Musical chemistry is a rare thing. It’s not easily attainable, but when you have it, the fruits are magical. If you haven’t heard the project featuring George Lynch, drummer Ray Luzier of Korn, and bassist/vocalist Dug Pinnick of King’s X, you’re missing out. This is what chemistry sounds like. KXM’s second album, Scatterbrain, is one of the most edgy rock albums to marry chilling guitar, tribal-prog drumming, and gospel-tinged vocals. Lynch brings his A-game throughout, as he’s pushed outside his comfort zone for startling results.
The chemistry you guys have together is undeniable.
It’s a little gift to ourselves when we get together. It’s kind of a vacation from our regular music lives. We go in and pretend we’re in our garage-band days and do whatever the hell we want.
It must feel refreshing to make an album so quickly without beating it to death.
KXM is all about the process. That’s what really defines us. We’re not a real band in the sense that we’re not premeditated, made a career out of making the band successful, the tour, management, and all that stuff. We’re about improvising and seeing what happens. It’s liberating to be able to do that. It’s a rare thing to be able to come from different places in the universe, triangulate, and not have any preconceived ideas and notions about what we’re going to do. We set up in a room and say, “The clock is ticking! You have 12 days! Go! Make an album!”
We work well under pressure. If we hadn’t had a deadline imposed, we wouldn’t have the spontaneous results. We’re not over-thinking stuff. That’s not to say we couldn’t do a great record we’re all happy with if we spent a lot more time working on it, but I think it captures something when you’re forced to not over-think. Not that there’s no thought put into the record – it’s very complex. But it’s different than the normal records that I do; we’re using odd time signatures and a variety of influences that I’m really not known for. I had to stretch a little bit, which is a great challenge and interesting for me as a player.
How much does your rig inspire what happens?
I brought a huge pallet of options – seven or eight heads I kept swapping out until I found the right combination. One of my anchors was my old 1988 Soldano that I used on the first Lynch Mob album, Wicked Sensation. I think it has the Jackson transformer, and that thing has always sounded fantastic. It’s got a big low-end and it’s very girthy. It’s a great amp, especially for rhythms.
I like mating it with something else – sometimes a Trainwreck, or my old Marshalls that date back to my Dokken days. I have a very interesting JCM800 that was modified by Bogner. It’s very unique and very aggressive. I like mixing very aggressive amps with something a little more toned down – maybe an AC30 with EL34s. But the trick is to find two amps that work well together. The Soldano was a large part of that record.
What kind of guitars were you using?
I usually start with something substantial – my ESP Tiger, my Custom Shop Les Paul, or my ESP Super V, which is all mahogany. It’s pretty dark and Les-Paul-Junior-sounding. It has a lot of grunt to it. I’d use something like that on my initial tracks, then a lot of times I’d overdub it with something that’s got more spank. One of the guitars I use for that is my Linhof Super Telecaster. I put those together with those mix of amps and get an interesting combo.
You recently did a Dokken tour that went better than expected.
Getting back together after 25 years… people don’t really change that much. We had a blast. We were all kidding around like the old days. Obviously, we’re all older, but time hadn’t really passed at all. The band played well and we recorded a live DVD and a live album. It’ll contain semi-acoustic versions of three older Dokken songs. There’s also a new track, which is really cool.
What’s next?
I’m doing a project with Corey Glover, of Living Colour. He’s no joke! He will f**k you up! It’s similar to the project I did with Angelo Moore of Fishbone, but it’s a little more rock. It’ll be less weird (laughs)… Weird is not bad. I love weird (laughs)! I also have a Lynch Mob album in the wings, another Sweet & Lynch record, and an album with Jack Russell, of Great White.
This article originally appeared in VG July 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
To the casual fan, heavy metal can get a bit “same sounding” after a while. But then there are those rare albums that are undeniably unique. Case in point is Sepultura’s 1996 classic, Roots, which combined de-tuned riffing with Brazilian percussion, exotic instrumentation, and chanting. Two decades since its release, Max Cavalera looks back on what made Roots so special.
It’s hard to believe it has been 21 years…
After the Chaos AD tour, the band took a break and the guys went to the beach in Brazil. I didn’t want to take a break, so I started writing and making four-track demos. When the guys came back, we started putting them into songs and the first we worked on was “Straighthate.” It was a really exciting time and we were very inspired. I was listening to a lot of different stuff – metal, Brazilian music. And that’s why Roots was this return to Brazilian roots of great sounds, mixing Brazilian instruments like berimbau and percussion. When we started thinking about what we were going to do with the record, Monte Conner at Roadrunner suggested we use Ross [Robinson], who had just done the Korn album and a Fear Factory demo I really liked. There was a really cool studio in Malibu, called Indigo Ranch, where he recorded a lot of the stuff. We banged out a bunch of songs and it was a great time.
Was there a sense that it would turn out sounding so unique?
We felt it was different, but we didn’t know it was going to be so successful and influential. But yeah, we felt it had something special about it. A lot of it was the way we were writing songs at that time – a bit more simple, more focused on the energy level and the impact. A song like “Roots Bloody Roots” is really simple – one riff almost the whole time, just going all the way. I sing on top of it, and it has a really catchy chorus that helped the song, then we gave it a really brutal, slow ending.
But when we started putting stuff on tape and listened back in the studio, I felt we were sitting on something quite special. I didn’t know it was going to be that big, but I felt it was different from we’d done before.
Which guitars and amps did you use for the album?
I was using Gibson at that time. I was on the verge of switching to ESP and had a contract with Gibson-Brazil, so I was with them for a couple of years. Before that, I was playing a lot of BC Rich stuff. But on the album, I used a lot of Gibson SGs.
Amps… it would be a lot of old stuff because the owner of the studio, Richard Kaplan, had a massive collection of amplifiers and pedals. I think we recorded with a combination of Marshall and Vox, and it was an orgy of pedals and amplifiers – it was insane! We should have taken a picture and put it on the album, because there must have been 150 pedals on the floor at one point, and we were trying all kinds of different stuff because Ross was really into pedals and the crazy sounds you can get.
Which guitars and amps do you currently use?
I am using ESP. I have my own line of guitars, the RPR, which I designed myself. It’s a mix between a Warlock and an Explorer, and I love it. The connection I make is if the Explorer and the Warlock had a kid, that’s what my guitar looks like… it’s the bastard son of those two. And I’m using a lot of Peavey – all different kinds of amplification. They have these little amplifiers that you can put in a backpack, so we can take it to South America and Europe. They sound just as great as the big amplifiers.
Which guitarists were your biggest influences?
I always loved Brian May. Queen was the first band I actually listened to, and I was a big fan. And of course, Tony Iommi is the godfather of metal riffs. Anybody that wants to learn to play metal, you cannot go wrong with Iommi’s riffs. Later, I started liking Tom Warrior, from Celtic Frost. I loved his writing, mixing a bit of hardcore in it. And Piggy, from Voivod. I liked all the crazy, wild stuff that he did, and weird chords. I always loved Eddie Van Halen, especially liked his sound and ideas.
This article originally appeared in VG July 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Allen Hinds has spent a considerable amount of his 60 years playing guitar, and has kept busy lately with two new releases while also teaching at Musicians Institute, doing session work, and touring Japan and/or Europe a time or two each year. All this came after years of gigging with various acts and a late-blooming solo career that started circa 2005.
One of two recent releases, Fly South, was written on acoustic.
“I used an early-’60s Martin 000-28 I have at my house,” he said. “I had about 10 songs that were nice and vibey and I started adding electric to them.” Then, the album morphed after the unexpected death of his daughter. “A few songs – the slower ballads – were emotional,” he said.
Making the record, he got help from heavy-hitters he counts as close friends, including bassist Abe Laboriel, guitarists Jimmy Johnson (“He’s always been like my big brother”) and Jimmy Haslip, along with others.
“And I got lucky getting Vinnie Colaiuta between his incredibly busy touring. It was great. I had working tapes of the tunes; Vinnie listened to them once and said, ‘I got it. Let’s Go.’ He was great! He’s a very intuitive drummer.”
Hinds’ musical journey started in the south. He grew up in Georgia and Alabama when the area was fertile for a young guitarist.
“The Allman Brothers were about 50 miles away, so I got to hear the original band. I also heard a lot of great country music and great country players; I knew what a Tele could do through the right amp. I also fell in love with slide-guitar and pedal steel. That’s always been a thing that turned me on.”
He started on guitar at age 16 and became of fan of Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell. “I’d look at the album covers and see Larry Carlton and Robben Ford listed, so I gravitated toward anything they played.” He then attended Berklee College of Music for a year before returning to Alabama, where he played with a band that mixed pop, rock, and fusion, but… “I wanted to learn more. At the time, the Guitar Institute of Technology was happening. You’d walk the hallways and there’d be Scott Henderson, Robben Ford, Jeff Berlin, Joe Diorio, all these great players. I’d skip classes to pester Robben.”
After G.I.T., he jumped into the fertile L.A. scene, playing gigs with Hiroshima, Bobby Caldwell, Gino Vanelli, the Crusaders, and others. In 2005, he turned his focus to solo work and has steadily built a respectable following. A Tele guy, he relies mostly on ’52 Esquire with replaced pick-up and bridge plate from another ’52. “It’s a great-sounding guitar,” he said. “I believe tone comes from where your hand meets the neck and from the pickups.”
He also uses a guitar made for him by Xotic, and two guitars for slide – a LSL and a ’59 Gibson Melody Maker with a humbucker and palm pedal. Always a fan of his old Fender Deluxe Reverb, he recently discovered Red Plates Amps’ BlackLine. “Its overdrive is incredible,” he raves.
This article originally appeared in VG July 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Music fans were relaxing on Easter Sunday when word of Allan Holdsworth’s death began filtering about, bringing shock to the guitar community. For 45 years, Holdsworth had been one of the greatest improvisers in jazz-rock and the personification of the word “innovator.” In fact, earlier in the month his label released a 12-CD retrospective, aptly titled The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever.
After arriving on the ’70s fusion scene in the group Tempest, Holdsworth dazzled fans through fast legato lines in various lineups of Soft Machine, Gong, the New Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Jean-Luc Ponty, and his 1976 solo album, Velvet Darkness, displaying his rarely-heard acoustic chops. Between 1977 and ’79, he broke to a wider audience with the fusion quartet Bruford and prog-rockers UK, the latter featuring bassist John Wetton, who died in January. Holdsworth’s liquid hammer-on phrasing and delicate vibrato-bar chops on UK’s “In the Dead of Night” remains his most famous solo, and had a seismic impact on players from Eddie Van Halen to Alex Lifeson and beyond. For incontrovertible proof, listen to Van Halen’s “And the Cradle Will Rock” or Rush’s “Limelight.”
Notoriously particular about his music, Holdsworth escaped the sideman role in launching a solo career while showing off wild post-bop leads and gossamer chord arpeggios on 1982’s I.O.U., featuring longtime collaborator, keyboardist and drummer Gary Husband. A year later, he was back with Road Games, reuniting with virtuoso bassist Jeff Berlin and sporting Cream’s Jack Bruce on vocals, while 1985’s brilliant Metal Fatigue all but cemented Holdsworth’s place at the forefront of jazz-rock. At the time, Holdsworth’s chordal work on “Tokyo Dream” and “Devil Take the Hindmost” was almost wholly unprecedented – he was playing soft-but-complex clusters like a keyboardist, but on a standard six-string guitar.
For gear, Allan used a white Gibson SG early on, but later deployed a Fender Stratocaster with two DiMarzio PAF humbuckers. After exploring Charvel, Ibanez, Steinberger, and Bill DeLap guitars (as well as amps made by Hartley Thompson, Sundown, Yamaha, and Mesa/Boogie), Holdsworth began a long association with Carvin and Keisel guitars, Hughes & Kettner amps, LaBella strings, and Dunlop picks. By the ’90s, he’d created an ethereal, chorus-like clean tone by layering eight delay units from different manufacturers. In a 1994 interview, Holdsworth told me, “I feed my amp’s output into little load boxes and then to a power amp and speakers. That way, I can play really soft and still get a sound I like. I don’t want to have to play loud to get a good tone. Actually, at the volume I use, I could easily play electric guitar with an acoustic band.”
Albums like Atavachron (1986) and Sand (1987), however, raised eyebrows as he began exploring guitar synthesis via the Synthaxe, a radical MIDI-controller instrument. Despite the obvious beauty of “Distance vs. Desire,” some fans rejected his keyboard-like tones.
Music journalist Tom Mulhern was one of Holdsworth’s earliest supporters in the U.S. press.
“You can’t distill Allan Holdsworth into a simple sentence – he was his own branch of the musical tree, almost a new species of guitar,” he said. “In the 1980s, Allan not only got into guitar synthesis; he pioneered the SynthAxe. It produced no sound of its own, but provided the player with tools that no guitar could offer, including breath control for expression, keys for holding notes, and a reassignable electronic whammy bar that could be used for far more than bending notes. Allan utilized every aspect of the SynthAxe with the expertise of a skilled surgeon.”
On the day of his death, a family friend created a GoFundMe page, noting the 70-year-old’s financial difficulties. Within 24 hours, fans had more than paid for his funeral, indicative of the level of reverence they held for the man.
Thoughts of many notable players began circulating via social media. “Rest In Peace to a giant of Electric Guitar. Hero to generations,” said Vernon Reid, of Living Colour, while Joe Satriani tweeted, “Allan, you remain an enormous inspiration to me. Your beautiful music will live on forever.”
Bill Bruford played with Holdsworth at his creative peak, and offered his own perspective.
“Through my own band and U.K., I listened to Allan nightly, launching sheets of sound on an unsuspecting audience, changing perceptions about what guitars and guitarists should, or could, be doing,” he said. “I would have paid to be at my own gig. Allan wasn’t easy, but if it was easy, it wouldn’t have been Allan. Like all creative musicians, he was restless and relentless in pursuit of ‘the perfect sound,’ the one that he couldn’t get out of his head, the one that would never leave him alone. Now, he will be at peace. Still, my guitar gently weeps.”
This article originally appeared in VG July 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
The iconic “singing cowboy” was created by Hollywood actors like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, and others. Many used fancy, customized guitars, often with their name emblazoned on the fingerboard, and the majority were high-end flat-tops including Martin D-45s and Gibson J-200s.
This 1940 Gibson Super 400N was made for a genuine Texas cowboy and larger-than-life character named William Fulton Peale, Jr.
Born in San Antonio on January 5, 1922, he was first cousin to Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking. His father was successful in the oil business in Texas and left his son financially secure.
As a young man, Peale was a competitive pistol shooter, and at age 40 transitioned to skeet shooting. He adopted an unorthodox stance, holding both elbows straight out from his sides, but still managed to qualify for several Sports Afield All-America teams in the late ’60s. He went on to an effective career in skeet shooting and in ’91 was inducted to the National Skeet Shooting Association Hall of Fame. Contemporaries remembered him as a great storyteller, especially when he reminisced about his early years in competitive shooting.
Peale also enjoyed playing guitar. In early 1940, he ordered a blond Gibson Super 400N from the factory, and serial number 96242 was shipped to him from Kalamazoo on August 20. While the guitar is a beautiful example, Peale decided it needed something extra, so not long after purchasing the guitar, he returned it to Gibson, where it was customized with his name rendered in mother-of-pearl script inlay on the fingerboard, and small stars on the fretboard and its engraved white pickguard. Gibson returned it on February 17, 1941 – a quick turnaround (only six months) for such customization.
In the years immediately before World War II, many instrument builders did not cut or inlay their own mother-of-pearl, even on production models. Instead, they depended on a network of companies that specialized in this work, most of which were in New York City.
A Gibson MB-4 fretboard from the late ’20s shows how, instead of creating a pocket in the surface, the area to be inlaid was cut out completely. A mix of pearwood and sawdust was used to raise the inlay to level.
From 1903 through 1929, Aumann Brothers, of Detroit, produced inlays for everything Gibson manufactured. Gibson would send blank (with fret slots) fretboards to Aumann. The brothers used manually powered stand-up jigsaws to cut intricate patterns from thin sheets of mother of pearl, typically creating seven or eight patterns simultaneously by stacking layers. The pearl was inlaid by tracing patterns on the fingerboard and drilling a small starter hole through the fingerboard, then cutting the rest using a jeweler’s saw. This method had the advantage of speed, but often resulted in a sloppy finished product that showed obvious filler around the edges of the inlay. Because wood had been removed, they had to support the pearl with filler underneath, as well.
The fingerboards were returned to Gibson to be fretted, then stored as a sub-assembly.
In 1930, Gibson began using Union Pearl Works, of Brooklyn, for primary production instruments, but until 1950 continued to use Aumann Brothers for custom orders. In a 2009 interview for Spann’s Guide to Gibson 1902-1941, Carl J. Stadler, nephew of Frank and Joe Aumann, recounted working in the shop during the late ’30s and early ’40s, including how it received a stream of special orders from Gibson.
It’s also interesting that if a specific model was discontinued, Gibson did not discard the completed fingerboards (or other parts) intended for it. A good example is the L-Century flat-top produced from 1933 until ’39, which had a white-celluloid fingerboard with inlaid rosewood inserts which in turn had inlaid mother-of-pearl patterns. The rosewood inserts were produced by cutting up leftover tenor-banjo fingerboards, which in turn produced a variety of inlay pattern deviations from the L-Century’s catalog spec.
Gibson found other uses for leftover fingerboards. When instruments requiring fret work were returned to the factory, it was easier to simply replace it using the discontinued stock; the replacement already had new frets, so it was a matter of dressing them and (if called for) re-binding. This practice resulted in bizarre combinations of inlay patterns.
With the exception of the fingerboard and pickguard, the Peale Super 400 conforms to specs for the period, with an 18″ archtop body, carved Adirondack spruce top, f-shaped sound holes, figured-maple back and sides with natural finish, engraved Varitone tailpiece, three-piece figured-maple neck with center dark strip, “open-book” peghead with mother-of-pearl script logo and split-diamond inlays, sealed Kluson tuners with amber Catalin buttons, ebony fingerboard, heel cap with “Super 400” engraving, multi-ply binding on the top, f-holes, fretboard, and headstock, gold-plated metal hardware, and other typical appointments.
Peale married late in life, never had children, and lived most of his life in Austin before dying there on January 15, 2008.
This article originally appeared in VG March 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
No two ways about it, as his career hit stride, Jimi Hendrix was a Strat guy. Not famously loyal to any particular guitar going back to his days hustling chitlin-circuit gigs with Slim Harpo and Tommy Tucker, from the moment he could upgrade from the Supro Ozark and Danelectro of his youth to the Epiphone Wilshire he bought fresh out of the Army in 1962, the Fender Duo-Sonic used to back the Isley Brothers, to the Jazzmaster and Jaguar with Little Richard, Jimi always wanted the tool that best helped him channel the sounds in his head.
’67 Gibson SG Custom: Annie Darby, courtesy of Hard Rock Café. ’69 Gibson Flying V: Tina Craig, courtesy of Hard Rock Café.
As he moved to center stage with his own Experience band in 1966, that tool was a Strat – and several that he used are now famous unto themselves, including the white one he played at Woodstock, the sunburst models he set aflame in the heat of performance, and the black ’68 with maple fretboard that was purportedly his favorite guitar and which he played the night of his death in September of 1970.
Today, several of those Strats are in the noted collection of the Hard Rock Cafe – as are two Gibsons that are equally identifiable for their use at specific concerts.
The Flying V bearing serial number 849476 was commissioned by Hendrix in 1969 and shipped from the Kalamazoo factory in 1970. He played it during his appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in August of 1970, as well in the controversial 1971 film Rainbow Bridge, shot July 30 on Maui. The film includes 17 minutes of Hendrix with it, and while the footage is heavily edited it’s coveted by Jimi fans.
Jeff Nolan, Hard Rock’s resident curator/historian, says most of this guitar’s cosmetic appointments were created per Hendrix specifications. It sports split-diamond inlays, a bound neck – both unusual for a Flying V from that period – a truss-rod cover from a Les Paul, and an ultra-thin three-ply pickguard. It also has a Maestro vibrato with a flat-mount base/string anchor bit, and lever with three holes that allowed for longitudinal adjustment. Word has it that it was on this instrument that the company first displayed a pearl-inlay Gibson logo on a V, was positioned unusually high on the headstock.
Jimi owned three Flying Vs – a black ’67 he painted with “psychedelic” shapes and figures and used at the Paris concert during a 1967/’68 tour, as well as a ’69 in tobacco sunburst he played while awaiting delivery of this custom lefty.
Jimi used this white ’67 SG Custom in 1968/’69, and is best known as the guitar he played for his appearance on the “The Dick Cavett Show” in September of ’69. After sitting for a bit of discussion with the host, Hendrix performed “Izabella” and debuted “Machine Gun.” The guitar has the Custom’s typical three humbucking pickups and was the instrument he frequently chose to perform “Red House,” including a 12-minute version in Stockholm on January 9, 1969. On the historic Isle of White version of the song from August of 1970, however, he played the custom Flying V. Many regard that ferocious performance as one of the finest examples of electric blues. Barely three weeks later, Jimi was gone.
This article originally appeared in VG December 2016 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
The fixed Melita bridge on this ’53 makes it uber-rare.
The romantic concept of the “Old West” – an enduring element of American pop culture – was spurred by pulp novels before John Ford introduced the world to My Darling Clementine and “Gunsmoke” arrived on the small screen.
’54 Round-Up: Dave Rogers/VG Archive. “The tortoise pickguard on ’50s Round-Ups was prone to disintegration, so precious few have survived,” notes Edward Ball. “Accurate reproductions are available, so collectors should be wary of any that remain in mint condition.” This one has the more-common floating Melita bridge.
By the 1950s, everything from clothing to toys to candy had been offered to consumers using imagery of dust-blown frontier towns, singing cowboys high upon a steed, and buckskin-clad hombres spinning a six-shooter. In the music-instrument biz, the Gretsch Company – underdog in the burgeoning market for electric guitars – couldn’t be faulted for delving into trendy gimmickry with the model 6130 Round-Up.
Gretsch begrudgingly waded into building solidbodies in late 1953, when it launched the Duo-Jet to join Gibson’s Les Paul in chipping away at the dominance of Leo Fender’s Telecaster. And while its shape may have been borrowed, the Duo-Jet brought a sound, feel, and look all its own thanks to a “chambered” body (really, it was just substantially routed for electronics), DeArmond Dynasonic pickups, sophisticated Melita bridge and a top made of a thin piece of black plastic that Gretsch otherwise used to wrap drums. It had a fretboard with big pearloid block inlays, chrome hardware including oversized control knobs, a fancy archtop-like tailpiece with a “G” cut out of its center, and a multi-layer floating pickguard made of plastic. A truly dapper effort, it enjoyed a modicum of success, getting snatched up by high-profile rock-and-rollers like Bo Diddley and Cliff Gallup. If a particular one eventually earned “most heard” honors, it would be George Harrison’s, bought second-hand and used during The Beatles’ early days in Hamburg and on the band’s first few albums.
But what about the country crowd? Was Gretsch content to let Fender’s new Strat join the Tele and wander that world unchallenged?
The Silver Jet was as laser-focused at rockers as the Round-Up was at country pickers.
Nope. Because amongst that late-’53 batch, Gretsch built 50 (batch numbers 12100 to 12149) guitars it called the Round-Up. Breaking dramatically from the Duo-Jet’s look, it had a pine top bearing an orange/brown stain that resembled antique furniture, maybe with a knot or two. And while that alone didn’t whisper “come hither” to a player whose stage attire included a Stetson, there was a decided lack of nuance to the oversized cattle-brand “G” burned into its front and the chuckwagon belt buckle at the top of its tailpiece. Indeed, where other guitars carried genre-specific connotations, Western-themed etchings on the Round-Up’s fretboard inlays, the steer’s head inlaid with pearl on its headstock, the tortoiseshell pickguard with engraving to match, and belt-like tooled-leather edge trim with upholstery tacks left no doubt about its target audience.
All that Western accoutrement aside, though, the 6130 was indeed a Jet, subject over the next couple years to the same changes in pickups, control knobs (going from “plain-topped” to “arrow-topped” in ’55), bridge, fingerboard markers, etc. But where the Duo-Jet would remain the company’s stalwart electric, the Round-Up quickly fizzled; Gretsch records do not show any having been made in 1956 followed by a single batch the next year.
“The ’57 Round-Up is a real anomaly,” said Gretsch authority Edward Ball, who penned a feature on the early Duo-Jet in the February ’11 issue of VG and also wrote Ball’s Manual of Gretsch Guitars – 1950s. “The advent of the 6121 Chet Atkins Solidbody basically killed the Round-Up in early ’55, but in ’57 a batch with numbers starting at 234XX includes 50 Round-Ups with hump-block inlays, horseshoe headstock motif, and the 6130 model number stamped on their labels. Several in the group also had some of the earliest documented Filter’Tron pickups; one of them is part of the vintage Gretsch collection that Randy Bachman sold to the Gretsch Foundation in 2008.”
’54 Gretsch brochure courtesy of Edward Ball. This page in a ’54 Gretsch promotional brochure shows the Duo-Jet and Round-Up introduced at the same time.
Gretsch last acknowledged the 6130 in a 1958 Project-O-Sonic flier, where it used a picture of a ’57 to illustrate the new Filter’Trons, Space Control bridge, and the thumbnail fretboard inlays.
Whether or not it’s gold, all that glitters comes with a price. At $300 retail, the Round-Up was more than a couple notches above the Telecaster ($189.50), the ultra-modern Strat ($229.50), the Les Paul goldtop ($209) and even the metallic-drum-plastic-topped Silver Jet ($230) introduced by Gretsch in ’54.
Though the Round-Up lost the draw, its Western dress lived on thanks to the 6121 Chet Atkins solidbody, the 6120 Atkins semi-hollow, and the 6022 Rancher acoustic (VG, January ’11). As Atkins’ influence increased, he urged Gretsch to ditch the Western sketches from guitars bearing his name, but he look resurfaced in ’74 on the 7620 Country Roc and has been retained on Round-Up reissues.
Original versions of the Round-Up don’t often turn up for sale, and the knotty-pine-topped ’53 is particularly rare. Its looks and scarcity give it high status amongst collectors, plus it’s one of guitardom’s true curiosities. Where else does talk of a model involve terms like “G brand,” “cows and cactus,” and “steer’s head?” And don’t forget, it’s the only guitar factory-dressed with its own belt-buckle!
’53 Gretsch Round-Up: VG Archive. The leather edge trim on the 6130 is derived from a Vogel belt.
Leather and Metal
Gretsch Flashes the Belt by Steve Evens
Vogel buckles match Vogel belts of the day. The tooling on the middle example shows the cacti and steer heads associated with Gretsch.
Few guitar collectors are aware that Gretsch used actual stamped belt buckles on the 6130 Round-Up when it began building the guitar in late 1953. The first, slapped on a prototype, shows a steer’s head and two wagon wheels, its raised image giving a three-dimensional effect typical of the style and era.
The buckle used on the production version of the Round-Up shows a fabulous scene with a cowboy and cowgirl riding into camp. There’s a stew-pot on the fire and the cook waving at incoming riders – dinner’s ready! In the background, a seated cowboy plays guitar as the setting sun drenches the sky. Each corner of the buckle is adorned with a four-leaf clover.
The Vogel stamp on the back of belts includes size and model number. Note the logo’s reference to “Vogel,” the German word for bird.
The third buckle, used from ’74 through ’78 on the 7620 Country Roc, shows a longhorn steer’s head surrounded by fancy engraving on nickel-plated steel with a copper foil inlay on the front. It measures 33⁄8” x 17⁄8“.
All were made by the Adolph Vogel Belt Manufacturing, which has been making belts and buckles in San Antonio since the late 1920s/early ’30s.
The leather edge trim used by Gretsch also resembles belts made by the Vogel company; the same cactus-and-cow tooled leather (as on the ’50s Round-Up) can be found on a belt stamped in upper-case, “Vogel, Top Grain Steer Hide, #5891X,” and the floral-tooled leather trim of the ’70s Country Roc resembles Vogel’s belt #5357L.
The best place to find the buckles is online; search clothing, shoes, and accessories/vintage/vintage accessories/belt buckles, and you’ll find more than 60,000 buckles for sale. Add “Western” to your search parameters and it’ll be refined to 5,000 choices.
The Vogel buckle shown here recently sold for $46.49, the Round-Up buckle for $31, and the Country Roc buckle for $14.80. A Vogel belt to match the Round-Up recently sold for $12.20, while the Country Roc belt sold for $9.99. Most have snaps for changing buckles, so, voila!
(TOP) This circa ’54 buckle is the type used on a prototype Gretsch Round-Up. Its back is stamped with the maker’s name (Vogel). Made of brass, it measures 3″ x 2″. (BOTTOM LEFT) This style, portraying a scene around a chuckwagon, was used on the 6130 Round-Up. Made of copper, it measures 3¼” x 17⁄8“. (BOTTOM RIGHT) This buckle from the mid ’70s was used on the 7620 Country Roc. It has what collectors call the “fancy” longhorn-steer engraving and measures 33⁄8” x 17⁄8“.
Special thanks to Edward Ball and Jim Hilmar, author of “The Gretsch Round-Up,” which can be read at VintageGuitar.com.
This article originally appeared in VG May 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
VG Overdrive is sponsored by Tech 21!Rik Emmett: Andrew McNaughtan.
Triumph was one of the leading arena-rock acts of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Striking gold and platinum with albums including Allied Forces, Never Surrender, and Thunder Seven and the radio hits “Fight the Good Fight,” “Lay It On the Line,” and “Hold On,” the trio offered a sound both anthemic and challenging – appealing to headbangers and proggers alike.
After exiting the band in 1988, singer/guitarist Rik Emmett continued on as a solo artist, issuing several solo albums beginning with 1990’s Absolutely as well as the all-instrumental Ten Invitations From the Mistress of Mr. E, the musically varied Good Faith, and a collaboration with Dave Dunlop, Strung-Out Troubadours. His most recent, RES 9, includes guest spots by Rush’s Alex Lifeson (“Human Race”), Dream Theater’s James LaBrie (“I Sing”), Lifeson and LaBrie together (“End of the Line”), and a reunion with his Triumph mates Gil Moore and Mike Levine (“Grand Parade”).
Guitar images: Stuart Hendrie. Emmett’s Les Paul Classics are chambered, giving them what he calls a “tone character closer to an ES/semi-acoustic.” Made in 2007 and ’08, they all have the ’60s neck profile he prefers.
Res 9 is really different from your other solo albums.
It is, and it was certainly much more a band effort than a solo singer/songwriter approach. I give a lot of credit to Dave Dunlop (guitar) and Steve Skingley (bass and keyboards), who co-produced with me. The process was old-school, in a way; there were voice and guitar demos I did in Protools, but we put the band in the studio for a week to work the songs, rehearse, and do band arrangements. Then we cut bed tracks to 2″ analog tape in a couple of days with Paul [DeLong, drummer], then transferred them back over so we could maintain big drum sounds. My old friend, Gil Moore, has Metalworks Studios, and he said, “You’ve got to do it here.” He was very generous about making sure my bill wasn’t too big (laughs), so we indulged ourselves through the process.
“I may not fit the profile of a vintage collector, but I am 100 percent a guitar freak!”
But from the day Mascot Records said “We’ve got a deal” and the contract was signed to it being delivered was three months, start to finish. When you make a record on a tight time line, there’s a freshness to what you’ve done. It’s not like you’ve beaten the thing to death or overthought it. It might be a little undercooked in some places, but sometimes that ends up being the charm. I’ve made so many records in all different ways, and this one was a real pleasure. I’m at that age now where I don’t second-guess much – I do it and say, “Yep. That’s what it is.” Because a record is just a snapshot; “Here’s what it’s like at this point in time.”
His Gibson CS-356 has MJS pickups.
Who are your early guitar influences?
Guild X-500: Annie Darby/Hard Rock International. This Guild X-500 was the centerpiece of Emmett’s early collection. “It made the transition with me from jobbing musician to bar-band guy to recording with Triumph,” he recalled. It can be heard playing the power chords on “Blinding Light Show,” from the band’s first album, and on “Suitcase Blues,” from Just a Game. A slight scuff on the tailpiece and two small dents in the top under it stem from an incident in 1975. “As I climbed the fire escape at the back of the hotel, going from the club back to our rooms, I was carrying a guitar in each hand and wearing the X-500. I tripped on the stairs and stumbled forward on the guitar. It and the arse end of a Les Paul Custom broke my fall.”
Like everybody my age, the Beatles. I’m left-handed and wanted to play like Paul McCartney, but I had a guitar teacher who turned it around in my hands and said, “Put your left hand on the fretboard. Give me a month and you’ll be better than all your right-handed friends.” Which was true. Then I was just like everybody else becoming a guitar weenie; there was Eric Clapton, and I think you can hear on Res 9 the Bluesbreakers/Clapton thing. And of course, Jimi Hendrix, whose DNA is all over “My Cathedral.” I told the guys in the band, “I want the track to be kind of like Music from Big Pink – give it a Levon Helm/“Cripple Creek” vibe – but I want it to sound like Hendrix sitting in.”
Then there’s Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page, and I was a Ritchie Blackmore fan – loved Deep Purple. Blackmore was as good as it got. By 16 or 17, I discovered English progressive bands. Steve Howe was my guy – Yes, along with Genesis and Gentle Giant. In terms of formative role models, I would say Howe became preeminent because one minute he’d be playing like Chet Atkins, the next minute like Hendrix, the next like one of those English nerds (laughs). I thought, “If I could only grow up to be like that.” But, just like any other player on that kind of a curve, when you start to hear Wes Montgomery, classical guitar players, Jim Hall, Joe Pass. There were a lot of players from when I was 17 or 18 until I was 21 or 22, when my taste was developing. Later in life, the biggest influence I still have – though you’ll never really hear it on an album like Res 9 – is Pat Metheny. He represents an unobtainable level of artistry in his way of thinking, playing, writing, and improvising.
Do you have some favorite modern guitarists?
I like a lot of what Edge does in U2. He’s a very creative, interesting player who gets great sounds. And how do you not bow down to John Petrucci in Dream Theater? He’s one of the best on the planet in terms of execution of what he does. Sometimes he gets a little “typewriter” for me, like, “There’s a lot of notes there in a big hurry.” But they’re always incredibly good notes, and his feel and time are just scary good.
The older I get, the more I revert to bands that are almost retro in nature, like Rival Sons and Vintage Trouble. I saw Vintage Trouble on Letterman one night, and went, “Wow! This is a great band” because they kind of sound like they’re from 1969, ya’ know? It was very Zeppelin. Nalle Colt sometimes plays Les Pauls and sometimes he plays a Gretsch with a Bigsby. I still teach at Humber College, in Toronto, so I get exposed to a lot of stuff.
Emmett, Levine: Steve Skingley. Emmett at work on RES 9 with Triumph bandmate Mike Levine.
Which guitars do you use most these days?
On RES 9, it was predominantly Gibson Les Pauls. I have three – a Custom Shop and two Les Paul Classics. They’re all chambered and made in 2006-’07. I also have a Gibson Custom Shop CS356, and it’s a beauty – I used it on some things. I also have a relationship with Godin, and they gave me a beautiful Supreme. So I used that on a few things.
Dean V: Annie Darby/Hard Rock International. This ’81 Dean V was custom-made in the heyday of Triumph. “Dean Zelinksy copied the dimensions of my Framus Akkerman’s fretboard and nut, so it’s almost as wide as a classical neck,” said Emmett. “It was always surprisingly bright-sounding and originally had one pickup; I had it souped up later and added the Kahler. Live and learn, right?”
In the Les Pauls, I have MJS pickups; in the neck position are the Black Earth humbuckers, and what makes them cool is their neodymium magnets, which give a little more articulation at full-out level. That’s always the thing with Les Pauls – when you play the neck pickups in a distortion setting but want a bit of articulation, you have to back it down a long way to get it to clean up. But with the low-powered neodymium magnets, they’re a little more articulate. The bridge pickups are their Humbucker IV, which have ceramic magnets and measure a little more than 13 ohms – pretty hot. The Godin has an MJS in its front position, I told Mike Smith, who runs MJS, that I wanted it to have an archtop character – a little more “acoustic.” So, he put a split-single with an Alnico magnet in the front and a custom Humbucker III in the bridge, which is a little less-powered than the Les Paul one. He alternates the pole pieces on it – an Alnico and a steel slug; that’s Mike doing his crazy-professor thing. The 356 might have an even higher-powered bridge pickup… it doesn’t have quite the same creamy, smooth power the Les Pauls have. The Les Pauls, being chambered, head a little bit more toward a 335, and I love 335s. I would use a 335 if I wasn’t 5’8″. I saw a video of me once playing my old 335s and I thought, “My God, I look like a little kid who borrowed his uncle’s guitar!” Whereas a Les Paul more or less fits me.
I like the tone of chambered guitars or semi-acoustics, and the Les Paul, to me, is the most versatile. I have a Gibson Custom Shop doubleneck, and used the 12-string on a couple of little things, and I used a Yamaha Pacifica 1 – a Weddington Custom Shop. Those guys made that for me back when I was a Yamaha guy, ’95 or ’96. I think they call it a USA-1. It had a Tele-style body but it’s like a Strat with a humbucker – single/single/double and a whammy bar. So, what you hear on “Sweet Tooth,” the out-of-phase/fingerpicked stuff on the front of “Stand Still” and “Grand Parade,” was probably that guitar because I wanted a bit of that skinny Strat texture.
Emmett, Levine: Steve Skingley. This Gibson Custom Shop EDS-1275 has its original pickups and is modded with an additional pickup selector, giving each neck its own to go with the individual master Volume and Tone. The neck-selector mini toggle (mounted between the tailpieces) reduces the chance it will be bumped by arm movement.
Which guitars did you use back in the day?
The one most people remember was the Framus Akkerman; now they call it the AK74. Jan Akkerman had become one of my favorite players in the “Steve Howe era.” I still think Akkerman was one of the best – a really interesting player with a great sound. Look at videos now, and you mostly see him playing Les Pauls. He hardly used the Framus live! But, I liked the Framus; it had a wide fingerboard and a zero fret, plus the Gibson configuration of pots – Volume and Tone for each pickup – if you’re the lead guitar player but not the lead singer, you have the luxury of looking down to set your knobs and switches, so you get lots of tones and colors out of a two-pickup/double-coil configuration. But I’m a singer, so I don’t have a lot of time. I often get my guitars re-wired so I can change levels without looking – really, all I ever use is a master Volume because I’m singing, working the crowd, being the front man. I don’t have the luxury of fiddling with knobs and pots.
The Akkerman was a hybrid that looked like a Les Paul but had an f hole, master Volume/master Tone, and I also liked that its wide fingerboard made it easier to play fingerstyle. I thought, “That will be perfect for me.” I didn’t even play one before I ordered one. Framus had a distributor in Nashville, and the guy told me, “We only have one left in North America, and Chet Atkins is checking it out right now.” I said, “Well, see if you can get it back.” I don’t know if he was giving me a line, but it arrived and became my principal guitar from 1976 until Dean made me a V in ’81. I had Les Pauls at the time, too, but the Akkerman was my number one guitar for a lot of that period. There was also a Gibson doubleneck, but it was one of those where if you leaned backward it went sharp, and if you leaned forward it went flat. So I got an Ibanez Artist doubleneck… very heavy – like, piano heavy – but I used it every night. Dean later made me a big single-pickup I used a lot from ’81 to ’84, before I was full-on into Yamahas.
Emmett, Lifeson: MarkWeiss. Emmett and Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson (LEFT) during the RES 9 sessions.
In ’82 or ’83 I started using a Yamaha a little bit. My first ones were the SBG-3000 – top of the line double-cutaway similar to what Santana endorsed for a bit. Mine had Floyd Rose vibratos because we were in that era. They also made me a white doubleneck SG-style just before the MTV/big-hair period, when all guitars had hockey-stick headstocks; Yamahas were the RGX line before the Pacifica came along with a more Strat-/Tele-ish headstock. I used some of those over the years. I have some beautiful Yamaha archtops hand-made by Kiyoshi Minakuchi in their custom shop; everyone called him Jackie, and he was their archtop guy. The big ones were the 2000s like the one Edge used to play those long, singing feedback lines.
Yamaha’s AEX series were like big Gretches, and I had a couple made with fancy inlays and my initials on the heel caps. My favorite was a smaller AEX-1500, and I think Martin Taylor helped with the design. It had a piezo bridge, floating pickup, and a preamp to blend them. It’s a fantastic guitar.
Emmett, Levine: Steve Skingley. (Left) This Godin Montreal Supreme is “…light as a feather, and the Richlite fingerboard with big frets is smooth as butter,” said Emmett. (RIGHT) This Yamaha Pacifica USA-1 was made in the company’s L.A. Custom Shop.
How did your taste in guitars develop through the years?
Rik Emmett: Andrew McNaughtan.
Well, I’ve owned hundreds in my life, and never hesitated to modify or tweak them. So I may not fit the profile of a vintage collector, but I am 100 percent a guitar freak! Once you’ve had so many go through your hands, you realize that Leo Fender got it pretty much right with the Tele. There’s a lot about that guitar that’s no bulls**t. Then, when Ted McCarty and Les Paul put the other one together, well, they got it right, too! (laughs)
Do you still have the Triumph-era instruments?
Unfortunately, I don’t. You’d have to go to Hard Rock Cafes to find some of them. My wife and I moved last year and I downsized, so I gave a lot of my guitars to my kids, along with my gold albums. I only kept about 30.
This article originally appeared in VG May 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Jimmy D’Aquisto used ebony for tailpieces, pickguards, and other components that traditionally were metal or plastic.
Melbourne “Mel” Bay (1913-1997) began his musical career at the age of 13 in his hometown of Bunker, Missouri. Largely self-taught, as a teen he performed on guitar, tenor banjo, Hawaiian guitar, ukulele, and mandolin.
At 20, Bay moved to St. Louis seeking work as a professional sideman with traveling bands and on radio. To supplement his income, he turned to teaching, sometimes working with upward of 100 students each week. Finding existing methods lacking, he began handwriting instructional materials, stressing sight-reading skills and usable chord forms.
After being turned down by several music-publishing firms that didn’t believe the guitar had a future, Bay formed his own publishing house in 1947. His first book, Orchestral Chord System for Guitar, was followed in ’48 by the first volume of the Modern Guitar Method series (which to date has sold more than 20 million copies). He traveled the U.S. to promote the material with guitar teachers, and quickly followed with more books that expanded into diverse styles and covered all major stringed instruments. Beginning in the ’50s, the rise of guitar-centered rock-and-roll music buoyed Bay’s career and brought consistent expansion to Mel Bay Publications.
Throughout his life, Bay preferred the archtop guitars of New York builder John D’Angelico (1905-’64), usually performing on a New Yorker model. Bay may have been first exposed to the work of D’Angelico at Gravois Music Company, in St. Louis.
According to extant records, the store was ordering Style A, Excel, and New Yorker guitars from D’Angelico as early as September of 1936. The first concrete connection between Bay, Gravois, and D’Angelico happened May 7, 1949, when the store placed an order for a Special (serial number 1816). Records show Bay received two additional D’Angelico guitars through Gravois that year and more in the ’50s and early ’60s, all for the purpose of re-sale.
After D’Angelico’s death in 1964, his apprentice, James “Jimmy” D’Aquisto (1935-’95) completed the guitars still in production, and eventually purchased the business from the D’Angelico family. He then began building under his own name, and the earliest D’Aquisto guitars greatly resembled their D’Angelico predecessors. But, as years passed, D’Aquisto’s design ethic shifted to a more-organic approach, replacing metal, plastic, and shell components with parts made of wood. This included binding, inlays, truss-rod covers, pickguards and tailpieces. The guitar featured in this month’s article is a transitional model with ebony truss-rod cover, pickguard and tailpiece, but retaining the use of mother-of-pearl inlays and plastic binding.
At an early date, Bay began using photos of D’Angelico guitars on the covers of his publications, teamed with illustrations inside. As the target audience for Mel Bay publications studied and became accomplished guitarists, they were enticed to own the guitars they’d seen over and over again in their instruction books. The result was a promotional boon for D’Angelico, and later for D’Aquisto.
D’Aquisto used a circular peghead cutout with a brass acorn finial on his New Yorker models. While it isn’t unusual to find a mother-of-pearl inlay on the back of a D’Aquisto peghead, this one is personally inscribed to Mel Bay.
In 1974, Bay commissioned a D’Aquisto New Yorker that would become particularly noted after appearing in photos for the expanding line of books. The guitar, with serial number 1086, was completed December 7 of that year and has a mother-of-pearl diamond-shaped inlay on the peghead rear inscribed, “Especially made for Mel Bay.”
In other respects, it’s a typical New Yorker of the period with 18″ archtop body, carved spruce top with S-shaped sound holes, Venetian cutaway, removable/height-adjustable ebony bridge, figured maple back and sides, sunburst finish, ebony tailpiece, one-piece figured-maple neck, white heel cap, circular peghead cutout with brass acorn finial, mother-of-pearl script logo and engraved scroll peghead inlay, gold-plated Grover Imperial tuners with art-deco metal buttons, ebony truss cover, 22-fret ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl split-rectangle inlays, and multi-ply white binding on the top, back, and side edges of the body as well as the peghead, fingerboard, pickguard, and sound holes.
Bay was active in music publishing until his death at age 84, in 1997. His son, Bill, remains in charge at Mel Bay Publications, expanding the company’s focus to include e-books and DVDs, as well as video on-demand.
This article originally appeared in VG May 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Amp and photos courtesy of Mike Tamposi. Marshall differentiated the look of the Park 45 from the JTM45 by splitting the channel inputs and Volume controls, then labeling the Presence control “Brightness.” 1966 Park 45 • Preamp tubes: three ECC83 (12AX7) • Output tubes: two KT66 • Rectifier: GZ34 • Controls: Volume Channel II, Volume Channel I, Treble, Middle, Bass, Brightness • Output: approximately 35 watts RMS
When is a Marshall not a Marshall? When it’s a Park, of course! Though it might not scream “classic rock tone” for the guitarist masses, in the eyes and ears of Marshall aficionados, the name Park denotes a new level of vintage desirability.
The rules of supply and demand apply to the collectibility of Park amps, of course, since far fewer were made than the corresponding Marshall models. But there’s something else to it – that feeling, perhaps, that this is a secret Marshall, with the same heart and soul and fury along with the added caché of being in disguise.
This 1966 Park 45 head is an early example, and presents a fascinating look at how closely Park paralleled its sibling. Later Parks were occasionally used to test mods or tricks, or became clearing houses for leftover components after Marshall models moved to other specs (witness the prolonged use of “lay-down” transformers or a few hand-wired circuit boards in Parks several months after Marshal had gone to printed circuit boards in 1974). This Park 45, though, is a JTM45 in all but name and a few cosmetic tweaks, and likewise one of the most desirable vintage British amps you could lay your hands on.
The tell-tale 784-103 identification code on the bell-end of the Drake output transformer, mounted on the notoriously flimsy early aluminum chassis.
Park was established to provide amps for Jim Marshall’s pal, Johnny Jones, owner of the Jones and Crossland music store, in Birmingham. Jones’ establishment sold Marshall amps before Jim struck an exclusive distribution deal with Rose-Morris in ’65, so the new “stealth” brand – given Jones’ wife’s maiden name which was already used for other Jones/Crossland house-brand instruments – provided the perfect means for keeping his friend stocked with amplifiers.
Internally, the Park 45 is dead-on ’66 JTM45, but a few twists to its look were required to help it skirt Rose-Morris’ claim to exclusivity.
This one’s owner, VG reader and collector of vintage British amps, Mike Tamposi, notes, “It’s essentially a JTM45. The only differences are the cosmetics and the fact the Volume pot for Channel II separates the two pairs of inputs (positioned together on all early four-input Marshalls).” Tamposi further points out how this amp uses the rare “banana” knobs seen only on the earliest top-mounted Park 45 heads from ’65/early ’66, and “…Park 45s used an amber Radio Spares indicator lamp, whereas JTM45s used red.”
This amp is original inside and out save for the filter capacitors and a few resistors that were changed to keep it gig-worthy. Its chassis is the rather flimsy aluminum used on early JTM45s, and Tamposi says it’s beginning to sag under the weight of the transformers, as most do. To keep it sounding as it should, the amp is loaded with new-old-stock GEC KT66 output tubes, as would have been in it when it departed the Marshall facility in ’66, a Mullard GZ34 rectifier tube, and a mix of Mullard and Brimar ECC83 preamp tubes.
As for “sounding as it should,” the owner reports, “The amp has great glassy tone that stays clean up to almost halfway on the Volume control, then starts breaking up, eventually getting to the classic Marshall snarling and barking. Classic Angus Young tone!”
Anyone who has played a vintage JTM45 or a good reproduction knows it’s a different sonic template than what is considered archetypical Marshall tone. Understandably so, since Jim Marshall, Ken Bran, and Dudley Craven lifted the schematic of Fender’s 5F6A tweed Bassman of the late ’50s to create their first commercial guitar amp. Thus, early Marshalls are differentiated from American tweed 40-watters by only a few components and speakers.
From its yellow mustard caps to the values of its carbon-comp resistors, the Park 45’s circuit is dead-on JTM45.
So, while you could lift this Park’s circuit board and control complement and drop it right into a JTM45 of the era, you could also overlay it almost component-for-component into the chassis of a tweed Bassman, from the 820-ohm resistor and 250uF bypass cap that bias and voice each channel’s first gain stage to the cathode-follower tone stack and capacitor values therein, to the configuration of the long-tailed-pair phase inverter (note the control labeled “Brightness” here is the exact same as the “Presence” on the JTM45 and Bassman). Different component brands – yellow Philips/Mullard “mustard caps” in the Park vs. yellow Astron caps in the Fender – might account for slight sonic differences that are then enhanced by the British-made Radio Spares or Drake transformers in place of the American Triad or Schumacher, but the difference is slight in the grand scheme.
Another notable difference is Park and Marshall’s move to KT66s by 1966, after starting with the 5881s in the Bassman; generally, this is heard as a relatively subtle sonic alteration. When compared to the Bassman’s very resonant open-back/solid-pine 4×10″ with Jensen P10Rs, the classic Greenback-equipped birch-ply 4×12″ issues considerably more low-end thump and a distinctive midrange grind, with less of that “American” top-end sparkle. In other words, it sounds more British.
Not to split hairs, but looked at another way, the tweed Bassman, JTM45, and Park 45 share so much DNA it’s little wonder many guitarists conclude that when it comes to a solid, dynamic foundation for a versatile rig, you can’t do much better than this template. But why would any owner dare play a museum piece like this, much less replace original components to keep it functional? “All of my amps have updated filter caps, and I add bias pots to keep them working their best,” Tamposi declared. “They ain’t just for looking at!”
Hear, hear!
This article originally appeared in VG May 2017 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
Allen Hinds has spent a considerable amount of his 60 years playing guitar, and has kept busy lately with two new releases while also teaching at Musicians Institute, doing session work, and touring Japan and/or Europe a time or two each year. All this came after years of gigging with various acts and a late-blooming solo career that started circa 2005.
It’s also interesting that if a specific model was discontinued, Gibson did not discard the completed fingerboards (or other parts) intended for it. A good example is the L-Century flat-top produced from 1933 until ’39, which had a white-celluloid fingerboard with inlaid rosewood inserts which in turn had inlaid mother-of-pearl patterns. The rosewood inserts were produced by cutting up leftover tenor-banjo fingerboards, which in turn produced a variety of inlay pattern deviations from the L-Century’s catalog spec.
At 20, Bay moved to St. Louis seeking work as a professional sideman with traveling bands and on radio. To supplement his income, he turned to teaching, sometimes working with upward of 100 students each week. Finding existing methods lacking, he began handwriting instructional materials, stressing sight-reading skills and usable chord forms.
According to extant records, the store was ordering Style A, Excel, and New Yorker guitars from D’Angelico as early as September of 1936. The first concrete connection between Bay, Gravois, and D’Angelico happened May 7, 1949, when the store placed an order for a Special (serial number 1816). Records show Bay received two additional D’Angelico guitars through Gravois that year and more in the ’50s and early ’60s, all for the purpose of re-sale.
In 1974, Bay commissioned a D’Aquisto New Yorker that would become particularly noted after appearing in photos for the expanding line of books. The guitar, with serial number 1086, was completed December 7 of that year and has a mother-of-pearl diamond-shaped inlay on the peghead rear inscribed, “Especially made for Mel Bay.”
acorn finial, mother-of-pearl script logo and engraved scroll peghead inlay, gold-plated Grover Imperial tuners with art-deco metal buttons, ebony truss cover, 22-fret ebony fingerboard with mother-of-pearl split-rectangle inlays, and multi-ply white binding on the top, back, and side edges of the body as well as the peghead, fingerboard, pickguard, and sound holes.
