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PART 5 "THE FAB SIXTIES A.K.A. THE GLORY YEARS PART 3" (JIMI HENDRIX!!, Blackmore)
Well, we're back again with yet more information. I'm sure that by now, you have showered and removed the "Eau d' Stench", as it's smell is about as potent as a skunk's defensive (and offensive) spray. At least with the "Eau d' Stench", bathing yourself in a tub of tomato juice is not required! Hopefully, when the "Stench" sneaks upon your senses, you will notice it's haunting, aromatic, odor as it will be very familiar to you. You will be in that mental state of what is known as `deep knowing', in other terminology, LET THE BUYER BEWARE!Now, we'll resume our trip back into the late `sixties' and discuss the equipment that the musicians of that era were using and how it affected their sound. A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to Roger Mayer, who, as most of you know, was Jimi Hendrix' ace electronic wizard and guitar technician. In our relatively brief conversation, he really enlightened me about Jimi's equipment as far as what was actually employed in the studio sessions from the `Axis: Bold as Love' period forward.
Roger informed me that some of Jimi's arsenal of amps included `Sound City' 100 watt stacks for the cleaner sounds, and Marshall stacks for the heavier, distortion sounds. In some applications, Jimi would run directly into the console. According to Roger, there was a Fender Twin used as well during the `Electric- Ladyland' sessions. While we're on the subject of amps, it should be mentioned that there were two versions of the `Sound City' heads, one having a sextet of EL-34's with a 100 watt rating, and a 200 watt version with a quartet of KT-88's as the output section in that amp.
Everybody knows that Roger modified a lot of Jimi's effects, such as his wah pedal and his Fuzz-Face. It is very common knowledge that Hendrix used a Uni-vibe vibrato-chorus unit as well. Jimi was also known to fiddle with just about anything that was new on the scene, so he could find a way to incorporate them into his musical bag of tricks.
There is yet another player in this saga when it concerns Jimi's amplification. This person is Buck Munger; former head of artist relations at Sunn Musical Equipment, located outside of Portland, Oregon. Buck had signed a deal with Jimi Hendrix during the famous Monterey Pop Festival in 1967's "Summer of Love". His endorsement was based on special, custom-order amplifiers which were built to Jimi's own personal specifications.
These amps had very heavy-duty specially designed transformers which could handle a huge amount of volume. These heads had a quartet of KT-88's as the output tubes, and Jimi would use one head with two custom Sunn cabinets loaded with six twelve-inch JBL's in each one. From what I've researched, Jimi used five heads in his live gigs, and that would equal ten separate speaker enclosures! When you figure that the amps were putting out around 120 watts RMS each, while being cascaded in parallel with each other, that makes a whole lot of noise!
After his stint with Sunn, Buck went on to become the most notorious artist relations manager in Gibson and Moog's history during the seventies. Today, he is the publisher of Portland's own `Two Louies' magazine, which covers the regional scene as it pertains to what is happening in their area musically. The `Louies' got started in 1979, and continues to report on what's hip and exciting. Buck is also a huge wealth of information on musical trivia, so if any of you would like to contact him, he can be reached at (503) 284-5931.
As far as Jimi's strings were concerned, he used the Fender `150' set which is gauged .010, .013, .015, .026, .032, .038, and composed of a pure-nickel outer jacket in a roundwound format. There is something that is very special about why this particular set worked for Jimi, where it wouldn't work as well for other players.
When you take into consideration the fact that Jimi's Stratocaster was played up-side down, you'll notice that the higher treble strings were closer to his tuning pegs, as his headstock was reversed like a Gibson Firebird, to use an example. This will create more tension on the strings as they are closer to the nut in comparison to a regular, right-handed Strat. The lower three bass strings are yet another story, since they have more distance to reach their tuning pegs when compared againest a `normal' Strat.
When you have an excess length of string behind the nut, this REALLY affects the way the string feels because there is less tension when tuned to standard pitch. Now, when you add into the equation that Jimi was tuned to `E-flat', you can just imagine how floppy and loose his lower strings felt! My guess is that Jimi Hendrix had a VERY light touch with his left picking hand, not to mention extreme control over his picking technique.
When it came to picks, he used Manny's mediums, in the standard Fender shape. Also, it was brought to my attention by Ken Fischer, that he had seen an old film of Jimi, doing a demo of "Angel" in his Greenwich Village apartment, using a Fender Deluxe amp and his trusty Stratocaster. This song was from his `Cry of Love' album.
Roger Mayer admitted to me that he wasn't at every session, so I'll try to get in touch with Eddie Kramer to get more details about the amp rigs that were used on the `Are You Experienced' sessions. I have heard from other sources that "Purple Haze" and "Hey, Joe" were cut on Noel Redding's old Telecaster where Jimi just turned it around and re-strung it! Just when we thought after all these years, that it was a Strat... NOT! That really turned my head around, that's for sure. Stay tuned for more film at eleven!
When you really think about it, Jimi's sound was very unique because everything was up-side down and reverse, right down to the angle of his bridge pick-up in conjunction with the pole-piece's staggered arrangement being ass-backwards too. Other interesting notes about Jimi include the `Gibson' stage of his career, in which he was seen using S.G. Customs, Les Paul Customs, and, of course his famous Flying `V'. During this period, the Darco company had a set of strings out on the market which were called the `Hendrix set'. These strings were pure-nickel also, BUT, they were slightly different in their size. Lo and behold, they were what is commonly referred to as the 'Regular Light' set of today, which is: 010 013 017 026 036 046. Gee, I wonder why he would use this set all of a sudden? I'ts pretty obvious to me that maybe the shorter scale-length of his Gibson guitars could have something to do with this. Imagine how lousy his standard `150' gauge strings would feel on a 24.75" scale instrument, especially when it was tuned down a half-step ......Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
It's also interesting to recall, that on the outer label of these Darco `Funkys', as they were known, that ONLY the .010 gauge set was stamped the `Hendrix set'. Some of you might remember the ugly green package that these strings came in... in fact, they were really nice sounding because they were of a good quality nickel, and they had a real open, airy, sweet tone on the plain strings. To me, these plain strings sounded a lot like the Martin bronze sets of that era. I believe that the Darco company, at the time, was indeed producing acoustic bronze sets for the Martin folks.
There are a myriad of great tones from this era, such as the Rolling Stone's intro riff to "Midnight Rambler" from their `Let it Bleed' LP. The sound that Keith Richards gets on that particular cut is amazing because of the amount of bass in the tone, and the fact that it isn't `mushy'. Let me tell ya, that's a real BEAR to duplicate! I believe that tone was created with either a Les Paul Standard or a Les Paul Custom with the three PAF's on the rhythm or neck pickup through a couple of Fender Super Reverbs of Black-face vintage. The 4x10 speaker configuration in those amps give you a really robust tone without the mud in the bottom end.
If you're interested in getting that sound, and you can't find a good Super Reverb or two, a Jim Kelley amp will NAIL that sound in about three seconds! I really like them, as I have quite a few in my personal collection. They were discontinued in around May of 1985, and they are becoming very sought after. I bought them for spare parts when nobody knew about how good these amps were. If you want to hear some recorded examples of this amp, you can refer to any good Bonnie Raitt record (she uses two single channel models), or you can even whip out Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" from their `Brothers in Arms' album. What a sound!! That's a double channel FACS combo running through a Marshall cabinet on that song.
Other great tones were produced from the first five Deep Purple albums. My personal favorites are the first record, `Shades of Deep Purple' and`Deep Purple: In Rock'. The tonal differences between, say, "Hush" off the first album, and "Child in Time" from `In Rock', are vast opposites. "Hush" was done on a Gibson ES-335 dot-neck, while the latter song was cut with a Stratocaster. Ritchie Blackmore had a real dark sound on the former song; which was again a pure-nickel roundwound string being played through 200 watt Marshall Major stacks which required two cabinets with 30 watt Celestion speakers in order to handle the power of the amplifier properly.
It should also be noted that Ritchie was the very first guitarist to use a factory-installed master volume control on his Marshall amp set-ups. His strings have always been the English-made Picato brand gauged 010 011 010 026 038 048.
The tone on "Child in Time" was a little thinner, but not much, as he used the front neck pickup of his Strat for most of the lead tracks. The amps were the same as far as I can tell. If you go back and listen, you'll hear what I mean. As players, it's always amazing to go back to a piece you haven't heard in 20 years, to find out how your ears have improved, while you're thinking about how difficult it was to get THAT sound when you were a kid!
Remember how you would sit in your room, dropping the phonogragh needle over and over onto that same, little part that drove you beserk, while wearing out your brand-new record in the process? Now, that was real high-technology, huh? Yeah, right! We were all very frustrated because it was such a time consuming method of learning the licks we wanted. With the introduction of portable cassette players, we saw some relief but not too much, as we would proceed to wear those out too! What I would of given for a simple four-track deck back then... Now, we really have it made due to the advances in the recording industry. Our children really have us over a barrel in this regard!
Next month, we will get even more into this period, but we will be looking at it from a different perspective: The Blues and their tremendous influence on the sounds we soaked up in our minds. Besides, everybody loves the blues, right? We're going to shift gears to the `American-style' sounds versus the `British' ones. Look forward to future columns on psychedelic music and all kinds of different stuff as it all intertwines into one heavy piece of diversity!
Along with all of this, we'll be discussing scale-lengths in an exploded view with excruciating detail. As a matter of course, I'll be bringing in an experienced panel of experts to help us really get down and dirty, so we can all have our own doctorates in "Sound Understanding".
Special thanks must be given to Roger Mayer, Buck Munger, and Jimmy Crummy for their assistance in this article. Extra, extra special thanks to Dr. Karen Lundegaard Ph.D, of Berkeley, California (what is it with me and Berkeley, anyway?) for her guidance, and for being the greatest teacher I have encountered on this planet! Last but not least, to Dan Bullwinkel and Dan Fedorenko for keeping us grounded while I am away on one of my jaunts across the country or wherever I need to be on short notice.
Copyright 1994 by Dean L. Farley
Reprinted from "Vintage Guitar" July 1994 issue.