Rumor has it ...

[BeauV]

I keep imagining a 20' tall wall of Marshall Amps with all of us cowering in front of them - IT'S TOOOOO LOUDDDDDD!!!!!

Of course, they'd all be set on 11! YA!!

[kdh]

I'm reading "Light and Shade, Conversations with Jimmy Page." He describes electric guitars and Marshalls and distortion boxes being developed in the context of the London rock scene.

[BeauV]

I remember the first time I had amps loud enough to get my old P-bass to feedback and endlessly sustain a note. I could play it as if I was bowing the string. It was an amazing and wonderful experience. They were massive 18" JBL speakers in a set of boxes I made from plywood and 2X4 studs, giant Kustom amp heads covered in red metallic tuck-n-roll. You can see those heads and the Kustom speaker towers (12" speakers I think) on Glee sometimes in the background - makes me smile.

After that night my head and ears hurt for days. I guess there's a reason I don't hear well.... ah me....

[bob perry]

Keith:
You are rich. I think you should by a vintage Fender 6 string bass, the kind the Beachboys used. It's one octave above the standard bass.They are very cool axes. I don't think I have ever played one. Maybe once. It will add some definition to the mud of the other other basses

Beau:
I used an Ampeg SVT head, not sure we called it the "SVT" back then. It weighed about 50 lbs. and was 300 watts of pure tube power. It is still a very popular head. I had two cabinets each with 4-12" Altec Lansings.
Today I use an Eden 500 watt head with an Eden cabinet with 4-8" drivers.
My hearing is quite good today. Can't figure out why.

[kdh]

I used to play bass in our high school jazz band and this was the amp I used to use.



It was a great amp. The head flips around into the cabinet for transport.

Bob, isn't a guitar one octave above a bass, or is it two octaves? I am rich but I have a hard time spending money. Somehow the ability to have anything makes me want nothing.

I'm jealous of the gear you guys had. We could only afford Peaveys. My hearing also is surprisingly good, considering.

Beau, I remember those Kustom amps. With those I would have done a lot less damage to my mom's station wagon.

[kdh]

What do you guys know about steinberger headless basses? I always wanted one purely for the look.

[bob perry]

Keith:
The bass player in the BANDITS,my first band, had that exact same Ampeg. It was a very good amp. Clever design too.

I know that headles bass but it's way to silly looking for me. I like the look of a Fender. Don't care much for the look of the Warwicks but they sound so damn good I could use one no problem.

Not sure of that octave thing on the Fender 6 string but it sure does not sound like a true modern 6 string bass. It's kind of a hybrid sound. I think that the Beachboys would sometimes double the regular bass part with the Fender 6 string. It kind of added a percussive "click" to the sound.

Kind of think the upper, 2nd string, 2nd fret E of the regular bass is one octave below the low, open E string of the regular guitar so that would put the lower E string of the bass two octaves down.

[kdh]

Found another girl bass player for our band. D'arcy Wretsky.

[bob perry]

Oooooooooooo,,,,I like.

[cap10ed]

Tal Wilkenfeld. If she's good enough for Jeff Beck...



I'd like to be her bass.

Good post Ish. For years and years I wondered why guitars had their shape. That picture of the breast arrestor bass guitar answers everything.

[BeauV]

Keith, how do you tune that headless base, with a crescent wrench? That just looks weird. I'm sure there isn't any good reason not to tune from the bottom of the string vs the top, but it still feels.... weird.

I'm liking some of the suggestions for women to add to our All Badass Base All the time band.

Bob, I can't be certain, but I think the Beach Boys may have double amped the base. I'm probably just guessing here based on the sound of it. We did that in our band a lot. I'd take my big pile of giant speakers with the Kustom amp and set that to give that nice flat WHUMP noise that a P-bass makes when you play it - all lows and a very soft attack, like a bass drum with a pillow in it. Then, I'd take a Fender Twin Reverb and set it up like you would for a rhythm guitar, which make for a sound that is quite like a bass that's an octave higher. I built a "Y" connector so that the line from the P-bass when to the inputs of both amps and then it sounded like someone was doubling what I was playing. Which I guess the Kustom and the Fender were doing. It was really REALLY fun when I'd turn up the reverb on the Fender - crazy effects for a crazy era playing druggy music. Add a fuzz-tone and a tape-loop and you could do wild and crazy stuff!

[kdh]

Beau, it looks like there are knobs on the body of the bass for tuning. One of our guitarists had a Twin Reverb with Altec speakers. I think it was the Altecs but I never liked the sound. I made a "power soaking" bunch of resistors to overload the power amp stage as Tom Shulz of the band Boston used to do. I still didn't like the sound.

[BeauV]

Beau, it looks like there are knobs on the body of the bass for tuning. One of our guitarists had a Twin Reverb with Altec speakers. I think it was the Altecs but I never liked the sound. I made a "power soaking" bunch of resistors to overload the power amp stage as Tom Shulz of the band Boston used to do. I still didn't like the sound.

I'm not exactly sure what was different about 'em but I like JBL speakers and didn't like Altec Lansing. Of course the "L" in "JBL" is for Lansing, but they really sounded quite different. The reason I ended up building my own speaker cabinet was to make it heavy enough and big enough to get rid of the flat spots and resonances in the response curve. The Marshall, Fender and Kustom boxes all had really strong resonance on certain notes - so much so that I'd wince when I had to go to those notes. I made my monster box so stiff that the natural resonance of the thing was way up above what a Bass ever got to. It had 6" caster wheels to get it around, I'm glad I was young.

The Twin Reverb started life as the amp for our lead guitarist, who played a Rickenbacker 12 string through it and then a Strat. He got something bigger and snagged the Twin for "effects". I'd sometimes us a Wah-Wah on the Twin and the Kustom on "flat" - that was a fun Welcome Back Kotter sort of a sound. It also did a wonderful Bill Cosby Show theme effect. These are good memories, I'm glad you guys woke 'em up.

[bob perry]

"Wolf tones". Sometimes accoustic instruments have them. Amati knows about this.

I met JBL when I was in LA. It's kind of a long story but I had taken our custom built JBL PA system back to the factory to get a driver changed. I just walked in the front door. In my typical smart as way I asked the receptionist if I could talk to "JB". I didnnt know if a "JB" even existed. She said he was out to lunch I sat down and waited. He finally showed up, listend to my complaint, had the huge PA toweres unloadad and repaired, no cost. I have a soft spot for anything that says JBL on it. Looking back on that, it hapened in about 1968, I wonder who that guy really was. Was he "JB"?

I used Altec Lansing drivers in my Ampeg cabinets. I have no idea what's in my Eden cabinet. Maybe I should Google that and find out for fun.

[Tim OConnell]

JBL speakers are wired in reverse compared to the norm. They don't blow but suck the lifeforce out of the listener