toggle switch also conveniently mounted
on the front panel.
The ‘vintage’ setting
produces
pristine,
Fendery
clean tones
up to 12
o’clock on
the volume
control,
gradually followed by a progressively thicker growl with
intense distortion and sustain. In this setting, the 8 Ball surpasses all the other small amps we’ve reviewed in terms of
practical versatility with stronger, louder clean tones and a
more gradual cascade of second-order harmonics and crunch.
Again, very Fender-like. The ‘modern’ setting is hot from the
jump, with a much faster and rabid increase in distortion, sustain and gain. Carlos would dig it, no pedals required. The 8
Ball is available by custom order only at $1150 plus shipping
with 90-day delivery and a 50% deposit. TQ
Bakos Ampworks, Atlanta, 404-607-8426
sonably affordable. Afterall, what good is a tantalizing
review of something you may never hope to own? Perhaps
you too have scoured guitar reference books or searched
online with the hope that you’ll be reminded of a forgotten
model or find a modern guitar that has escaped you… Oh,
we’ve spent hours chasing spontaneous detours into obscurity studying bizarre footnotes in guitar manufacturing like the
1980 Gibson ES335-S Firebrand, the Smith Stratocaster, or
the Gretsch Corvette, only to conclude that you deserve better than long diatribes on quirky curiosities that won’t get
played. During one such recent online excursion, however,
we stumbled upon a guitar so lusciously delicious and which
we knew to be endowed with reasonably certain prospects of
absolutely stellar tone that we could simply not let it escape
your attention or our grasp. An exceptional, utterly gorgeous
example made by a very thoughtful and meticulous builder
who has been quietly working for decades smackdab in the
heart of Music City USA. His company and distinctive brand
are rarely advertised it seems, yet experienced players who
can afford to play virtually anything they wish ardently play
this fellow’s guitars – not because they were given away as
part of an endorsement deal, but because like us, they find
his instruments irresistible. At a time when it has become virtually impossible to comprehend and digest all the nuanced
variations being built on even one model like the
Stratocaster, many of us still crave honest guitars that play
flawlessly and sound unlike all the ubiquitous and familiar
archetypes in a good way… unique guitars that compel us to
pick them up every time we walk in the room and sound
unlike any other 6-string you can name… That’s what we
want, and Jerry Jones builds ‘em. We’ve reprised Jerry’s
essential account of his early days at Nashville’s Old Time
Picking Parlor and the genesis of Jerry Jones guitars, followed by a review of our latest 1996 ‘JJ Original’ copperburst and an overview of Delta Moon guitarist Mark
Johnson’s 3-pickup models. Enjoy…
Jerry Jones
ToneQuest
Tumblin’ Dice
We spend more than a little time researching and considering
various new and not-so-new guitar models that may be worthy of your
consideration,
always looking
for instruments that are
unique, exceptionally toneful, and almost
1980 ES335-S Firebrand always… rea-
I think my interest in
anything other than
just playing guitars
started in the early
‘70s. I grew up in
Jackson, Mississippi
and like many kids at
that time, I received a
modest starter guitar
for Christmas… an
early ‘60s Epiphone
Coronet, as I recall. I
played at home and
with my pals now and
then and the guitar
would go back under
-continued-
14
guitars
the bed for a while. My interest was rekindled when artists
like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page emerged in
the late ‘60s. I was a Led Zeppelin fan and in addition to having seen them in concert, I particularly remember seeing an
album cover photo of Jimmy Page with his sunburst Les
Paul. That guitar definitely struck me. Les Pauls had been reintroduced a year or so before, but not as a sunburst. As I
learned more about the history of these guitars I became even
more intrigued. Old sun burst Les Pauls from the ‘50s were
impossible to come by at that time and they would have been
expensive… as much as a new guitar. I did find a ‘52 goldtop
in Memphis though, and in short order I set about converting
it to a faded sunburst. I must have refinished that guitar four
or five times over the few years that I owned it. With each
refinish, I would learn something new. The only book available at that time was the Irving Sloane book on classic guitar
construction, which I studied. I continued to play over the
next few years and became more interested in pedal steel guitar than six string. Also, I would purchase vintage guitars
when I came across them. That was a time when you could
buy vintage Strats or Teles listed in the local want-ads. I
would just call the ads offering Fender guitars and ask if the
guitar had a big “F” on the neck plate, if not, I was off to buy
my next guitar. Some of them were basket cases, and I would
restore them and sell them to my friends. I did enough of this
kind of work that I decided to set up an extra room in my
house as a shop… nothing too serious, though. I never entertained any thoughts of a career. I was always the guy who
took the clock apart and got it back together most of the time.
My father was a tinkerer and could intuitively fix most anything, so I just thought that’s what guys did – fix things. So,
in addition to my musical interest, I cultivated an interest in
how things are made and how they work. I think most great
instrument builders develop a keen sense of how things
should look, sound, and feel from a player’s perspective.
Over time, I have seen instruments that were made by very
capable wood craftsmen that really would not appeal to musicians. Some of those fine details that make a great guitar can
escape even the best woodworkers. You have to see your
work through a musician’s eyes, so that’s what I have always
done. I’m not a frustrated musician or a frustrated woodworker… I’m a guitar builder.
In 1978, through a chance meeting, I ended up with a job
offer with The Old Time Picking Parlor in Nashville. The
OTPP was a well-known guitar shop and had a great reputation for acoustic construction and repair. Most of my experience was with electric instruments, so it was a good fit for
me. I could take all the electric business that walked in the
door and at the same time learn a lot about acoustic instruments. I think I actually started building my first guitar a few
months after arriving in Nashville. I slept on the floor in a
hallway of a friend’s apartment for the first few months, and
I was so excited about my new job that it didn’t even bother
me at all. I can still remember the smell of lacquer and rosewood when I first walked in the front door of the OTPP.
The OTPP experience was really an eye opener. Most of the
big questions I had about building guitars were answered
almost immediately. I had experience repairing and finishing
instruments, but that only went so far. How to carve necks,
cut fret slots, and imbed truss rods were questions that were
best answered with my experience at the OTPP. The great
thing about repairing guitars professionally is that you have
an opportunity to check out many different kinds of guitars
and understand how they are built. Most of my training has
been ‘on the job,’ but I have hired a few guys along the way
that were graduates of various luthier schools, and that can be
helpful. I don’t think any universities offer advanced degrees
for guitar builders and I would expect that most other
builders out there have arrived the same way I did…just diving in. You never can learn it all and just as you have a handle on one aspect of guitar building, something else pops up.
My job today is more about being a problem solver and
wearing many hats.
In about
1982, I
decided
to start
my own
shop. I
had a
two-car
garage at
my
house
that was
unused, so I loaded it up with the tools of the trade and I was
off. That was a great time. I remember being totally unaware
of time. Every day it was a short trip to the shop and many
nights I would not leave until I noticed that the TV had gone
off the air. By 1985, I had outgrown my home shop and was
able to rent an 800 square foot space in the downtown
Nashville area. Most of my efforts to this point were about
repairing and custom building,
but with the new shop, I was
looking for a way to develop a
product line and a manufacturing business. Shortly after moving to the new shop, a customer
brought in an old Silvertone single-cut guitar with a single pickup. Although I had worked on
vintage Danelectros for years,
for some reason I was intrigued
with this guitar. While the
Silvertone was in the shop, I
-continued-
15
guitars
blueprinted it and took all
the necessary measurements to reproduce it.
Over the few years that I
had built instruments, I
never had any desire to
build one for myself. This
Silvertone guitar was different…very simple, with
only the essentials… just
the kind of guitar I would
want for myself. I set
about building my copy of
this guitar and became
stumped when I came to
the bridge and the pickups. I could fabricate a simple bridge,
but for the pickups, I could only try to locate some originals.
When I did find an old set, they were expensive — $100.00
each as I recall. I could have purchased them, but why not
just make them? I knew how the pickups were constructed
and could wind my own, but the lipstick tubes would be the
problem. I looked everywhere for some kind of casing for the
coils and the closest thing I could find were cigar humidors,
and they were much too big. So my guitar project sat.
Fast forward to the fall of 1986. The same customer who
brought in the Silvertone now brought in an original
Danelectro Longhorn Bass 6. I had worked on a few of these
in the past, but given my recent fascination with the
Silvertone, I decided to also blueprint the Longhorn. At about
that time, the country group Highway 101 had just released
their new hit record with 6-string bass all over it. The guitar
player, Jack Daniels, had borrowed an original Bass 6 for the
recording session, but now needed one for the road. I had
built a few guitars for record producer Paul Worley over the
years, and he recommended that Jack talk to me about building a Bass 6 for him.
That’s when the lights
went on for me. Taking
the experience I had
gained with the previous
small production runs
and the resurgence of
the retro country sound,
the Bass 6 could be just
the instrument to get the
wheels rolling for a new
product line, but I still
had to solve the pickup problems. With at least one order in
hand, I set out once again looking for some type of pickup
casing. As luck would have it, while shopping at a local
Walgreen drug store I noticed a cosmetic product that
appeared to have a cap that was exactly the shape and size as
the original Danelectro pickup covers. I purchased a few of
these and they turned out to be an exact match. I thought I
was in business now, but the pickup proved to be more perplexing than I thought.
I had
most of
the material components
for the
pickups,
but as I
started to
dissect
them, it
Jerry Jones pickups
became
increasingly difficult to find a standard. I found two magnet
sizes, two wire types, and no two pickups that exhibited DC
measurements that you could call ‘average.’ They were all
over the map. I had always heard that the original factory
used a photo timer to turn the coil winders off…I think it was
2 1⁄2 minutes. Based on known motor speeds, that would give
me at least a ballpark figure for turns of wire. I did count the
turns of several original coils and it seemed to be 5K, plus a
small overrun. That was helpful, but there are other factors…wire type, tension, layering, etc. The bottom line here
is that the original pickups exhibit a narrow and lofty resonance peak that is lowered in frequency and output when the
metal tubes are installed. In effect, the metal tubes used for
the covers help attenuate the tone and output of the raw coil.
Another factor is the use of Alnico 6 magnets rather than the
standard Alnico 5. This is a difference that I discovered a few
years into production. One of the major magnet mills tested
one of the original magnets and it turned out to be Alnico 6. I
think the Alnico 6 is a big part of the sound, though I’m not
sure they would work for other types of guitars pickups. They
seem to be warmer, with plenty of strength. They require less
wire for good output, which can improve the signal-to-noise
levels. I’m not sure why original Danelectros use Alnico 6
magnets… maybe they were cheaper or maybe they were
government surplus, but they sure sound great.
TQR:
How are your guitars built in comparison to the old
Danelectro models, and what improvements have
you made?
As I said before, the old single-cutaway Silvertone in my
shop just captivated me and was the kind of guitar I would
build for myself. The original bodies are built with a pine or
poplar wood frame and a top and back of Masonite. The
necks were poplar wood with two fixed steel reinforcement
rods. These materials seemed inexpensive at first, but I would
later learn that they cost more than the materials for a Strat. I
believe the original Danelectro Company found most of their
-continued-
16
guitars
potential in low
priced instruments
that they sold to
Sears, and I have a
theory about the
evolution of these
materials for guitars.
The original
Danelectro was in
the amp business
when approached by
Sears to develop a
guitar line. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to see that an
amp company would have these common amp materials in
great abundance. Masonite for tube covers, vinyl for cabinet
covering and pine or poplar for amp cabinets.
1992. The next
leap came in 1994
when we jumped
from traditional
manufacturing to
the future with the
purchase of a CNC
manufacturing
machine. I can’t
say enough about
these machines and how much they have upped the quality
for all guitar makers. Tom Anderson was very instrumental in
bringing small instrument makers into the computer age. Not
only is our CNC super precision, it also frees our employees
to concentrate their skilled handwork in the right areas… let
the CNC do the grunt work.
With the initial order for a Longhorn Bass 6, things just
seemed to take off. I made six instruments in the first run and
they sold immediately. Some original Danelectro instruments
were in demand, rare
and pricey. The opportunity for me seemed
to be in providing
reproductions of desirable vintage instruments that felt and
played like a pro-level
instrument. As thinks
heated up, I realized
that I had both a challenge and an opportunity to pick up the ball
from the original
David Grissom
Danelectro Company
and run with it. That would mean an expanded product line as
well as improved quality and the initial success gave me the
freedom to pursue these goals.
In 2001, we decided to change
our instruments again with the
introduction of the “Neptune”
line. This allowed us to make
some needed improvements
and make our instruments distinctive. Leaving the strict vintage look to others, we made
the body shapes a bit more
angular…just slightly. Same
for the headstock. The necks
would now be clear coated
with a satin finish. The pickups
are now more calibrated with a
hotter bridge pickup. All
switches are 4-pole slider type with better pickup selections.
After having made our own bridges for years, we switched to
Fender-type bridges. To duplicate the tonal characteristics of
our original bridges, a nest is routed below each bridge and
the bridge is mounted suspended over the body with spacers.
The strings are now through the body and I think the tone is
actually a bit better now — a little tighter.
The big surprise for most players is that a great instrument
can be produced with unconventional materials if the attention to detail and the build is high quality. It might be a bit
like the “silk purse from a sow’s ear” adage, but in this case,
it works. I guess there will always be a few who “don’t get
it” and don’t understand what’s involved. Even with cutting
edge manufacturing, it’s still more difficult to reproduce a
vintage instrument than to just start out to make a modern
guitar. I guess if it were easy to reproduce the classics, we
would all be driving brand new ‘55 Chevys. To that end, our
first instruments were as faithful as possible. Even though we
met some small resistance, we continued to improve and
change the instruments over time.The most obvious improvements were the intonatable “Neptune” bridge and the addition
of an adjustable truss rod. That would have been around
TQR:
Can you describe some of the more interesting features among the baritone, bass and sitar models?
The Bass 6 was the first instrument we offered. These had
been used traditionally in country music as a “TicTac” bass.
The name “TicTac” refers to the sound of the bass when
played with a pick. A Bass 6 was used to overdub upright
bass lines and give the bass line a bit more presence and
attack. The Bass 6 is a 30" scale instrument that is tuned like
a four string bass with an added high B and E…just like a
guitar but one octave down. A 30" scale is just about the limit
on the short side of what can still be tuned as low as a long
scale bass (34"). The harmonic structure of the low E string
on the Bass 6 can get a bit weird at this short scale. The idea
-continued-
17
guitars
for the baritone (28" scale tuned
A~A or B~B) was to overcome
some of these problems. I had the
idea for the baritone some time in
the ‘80s when I first heard
Andreas Vollenweider play harp.
I thought it would be great to
emulate the harp by putting a
string bender on a tuned down
guitar. I never did make a baritone with a B-Bender, but I did
have a chance to at least make
the “tuned down guitar.” By
shortening the 30" scale of the Bass 6 to 28", the instrument
became easier to chord down by the nut. Got rid of that problem low E, moved all the strings up a notch and added two
unwound strings on the treble side. This made the instrument
much more playable as a guitar…much easier to chord and to
bend strings.
I think we have offered the sitar
model since the early ‘90 s and it
has proven to be our best selling
model over time. The sitar is
loaded up with plenty of parts,
and since we were already making all our own hardware, it
seemed like an obvious addition
to the line. The familiar sitar
sound is achieved with a slightly
rounded bridge saddle that sends
the string into oscillation when
struck. The 13 sympathetic
strings can mostly effectively be
used to play accompaniment. We
tune them to a Dm7Sus scale, but
any scale can be used. Most people believe that the sympathetic
strings provide the droning sound
on an Indian sitar. If you look at
how a real sitar is tuned (C or
C#) you will notice that it is
tuned with 1’s and 5’s with a 4th as the main play string. If
you drop the low E on our sitar to D, you effectively have a
sitar tuning on the lower 4 strings. Think of the lower D, A,
and D as the drone strings and the G string as the main play
string and the high B and E as additional play strings.
The Copperburst
Contrary to all those casual visits to Midtown Music (RIP)
when we walked in the door not really looking for a new guitar and left with one anyway, we really were trolling for a
Jerry Jones on eBay when we found the Copperburst. We’d
been poking around on eBay and Gbase for awhile, with a
few of the later ‘Neptune’ models appearing, along with a JJ
Sitar or two, a doubleneck 6-string/baritone, and a late ‘90s
‘JJ Original’ in Turquoiseburst, but the brilliant white and
aqua-green vibe of that guitar tilted just a little too far into a
booth in a Juarez taco stand for our taste, not that we have
anything against turquoise, Juarez, or taco stands… Hell, we
still own some turquoise jewelry from the ‘70s, acquired during a brief Fogelberg infatuation, and we love the fish tacos
in Huntington Beach, and right here in Decatur at Taqueria
del Sol or El Tesoro. Just so you know…
The Copperburst appeared soon
enough on an eBay auction from a
seller in Austin, Texas who was
apparently unloading quite a few
instruments on eBay from the collection of Kiefer Sutherland. We
didn’t care one wit about such
celebrity provenance, but we did
wonder why a collector flush with
that kind of cheese would bother
selling off any guitars at all? Well,
you can only play ‘em one at a time.
Regardless of who owned it, the
Copperburst was clearly a magnificent work of art unlike any other
guitar we had ever seen, and we
knew first-hand that it would sound,
play and feel infinitely superior to
any of the original Danelectros that
inspired it. Of course, this fact had
not escaped the seller either, and he had tagged it with a Buy It
Now price of $1100 – $300-$400 over what you would normally expect to pay for a used Neptune, and about $200 under
what this guitar would have cost new. Still, the copperburst
was in dead mint condition from a very significant era in the JJ
lineage, even more rare and stunning in the copperburst finish,
and we knew we could knock off another $88 cash back refund
through bing.com, and shipping was free. Done, and when it
arrived, we were not disappointed.
The Copperburst features two of Jerry Jones’ incomparable
lipstick single coils, medium jumbo frets on a rich, toffeecolored (Madagascar?) rosewood fretboard, a chunky yet
comfy ‘C’ shaped 25" scale, 21 fret bolt-on neck with truss
rod adjustment at the heel, and flawlessly functional,
Waverly-style open back nickel tuners. The chambered
masonite and wood body produces an exceptionally lively
and resonant instrument weighing just 6.75 pounds. You also
need to know that these guitars leave Nashville with superior
fret work comparable to the finest custom-made guitars, nuts
that don’t bind the strings when tuning, and fully intonatable
6-saddle steel bridges. Bridge height is also fully adjustable
-continued-
18
amps
via two adjustment screws
at each end of the bridge
plate.
The two-pickup models are
wired with single volume
and tone controls and a
stout 3-way toggle switch
that yields the neck or
bridge pickup alone, or
both pickups in series, for a
very bold sound that
trumps the volume obtained
from either pickup alone.
Even with the JJ’s zero
headstock pitch and comparatively low angle at which the strings break over the saddles, the big frets make string bending a breeze with no slop
or slippage at the notched saddles. As you might guess, all
the JJ guitars also excel when tuned to open tunings like G,
D, A, E or C, and they are phenomenal sliders… But please
don’t assume that like many original, cheap-o Silvertone or
Harmony guitars, the JJs can’t cut it played as a standard 6string for anything but droning Delta blues. They rule played
in standard tuning, and while the pickups are a little weaker
then typical Strats and Teles,
their ‘weakness’ is a major
strength in this guitar, rendering crystalline clarity, punch
and a unique vocal character
that is indeed unlike any
other guitar you will ever
play. Want more power and
volume? Just turn up your
amp. The clarity of the lipsticks simply enhances the
overdriven tones available
from your amp or effects.
With the right amp, deftly
controlling the intensity of
the cascading, shimmering
harmonic overtones with your
fingertips introduces a mesmerizing effect created solely
by pick attack. Case in point
– the Copperburst played
through the ‘59 Champ with
additional goose bumps provided by Lee Jackson’s Mr
Springgy reverb pedal is
nothing less than absolute
magic.
Mark Johnson’s 3-pickup Neptunes offer an entirely different
tonal palette with a 5-way Strat-style switch that does not
deliver the same volume and vibe as the series setting on the
Copperburst, but you do get three additional tones… Which
setup is ‘better’? We like the two pickup sounds and Mark
seems to prefer the five tones you get with three pickups, and
the rest is up to you. One thing is certain – Jerry Jones’ guitars remain among the most satisfying, well-made and toneful
bargains on the planet. Get yours now. TQ
www.jerryjonesguitars.com, 615-255-0088
ToneQuest
Three Monkeys Orangutan
The amplifiers built
by 3 Monkeys seem
to have attracted a
lot of enthusiastic
attention, fueled in
part by the background of the “three
monkeys” behind the
name – Brad
Whitford, the guitar
player who has been
responsible for holding down the groove
in Aerosmith for
decades, his longtime tech, Greg Howard, who has also worked with Green
Day, Cry of Love (and the mighty Audley Freed), Jimmy
Page, and the Black Crowes among others, and Ossie Ahsen,
former founder and designer of Blockhead amps. This power
trio created 3 Monkeys in 2007 with the launch of the
Orangutan, which by now seems to have been reviewed in
print and web videos by just about everyone who does such
things. Well, except us… So as we admittedly embark on the
ass-end of the bleeding edge in the boutique amp world relative to the Orangutan, we pause to reflect on just how sophisticated marketing for high-end guitar amplifiers has become.
Or not. But first, let’s learn a little more about the genesis of
the Orangutan from one of the three monkeys, Ossie Ahsen:
TQR:
Speaking from the perspective of a designer first
with perhaps the experience of a player’s ear, what
inspired the design of the Orangutan? What did you
want to accomplish specifically that would distinguish this amp from others new and old in this
power and price range? Was the sound of the
Orangutan inspired in part by any other (vintage?)
amps we may know?
19
amps
The origins of the Orangutan
go back to when we (Greg,
Brad, and myself) first sat
down to talk about what an
amp should be. From the start
it was a different process from
what I was used to – more
about passion, and we did not
get technical at all. We just
waded through our thoughts,
talking about anything from
Humble Pie to Porsches. Out
of this came a sense of what
we wanted to accomplish, what
the amp should be, and more
importantly, how it should feel.
We talked about the tones we loved and the experiences we
had playing all kinds of gear. Greg was coming from what
one might call the school of vintage Americana, both sonically and from an aesthetic standpoint, while I was coming
from a purely British perspective. On our own we could
have butted heads all day on the merits of 6V6s versus El34s, but we didn’t. The reason why was Brad, who formed
the bridge between the two of us. Brad has his roots in both
of these places – he can play a blonde Twin or a Marshall
Super Lead and make both of us smile. This bridge allowed
us to form the amp with its roots in both of these places as
well. When it came time to actually design the circuit, we
had this synthesis between America and the UK set.
We started the design process by assembling a mass of vintage amplifiers – blackfaces, tweed and blonde Fenders,
Marshalls, Gibsons, Hiwatts, Vox, and Magnatones. The purpose of this collection was not for duplication or dissection,
but rather to keep ourselves immersed in the flavors we
appreciated, to give ourselves a baseline, and keep our ears
tuned to that sound. We would work on our amp and then go
off and play the old stuff to gain perspective on what we
were doing. I think this was the key process that influenced
the sound of the amp. What we were hearing in the vintage
area was bleeding over into what we were working on.
Repeating this process over and over led us to produce the
amplifier we envisioned. I think you could say that we were
designing by inspiration and not any fixed criteria that the
final product had to meet. We didn’t say it had to have this
feature or that feature… there was no specific amplifier we
were trying to copy… We just wanted the amp to have a vibe
that all of our favorites shared. When someone plugged into
the amp, we wanted them to hear little bits and pieces of all
these great amplifiers. They may not be able to put their finger on it, but they will say that it sounds pleasingly familiar.
TQR:
Most custom builders reference the overall design
and types of components used in the construction
of their amps… Class A, Class A/B push/pull, etc.,
and transformers, coupling caps, and resistors,
specifically. Can you summarize the unique circuit
design features of the Orangutan and notable component choices?
It seems that most companies these days use exotic parts as a
rule, but component choices for the Orangutan were made in
a more thoughtful way. We tried not to get caught up in the
parts hype, prejudging components, choosing the latest fads
in the world of resistors, capacitors, and pots. It’s a good
sales tool to use this part or that part, but I feel that how a
part is used is more important than who made it or when. You
can take a box of premium NOS parts and make a mess of it
just as easily as you can with the new production stuff. Now
this is not to say that the choices we made were not important
to the sound – I know for a fact that if you built our design
and used random parts, the amplifier’s sound will change.
There is a recipe, just not the expected one. We chose the
parts for durability, availability and sound. The fact that we
we not trying to copy a known circuit that required specific
components gave us the freedom to use whatever we knew
was best suited to the application without fear of reprisal.
When you create a new design, as opposed to a clone of a
known quantity, you have that advantage.
TQR:
Rotary tone switches seem to have become increas
ingly popular… Can you describe how each position was voiced and what you had in mind with
each setting in the Orangutan?
The rotary
switch came
into the
design as we
found a need
to match different guitars
to the amp,
as well as
Boost & Voice controls
give the user
different EQ points for fitting into the mix. The switch sets
the gain level and has a network of high and low pass filters
-continued-
20
amps
that produce 6 homogenous sounds that range from clean to
distorted; from neutral to thick to thin, while retaining the
inherent feel of the amp. For instance:
Position 1 (furthest counter clockwise) is the least distorted
neutral signal.
Position 2 offers a small bump in gain and low end from
position 1.
Position 3 adds further gain and a low mid bump over position 2.
Position 4 reduces low mid and increases midrange over
position 3.
Position 5 increases high mids over position 4
Position 6 increases high treble over position 5
TQR:
How does the pull/boost feature work, specifically?
Is it routing the signal out of the tone stack?
The pull boost feature is quite simple – it changes out one
value in the tonestack that lessens the insertion loss of the
circuit. It has the effect of increasing the apparent gain, as
well as midrange. The treble control continues to function
fully and the bass control to a lesser extent.
TQR:
We’re guessing that the cabinet is made by Mojo…
Is it pine or birch ply, and what type of material is
used for the baffle board?
The cabinets are currently made here at our shop, although
we recently outsourced a run of head shells. The head boxes
are made of Baltic birch, the 2x12s and combos are made
from a maple-poplar shell with a baltic birch baffle.
TQR:
Our review amp is equipped with a Warehouse
Veteran 30 – is this the stock speaker for this model
or do you offer a range of optional speakers?
We have our own 3
Monkeys branded
speakers now based
on the WGS
Veteran 30, and this
is currently the
stock speaker for
the combo. We do
offer a range of
other speakers as
well, mostly from
Celestion, including
the Heritage V-30 and G-12H 70th Anniversary. We found
the Veteran 30 to be a good match with the amp. We also
offer custom covering in tolex and ultra suede as well as a
complement of grille cloths to match.
ToneQuest
Orangutan Review
We did our
homework
before
actually
getting our
hands on
the
Orangutan,
and we
found most
of the various
Internet
video demos on the web to be characteristically uncompelling
in helping anyone make a truly informed buying decision.
Too many tired licks (can anyone play a song?), poor sound
further compressed for web streaming, and blindfolded you’d
be challenged to distinguish the Orangutan from a dozen
other amps. Really. In all fairness, the Youtube clips we’re
referring to were largely produced by members of the guitar
media and not the three monkeys themselves… So while we
realize that sound and video clips have become a requisite
part of the online browsing jacky-jack, we’ll tell you what we
tell people who write asking why we don’t post video or MP3
clips of the gear we review… Because the tiny little sound
you’re hearing online being made by someone other than you
cannot remotely approximate the actual experience of you
yourself playing your guitar through an amp in a room or,
god forbid… with a band. It just and simply can’t, nor can
any subtle tone-enhancing features fully emerge in a compressed sound file played through your desktop speakers. The
truth is, sound and video clips can just as easily steer you
away from an amp that might otherwise fill an essential niche
in your stash for reasons as simple as you not liking what
was played in the demo, the sound of the guitar used, the way
the controls on the amp were set, the sound of the room,
recording quality, or the style in which the amp was humped
in the reviewer’s narrative. No, sound and video clips have
largely become the cyber- sucker that satisfies our craving
for immediate gratification, but we happily suck on such
pacifiers in a vacuum.
Of course, sound isn’t the only thing that sells amps, and the
three monkeys get this. No one wants to play through a
fuggedly-looking amp (unless it cost $75,000), and ‘cool’ rules
when it comes to the stuff guitar players play… The Orangutan
1x12 combo is a visual work of artsy post-war Americana with
its ‘50s-era angles, turquoise tolex, whipped cream grill and
crushed sparkle panels. Yum! I’ll have a cheeseburger and that
cheerleader over there smothered in Stilton crumbles with
-continued-
21
amps
cream gravy on
the side.
Wouldn’t the
Orangutan look
luscious with a
White Falcon, a
sparkling burgundy
Jizzmaster,
Farfisa organ, or
a bronzed stripper from
Pensacola? Eye
candy, yes…
The 3 Monkeys
head and cabinet
rigs are equally
posh with no squared angles, somewhat reminiscent of the
original Rickenbacker stacks. You won’t mistake a 3 Monkeys
rig for anything else, and that’s the name of the game in amp
design. Give them an A+. But what about the intention of the
Orangutan? What does it want you to be?
knob) was very chimey with big jangly harmonics, but super
bright, with very little if any mids or bass. Kinda like John
Lennon’s vocal track on “Strawberry Fields.” Position #2 was
similar to #1 with a tad more volume and presence. For us,
#3 was the honey hole – the mids and volume jumped into a
fuller, richer, thicker tone with plenty of jangle remaining on
the top (a direct quote from our notes), #4 was very good –
slightly scooped in the mids with no decrease in volume, and
#5 and #6 dumped mids with more prominent treble presence. Beatles again… “Paperback Writer.” Play that at your
next guitar show instead of “Coldshot” and you might get
some respect.
Tone
Noverb
Now there’s a word that gets thrown around a lot these days.
We didn’t invent the word ‘tone’, but we know it when we
hear it (and it ain’t contingent upon you greasing the reviewer). To be honest, we weren’t immediately sure what to think
about the intention of the Orangutan, which pretty much lines
up with the designers’ comment that they weren’t chasing a
particularly familiar or ‘vintage’ sound, nor were they conjuring a clone of anything. So, we struggled with the Orangutan
at first. This happens sometimes when you are hell-bent on
writing a revealing and informative review rather than just
squeezing off another formulaic soy ink turd on deadline
accompanied by a stupid rating, and besides… how are we
supposed to tell you what an amp sounds like without referencing something you may have actually heard?
The reverb on the Orangutan seemed almost like an apologetic afterthought. The short-pan Accutronics was screwed
down to the floor of the cabinet without a vinyl bag (OK,
what do we know, maybe they were never necessary), and
one deft video reviewer (Lance Keltner) described the reverb
sound as “very unique sounding in that it really doesn’t have
a lot of a spring or boingy sound – almost like a really good
studio reverb that kind of ducks back behind what you’re
playing in the background and is only apparent between
phrases.” Translation: You might could hear it for a second,
but only when you stop playing. All we can say is, if you
can’t really hear it, why not just leave it off and give us a
midrange control instead, maybe. We didn’t dig the no-verb
reverb, but we did end up digging the amp.
The Orangutan’s layout is simple enough – four 6V6 power,
a single input, Volume, Treble, Bass (with pull boost), six
position rotary Voice control, and Room (reverb). Of the six
Good Intentions
voices available from the rotary switch, we only really liked
a couple for steady and constant use – those with some junk
in the trunk. The #1 position (far right facing the front of the
Pull On It Here
The pull-boost (curiously on the bass EQ pot) gasses gain and
distortion throughout all six settings on the rotary switch, and
surprise… we liked the sound best in the #3 position. We also
often found it necessary to roll off some treble on our single
coil guitars when using the boost circuit. As on-board boost
circuits go, this one is pretty good, but not exactly ‘plug &
play.’ You need to shape your tone for the best results.
Once we began to grasp the true intention of the Orangutan,
we started to get ‘it.’ We had decided pretty quick that it was-
n’t no blues amp, and as soon as we got our mind right on the
fact that the Orangutan wasn’t gonna spew huge steaming
-continued-
22
effects
gobs of low end and low mids, we backed off, cast aside our
initial impressions and began to simultaneously experiment
with those six rotary positions and the bass and treble EQ,
often dropping the treble well below where we are accustomed to set most amps and/or goosing the bass – backfilling
the fuller midrange frequencies where the guitar truly lives,
while knocking down some of that toppy top-end. We’ve got
nothing against trebly 6V6 compression or the classic rhythmic tones lurking within sides from Wayne Fontana and the
Mindbenders, but we don’t want to live there exclusively…
This is the challenge in really getting your mind around an
amp. In one cat’s hands, a vintage AC30 sounds strangled
and one-dimensional, then you hear what Kid Ramos or
Daniel Lanois does with one of them and you view the potential of that amp very differently. So as we explored a broader
range of EQ settings on the Orangutan, we discovered what
we considered to be more useful tones that, if we must resort
to comparisons, hover somewhere between an AC30 and a 20
watt Marshall without the sonic patina of an original.
Definitely more ‘British’ than ‘American.’ The Orangutan
was intended, in our opinion, to be played with the jangly,
chimey edginess that oozes from its very core. From there,
it’s up to you to dial in a subtle balance that emphasizes the
specific tone notches lurking within the tone controls and the
pre-set Voice control to taste, tailored to the specific guitar,
pickups and the vibe you’re seeking. Of course, there is plenty of gain and sustain available from the boost circuit, but
you don’t want to go there in some of the brighter Voice settings we’ve described without knocking down treble or filling
in the mids. We also found the Orangutan to be slightly more
single-coil friendly as long as you manage treble from the
guitar or the amp. Humbuckers seemed a little flat, as they
often do played through a Vox. Come to think of it, how
often have you ever seen a humbucking guitar played through
a Vox? A little more transparent reverb would have helped
add some air and lift to the narrower sound of our Les Paul
played through the Orangutan.
In terms of power and volume, this 1x12 rig is rated at 30W36W, and we would compare it to a strong blackface Deluxe
or brown Vibrolux in terms of perceived power and volume.
With its single speaker, the Orangutan doesn’t develop the
full impact of an AC30, for example, and the threshold for
clean headroom is moderate. You could certainly use this
amp in small to medium-sized club settings, but consider the
head & cab version for larger venues. The Orangutan 1x12
combo impressed us as a very stylish race car of an amp – a
little temperamental under practical conditions, requiring a
bit of tweaking for maximum versatility, but uniquely capable nonetheless.TQ
www.3monkeysamps.com , 219-696-6755
ToneQuest
Z. Vex Mastotron Fuzz
Imagine,
if you
will, sitting
down on
a bright
and cold
winter’s
day with
your guitar and
amp du jour, comfy-cozy in worn denim and flannel, a
steaming cup of dark San Francisco roast Sumatran within
easy reach, and outside your window the world is dusted in
powdered-sugar snow as you wistfully think of hot Krispy
Kreme donuts coming down the line just minutes away on
Ponce de Leon Avenue. While ‘snow days’ in the deep South
mean snogging with a rented DVD for many Atlantans,
today is a work day – deadlines loom, which is why your
foot is poised above a Z.Vex Mastotron silicon fuzz. The red
jewel light on the brown Vibrolux cheerily glows in anticipation, the goldtop in your lap has been prepared with exquisite care for its intended purpose, and with a quick sip of the
Sumatran you step on the Z.Vex, strike an A minor-ish chord
with open A left free to drone, push the guitar into a steady,
pulsing, quaking, rhythmic throb, and as you close your eyes
and move through the spontaneous melodic combustion firing in your brain, the 10x20 room in the snow-covered bungalow is transformed into the hall of the mountain king,
reeking of gooseberry, cloves and akevitt. Suddenly, soft
denim turns to an adder skin codpiece as knee-high jack boots
swallow your woolen socks…
your thick mane of chestnut hair
spills over a wolf pelt vest and a
silver amulet hangs from your
neck in the image of mighty
Odin… the coffee you were drinking is now a pewter goblet of
Juleøl, and a red-headed Russian
Roky Erickson
drummer named Yegor is pound-
23
instruction
ing the living shit out of an old Slingerland double kick set
with a putrid Belomorkanal dangling from his purple lips,
smoke curling to the soaring ceiling of a stone banquet hall
where it coalesces to form the living image of Roky
Erickson singing “Cold Night for Alligators” with Billy
Gibbons playing a Vox tear drop 6-string bass through double SVTs, nodding to the beat with a two peso smile
cloaked beneath a grey KGB Fedora and not-so-cheap sunglasses. When you finally manage to shake off the
Mastotron, safe again in the cozy warmth of the bungalow,
you stare deeply into the fire for answers, and the voice of
an angel whispers from the hearth, “It’s alright, baby. Let
me fix you some chicken and waffles.”
Z. Vex Mastotron… Legal trippin’ with none of the aftereffects. $149.00. We dare you. TQ
www.zvex.com
ToneQuest
Workin’ Out with Kal David
the Blues Guitar Master Class Series
Among all the different musical
styles played on
the guitar, the
blues may be the
most challenging
when you really
want to standout
from the crowd.
What hasn’t been
played? Sure, we
can think of a few
living players
whose tone, technique and phrasing are unmistakably theirs alone…
Clapton, Buddy
Guy, Ronnie Earl, Jeff Beck (when he chooses to go that
way), Junior Watson, Kid (David) Ramos, and undoubtedly…
Kal David.
Kal’s musical career began in Chicago, where he was
signed at a young age to Vee-Jay Records and formed a
duet, The Rovin’ Kind, with guitarist Paul Cotton. Kal and
Cotton soon created a new band in Los Angeles, Illinois
Speed Press, recording two albums for Columbia Records.
When Cotton joined Poco, Kal moved to Woodstock, New
York where he formed the Fabulous Rhinestones with former Electric Flag bassist Harvey Brooks and Buckingham’s
keyboardist Marty Grebb. The band recorded three critically acclaimed albums before Kal found himself back in L.A.
where he became the musical director for the weekly ProJam at Hollywood’s China Club, which frequently attracted
a who’s who of exceptional artists, including Stevie Wonder,
Larry Carlton, Brian Wilson, Stephen Stills and Joe Walsh.
Kal and his partner, singer Lauri Bono, moved to Palm
Springs in the early ‘90s, forming a new band, Kal David
and the Real Deal, and in 1998 they opened the Blue Guitar
blues club in downtown Palm Springs. We first met Kal and
Lauri in Palm Springs at the Blue Guitar. Playing his vintage
‘63 Firebird V and accompanied by an extraordinarily talented band, Kal and Lauri put on a show we would never forget,
and as we drove back to L.A. that night, we were energized
by having met and discovered a ‘new’ guitarist with such
incredible phrasing, taste and truly signature tone. If you
play the blues, you deserve to discover Kal, and now you
can, like never before.
The Blues Guitar Master Class Series is unlike most instructional programs in that Kal has carefully developed scalebased exercises that will not only help you become a better
and more nimble guitar player, but also dramatically improving your grasp of the instrument on every level. We’re oversimplifying things a bit, because the complete video and
printable lesson plan spans ten different sections covering a
vast array of scales and exercises, chord forms and chord
exercises, reading Nashville charts, Vibrato techniques, picking techniques (very underrated), tone, attack, dynamics, and
assignments involving complete songs that enable you to
fully appreciate and measure your progress. There is work
involved, and some of the exercises may force you to break
some long-standing bad habits, but in the end, you’ll be a
better player, and happier for it. We asked Kal to explain why
he decided to develop his course and what he wished to
accomplish:
TQR:
Had you ever given lessons in the past and were
you self-taught, Kal?
I have been approached by a lot of up and coming guys about
giving them instruction, but I was just never interested. I
would do it now for people that had taken my course who are
dedicated and sincere. I’m pretty much self taught, and whenever I heard something I wanted to play I’d find someone
that could show me how to play it and imitate them. Early
on, I’d just get the record and learn from that it, so I’m basically self-taught, like a lot of people. I can read the heck out
of a chord chart and I can read music, and I get called for
recording sessions both as a guitarist and a singer. I don’t
read as fast as most of the guys that do it all the time, but I’m
fortunate to be associated with a couple of jingle houses as
the ‘blues guy,’ so that’s what I’m usually called to do.
-continued-
24
instruction
TQR:
When and how did the idea for the course emerge?
A friend of
mine suggested
that I teach
some classes
and maybe
make a video. I
thought about it
and my wife
and partner,
Lauri Bono
encouraged me
to do it, so I put
together this
course based on
exercises I had created out of necessity. I was living in
Woodstock, New York and there was a guy there named
David Sanborn who used to hang out and jam with us a lot,
and I consider David to be one of the greatest improvisational
blues players in the world. Even though he’s known as a
jazzer, everything he plays is really rooted in the blues. So
one day I asked him what I should practice, and he said it
was very simple – that he practiced pentatonic scales. So I sat
down and practiced pentatonic scales like a madman for
about a year, and my solos really didn’t improve – not one
bit. My dexterity improved a little because I was practicing a
lot, but that was it. I realized that I needed more than just
scales, and I devised this system of exercises based on the
scale using four notes at a time, where I would play the first
four notes, and then starting with the second note I just
played, play the next four notes, and so on. I worked on that
for awhile and I noticed that it was impacting my playing
tremendously, and I really got into it. Once I started doing
this, muscle memory quickly took over… You play the exercise enough and your fingers start to remember where they
are falling on the fret board. Anywhere I would put my hand
on the guitar there was something there to play. There are
five positions on
the neck
for every
pentatonic
scale and
every
major
scale, so
you can’t
fail…
anywhere
you put
your hand
– up one
fret or
down there is a scale you can go to and you really can’t play
a wrong note. When I’m playing solos now, I don’t even
think about where I’m playing – I’m just thinking about what
kind of phrase I want to play. I like to think of an expression
I’ve heard… “repetition is the mother of skill.” What that
means to me is that when you do something over and over
enough times, it becomes automatic. When I don’t play for a
few weeks I may get a little rusty, because there is no amount
of practice that can take the place of playing gigs, but once I
start playing those pentatonic exercises, I know I can right
get back to where I left off.
TQR:
We were having a conversation with a friend who
was quite thrilled with the idea that he was being
taught the entire fingerboard and that his ability to
‘see’ every note on the fingerboard would enable
him to dramatically expand his grasp of the music.
I think the problem with having to think about something
you’re playing is that you have to think about it. I would
rather not think about how something is being played… I’m
at the point where I’m just trying to create beautiful solos.
I’m not really thinking about which finger I’m using… it’s a
matter of trying to not think about it. Trying to clear my
mind completely… I’m not thinking about anything. Lauri
says, “He’s gone. He’s in that place. He’s playing a solo now
and he’s completely gone.” I’m not thinking – it’s pure playing, and these exercises I believe lead to that. Your hands
remember what you have to do, and that’s the point we want
to get to.
TQR:
So you’re removing any physical barriers to will
your fingers to do what you’re hearing in your
mind… You’ve been playing guitar in this way
most of your life because you have that gift. You
have the gift of being able to hear music that you
can play, and that people enjoy hearing over and
over again. That’s where we aren’t all on the same
page, perhaps.
-continuedTONEQUEST REPORT V11. N3. Jan/Feb 2010
25
instruction
That’s a good way to put it. Everybody hears something filtered through their own musical taste. I listen to some things
that resonate with millions of people and I think, “What are
they hearing in this?” There’s no explaining it. People ask me
how I get my tone. Well, my tone is in my heart and in my
brain before I ever pick up an instrument. I know what tone
I’m going for, and whatever guitar I’m playing, I’m trying to
make that guitar sound like the tone I’m hearing in my head.
I have come up with what I think is the tone that I like, and it
is filtered through my personal taste, influenced by every guitarist I have ever really listened to. For example, some players have a fast vibrato, like Michael Bloomfield, who had a
hyper personality. Clapton has a slower vibrato… I have a
slower vibrato. But it’s a matter of personal taste – how you
wiggle it (laughing. It depends on what you like to hear –
which pickup do you like to play on? I like to play on the
neck pickup a lot. All of this defines your tone.
TQR:
That’s true. I had a student in a class who had never used his
pinkie and I told him that I would be watching him to see if
he tried to cheat. I busted his chops a bunch of times… He
would try to play what we were playing without using his
fourth finger and I told him he was limiting himself so much.
By the time we finished he was using all four fingers and his
playing improved dramatically. When I first heard Clapton
play at the Bottom Line in New York in the ‘60s, he wasn’t
really using his pinkie. He was using a wah-wah pedal which
I went out and bought at Manny’s the very next day, but he
wasn’t using his fourth finger. He is now, and he’s come a
long way as a player over the years, strange as that may
sound.
TQR:
You also talk about picking or ‘right hand’ technique in the course. It seems that picking technique
can hang someone up as much as the fingerboard…
When I’m teaching a class I always insist that people pick
properly. In other words, when it’s an up beat you pick up,
and when it’s a down beat you pick down. Now, that’s not
always the rule when you’re actually playing, but it’s a really
good rule to practice with. Using all four of your fingers,
including
the pinkie,
(and I know
a lot of
players
don’t use it
at all, but
you’ve got
to), the
right hand
picking has
got to be
done the
right way,
otherwise
you’ll
screw up in
one measure playing
these exercises. The one thing that addresses these techniques
is the warm-up exercise in the video. It stymies people
because you can’t play it with just three fingers, and you
have to play it correctly with up and down strokes. That is
the basis of the entire course – four notes played with all four
fingers using up and down strokes.
TQR:
some bad habits.
Which, even for experienced players, can address
Your warm up exercise starts off going up the fingerboard. It seems to me personally to be much
more difficult going down the fingerboard on solos.
In fact, it’s infinitely harder…
Well, probably the first time you play the warm up exercise,
you aren’t going to be able to play the whole thing. It’s simple, but the hard thing is to pick properly with down beats
and down strokes and upbeats and upstrokes.
TQR:
So the first class is typically a train wreck, then
everyone goes home, practices for a week and…
They do much better in a week or two. Results happen pretty
quickly depending on the time spent practicing. You can
make great strides practicing thirty minutes to an hour a day,
and it’s a very fulfilling thing. When you begin seeing an
improvement, you actually want to practice, and the feedback
from people who have been practicing with the DVD has
been very positive.
TQR:
And do you also make an honest attempt to reveal
any subtle tricks?
Yes, although I really don’t like to teach licks. How do you
teach licks? By knowing the scales they are derived from. I
also discuss dynamics. The three major elements of music
are, of course, melody, harmony and dynamics. Changing
dynamics is very expressive and really brings the listener in,
and I really stress thinking dynamically… You cue the band
to drop it down, and that gives the audience a chance to go,
“Wooo” (laughing). And then when the band comes back in
strong again after playing at a whisper, it’s almost like a
trick… You’ll always get applause.
TQR:
Tension and release.
Yeah, you just can’t play all the notes at the same volume.
-continued-
26
instruction
That’s my bitch with drum machines. You can’t get nuance
out of a mechanical device. I over-emphasize dynamics, and
you really can’t over do it.
TQR:
You also talk about your favorite chords…
Yes, fournote
chords
that I use
all the
time, and
it sounds
as if four
note
chords
won’t be
full, but
they are.
I often
stick
chords into the middle of a solo because it needs it. There
are things in the course that reveal that, and I do talk about
how I play with the pick and the third, fourth and pinkie
finger of my right hand. It’s something that’s been called
the ‘claw’ style that was first done by Jerry Reed, and you
can actually make it sound as if there are two guitars playing. So I demo that, as well as different things I do with my
guitar and amp to get my tone.
TQR:
And the best way to get the DVD is to order it from
your web site, as well as your excellent CDs and
digital downloads, which we recommend…
Yes, and it includes a downloadable 32-page workbook in a
PDF, and we update it on an ongoing basis based on feedback we get from our students. It’s only 33 pages, but it’s
all the stuff you need to become more fluid, fast and confident on stage. I don’t really feel that speed is so important,
but it’s the one thing around the world that I am always
asked about. How can I get faster? There’s nothing wrong
with playing fast, but I really feel that the space between
the notes is as important as the notes themselves. I like to
play like a sax player. I play something and then I take a
breath. I think the listener needs to take that breath with
you, and explaining how I feel about these things… playing
a little softer sometimes, louder at others, and taking a
breath is really the most effective way to make an impression on your audience.TQ
www.kaldavid.com
TQClarksdale
It’s back! We
are now
resuming limited production of our
meticulous
recreation of
the original
1959
DeArmond
R15 1x12
amp. You may
recall that we
initially produced a limited number of TQ Clarksdale amps in
2006, before our supplier for the original chassis informed us
that small runs would no longer be possible. We’ve found a
new supplier, and the TQ Clarksdale ‘DeArmonds’ will be
built again by Jeff Bakos with our original specs – pine cabinet construction and design identical to the original, original
Mercury Magnetics Tone Clone transformer set cloned from
our original ‘59 DeArmond, hand-wired chassis, premium
components
including
Sozo caps,
Celestion
G12H 70th
Anniversary
speaker,
premium JJ
and Tung-Sol tubes, Evidence Audio speaker cable, custom
gold grill cloth and blonde tolex covering. This 22 watt
design represents one of the rarest and most toneful combos
ever built. The original 1959 DeArmond 1x12s were built for
just one year in Toledo, OH, and a clean example recently
sold on eBay for $7,000. In 2006 Jeff Bakos meticulously
blueprinted our original DeArmond, Mojo created CAD
drawings for the original cabinet design, and we sent the
transformers to Mercury Magnetics to be cloned. The result is
a phenomenal 1x12 that will generally kick any tweed
Deluxe straight to the curb with a bigger, bolder voice and
lush, musical distortion cranked. The 4-input, cathode-biased
Clarksdale can be operated with dual 6V6s and 5Y3 rectifier
for optimum burn, or a pair of 6L6s and a 5AR4 for slightly
more power and clean headroom. Blonde tolex only, simply
because it’s the coolest...
To order, please call 1-877-MAX-TONE or place
your order and deposit at www.tonequest.com
Price: $2300 with 50% deposit, FedEx Ground shipping not included. Because each amp is custom-built
for each owner, please allow 120 days for delivery.
27
www.tonequest.com
the
est
ToneQu
Report
PO Box 717 Decatur, GA. 30031-0717
PERIODICAL
POSTAGE
PAID AT
DECATUR,GA
AND ADDITIONAL
MAILING OFFICES
TM
ToneQuest
est
ToneQu
Report
TM
Editor/Publisher David Wilson
Associate Publisher Liz Medley
Graphic Design Rick Johnson
EDITORIAL BOARD
Analogman
Greg Germino
Germino Amplification
Tom Anderson
Tom Anderson GuitarWorks
Billy F. Gibbons
ZZ Top
Mark Baier
Victoria Amplifiers
Joe Glaser
Glaser Instruments
Jeff Bakos
Bakos AmpWorks
Tom Guerra
Mambo Sons
Dick Boak
CF Martin & Co.
John Harrison
A Brown Soun
Joe Bonamassa
Phil Brown
Dan Butler
Butler Custom Sound
Don Butler
The Toneman
Steve Carr
Carr Amplifiers
Pyramid Strings
Now in Stock
We've just received a new shipment of
Pyramid .010-.046, .010-.048 and .010.052 roundwound nickel classics! Stock
up now. The .010-.052 set is one of our
favorites, and includes a plain .017 G
string, so skinny top same as the regular
set of .010-.048s, but with a bigger bottom. Addictive. To order, CALL 1-877MAX-TONE or visit
www.tonequest.com
Mitch Colby
KORG/Marshall/VOX USA
Johnny Hiland
Gregg Hopkins
Vintage Amp Restoration
Mark Johnson
Delta Moon
Phil Jones
Gruhn Guitars
GHS Strings
Mark Karan
Robert Keeley
Robert Keeley Electronics
Larry Cragg
Neil Young
Gordon Kennedy
Jol Dantzig
Ernest King
Hamer Guitars
Gibson Custom Shop
Ronnie Earl
Dan Erlewine
Stewart-MacDonald
Larry Fishman
Fishman Transducers
Bill Finnegan
Klon Centaur
Lindy Fralin
Peter Frampton
Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitar Amplifers
René Martinez
The Guitar Whiz
Greg Martin
The Kentucky Headhunters
Richard McDonald
VP Mktg, Fender Musical Instruments
Justin Norvell
Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitars
Dave Noss
Avatar Speakers
James Pennebaker
Riverhorse
Tommy Shannon
Double Trouble
K&M Analog Designs
Bob Weir & Ratdog
Ben Cole
Jimbo Mathus
Shane Nicholas
Chris Kinman
Kinman AVn Pickups
Mike Kropotkin
KCA NOS Tubes
Sonny Landreth
Albert Lee
Adrian Legg
Todd Sharp
Nashville Amp Service
Tim Shaw
Fender Musical Instruments Corp.
John Sprung
American Guitar Center
Peter Stroud
The Sheryl Crow Band
Laurence Wexer
Laurence Wexer Limited
Fine Fretted Instruments
Buddy Whittington
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Greg V
Nashville
Lou Vito
Artist Relations, PRS Guitars
Dave Malone
The Radiators
The ToneQuest Report TM (ISSN 1525-3392) is published monthly by Mountainview Publishing LLC, 235 Mountainview Street, Suite 23, Decatur, GA. 300302027, 1-877-MAX-TONE, email: [email protected]. Periodicals Postage Paid at Decatur, GA and At Additional Mailing Offices. Postmaster: Send address
changes to:The ToneQuest Report, PO Box 717, Decatur, GA. 30031-0717.The annual subscription fee for The ToneQuest Report TM is $89 per year for 12
monthly issues. International subscribers please add US $40. Please remit payment in U.S. funds only. VISA, MasterCard and American Express accepted.
The ToneQuest Report TM is published solely for the benefit of its subscribers. Copyright© 2010 by Mountainview Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part
of this newsletter may be reproduced in any form or incorporated into any information retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright holder. Please forward all subscription requests, comments, questions and other inquiries to the above address or contact the publisher at [email protected].
Opinions expressed in The ToneQuest Report are not necessarily those of this publication.Mention of specific products, services or technical advice does not
constitute an endorsement. Readers are advised to exercise extreme caution in handling electronic devices and musical instruments.
28

amps - The ToneQuest Report

Transcription

Similar documents

El Mirage - Tao Guitars

MICHAEL ANGELO BATIO

Downloadable Brochure - Kevin Michael by McPherson Guitars

Avenged Sevenfold

Biographies - Trollstilt

Christmas Sale - best in music education center

michael angelo batio

Rock Camp guitar auditions - MSU Community Music School

Read review - Rahbek Guitars

here - Dave Sharp