Gigging.

I didn't post a new article Friday or Saturday because of a show my band had on Saturday; we practiced all Friday and then played at 3 o clock in the afternoon the next day. We "headlined" the event, but honestly that doesn't mean a whole lot. The show consisted of a band where the members were all under 14, an acoustic solo act, and us. Now the kids were in the band were all very nice, but this article uses them as an example so I'm not going to give any names, including the name of the venue.

The focus of this post is on the equipment used to play shows. As a gigging musician one of the most common issues I've noticed (being a gear nut) is that bands wont use equipment that compliments their sound. I understand that not everyone can buy expensive gear, that's not my issue. But there are so many options for inexpensive gear out there that no one should be using solid state half stacks to play clubs.

Hello we are <censored> and we're sponsored by Guitar Center!

Now this isn't the worlds WORST gear setup, but its far from great. It sounded terrible, though honestly it was more that the band didn't feel they needed to sound check, instead they just turned everything to 5 and went for it. Anyways, heres the list of gear:

Amps: Line 6 spider valve 112, Marshall MG solid state, Hartke VLX 115 (200 watts)
Guitars/bass: LTD Eclipse, Epiphone Les Paul, Ibanez gsr 200
Drums: Cheap off brand kit with middle of the road Zildjian cymbals.

(Im not going over the keyboard because he did nothing for the band and was not in the mix)

Now I feel that the biggest issue here are the guitar amps. The Line 6 spider valve isn't a terrible amp, the solid state Spiders are well known to be absolutely terrible amps. The Valve ones sound all right, they don't have soul like an old Fender, Marshall or Orange would have, but its defiantly pleasing to hear. The issue is the modeling; everyone loves to just put the modeling on "insane" and play with an emg equipped Les Paul of sorts. Though the guitarist played an EMG equipped Les Paul of sorts, the amp wasn't quite on insane, but the guitarist didn't really understand the modeling function. She was only about 13, its understandable. Thing was, her gear setup (which was clearly bought by her rich parents) cost probably 1000 dollars at Guitar Center, which would have been much better spent on lessons. The band was playing nothing but covers, like Paramore and Hey Monday, so being equipped with an active guitar with a Line 6 on a "Brutal" setting just made the whole mix sound out of place.

The other amp was a Marshall MG "valvestate". The kind with one 12AX7 preamp tube. These sound terrible. You can pick one up on Craigslist for 100 dollars pretty much any day, but new they cost nearly 300 dollars. She played with an Epiphone Les Paul, one of the higher end Epiphone Les Pauls at that I believe. I would comment on the setup more but I couldn't hear it over the Line 6.

As for the bass, the main problem wasn't the amp. Hartke amps sound good, as long as you EQ them right. They aren't very colorful amps, but that's fine, they aren't supposed to have a "Hartke Sound". The issue was she had an Ibanez GSR 200 that she, like the rest, didn't have a grasp on how to work it. I owned one as my first bass so I know how the controls work on said active bass, and I noticed she kept playing with the pickup blend knob (its a p/j setup) without any reason. The GSR and the nicer SR basses aren't really meant for pop and rock playing regardless, they make much better metal or jazz basses. Some sort of passive P bass clone would have sounded way better for her.

Bottom line for them is they didn't buy equipment that fit them, they just bought some gear. On top of that they didn't know how to work their gear very well. I've seen so many bands doing the same thing that I felt I needed to say something about it. Now I mean being a Fender blogger of course I wanted to say "Oh they needed some Strats and a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and they would have sounded great" but that wouldn't have made them sound perfect. They just needed gear that fit them. An instrument is a musician's tool, and so we as musicians should know how to work our tools as well as we possibly can. That goes with the entire setup, know it well, because that's how express yourself.

A Solution in Search of a Problem

How many of you who own a Twin Reverb have decided that it isnt loud enough? Any of you? Figured there isnt anyone who needs a louder Twin. Ok lets try another question: How many of you think the Twin Reverb isnt heavy enough? Same response? Figures.

Well, CBS decided that there is a market for a louder, heavier Twin.

It hungers for eardrums

At 180 watts, but depending on how it is biased you can get these things to output 250 watts, these things are loud. Because sound pressure levels are logarithmic, not liner its hard to compare the real volumes between a standard Twin and a Super Twin, but simply saying that its "Louder than a Twin" says enough.

As far as features went it had a graphic eq section, a notoriously awful distortion channel, and the infinity loud clean channel. These were made from 1975-1977 or 78. They wern't made long or in mass quanitites because there simply wasnt any demand. Current prices are still low because theres still no demand. The amp circuit was useful for one thing though:

This amp is not useful for the studio at all by the way

Besides the brute of the Fender 400ps, this is probably the most capable tube bass amp Fender ever made. Its identical internally to the Super Twin, minus the reverb, distortion, and a modified EQ.  It was, oddly enough, a combo amp with 1 15 inch speaker. The speaker could in no way handle the wattage, and the amp was extreamly heavy, so most people just cut the cab up to make the amp into a head. This is actually my main amp, and I did just that to it. Even more problematic than just the speaker and the weight was the cabinet's tendancy to fall over because of how top heavy it is. Once in head form, it makes for a mini SVT of sorts, just more Fender voiced because of the sextet of 6L6 tubes it contains.

CBS had sort of an obsession with extreamly loud and heavy combo amps durring the mid 70's. Some other highlights include:

Fender Quad Reverb
Its a Twin Reverb with a 4x12 cab instead of a 2x12 cab. Cleans for days but weighed over 100 pounds.

Fender Super Six Reverb:
135 Watts. 6x10. 140 pounds.

Most of these amps are fairly rare, but also fairly worthless because of their size and weight. Ive seen Quad Reverb amps go for as low at 300 dollars because they simply cant be moved by one person. Most of these amps wernt particularly great guitar amps either. They were clean for days but by the 70's most guitarists wanted good overdrive, which ironically the 50 watt Bassman amps had. Many bands would have the bass on a Twin or a Dual Showman of sorts and the guitar on the Bassman. If they had changed around the nameplates maybe they would have had an idea there. But they didnt, so these amps float around Craigslist endlessly.

The 80's!

Hair metal sold guitars. Kramer, Jackson, BC Rich, they all made their fortune in the mid 80's. Fender wanted to capitalize on this market of course, so they had employee John Page create this beauty:

Excellent!

Kinda based off a strat, dual humbucker, funny headstock, its all there. The design is supposed to be based off of a Stratocaster with the contours cut out, but to me it looks like a BC Rich mockingbird you flipped over.

See?

As far as features go it had an odd little floyd rose inspired locking tremolo, coil splitting humbuckers and had a 5 way strat selector. The headstock had a unique logo on it too:

Righteous!

The oddest thing I found about these guitars is that, according to Wikipedia at least, some models were made out of birch. Ive personally never heard of any electric guitars made out of birch, and I'm sure Fender hasn't made any other high end guitars out of birch.

There is a bass counterpart too

The bass version has 2 single coil pickups and is sort of a mutant jazz bass. The neck is designed for lead playing and is very thin. It has the same pointy headstock as the guitar counterpart. It only came in alder.

3 pickups!?

A 5 sting model was also released, probably very rare. This is the only photo I could find of one. Apparently it has a third pickup, and is supposed to have 5 tuners obviously.

The Performer series was only made for one year, from 1985 to 1986.

Delay Effects 40ish Years Ago

Effects units started gaining popularity towards the tail end of the 60's with the FuzzFace and the Wah pedal leading the way. Fuzz and Wah effects have stayed relatively unchanged since their creation whereas other early effects such as delay/echo have been completely changed by better analogue, or in some cases digital, technology. Early delay/echo effects used tape, magnetic wheels (see Binson Ecorec 2, used by Roger Waters) and oil cans to create its effect. Fender's "Variable Delay Echo-Reverb" used a magnetic oil can to create its delay.

It screams "1967" doesn't it?

Now I'm sure a few of you are wondering how the oil can delay works. Basically the guitar signal went in through the input, was then amplified to become very strong, and then the signal is released over a rotating belt covered in little wires. The signal is stored the same way static electricity is stored inside the body on a rainy day, and is then released onto a "tapehead" sort of reader, like one would release said static charge onto a doorknob. The whole mechanism is done in a vat of oil to keep the charge from being released into the air.

The time it takes the belt to be charged, then travel, then be "read" is how long the delay is, so the delay length knob simply speed up or slow down the belt speed. I would assume these units would be fragile with all the oil and belts and such. Ive only seen one in person, and its in disrepair. I did, however, find a video of someone demoing this unit.

Oh and it has spring reverb too!

On bass amps and speakers

I'm a bass player myself, and considering how much I love Fender basses and Fender guitar amps you'd think I'd play through a Fender bass amp. Well, I do, but I play through a very rare model, and there will be a post about it later. But for the most part, even bassists who love Fender basses dont play through Fender bass amps. Why? Because for the most part they suck, particularly the CBS era amps.

Great for clubs the size of a small closet!

Now at first glance it looks ok, Its fairly small, about the size of a modern 4x10 cabinet (I actually own its big brother the bassman ten, which uses the same cabinet) but its only 30 watts. As far as bass amps go a good rule of thumb is to divide the watts by 3 to compair how loud it would be to a guitar amp, so it would pair up well enough with a 10 watt guitar amp, say your guitarist is using a princeton or something. The only issue with that is the guitarist can drive his princeton and the bassist usually wants the bass to stay clean. The thing is, the wattage isnt the issue so much as the speaker...

Why?

The speaker is made out of styrofoam. What? Yes. Thats the other reason you couldnt turn these amps up. The speakers blew all the time, in fact, the original speakers are nearly impossible to find. So in short, these amps were very low power, and on top of that the speaker blew if you cranked it. CBS quietly discontinued this model around 1972.

Oh why hello there! They call me...

... Fender Custom.

Yeah this photo came from Craigslist

Ok, theres a lot going on in this guitar. Lets disect it down to make it more managable, shall we?

The neck and the pickups are from Fender's ill fated "Electric XII" 12 string electric guitars. It was designed from ground up in 1965 for folk musicians that wanted to play an electric 12 string. They were made from 65-69.  Apparently they weren't a hit so Fender was left with a batch of necks and bodies and pickups they couldn't use for other guitars.

So what did they do? Well employee Virgilio "Babe" Simon comes up with a plan to sell the rest: cut the bottom of the body in a funny way, add a tremolo, seal up the 6 of the headstock holes, and make it a standard(ish) 6 string. And so they did.

They called some the "Fender Custom" and others the "Fender Maverick". The rest speaks for itself.
The neck honestly looks really nice other than the awkward headstock. The pickup selector is unique too.

But how does it sound? Ive never seen split coil pickups on a guitar before (besides G&L's z coils), only on pbasses and mustang basses. (speaking of mustang basses, those pickups look awfully familiar...) Unfortunately, I cannot find any videos of people playing one. On the off chance someone owns one of these, please record a clip of playing this, those split pickups look killer!

Forgotten designs

Everyone has heard of the Stratocaster, hands down there is no guitar that is more of an icon than Leo Fender's famous design. But that's not the only thing Fender became famous for, more savy guitar players and collectors fawn over amps such as the tweed covered Deluxe and the "blackface" 50 watt Bassman. But what about the designs that were forgotten? How many people remember models such as the "Fender Custom" from the late 60's or the "Fender Cornado" series of semi-hollow guitars? A reminder of such unique, inventive, strange or downright brainless design is what this blog shall highlight.