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Report

“Eric fell in love with the damn thing, and George did, too. I gave one to Eric, one to George, and one to Jimmy Page, ‘cause they all loved ‘em.”

– Delaney Bramlett on tweed Champs

At the first mention of a tweed Champ many players immediately associate Leo Fender’s diminu-tive runt of the litter and its big dog howl with the Layla sessions – perhaps the most poignant andinstructive study in tonecraft and irony within the entire history of rock music. Think about it…Eric Clapton, the recalcitrant guitar god who forever transformed rock and blues first with theBlues Breakers and then Cream wielding 100 watt Marshall stacks and a slew of powerful Gibsonguitars, forms a new band comprised of ‘unknown’ American players and arrives at Criteria stu-dios in Miamiunder thewatchful eyeof Tom Dowdwith a ‘56Strat and atweed Champto record oneof the greatestalbums of alltime. As DonJuan suggest-ed in CarlosCastaneda’s ASeparateReality, “Theaverage manis too con-cerned withliking peopleor with beingliked himself.A warriorlikes, that’sall. He likeswhatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.” Enter Derek and the Dominos, Brownie, and atweed Champ. As a point of reference, may we suggest you acquire or re-visit The Layla Sessions.Clapton, Carl Radle, Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitlock and Skydog provide a positively rippin’ dose ofspontaneous magic, and every minute of it was fueled by tweed Champs. Bobby Whitlock on theLayla sessions: “When you let a horse run a race, it will run its finest race on its own. When youget some musicians and you get some creative people, you give them the opportunity to do what

Mountainview Publishing, LLC

$15.00 US, JAN/FEB 2010/VOL.11 NO.3

The Champ

INSIDETonecraft

&irony…

Our interviewwith the Albert

Brothers on recording

the Laylasessions

Champology…Our

search for the ‘59 Champ

Reviews Champ

Speakers –Weber

Signature Alnicos,

Jensen P8R&

C8R

10The

Fender ‘57Champ reissue

11Victoria 518

13ValveTrain Amps…

Model 205with

tortured tweed,the Concord

&Lexington reverb

13Bakos 8 Ball

14Exceptional

&Affordable Classics…

Jerry Jones&

our Copperburst

193 MonkeysOrangutan

23Z Vex Mastotron

24Kal David’s

Blues GuitarMaster Class

www.tonequest.com

TONEQUEST REPORT V11. N3. Jan/Feb 2010

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they’re supposed to do, and they’ll do just that. Given theright circumstances, they’ll perform at their peak. They’lldraw from the source. These songs don’t come out of yourhead. They’re not something you sit down and figure out.They’re things that flow through you – we were just instru-ments, just like the instruments in our laps. We were providedan opportunity to lock ourselves away and let the creativeprinciple of the universe flow through us.”

Interviewedabout theLaylaSessions inSound onSound mag-azine, broth-ers Ron and

Howard Albert, the Criteria recording engineers who workedthe Layla sessions with producer Tom Dowd added, “If youlooked through the control-room glass, the piano was to theleft, and on top of the piano, which had the lid closed, wereour [Fender Tweed] Champ amps that Eric and Duane bothused. We had to be inventive. The room was not a large space,so what we had to do was figure out a way to get everybody inthere. The piano took up most of the space along one wall,and cue systems in those days were pretty basic. We only hadone stereo send and it was hard for everybody to hear them-selves, so for acoustic purposes we used the little Champamps because they wouldn’t make a lot of sound in the room,enabling us to get isolation between the drums and the pianoand the guitarists.”

Having read this, we were compelled to find the AlbertBrothers on your behalf, who remain active in the recordingindustry having recently completed a new compilation of unre-leased Manassas tracks titled Pieces, as well the Subdudes lat-est release. Ron and Howard also operate Audio VisionRecording Studios in North Miami with their partner SteveAlaimo. We spoke to the Albert brothers via a 3-way confer-ence call in late December, and it was a great hang. Listen…

TQR: As the engineers responsible for recording Layla, what were your expectations in advance of the sessions?

We weren’t really told anything beforehand. We were doingabout one act a month for Atlantic at that time. It was a machine,and Atlantic had set up what was called Atlantic South atCriteria Studios. Tom, Jerry and Arif would be present on arotating schedule, Ahmet might fly in on any given day, butHoward and I were the staples, and to a certain degree ChuckKirkpatrick was the third member of that team, although not asheavily involved. For the Layla sessions it was just anothergroup as far as we were concerned – business as usual, and

essentiallythe setupwas thesame – wehad thedrums inthe boothwhere wewould nor-mally place

them, and we had this 9-foot Baldwin grand piano which wasalways in the same place. The one thing that we did do different-ly, and I think this is where the Champ came in, was that westuck the Champs on top of the piano, and Eric had one blowinginto the back of his head like a set of headphones.

TQR: Whose idea was it to use the Champs?

I think it was just circumstance. It certainly wasn’t the firstrecord that we ever used a Champ on, and for those sessions Ithink one was Eric’s and the other one belonged to the studio,and I believe that one might have been a blackface Champ. Inthe recording studio, smaller amps were more the norm ratherthan using bigger amps. We used to record bass through a lit-tle Ampex suitcase amp with a ten inch speaker – the bass onJames Brown’s “I Feel Good” was recorded through that littleAmpex, and that kind of thing was not uncommon.

TQR: What types of mics did you use?

MostlyShureSM57s onthe guitars,and alsoElectro-Voice 635s.When youhave a lot

of musicians in a small space, condenser mics are not yourfriend. One of the things we had going for us at Criteria wasa huge backlog of experience in understanding which micswould do what under specific circumstances, and we had tonsand tons of microphones because of Mack Emerman. If it hadbeen made, we had it. I can understand how your readers,being guitar players, might think we pulled out some classiccondenser mics, but that wasn’t the case.

TQR: We have actually interviewed guitarists who have laid out pretty heavy dough to stock their mic clos-et with various Royer and Neumann microphones to use for recording guitar…

And I look at those guys and think, “What are you doing?”

Ampex 620

TONEQUEST REPORT V11. N3. Jan/Feb 2010 3

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We’ve specifically used dynamic mics like a ShureSM57 on guitar because we know what we’re goingto get, and that mic gives us the sound we want. Weusually don’t have to EQ the track as much with a57, and part of the magic of the guitar sounds onLayla is due to the way the guitars were layered.Dynamic mics give us the sonic space to do that.On overdubs, in addition to the Shure SM57, wemight also use a condenser mic like a U47 set upten feet away from the amp and mix that with thedirect mic. We also turn the mics off-axis at a thirtydegree angle when close mic’ing. But we’d beremiss if we didn’t mention that part of the secret to

that great guitar sound on Layla was the room – Studio B atCriteria. It was a rectangular room with polycyndrical dif-fusers on the walls that were home-made with slats inbetween them to break up highfrequency waves. The ceilingheight was something like 22 feet,and the big thing that no one evertalks about was the carpet… prob-ably 90% of the sound was thatmagic carpet (laughing…)

TQR: Get out of here… But the diffusers were, for those who may not know, designed to knockdown stand-ing waves, correct?

Mack designed this room himself, and he just put stuff upthat he’d read about, made it up and it worked. The thing thatwas amazing about that room was that the isolation was justincredible, and I have never been in another room like itsince – ever. We’ve been in rooms all over the world andnothing could touch it.

TQR: And while a studio remains on the premises today, that particular room at Criteria was turned into an artists’ lounge… Seems like a crime.

It was a crime. You could understand the building being soldand turned into a pizzeria or something, but to have lost thatroom in a recording facility is a crime.

TQR: How much did you adjust EQ on individual tracks when you were recording Layla?

You almost had to EQ things as you were recording, becausewe only had sixteen tracks total, and eight of them were usedfor the drums alone, which only leaves about six tracks forvocals and guitars. But we generally EQ when we’re record-ing, because if you get it right in the beginning, that’s alwaysbetter. “We’ll fix it in the mix” never made sense to us.

TQR: Sixteen tracks should be enough for a rock

record…

Yeah, it is.

TQR: It seemslike music wentdown hill as thenumber of availabletracks increased.

You think?! Not only that, it went down hill when peopledecided they needed twenty four tracks just to get four trackson a record.

TQR: So you would EQ on the fly…

Yeah, and then we’d do a lot of bouncing and putting differ-ent parts together so we would wind up with three or fourguitar parts as one track among sixteen.

TQR: What’s your take on the evolution of recording from analog 2-inch tape to digital? When we inter-viewed Tom Dowd, he seemed to think that digital was superior to analog, which was surprising to hear.

I don’t agreewith that.When weswitchedfrom analogto digital wechose theOtari Radarsystem,which hap-pened to

sound fabulous, with very little difference in the bottom-endor overall quality from analog tape. We A/B’d it all the timeand it just sounded fabulous. It was just really, really, reallygood. Then they came out with Radar 2 which was even bet-ter… The first digital machine was 3M, and that sounded likedog, and the $260,000 Sony 48-track digital 3348 was verybright and brittle sounding, but unfortunately, most of themasses initially went in that direction. Radar just sounded bet-ter, like an analog tape. Then when Pro Tools came out, itbecame the industry standard very, very quickly, and one ofthe things that helped Pro Tools was how bad the earlierAlesis ADAT system had sounded. You guys are into guitarsand guitar sounds, but hip-hop is the leader in the recordingindustry (and there are no Champ amps on hip-hop). Theother thing is that everybody can have a Pro Tools systemwithout spending $200,000, and the things you can do withediting are invaluable. So, if you’re a professional these days

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Elec

trovo

ice

635a

mic

SM57

Tom Dowd


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you’re using Pro Tools. Theymay have stopped by now, butas recently as a few years ago Iknow that U2 was still track-ing on Radar. But if you’re anygood as an engineer and youhave a decent console, you canmake good sounding music.

Back to the circle of guitarsand Champs… yes, there aresome beautiful vintage amps,but let’s not forget the guitarthat is plugged into the amp…

It all starts with the guitar. Part of our philosophy in makingbeautiful sounding rock & roll recordings is layering differenttypes of guitars – whatever you got… If you have a Strat itdoesn’t mean you can’t use a Telecaster, a Les Paul, an SG ora Gretsch with it. It’s cumulative… knowing what somethingshould sound like has been a big part of our success.

TQR: Sure, although you did manage to pull it off with the Layla sessions, which were limited to the Stratocaster and Duane’s Les Paul…

That’s correct, but in all fairness to them, you also had twocompletely unique guitar players with their own very uniqueand different styles.

TQR: What types of effects did you use on Layla?

We really didn’t have very manyguitar effects back then, but weused EQ, compression and lim-iting, we had echo chambers,and we used a little tape delaywith a couple of Ampex tapemachines. The Fender Lesliecabinet also played a huge rolein the sound of that record. Itwas an actual Fender ‘Leslie’cabinet with an on/offfootswitch, but Howard and Itook it to another level by con-

necting a variac to it to vary the speed of the Leslie.

TQR: And this Leslie cabinet was connected to what?

Either a Fender Super Reverb or a tweed Bassman. Therewere two rental companies in Miami at the time – Howardand I had one and Criteria created one later on when theyrealized you could make money renting equipment. We hadeverything… we still have Howard’s B3 that was on Layla,all of the Aretha Franklin records and all of the Allman

Brothers stuff. The last time we saw the Baldwin piano wasat a Florida memorabilia exhibit, so it’s still around.

TQR: Have you ever had to spend a lot of time trying to ‘get a sound’ for a particular guitarist in the studio?

No. Listen, Duane Allmanwould come in, and all hewanted to do was play, sohe’d leave it to us to get ‘thesound.’ If you took more thantwo minutes to get a soundup, they would get frustrated.All they wanted to do wasplay – it was our job to getthe sound for the record. Ithas never happened in oursessions, but I have seen peo-ple take all day to get guitaror drums sounds, and I don’tunderstand that. When wewere doing Zakk Wylde therewere no issues with the guitarsound. We set up three

Marshall heads in the control room with different cabinetsmic’ed up in the studio, and it was never more than a matter ofa few seconds to get a great guitar sound. We also have a pret-ty unorthodox method of recording vocal tracks, and we’velearned that it doesn’t matter how the vocal sounds alone –what matters is how the vocal sounds in the mix – how it sitswith all the other tracks. Getting that right is not an easy trick.

TQR: We’ve also had people comment on how they don’tlike to start a track on guitar and come back to fin-ish it on another day, because it never sounds the same.

That’s true, and we’vehad to deal with thatmany, many times.Here’s a story… JerryGarcia was playing pedalsteel on a Stephen Stillssession – it may havebeen Manassas, I don’trecall, but Jerry shut itdown late one night not

having finished the track. He said he’d come back tomorrow,and we’re still waiting (laughing). Stephen came in and fin-ished Jerry’s pedal steel track playing a Gretsch and doingthe volume swells with the volume control on the guitar, soyou have this ‘steel track’ actually comprised of two parts,and yes, we did have to do some work to get Stephen’s guitarto sound like Jerry’s pedal steel.


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TQR: You both also recently created and produced an all-new Manassas recording titled Pieces from unre-leased tracks from the original sessions, and you mentioned when we first spoke how surprised you were to hear that warm analog sound again.

The first time we putthose tapes up andpushed play… Weknew the songs, wehad worked on themcollectively for hun-dreds of hours whenthey were recorded,and while we hadn’theard them in 30years, you think you

remember what they sound like – specifically the tonal quali-ty of analog recording – yet we were just blown away.

TQR: Can you describe the difference?

Better. More bottom and more transparent. More depth. It’salmost like recording a session with everything close-mic’edand also with room mics, then you bring the band in to hearthe playback with the sound from the room mics off, and theambience of the sound you are hearing is drastically different.The digital sound is drier, versus this coating over the wholething that just makes it warm and gushy.

TQR: You worked in an era where recordings were made in the studio, and then the mix would be mastered to an acetate, and sometimes a lot could be lost in the process.

We had our ownmastering facility,so we knew whatwe were going toget. Having allthose exotic micro-phones, we didn’thave to send ourmasters out to be

mastered. We had our own mastering guy, Karl Richardson,who gave us an edge over a lot of people. At that time therewas a lot of EQ’ing going on in the studio to make it workright on an acetate, because you had physical limitations… Ifyou went over twenty-one minutes a side on an LP, you hadto lower the volume because the width of the grooves had tobe narrower. If you had a lot of bottom end, which we alwayshad on our records, the wider the grooves had to be, and theless volume you had. If you were to look at the elapsed timeof the sides on the Manassas records, for example, that’s part

of the ‘cheating’process that we werevery aware of. If youwanted a loud, fatrecord, you couldn’thave twenty-fourminute sides. Look atthe Beatles records…they were short sides.In those early daysyou had somethingcalled variable pitch…

What that means is that you could vary how narrow or widethe groove is depending on where you turn the knob in mas-tering. A good mastering engineer at that time would learnthe song and know where the big bass bumps were so theycould widen the grooves. There was no automation – theywould turn the knob, and if they had a twenty minute sideand seventeen minutes into it they missed, they’d have tostart over and cut a new acetate.

TQR: And you were making judgments in terms of EQ asyou were recording that were critical to the master-ing process.

Yes. Most recent-ly, the recordcompany decidedthat they wouldalso like torelease a vinylversion of Piecesas well. They sentthe recording to

Bernie Grundman – one of the most accomplished andrespected mastering engineers in the world whom we’veworked with for many years, and he said the recording didn’tneed mastering. It’s already been done.

In regard to mastering and making records sound good…making albums was not the norm – it was a singles businessfirst, so worrying about the length of a side and all these con-siderations we’re talking about… no one really cared aboutthe album except for the artwork. When we were doing analbum a month for Atlantic, one month it would be EricClapton and the next would be Herbie Mann.

TQR: Yet you routinely recorded many versions of each song and then assembled the final, finished master using assorted pieces from all the different takes – a composite of the best instru mental and vocal takes you had recorded.

We always did that on everything, with everybody. The only

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example Ican thinkof contraryto that isGregAllman,and I’ll tellyou thestory…You know,the AllmanBrothers

literally lived in the parking lot of the studio in this oldWinnebago when they were in Miami. It wasn’t like Duanewas called down from Daytona Beach for a session – he wasliving in the parking lot at Criteria, which just happened tomake one of the greatest guitar players in the world availableto us, and we very very fortunate to have him around.

TQR: So were they were ‘hanging’ outside the Winnebago with folding patio chairs and cases of Budweiser? That kind of hang? Southern boys would do that – turn any damn place into a porch iswhat they do.

Yeah, something likethat. You see, so much ofwhat we did was doneafter hours… Tom wouldleave the session in ourhands, and we could dothe hang, and during thathang time is when wewere able to develop oursound and our recordingtechniques. Some of it

worked and some of it didn’t, but we were free to experi-ment. So, Greg came into the studio early one day for somereason and said, “What do you want to do?” It was just himand I – there weren’t any record company people or produc-ers around, but we had our shit together… The studio is setup, the mics are set up and the lights are dimmed… We wereextremely professional and very much on top of our game.So I said, “Let’s do this…” It was a song we’d recorded earli-er called “Midnight Rider” that needed a vocal. So I put thetape on the machine, Greg sings the song and at the end helifts his head, looks at me and says, “How’s that?” I looked tomy left and looked to my right and there is no Tom Dowd,and I pushed the talkback button and said, “Yeah, that sound-ed good.” And that’s the vocal on the record – one take, andit’s the magical one. Having said that, most of the recordingswe’ve made are composites.

TQR: Do you really get to work that way anymore?

Yeah, we’ll do that for a guitar part, but there is not thatmuch live recording going on anymore as a whole band, soit’s a little different, and I miss that kind of live recording.There are also not a lot of people around anymore that areknowledgeable and capable of working that way… the Johnsbrothers… Eddie Kramer… us…]

TQR: So you’ve done the new Manassas Pieces record-ing, and you just finished the new Subdudes record – how did that come about?

Well, theyrecorded theinitial tracksthemselvesin Coloradoand thenthey sent usthe mastersand we didsome over-

dubs, mixing and finished the record with Al Kooper play-ing some piano. In the process, we all became huge TommyMalone fans.

TQR: And so you should. There is no hip-hop on a Tommy Malone record. It’s a deeper groove alto-gether. The deepest.

www.audiovisionstudios.comwww.subdudes.com

The Albert brothers’ commentssuggest that perhaps the decisionto use Champ amps can beattributed to the engineers’desire to isolate the instrumentsin the small ‘Studio B’ space atCriteria. Did Eric Claptonapproach these sessions with anyparticular preference for the toneof a tweed Champ over otheramplifiers that would have beenavailable to him? We wonder…

Nearly four decades hence, we guitarists continue to scourthe vast landscape of sounds and guitar tones new and oldthat might allow, as Bobby Whitlock suggested, “the creativeprinciple of the universe to flow through us” too. Yet weremain vulnerable to sometimes listening too closely to thepersistent buzz that holds the latest white-hot gizmo aloft inour consciousness like a bad case of tinnitis…Dear God howwe hate to be the last to know what’s supposed to be ‘cool,’


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and as amp builder RoyBlankenship wryly observed in ourFebruary 2008 interview, “Thereis a lot of dick-measuring in thisbusiness.” Ya think? In this edi-tion of the Quest we fix yourattention on bona fide sure bets –instruments that can deliver on thepromise of lasting inspiration andrapture at the cusp of the newyear. But first, some context is inorder…

ChampologyWe’ll not drag you tied to the rusty back bumper of Fenderhistory through every academic nuance and iteration of theChamp since its creation in 1948, focusing instead on the later‘57-’64 tweed models originally equipped with an 8 inchRola, Oxford or Jensen speaker. While the early Champion800 and 600 amps are definitely collectable pieces of Fenderhistory, it’s the narrow panel tweed 5F1 circuit that deliversthe goods. Counted among these is the transitional ‘64 versioncovered in black tolex with silver grill cloth – the last 5F1Champ produced before the blackface model AA764 wasintroduced in late 1964. Of course, you want to know how theblack and silverface Champs (and the Vibro-Champ) compareto the narrow panel tweeds built from ‘57-’64… Well, youguessed right – they are usually cheaper today, and their

sound is much ‘clean-er’ in keeping with theevolution of the blackand silverface ampsoverall. They cansound very good in thestyle of a lower pow-ered, single 6V6 non-reverb Princeton, ifyou can imagine that,but they don’t possess

the mystical mojo of the tweed era any more than a silverfaceBassman sounds remotely similar to a tweed. We should alsomention that in addition to the modern reissue ‘57 Fendertweed Champ reviewed here, other builders have beeninspired to develop their own worthy tributes to the Champ,including Victoria’s model 518 featuring an optional JensenP12N speaker. If you are allergic to dealing with 50 year-oldrelics, one of these modern alternatives may be the amp foryou, and we’re reviewing a ton of ‘em here.

The ‘59Our initial search for a vintage tweed Champ was revealing inan amusing or irritating fashion depending on your state of

mind. We startedout on GBase.com,where a dozen or sotweed Champs invarious states ofpristine originalityand musty decaywere listed withinstructions to bendover and call for aprice. We actuallyplaced a couple ofcalls on specific

amps – one droll stoner agreed to send additional pictures(and did), and then informed us that they would need an addi-tional 3% for PayPal and the rich asking price was firmer thanTiger Wood’s putting stroke at the Perkins PancakeDoublewide Invitational. Second dude promised to send pixand never did. Are we having fun yet? Craig’s List turned upnothing but a guy named ‘Champ’ looking for a hookup (wedidn’t call), so it was on to eBay, where we quickly located ajuicy-looking ‘61, only to find that it had been “professionallyserviced” with all new caps (every last one of ‘em). A fewdays later a sweet, caramelized ‘59 appeared with a Buy ItNow price of $1299.00 and free shipping. We re-entered eBaythrough the Bing.com portal, hit BIN and claimed an instant8% cash back deposit in our PayPal account compliments ofBill Gates to close the deal. About the best you can hope forprice-wise on eBay for a straight, relatively unmolested tweedChamp is $900 and change if you want to hang in for the longhaul and play the bidding game. As always, we don’t want acompletely ‘refurbished’ old amp that sounds new, and it’salmost unheard of to see Champs with replaced transformers.Just avoid circuit boards that have been completely sweptclean of those Astron coupling caps and original resistors…

DeliveranceOur ‘59 arrived from Hendersonville, NC as advertised withthe electrolytics already replaced with the proper Spragues,and the original Oxford 8" speaker complete with a well-donetoilet paper patch on the bottom of the cone where the ACcord had probably punctured it. The Oxford sounded a littletired but good – papery and throaty with lots of transparentharmonic texture, and the Champ itself revealed everything

we had hoped forand more – the kindof vintage tone thatstops conversation,only to resume withheaps of reverentpraise and com-ments about howthat sound had been

Bobby Whitlock


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forgotten. And ithas. Well, you’vebeen busy…

The next day wetook the Champ toBakos Ampworksto have the toolong, brittle and

stiff 2-prong grey power cord replaced. As Jeff worked wediscussed his fondness for his own tweed Champ and all thetracks that had been cut with it over the years. With the newcord installed, we fired up the Champ and immediately heardcrackling in the volume pot that hadn’t been there before…What’s this? Jeff shook a tiny piece of old solder out of itwith a modified dental tool, but the scratchiness persisted.Not to be deterred, he disassembled the pot casing lookingfor any additional crap inside and reassembled it with noimprovement. “Sorry, man, but I think this pot is toast.”Sooo, we were off to search for a switched 1 meg audio taperpot, which we ultimately found at Weber VST for a righteousprice of under three bucks. While we were arranging thattransaction, we also asked the gang at Weber to send downboth of their Signature 4-ohm Alnico 8s for review in theChamp, which they did. Things were looking up as we antici-pated the article that was rapidly developing on your behalf.

When the speak-ers arrived weeyed the box fromWeber with thefull relish of a$200 pound ofgolden BlueMountain Lamb’sBread circa 1972.Irie. Well, not

quite irie… The Champ chassis wouldn’t clear the top edgeof the Weber’s Alnico magnet – no way, no how. But they sayright on their web description, “Fits a tweed Champ.”Pondering our failed geometry problem with all the acuity ofa chimpanzee, we were, for the moment, stumped and flum-moxed. We had acquired a couple of Jensen reissues thatwouldn’t fit either, and as we further digested this soberingthought in front of the PC monitor while nursing a SierraNevada Pale, we pulled up a picture of a mounted speaker inanother ‘59 Champ and stared at its position on the baffle-board for any clues to our dilemma… Gizzards and cocopuffs! Lookie there! The bottom edge of the speaker framewas no more than half an inch above the bottom edge of thebaffleboard on that one, while ours sat two inches higher…What the hell?

The baffleboard on our ‘59 was clearly original… Have you

guessed yet? It had been mistakenly installed upsidedown inFullerton! Ah, Lupé, look at the confusion and worry yourinnocent distraction has caused us 50 years later! WasFreddie Tavares whispering a naughty joke in your ear whenyou screwed this one together? Well, bless you, wherever youare… We flipped the baffleboard in minutes and the speakerwas now positioned properly to allow us to install the Webersand pretty much any other 8 we wished. Viva el Champion!Viva Lupé!

Giving Up the Goods By now perhaps you’re thinking that the acquisition of asweet tweed honey dripper presents challenges better left toothers… that the unpredictable effects of time, chance and apotential seller’s ignorance or obfuscation may leave yourwallet depleted and your spirit broken… Well, you certainlycan skirt the more adventurous path of hunting down an oldgem and buy something new – and you do have respectablechoices – but for those of you who relish the visual and sonicpatina that only a vintage classic can truly deliver, we urgeyou to go for it. With a little patience you’ll likely find aniconic example of this utterly stellar little jewel in the Fendercrown for a just a few hundred dollars more than a new ver-sion, and if you choose well, your investment will certainlynot depreciate in value over time. On the other hand, yourappreciation for the Champ and its absolute ability to inspireexceptional music at comforting volume levels is virtuallyincalculable. Wait… Read that last line again. Really? Yes.We must tell you that we were shocked and stunned by justhow magical the ‘59 really sounds – and especially after ourspeaker evaluations began…

Weber Signature Alnico 8and Alnico 8S Ted Weber’s untimely passing on

August 14, 2008 at age 58 marked theend of a remarkably creative and

energetic life devoted to electron-ics, music and sound. Before

creating Weber VST, Tedworked in research anddevelopment at the

Delco division of General Motors in Kokomo, Indiana, andlater became Lab Supervisor of Technicians at DelphiEnergenix Laboratory. He retired from Delphi in April 2005and expanded Weber VST well beyond the existing speakercatalog to include amplifier components and chassis, customcabinets, attenuators, bias tools, amp kits and more, but it isTed’s contribution to guitar speakers that truly energized anindustry that had fallen back on its heels a bit in precedingdecades. Weber re-set the bar and awakened a new interest inthe importance of speakers as the final transducer that shapes

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our tone, and through his work and the information shared onhis web site, a new and robust era in speaker manufacturingemerged. Ted’s legacy now lives on under the care of his sonT.A., who continues to manage the operation Ted created. Tedwas also an early contributor to TQR. Listen…

TQR: Did you initially want to reproduce the vintage speaker designs of the past?

Being an engineer, Ithought about howoften original designsbecame watered downin the front office oraccounting depart-ment. The belief I hadwas that if weremained small, did all

of our marketing on the Internet and kept our overhead low,we could actually design and build engineered speakers –products with very tight tolerances and a high degree of pre-cision machining that generally isn’t possible with mass pro-duction. Our gaps would be tighter with better concentricity,better magnets, a higher grade of steel, and our productionwould be cellular rather then just throwing things togetheron a high-volume production line. But I also knew that wewouldn’t be able to do the typical 6-8 times build-cost-to-retail-price ratio. We would have had a $300-$400 speakerthat would have become an expensive lawn ornament,because at that time, the question would have been “Who theheck is Weber?” Why would anyone pay that much for aspeaker built by someone they had never heard of? Mass dis-tribution wasn’t going to work for us. Anyone can go toEminence or overseas to have speakers made, but I didn’t seethe point of that. There was no sense in building speakersusing generic parts – that wasn’t within our vision of produc-ing speakers that the old designers would have created in aperfect creative environment. And if one of those old speakerdesigners were to come here today, he would find that we’rebasically shipping prototype speakers every single day in

terms of the qual-ity of materialsand manufactur-ing tolerances. Inthe old days, theywould havemachined all ofthe parts, proto-typed a specificmodel and per-formed a costanalysis on it.That’s where theoriginal design

would be watered down for cost effective manufacturing andcompetitive pricing. We’re taking that original speaker thatwould have been designed and built in the lab and reproduc-ing it every time.

Well,now…that’s com-fortingwordsindeed, andwe can tellyou that

given our experience with the Weber Signature 8s, Ted suc-ceeded mightily in his quest, may he rest in peace.

Weber builds an Alnico 8 and a brighter 8S model for yerChamp, and we started with the standard 8. The first thing wenoticed is that the volume increased over the original Oxfordby 20%. So much for originality… The Weber also displayeda far richer, bolder sound – strong and vocal in the mids withexcellent frequency response and, as the online descriptionpromised, a smooth response to higher volume levels with aslight attenuation in the higher frequencies and moderate,musical compression. We would choose this Signature 8speaker for most guitars equipped with brighter single coilpickups, and the improvement over the old Oxford wasastounding. Astounding? Really.

The Alnico8S also per-forms asdescribed,with muchmore promi-nent treblepresencethat colorsthe over-driven voiceof the

Champ with a brighter, sharper character overall. If you preferthe sound of a brighter speaker, this one’s for you. The con-trast between the two Weber speakers is very apparent, and wepersonally preferred the thicker, richer sound of the standardWeber Signature Alnico 8 over the 8S. Your results may vary,and that’s OK. We simply loved the way the smooth coneSignature Alnico 8 transformed the sound of our ‘59 Champinto a magnificently bold little tweed with excellent clarity(and this is important), exceptionally smooth, musical distor-tion, vivid second-order harmonics and phenomenal dynamicresponse to pick attack. In our world, you really couldn’t askfor more.

www.tedweber.com TQ


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Jensen P8R & C8RWe also arranged to receive a ceramic mag Jensen C8R andAlnico P8R from CE Distribution to audition in the ‘59, andit didn’t take long for us to give the nod to the ceramic C8Rfor the same reasons we preferred the standard Weber Alnicoover the brighter S model. In a feisty little amp like theChamp, we don’t want to hear a lot of high frequency distor-tion clashing over single notes and chords. The ‘59 Champ isby nature a very transparent and revealing amp given itssmall output transformer and speaker… Any dissonancequickly obscures fundamentals, while the right speaker canactually expand them through second order harmonics, creat-ing a polyphonic vocal quality that can be experienced first-hand throughout the brilliantly crafted, ultimate demo CD forthe Champ – Layla. The trick, it seems, is to strike the rightbalance of compression, frequency response and clarity,while avoiding shrill, too sharp treble tones, muddy mids andfloppy low end. The Jensen C8R sounds strong, full and richwith single coils (P90s are made for a Champ), but depend-ing on the pickups in your humbucking guitars, we’re notgoing to eliminate the brighter speakers mentioned here ifyou’ll be predominantly using midrange-heavy humbuckers.The good news is that all of these 8 inch speakers are rela-tively inexpensive, which makes experimentation a lot lesscostly. Among the Jensen 8s, we prefer the C8R.

www.cedist.com, 480-755-4712 (wholesale) www.tubesandmore.com, 480-820-5411

Lagniappe – Jensen & Rola ReconesThanks to Mr. Valco, akaTerry Dobbs, we were alsoable to have Tom Colvin atthe Speaker Workshop in Ft.Wayne, Indiana do hisreconing magic with a vin-tage Rola and Jensen 4 ohmeight. Like the originalOxford in the ‘59 Champ,both of these vintage speak-

ers produce a sound that is more ‘papery’ and slightly lesspowerful than the Webers or modern Jensens, but their tone is

very true to the period inwhich the tweed Champswere built. The voice of theRola was a bit thicker andmore middy than the Jensen,which displayed the typicalbrightness unique to JensenAlnico speakers, and bothadded more distortion thanany of the modern 8s

reviewed here. It’s also interesting to note that the Rola wasstamped with a Philco label.

The Speaker Workshop, 260-426-8742Terry Dobbs, www.valcoamp.com, 812-342-6684

Fender has estab-lished a long andvaried history ofbuilding highlyrespected modernamps like theBlues Deville,Blues Junior,Vibro King andreissue tweedBassman, but theyhave also not

ignored the enduring appeal of vintage classics, such as theblackface Vibroverb 1x15 designed in cooperation with CésarDiaz, the ‘57 tweed Twin, the hand-wired tweed Deluxe,blackface Princeton Reverb, and the 5F1 ‘57 tweed Champ.

Given all of the low-powered amps that are available to gui-tarists today at virtually any price point, you might wonderwhy an industry giant like Fender would bother to reissue a 5 watt hand-wired amp that lists for $1299 and sells for a‘street’ price of $999… Well, it’s a Champ, and in case youhaven’t noticed, there seems to be a healthy reverence forFender history among the current management at Fender thatoften transcends dispassionate business decisions that mightotherwise focus solely on the bottom line. We suspect theoverriding motivation for building a labor-intensive, hand-wired 5F1 Champ was simply that it deserved and needed tobe done. And as we have reported in the past in regard to thetweed Deluxe, for example, you can be assured that thedevelopment team at Fender assembled a respectable assort-ment of vintage Champs as they tweaked the prototype thatwould ultimately provide the final blueprint for production.As a consumer, tonefreak and prospective Champ owner, youof course are single-mindedly interested in one thing, and onething only… How does Fender’s modern reissue sound andcompare to ‘the real thing?’ Fair question, and the very samethat prompted us to request a Champ for review.

As far as technical details go, the Champ is properly housedin a lacquered tweed covered pine box, loaded with a Ruby5Y3 and GT 6V6 and 12AX7 tubes, and the excellent Weber

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ToneQuestThe Fender ‘57 Champ ReissueThe Fender ‘57 Champ Reissue

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Signature Alnico 4 ohm speaker (not the brighter ‘S’ Alnicomodel). The globally compliant hand-wired chassis is muchbusier than an original Champ inside, with redundant fail-safe fuses on the fiber circuit board, shields over the internalinput jacks, and a compliant (and easily removable) cageattached to the back panel that protects the user from thosesmokin’ hot tubes! Features (or lack thereof) faithfully followthe original design, with high and low sensitivity inputs and asingle volume control. Rather than using a switched volumepot, an on/off toggle switch is employed. The ‘606’ trans-former EIA codes indicate Schumacher, and this is good.Give Fender a deserving nod for also including an authenticbrown linen vintage-style cover.

ToneYou’d thinkan elegantlyaustere andsimple circuitlike the 5F1Champwould beeasy enoughto reproduceand dial in

tonally, and Fender has succeeded nicely. The voice of theChamp is rich and throaty with surprising volume as it gradu-ally succumbs to increasingly intense distortion and second-order harmonics. Compared to our vintage ‘59, the newChamp gets louder a little faster, probably due to a differenttaper in the volume pots of both amps. Equipped with thestock tubes, the modern Champ lacks a little of the clarity,dimensionality and smooth dynamic response of our ‘59, butwhen we swapped the GT 6V6 with an old RCA blackplateand the 12AX7 with a vintage RCA, those qualities emergedas you would expect. There is a difference between both

amps… the newChamp soundsunderstandablybrighter by a fewdegrees, and moreassertive… like anew amp versusone that is 50years old. But forthose of you who

prefer the reliability and no-maintenance peace of mindoffered by a new amp (with a 5-year warranty), we can rec-ommend the new Fender Champ very highly – and especiallyif you can get your hands on a fine NOS 6V6 and 12AX7.Even at today’s prices for vintage tubes, optimizing theChamp is an affordable and worthwhile upgrade. As for thespeaker, you needn’t worry about that – the stock Weber

Alnico selected by Fender is the one you want. Lightly usedreissue tweed Champs are selling for around $600 versus$999 new. By all means, Quest forth…

www.fender.comwww.kcanostubes.com

Mark Baier’sreplica of theChamp faithfullyhonors the origi-nal 5F1 circuit ina slightly largerpine box an inchtaller and deeperthan the originalcabinet, and noone does a betterjob of lacqueringtweed with an

amber patina than Victoria. If an eight inch driver leaves youfeeling slightly under-endowed, you can also order the BigBamboo – model 5112 – a tweed Champ in a Deluxe cabinetloaded with an Eminence Legend 12. Our 518 review modelincluded a new old stock GE 5Y3 rectifier, new (and excel-lent) Tung-Sol 6V6 and an equally good TAD (Tube AmpDoctor) 12AX7. If you ever find yourself wondering whichmodern tubes offer the best tone and dependability, just lookinside amps built by smaller companies that really care abouttube tone. We can recall when all Victorias were shipped withNOS tubes, if that tells you anything…

The 518 performs just as expected, with a rich, musical voice.The stock Jensen Alnico P8R doesn’t sound as overwhelming-ly bright in the Victoria as it did in our ‘59 or Greg Talley’s,but we still prefer the heavier sound of the Weber Signature 8.The 518 doesn’t spill into intense distortion and higher volumelevels quite as fast as our old Champs, but it gets there withauthority, and there are plenty of very usable tones presentbefore you reach ‘8.’ If you are under the impression thatChamps are only truly useful fully gassed on ‘10,’ you’d bewrong. Their sweet spot is really well before hard clipping, andyes, outboard reverb or tremolo quickly transforms them intosomething magical that defies easy identification in a blindfoldtest or a recording. Weaker Stratocaster pickups or a guitar likeour Jerry Jones Copperburst really bloom and breathe in thisamp – especially with the dynamic compression produced byan eight inch speaker, while typical P90s, Telecaster and hum-bucking pickups produce a more linear intensity. Overall, we’ddescribe the Victoria 518 as sounding slightly more detailed,

ToneQuestVictoria 518Victoria 518

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complex and musicalwhen compared tothe modern FenderChamp with its stocktubes. Load bothamps with RCAsand you might havea hard time distin-guishing one fromthe other except forthe slightly brighter

Jensen P8R. The 518 earns additional points on cosmetics withits excellent butterscotch lacquered finish, and we like the tra-ditional single, switched volume control. No, the switched potdoesn’t ‘sound’ better – we just like the feel of the click as thejewel light illuminates. By all of the typical criteria one mightapply to a booteek amp (tone and build quality), the 518 is out-standing at $1095 new. Our sole suggestion might be to add aline out jack on the bottom of the chassis should you wish togoose a bigger amp.

www.victoriaamp.com, 630-820-6400

ValveTrain As explained tous during anintroductoryphone call,ValveTrainfounder RickGessner’s visionfor theRevolutionSeries was tobuild high-quali-ty, hand-wiredguitar amplifiers

in the USA utilizing American-made components at a streetprice under $1,000. As he described his business model overthe phone, we couldn’t help thinking of the companies thathad recently adopted a similar, yet polar opposite approach –to build hand-wired ‘affordable’ amps in China. Well, regard-less of where they are built, the market for small, affordableguitar amps has always been much more robust than most ofthe bigger custom-built, hand-wired models we often reviewin these pages, and this is nothing new… Fender built farmore ‘student’ models like the Champ and guitars like theDuo Sonic and Mustang because that’s what sold the most –ditto with Gibson and the Skylark and Melody Maker. Smallamplifiers offering lower decibel levels remain immenselypopular today for home, apartment and studio use not neces-sarily due to their low cost, but because so many players

enjoy the sound of variable degrees of distortion at moderatevolume levels. The remarkable growth of the pedal businesscan be attributed to this same obsession with distortion at a‘polite’ volume. Hey… we love Super Reverbs as much asanyone, but when your ears are ringing hours after a briefdalliance with those four tens, we understand. And whowants to lift a Super?

We received three ValveTrain models for review, all an easyone-hand tote well under 10 watts. Inspired by the cathode-biased 1955 Fender 5F2A Princeton, the ‘205’ model is builtwith a pine cabinet two inches taller than a vintage Champ,and features nicely aged “tortured tweed.” Additional featuresunique to the 205 include both a volume and tone control, and4 and 8 ohm speaker input jacks on the bottom of the chassis.The presence of an 8 ohm jack might could open up a bravenew world of 8" speaker options for anyone bold enough tolook beyond the obvious… The majority of available used and‘vintage’ eight inch speakers are 8 ohm, including some veryinteresting 8s with Jensen, Magnavox (CTS), Rola, JBL andTelefunken labels. A player with an 8 ohm Champ could havea helluva lot of fun dabbling in some of the more obscure 8"full-range speakers that have been made for various stereo sys-tems – just be sure to limit your search to “full range” speakers– not midrange drivers or hi-fi woofers. Every time we’velooked, eBay has been full of ‘em.

Like the Victoria518, the volumepot on theValveTrain 205exhibits a slowertaper, so compara-ble volume levelson our ‘59s arequite different. ‘6’on one of the ‘59smight be ‘8’ onthe modern amps,

with a steeper increase in volume and distortion from ‘8’ to‘10.’ This isn’t a flaw – the taper is just different, as RobbenFord observed in our December ‘09 interview when we askedhim where he set the volume on his Dumbles. The hand-wired ValveTrain is shipped with a Weber Signature Alnico8S, along with an Electro-Harmonix 12AX7, 6V6, and aNOS RCA 5Y3 rectifier.

The sound of the 205 is squarely in the neighborhood withthe contemporary Champs we’ve reviewed – slightly tamerby a hair played wide open, and no, the taller cabinet doesn’tseem to affect the tone or fidelity of the amp one way oranother. Aside from great tone and crankability, the 205’sstrongest selling point seems to rest with that extra 8 ohmspeaker jack, in our opinion. Street price is $899.

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At 6 watts, these sin-gle input amps fallwithin the generalpower and volumerange of a Champ,but loaded with teninch speakers andadditional features.Available as a 1x10combo or compacthead, the Class A,cathode-biased,Concord operates on

a single 6V6, 12AX7 and solid state rectifier with volume,treble and bass controls, two 4 ohm and one 8 ohm speakerinput and a Real Vintage USA-made 10" speaker. Comparedto the Lexington, the Concord delivers a thicker, heavier tonewith plenty of additional treble available, and moderate dis-tortion levels from ‘8’-’10’ on the volume control that inten-sify significantly with stronger humbuckers. Overall volumeis comparable to all of the Champs reviewed here, but the

Concord displaysmore clean head-room before break-ing up, and maxi-mum distortion isless intense. Thinkof it as a 6-wattamp with excellent

fidelity and a good match with effects pedals. However, theoverdriven sound produces a mellower, jangly burn than thatof the typical Champ circuit.

The $700.00 Lexington Reverb 1x10 combo uses the samecabinet as the Concord, loaded with an Eminence Ramrod(one of our favorite 10s), dual EH 12AX7s, a single EH 6V6and solid state rectifier. Features include volume, tone andreverb intensity controls, a toggled high/low power switchthat cuts power from 6 to 1.5 watts, and a RAW switch thatincreases gain and treble response. A reverb footswitch is alsoincluded. We created some very usable and interesting tonescombining the trebly RAW setting with the neck pickups inour guitars, but otherwise found it too bright and thin for usewith the bridge. We also really never warmed up to the 1.5watt low power setting, preferring to play the Lexington at afull 6 watts with the volume level on ‘7’- ‘10.’ Like theConcord, this amp isn’t designed with a hair-trigger tendencyto jump into gonzo distortion levels, remaining clean wellinto the rotation of the volume pot before quickly producingoverdriven tones beyond ‘7.’ The nine-inch Accutronics

reverb pan produces agood spring reverbeffect that stops shortof full-surf splash, butit adds depth and mys-tery to single coils likeit should. On a relatednote, you may haveheard that Beltonrecently acquired theAccutronics Companythat has been buildingspring reverb pans in

Cary, IL for decades. According to the corporate web site,Accutronics reverb pans were to be manufactured in Carythrough November 2009. Log on to the Accutronics web sitetoday, and you’ll be greeted by the new ‘Belton’ Accutronicspage, with the company’s new address proudly displayed asGeumcheon-Gu, Seoul, Korea. Our condolences to the peopleof Cary, Il who are now unemployed so the new Accutronicscompany may pursue a more contemporary vision ofAmerican manufacturing excellence by fleeing to Korea topump up the company’s bottom line.

As for ValveTrain amps, they will not be made in Korea,which was the entire point behind Rick Gessner’s desire tobuild point-to-point amplifiers in the USA with parts sourcedfrom America. For low-volume dealing at a reasonable price,he has neatly bridged the world of mass production and bou-tique amps quite nicely with many more models than wewere able to review here, so by all means, check ‘em out.

www.valvetrainamps.com

Many of you are already familiar with our resident amp tech,studio owner/engineer and advisory board member JeffBakos. In his spare time, Jeff occasionally builds amps for

clients on request,and lately he’s beenasked to build…you guessed it –small little biters.Since his personalGA-5 has been fea-tured so often onvarious recordingprojects, Jeff toyedwith the idea of

ToneQuestValveTrain Concord & Lexington ReverbValveTrain Concord & Lexington Reverb

TQ

ToneQuestBakos 8 BallBakos 8 Ball

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recreating the Gibson GA-5 Skylark for a minute, but giventhe fact that vintage GA-5s remain fairly plentiful, he ulti-mately decided to design his own simple take on a smallishamp – the 8 Ball. Housed in a Mojo Champ cabinet, the 8Ball is built with one of our favorite tens, the EminenceLegend Alnico 1058 (that’s a hint), Mercury Magnetics tran-nies and choke, and premium components, including Sozocoupling caps. With the bigger Mercury Princeton trans-former set, the single 6V6/12AX7/5Y3 design is capable ofproducing 10 watts of power. Features include dual inputs,volume and tone controls, a front panel line out jack, and a‘vintage’/‘modern’ toggle switch also conveniently mountedon the front panel.

The ‘vin-tage’ settingproducespristine,Fenderyclean tonesup to 12o’clock onthe volumecontrol,

gradually followed by a progressively thicker growl withintense distortion and sustain. In this setting, the 8 Ball sur-passes all the other small amps we’ve reviewed in terms ofpractical versatility with stronger, louder clean tones and amore gradual cascade of second-order harmonics and crunch.Again, very Fender-like. The ‘modern’ setting is hot from thejump, with a much faster and rabid increase in distortion, sus-tain and gain. Carlos would dig it, no pedals required. The 8Ball is available by custom order only at $1150 plus shippingwith 90-day delivery and a 50% deposit.

Bakos Ampworks, Atlanta, 404-607-8426

We spend more than a little time researching and consideringvarious new and not-so-new guitar models that may be wor-

thy of yourconsideration,always lookingfor instru-ments that areunique, excep-tionally tone-ful, and almostalways… rea-

sonably affordable. Afterall, what good is a tantalizingreview of something you may never hope to own? Perhapsyou too have scoured guitar reference books or searchedonline with the hope that you’ll be reminded of a forgottenmodel or find a modern guitar that has escaped you… Oh,we’ve spent hours chasing spontaneous detours into obscuri-ty studying bizarre footnotes in guitar manufacturing like the1980 Gibson ES335-S Firebrand, the Smith Stratocaster, orthe Gretsch Corvette, only to conclude that you deserve bet-ter than long diatribes on quirky curiosities that won’t getplayed. During one such recent online excursion, however,we stumbled upon a guitar so lusciously delicious and whichwe knew to be endowed with reasonably certain prospects ofabsolutely stellar tone that we could simply not let it escapeyour attention or our grasp. An exceptional, utterly gorgeousexample made by a very thoughtful and meticulous builderwho has been quietly working for decades smackdab in theheart of Music City USA. His company and distinctive brandare rarely advertised it seems, yet experienced players whocan afford to play virtually anything they wish ardently playthis fellow’s guitars – not because they were given away aspart of an endorsement deal, but because like us, they findhis instruments irresistible. At a time when it has become vir-tually impossible to comprehend and digest all the nuancedvariations being built on even one model like theStratocaster, many of us still crave honest guitars that playflawlessly and sound unlike all the ubiquitous and familiararchetypes in a good way… unique guitars that compel us topick them up every time we walk in the room and soundunlike any other 6-string you can name… That’s what wewant, and Jerry Jones builds ‘em. We’ve reprised Jerry’sessential account of his early days at Nashville’s Old TimePicking Parlor and the genesis of Jerry Jones guitars, fol-lowed by a review of our latest 1996 ‘JJ Original’ copper-burst and an overview of Delta Moon guitarist MarkJohnson’s 3-pickup models. Enjoy…

Jerry JonesI think my interest inanything other thanjust playing guitarsstarted in the early‘70s. I grew up inJackson, Mississippiand like many kids atthat time, I received amodest starter guitarfor Christmas… anearly ‘60s EpiphoneCoronet, as I recall. Iplayed at home andwith my pals now andthen and the guitarwould go back under

TQ

ToneQuestTumblin’ DiceTumblin’ Dice

1980 ES335-S Firebrand


guitars

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the bed for a while. My interest was rekindled when artistslike Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page emerged inthe late ‘60s. I was a Led Zeppelin fan and in addition to hav-ing seen them in concert, I particularly remember seeing analbum cover photo of Jimmy Page with his sunburst LesPaul. That guitar definitely struck me. Les Pauls had been re-introduced a year or so before, but not as a sunburst. As Ilearned more about the history of these guitars I became evenmore intrigued. Old sun burst Les Pauls from the ‘50s wereimpossible to come by at that time and they would have beenexpensive… as much as a new guitar. I did find a ‘52 goldtopin Memphis though, and in short order I set about convertingit to a faded sunburst. I must have refinished that guitar fouror five times over the few years that I owned it. With eachrefinish, I would learn something new. The only book avail-able at that time was the Irving Sloane book on classic guitarconstruction, which I studied. I continued to play over thenext few years and became more interested in pedal steel gui-tar than six string. Also, I would purchase vintage guitarswhen I came across them. That was a time when you couldbuy vintage Strats or Teles listed in the local want-ads. Iwould just call the ads offering Fender guitars and ask if theguitar had a big “F” on the neck plate, if not, I was off to buymy next guitar. Some of them were basket cases, and I wouldrestore them and sell them to my friends. I did enough of thiskind of work that I decided to set up an extra room in myhouse as a shop… nothing too serious, though. I never enter-tained any thoughts of a career. I was always the guy whotook the clock apart and got it back together most of the time.My father was a tinkerer and could intuitively fix most any-thing, so I just thought that’s what guys did – fix things. So,in addition to my musical interest, I cultivated an interest inhow things are made and how they work. I think most greatinstrument builders develop a keen sense of how thingsshould look, sound, and feel from a player’s perspective.Over time, I have seen instruments that were made by verycapable wood craftsmen that really would not appeal to musi-cians. Some of those fine details that make a great guitar canescape even the best woodworkers. You have to see yourwork through a musician’s eyes, so that’s what I have alwaysdone. I’m not a frustrated musician or a frustrated wood-worker… I’m a guitar builder.

In 1978, through a chance meeting, I ended up with a joboffer with The Old Time Picking Parlor in Nashville. TheOTPP was a well-known guitar shop and had a great reputa-tion for acoustic construction and repair. Most of my experi-ence was with electric instruments, so it was a good fit forme. I could take all the electric business that walked in thedoor and at the same time learn a lot about acoustic instru-ments. I think I actually started building my first guitar a fewmonths after arriving in Nashville. I slept on the floor in ahallway of a friend’s apartment for the first few months, andI was so excited about my new job that it didn’t even bother

me at all. I can still remember the smell of lacquer and rose-wood when I first walked in the front door of the OTPP.

The OTPP experience was really an eye opener. Most of thebig questions I had about building guitars were answeredalmost immediately. I had experience repairing and finishinginstruments, but that only went so far. How to carve necks,cut fret slots, and imbed truss rods were questions that werebest answered with my experience at the OTPP. The greatthing about repairing guitars professionally is that you havean opportunity to check out many different kinds of guitarsand understand how they are built. Most of my training hasbeen ‘on the job,’ but I have hired a few guys along the waythat were graduates of various luthier schools, and that can behelpful. I don’t think any universities offer advanced degreesfor guitar builders and I would expect that most otherbuilders out there have arrived the same way I did…just div-ing in. You never can learn it all and just as you have a han-dle on one aspect of guitar building, something else pops up.My job today is more about being a problem solver andwearing many hats.

In about1982, Idecidedto startmy ownshop. Ihad atwo-cargarage atmyhousethat was

unused, so I loaded it up with the tools of the trade and I wasoff. That was a great time. I remember being totally unawareof time. Every day it was a short trip to the shop and manynights I would not leave until I noticed that the TV had goneoff the air. By 1985, I had outgrown my home shop and wasable to rent an 800 square foot space in the downtownNashville area. Most of my efforts to this point were about

repairing and custom building,but with the new shop, I waslooking for a way to develop aproduct line and a manufactur-ing business. Shortly after mov-ing to the new shop, a customerbrought in an old Silvertone sin-gle-cut guitar with a single pick-up. Although I had worked onvintage Danelectros for years,for some reason I was intriguedwith this guitar. While theSilvertone was in the shop, I


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blueprinted it and took allthe necessary measure-ments to reproduce it.Over the few years that Ihad built instruments, Inever had any desire tobuild one for myself. ThisSilvertone guitar was dif-ferent…very simple, withonly the essentials… justthe kind of guitar I wouldwant for myself. I setabout building my copy ofthis guitar and becamestumped when I came to

the bridge and the pickups. I could fabricate a simple bridge,but for the pickups, I could only try to locate some originals.When I did find an old set, they were expensive — $100.00each as I recall. I could have purchased them, but why notjust make them? I knew how the pickups were constructedand could wind my own, but the lipstick tubes would be theproblem. I looked everywhere for some kind of casing for thecoils and the closest thing I could find were cigar humidors,and they were much too big. So my guitar project sat.

Fast forward to the fall of 1986. The same customer whobrought in the Silvertone now brought in an originalDanelectro Longhorn Bass 6. I had worked on a few of thesein the past, but given my recent fascination with theSilvertone, I decided to also blueprint the Longhorn. At aboutthat time, the country group Highway 101 had just releasedtheir new hit record with 6-string bass all over it. The guitarplayer, Jack Daniels, had borrowed an original Bass 6 for therecording session, but now needed one for the road. I hadbuilt a few guitars for record producer Paul Worley over theyears, and he recommended that Jack talk to me about build-

ing a Bass 6 for him.That’s when the lightswent on for me. Takingthe experience I hadgained with the previoussmall production runsand the resurgence ofthe retro country sound,the Bass 6 could be justthe instrument to get thewheels rolling for a newproduct line, but I still

had to solve the pickup problems. With at least one order inhand, I set out once again looking for some type of pickupcasing. As luck would have it, while shopping at a localWalgreen drug store I noticed a cosmetic product thatappeared to have a cap that was exactly the shape and size asthe original Danelectro pickup covers. I purchased a few of

these and they turned out to be an exact match. I thought Iwas in business now, but the pickup proved to be more per-plexing than I thought.

I hadmost ofthe mate-rial com-ponentsfor thepickups,but as Istarted todissectthem, itbecame

increasingly difficult to find a standard. I found two magnetsizes, two wire types, and no two pickups that exhibited DCmeasurements that you could call ‘average.’ They were allover the map. I had always heard that the original factoryused a photo timer to turn the coil winders off…I think it was2 1⁄2 minutes. Based on known motor speeds, that would giveme at least a ballpark figure for turns of wire. I did count theturns of several original coils and it seemed to be 5K, plus asmall overrun. That was helpful, but there are other fac-tors…wire type, tension, layering, etc. The bottom line hereis that the original pickups exhibit a narrow and lofty reso-nance peak that is lowered in frequency and output when themetal tubes are installed. In effect, the metal tubes used forthe covers help attenuate the tone and output of the raw coil.Another factor is the use of Alnico 6 magnets rather than thestandard Alnico 5. This is a difference that I discovered a fewyears into production. One of the major magnet mills testedone of the original magnets and it turned out to be Alnico 6. Ithink the Alnico 6 is a big part of the sound, though I’m notsure they would work for other types of guitars pickups. Theyseem to be warmer, with plenty of strength. They require lesswire for good output, which can improve the signal-to-noiselevels. I’m not sure why original Danelectros use Alnico 6magnets… maybe they were cheaper or maybe they weregovernment surplus, but they sure sound great.

TQR: How are your guitars built in comparison to the oldDanelectro models, and what improvements have you made?

As I said before, the old single-cutaway Silvertone in myshop just captivated me and was the kind of guitar I wouldbuild for myself. The original bodies are built with a pine orpoplar wood frame and a top and back of Masonite. Thenecks were poplar wood with two fixed steel reinforcementrods. These materials seemed inexpensive at first, but I wouldlater learn that they cost more than the materials for a Strat. Ibelieve the original Danelectro Company found most of their

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guitars

potential in lowpriced instrumentsthat they sold toSears, and I have atheory about theevolution of thesematerials for guitars.The originalDanelectro was inthe amp businesswhen approached bySears to develop a

guitar line. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to see that anamp company would have these common amp materials ingreat abundance. Masonite for tube covers, vinyl for cabinetcovering and pine or poplar for amp cabinets.

With the initial order for a Longhorn Bass 6, things justseemed to take off. I made six instruments in the first run andthey sold immediately. Some original Danelectro instruments

were in demand, rareand pricey. The oppor-tunity for me seemedto be in providingreproductions of desir-able vintage instru-ments that felt andplayed like a pro-levelinstrument. As thinksheated up, I realizedthat I had both a chal-lenge and an opportu-nity to pick up the ballfrom the originalDanelectro Company

and run with it. That would mean an expanded product line aswell as improved quality and the initial success gave me thefreedom to pursue these goals.

The big surprise for most players is that a great instrumentcan be produced with unconventional materials if the atten-tion to detail and the build is high quality. It might be a bitlike the “silk purse from a sow’s ear” adage, but in this case,it works. I guess there will always be a few who “don’t getit” and don’t understand what’s involved. Even with cuttingedge manufacturing, it’s still more difficult to reproduce avintage instrument than to just start out to make a modernguitar. I guess if it were easy to reproduce the classics, wewould all be driving brand new ‘55 Chevys. To that end, ourfirst instruments were as faithful as possible. Even though wemet some small resistance, we continued to improve andchange the instruments over time.The most obvious improve-ments were the intonatable “Neptune” bridge and the additionof an adjustable truss rod. That would have been around

1992. The nextleap came in 1994when we jumpedfrom traditionalmanufacturing tothe future with thepurchase of a CNCmanufacturingmachine. I can’tsay enough about

these machines and how much they have upped the qualityfor all guitar makers. Tom Anderson was very instrumental inbringing small instrument makers into the computer age. Notonly is our CNC super precision, it also frees our employeesto concentrate their skilled handwork in the right areas… letthe CNC do the grunt work.

In 2001, we decided to changeour instruments again with theintroduction of the “Neptune”line. This allowed us to makesome needed improvementsand make our instruments dis-tinctive. Leaving the strict vin-tage look to others, we madethe body shapes a bit moreangular…just slightly. Samefor the headstock. The neckswould now be clear coatedwith a satin finish. The pickupsare now more calibrated with ahotter bridge pickup. All

switches are 4-pole slider type with better pickup selections.After having made our own bridges for years, we switched toFender-type bridges. To duplicate the tonal characteristics ofour original bridges, a nest is routed below each bridge andthe bridge is mounted suspended over the body with spacers.The strings are now through the body and I think the tone isactually a bit better now — a little tighter.

TQR: Can you describe some of the more interesting fea-tures among the baritone, bass and sitar models?

The Bass 6 was the first instrument we offered. These hadbeen used traditionally in country music as a “TicTac” bass.The name “TicTac” refers to the sound of the bass whenplayed with a pick. A Bass 6 was used to overdub uprightbass lines and give the bass line a bit more presence andattack. The Bass 6 is a 30" scale instrument that is tuned likea four string bass with an added high B and E…just like aguitar but one octave down. A 30" scale is just about the limiton the short side of what can still be tuned as low as a longscale bass (34"). The harmonic structure of the low E stringon the Bass 6 can get a bit weird at this short scale. The idea

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for the baritone (28" scale tunedA~A or B~B) was to overcomesome of these problems. I had theidea for the baritone some time inthe ‘80s when I first heardAndreas Vollenweider play harp.I thought it would be great toemulate the harp by putting astring bender on a tuned downguitar. I never did make a bari-tone with a B-Bender, but I didhave a chance to at least makethe “tuned down guitar.” By

shortening the 30" scale of the Bass 6 to 28", the instrumentbecame easier to chord down by the nut. Got rid of that prob-lem low E, moved all the strings up a notch and added twounwound strings on the treble side. This made the instrumentmuch more playable as a guitar…much easier to chord and tobend strings.

I think we have offered the sitarmodel since the early ‘90 s and ithas proven to be our best sellingmodel over time. The sitar isloaded up with plenty of parts,and since we were already mak-ing all our own hardware, itseemed like an obvious additionto the line. The familiar sitarsound is achieved with a slightlyrounded bridge saddle that sendsthe string into oscillation whenstruck. The 13 sympatheticstrings can mostly effectively beused to play accompaniment. Wetune them to a Dm7Sus scale, butany scale can be used. Most peo-ple believe that the sympatheticstrings provide the droning soundon an Indian sitar. If you look athow a real sitar is tuned (C orC#) you will notice that it is

tuned with 1’s and 5’s with a 4th as the main play string. Ifyou drop the low E on our sitar to D, you effectively have asitar tuning on the lower 4 strings. Think of the lower D, A,and D as the drone strings and the G string as the main playstring and the high B and E as additional play strings.

The CopperburstContrary to all those casual visits to Midtown Music (RIP)when we walked in the door not really looking for a new gui-tar and left with one anyway, we really were trolling for aJerry Jones on eBay when we found the Copperburst. We’d

been poking around on eBay and Gbase for awhile, with afew of the later ‘Neptune’ models appearing, along with a JJSitar or two, a doubleneck 6-string/baritone, and a late ‘90s‘JJ Original’ in Turquoiseburst, but the brilliant white andaqua-green vibe of that guitar tilted just a little too far into abooth in a Juarez taco stand for our taste, not that we haveanything against turquoise, Juarez, or taco stands… Hell, westill own some turquoise jewelry from the ‘70s, acquired dur-ing a brief Fogelberg infatuation, and we love the fish tacosin Huntington Beach, and right here in Decatur at Taqueriadel Sol or El Tesoro. Just so you know…

The Copperburst appeared soonenough on an eBay auction from aseller in Austin, Texas who wasapparently unloading quite a fewinstruments on eBay from the col-lection of Kiefer Sutherland. Wedidn’t care one wit about suchcelebrity provenance, but we didwonder why a collector flush withthat kind of cheese would botherselling off any guitars at all? Well,you can only play ‘em one at a time.Regardless of who owned it, theCopperburst was clearly a magnifi-cent work of art unlike any otherguitar we had ever seen, and weknew first-hand that it would sound,play and feel infinitely superior toany of the original Danelectros thatinspired it. Of course, this fact had

not escaped the seller either, and he had tagged it with a Buy ItNow price of $1100 – $300-$400 over what you would nor-mally expect to pay for a used Neptune, and about $200 underwhat this guitar would have cost new. Still, the copperburstwas in dead mint condition from a very significant era in the JJlineage, even more rare and stunning in the copperburst finish,and we knew we could knock off another $88 cash back refundthrough bing.com, and shipping was free. Done, and when itarrived, we were not disappointed.

The Copperburst features two of Jerry Jones’ incomparablelipstick single coils, medium jumbo frets on a rich, toffee-colored (Madagascar?) rosewood fretboard, a chunky yetcomfy ‘C’ shaped 25" scale, 21 fret bolt-on neck with trussrod adjustment at the heel, and flawlessly functional,Waverly-style open back nickel tuners. The chamberedmasonite and wood body produces an exceptionally livelyand resonant instrument weighing just 6.75 pounds. You alsoneed to know that these guitars leave Nashville with superiorfret work comparable to the finest custom-made guitars, nutsthat don’t bind the strings when tuning, and fully intonatable6-saddle steel bridges. Bridge height is also fully adjustable

guitars


amps

via two adjustment screwsat each end of the bridgeplate.

The two-pickup models arewired with single volumeand tone controls and astout 3-way toggle switchthat yields the neck orbridge pickup alone, orboth pickups in series, for avery bold sound thattrumps the volume obtainedfrom either pickup alone.Even with the JJ’s zeroheadstock pitch and com-

paratively low angle at which the strings break over the sad-dles, the big frets make string bending a breeze with no slopor slippage at the notched saddles. As you might guess, allthe JJ guitars also excel when tuned to open tunings like G,D, A, E or C, and they are phenomenal sliders… But pleasedon’t assume that like many original, cheap-o Silvertone orHarmony guitars, the JJs can’t cut it played as a standard 6-string for anything but droning Delta blues. They rule playedin standard tuning, and while the pickups are a little weaker

then typical Strats and Teles,their ‘weakness’ is a majorstrength in this guitar, render-ing crystalline clarity, punchand a unique vocal characterthat is indeed unlike anyother guitar you will everplay. Want more power andvolume? Just turn up youramp. The clarity of the lip-sticks simply enhances theoverdriven tones availablefrom your amp or effects.With the right amp, deftlycontrolling the intensity ofthe cascading, shimmeringharmonic overtones with yourfingertips introduces a mes-merizing effect created solelyby pick attack. Case in point– the Copperburst playedthrough the ‘59 Champ withadditional goose bumps pro-vided by Lee Jackson’s MrSpringgy reverb pedal isnothing less than absolutemagic.

Mark Johnson’s 3-pickup Neptunes offer an entirely different

tonal palette with a 5-way Strat-style switch that does notdeliver the same volume and vibe as the series setting on theCopperburst, but you do get three additional tones… Whichsetup is ‘better’? We like the two pickup sounds and Markseems to prefer the five tones you get with three pickups, andthe rest is up to you. One thing is certain – Jerry Jones’ gui-tars remain among the most satisfying, well-made and tonefulbargains on the planet. Get yours now.

www.jerryjonesguitars.com, 615-255-0088

The amplifiers builtby 3 Monkeys seemto have attracted alot of enthusiasticattention, fueled inpart by the back-ground of the “threemonkeys” behind thename – BradWhitford, the guitarplayer who has beenresponsible for hold-ing down the groovein Aerosmith fordecades, his long-

time tech, Greg Howard, who has also worked with GreenDay, Cry of Love (and the mighty Audley Freed), JimmyPage, and the Black Crowes among others, and Ossie Ahsen,former founder and designer of Blockhead amps. This powertrio created 3 Monkeys in 2007 with the launch of theOrangutan, which by now seems to have been reviewed inprint and web videos by just about everyone who does suchthings. Well, except us… So as we admittedly embark on theass-end of the bleeding edge in the boutique amp world rela-tive to the Orangutan, we pause to reflect on just how sophis-ticated marketing for high-end guitar amplifiers has become.Or not. But first, let’s learn a little more about the genesis ofthe Orangutan from one of the three monkeys, Ossie Ahsen:

TQR: Speaking from the perspective of a designer first with perhaps the experience of a player’s ear, what inspired the design of the Orangutan? What did youwant to accomplish specifically that would distin-guish this amp from others new and old in this power and price range? Was the sound of the Orangutan inspired in part by any other (vintage?) amps we may know?

TQ

ToneQuestThree Monkeys OrangutanThree Monkeys Orangutan

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The origins of the Orangutango back to when we (Greg,Brad, and myself) first satdown to talk about what anamp should be. From the startit was a different process fromwhat I was used to – moreabout passion, and we did notget technical at all. We justwaded through our thoughts,talking about anything fromHumble Pie to Porsches. Outof this came a sense of whatwe wanted to accomplish, whatthe amp should be, and moreimportantly, how it should feel.

We talked about the tones we loved and the experiences wehad playing all kinds of gear. Greg was coming from whatone might call the school of vintage Americana, both soni-cally and from an aesthetic standpoint, while I was comingfrom a purely British perspective. On our own we couldhave butted heads all day on the merits of 6V6s versus El-34s, but we didn’t. The reason why was Brad, who formedthe bridge between the two of us. Brad has his roots in bothof these places – he can play a blonde Twin or a MarshallSuper Lead and make both of us smile. This bridge allowedus to form the amp with its roots in both of these places aswell. When it came time to actually design the circuit, wehad this synthesis between America and the UK set.

We started the design process by assembling a mass of vin-tage amplifiers – blackfaces, tweed and blonde Fenders,Marshalls, Gibsons, Hiwatts, Vox, and Magnatones. The pur-pose of this collection was not for duplication or dissection,but rather to keep ourselves immersed in the flavors weappreciated, to give ourselves a baseline, and keep our earstuned to that sound. We would work on our amp and then gooff and play the old stuff to gain perspective on what wewere doing. I think this was the key process that influencedthe sound of the amp. What we were hearing in the vintagearea was bleeding over into what we were working on.Repeating this process over and over led us to produce theamplifier we envisioned. I think you could say that we weredesigning by inspiration and not any fixed criteria that thefinal product had to meet. We didn’t say it had to have thisfeature or that feature… there was no specific amplifier wewere trying to copy… We just wanted the amp to have a vibethat all of our favorites shared. When someone plugged intothe amp, we wanted them to hear little bits and pieces of allthese great amplifiers. They may not be able to put their fin-ger on it, but they will say that it sounds pleasingly familiar.

TQR: Most custom builders reference the overall design and types of components used in the construction of their amps… Class A, Class A/B push/pull, etc., and transformers, coupling caps, and resistors, specifically. Can you summarize the unique circuit design features of the Orangutan and notable com-ponent choices?

It seems that most companies these days use exotic parts as arule, but component choices for the Orangutan were made in

a more thoughtful way. We tried not to get caught up in theparts hype, prejudging components, choosing the latest fadsin the world of resistors, capacitors, and pots. It’s a goodsales tool to use this part or that part, but I feel that how apart is used is more important than who made it or when. Youcan take a box of premium NOS parts and make a mess of itjust as easily as you can with the new production stuff. Nowthis is not to say that the choices we made were not importantto the sound – I know for a fact that if you built our designand used random parts, the amplifier’s sound will change.There is a recipe, just not the expected one. We chose theparts for durability, availability and sound. The fact that wewe not trying to copy a known circuit that required specificcomponents gave us the freedom to use whatever we knewwas best suited to the application without fear of reprisal.When you create a new design, as opposed to a clone of aknown quantity, you have that advantage.

TQR: Rotary tone switches seem to have become increasingly popular… Can you describe how each posi-tion was voiced and what you had in mind with each setting in the Orangutan?

The rotaryswitch cameinto thedesign as wefound a needto match dif-ferent guitarsto the amp,as well asgive the user

different EQ points for fitting into the mix. The switch setsthe gain level and has a network of high and low pass filters

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Boost & Voice controls


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that produce 6 homogenous sounds that range from clean todistorted; from neutral to thick to thin, while retaining theinherent feel of the amp. For instance:

Position 1 (furthest counter clockwise) is the least distortedneutral signal. Position 2 offers a small bump in gain and low end fromposition 1. Position 3 adds further gain and a low mid bump over posi-tion 2. Position 4 reduces low mid and increases midrange overposition 3.Position 5 increases high mids over position 4Position 6 increases high treble over position 5

TQR: How does the pull/boost feature work, specifically?Is it routing the signal out of the tone stack?

The pull boost feature is quite simple – it changes out onevalue in the tonestack that lessens the insertion loss of thecircuit. It has the effect of increasing the apparent gain, aswell as midrange. The treble control continues to functionfully and the bass control to a lesser extent.

TQR: We’re guessing that the cabinet is made by Mojo…Is it pine or birch ply, and what type of material is used for the baffle board?

The cabinets are currently made here at our shop, althoughwe recently outsourced a run of head shells. The head boxesare made of Baltic birch, the 2x12s and combos are madefrom a maple-poplar shell with a baltic birch baffle.

TQR: Our review amp is equipped with a Warehouse Veteran 30 – is this the stock speaker for this modelor do you offer a range of optional speakers?

We have our own 3Monkeys brandedspeakers now basedon the WGSVeteran 30, and thisis currently thestock speaker forthe combo. We dooffer a range ofother speakers aswell, mostly fromCelestion, including

the Heritage V-30 and G-12H 70th Anniversary. We foundthe Veteran 30 to be a good match with the amp. We alsooffer custom covering in tolex and ultra suede as well as acomplement of grille cloths to match.

We did ourhomeworkbeforeactuallygetting ourhands ontheOrangutan,and wefound mostof the vari-ousInternet

video demos on the web to be characteristically uncompellingin helping anyone make a truly informed buying decision.Too many tired licks (can anyone play a song?), poor soundfurther compressed for web streaming, and blindfolded you’dbe challenged to distinguish the Orangutan from a dozenother amps. Really. In all fairness, the Youtube clips we’rereferring to were largely produced by members of the guitarmedia and not the three monkeys themselves… So while werealize that sound and video clips have become a requisitepart of the online browsing jacky-jack, we’ll tell you what wetell people who write asking why we don’t post video or MP3clips of the gear we review… Because the tiny little soundyou’re hearing online being made by someone other than youcannot remotely approximate the actual experience of youyourself playing your guitar through an amp in a room or,god forbid… with a band. It just and simply can’t, nor canany subtle tone-enhancing features fully emerge in a com-pressed sound file played through your desktop speakers. Thetruth is, sound and video clips can just as easily steer youaway from an amp that might otherwise fill an essential nichein your stash for reasons as simple as you not liking whatwas played in the demo, the sound of the guitar used, the waythe controls on the amp were set, the sound of the room,recording quality, or the style in which the amp was humpedin the reviewer’s narrative. No, sound and video clips havelargely become the cyber- sucker that satisfies our cravingfor immediate gratification, but we happily suck on suchpacifiers in a vacuum.

Of course, sound isn’t the only thing that sells amps, and thethree monkeys get this. No one wants to play through afuggedly-looking amp (unless it cost $75,000), and ‘cool’ ruleswhen it comes to the stuff guitar players play… The Orangutan1x12 combo is a visual work of artsy post-war Americana withits ‘50s-era angles, turquoise tolex, whipped cream grill andcrushed sparkle panels. Yum! I’ll have a cheeseburger and thatcheerleader over there smothered in Stilton crumbles with

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cream gravy onthe side.Wouldn’t theOrangutan lookluscious with aWhite Falcon, asparkling bur-gundyJizzmaster,Farfisa organ, ora bronzed strip-per fromPensacola? Eyecandy, yes…The 3 Monkeyshead and cabinetrigs are equally

posh with no squared angles, somewhat reminiscent of theoriginal Rickenbacker stacks. You won’t mistake a 3 Monkeysrig for anything else, and that’s the name of the game in ampdesign. Give them an A+. But what about the intention of theOrangutan? What does it want you to be?

Tone Now there’s a word that gets thrown around a lot these days.We didn’t invent the word ‘tone’, but we know it when wehear it (and it ain’t contingent upon you greasing the review-er). To be honest, we weren’t immediately sure what to thinkabout the intention of the Orangutan, which pretty much linesup with the designers’ comment that they weren’t chasing aparticularly familiar or ‘vintage’ sound, nor were they conjur-ing a clone of anything. So, we struggled with the Orangutanat first. This happens sometimes when you are hell-bent onwriting a revealing and informative review rather than justsqueezing off another formulaic soy ink turd on deadlineaccompanied by a stupid rating, and besides… how are wesupposed to tell you what an amp sounds like without refer-encing something you may have actually heard?

The Orangutan’s layout is simple enough – four 6V6 power,a single input, Volume, Treble, Bass (with pull boost), sixposition rotary Voice control, and Room (reverb). Of the six

voices available from the rotary switch, we only really likeda couple for steady and constant use – those with some junkin the trunk. The #1 position (far right facing the front of the

knob) was very chimey with big jangly harmonics, but superbright, with very little if any mids or bass. Kinda like JohnLennon’s vocal track on “Strawberry Fields.” Position #2 wassimilar to #1 with a tad more volume and presence. For us,#3 was the honey hole – the mids and volume jumped into afuller, richer, thicker tone with plenty of jangle remaining onthe top (a direct quote from our notes), #4 was very good –slightly scooped in the mids with no decrease in volume, and#5 and #6 dumped mids with more prominent treble pres-ence. Beatles again… “Paperback Writer.” Play that at yournext guitar show instead of “Coldshot” and you might getsome respect.

Pull On It HereThe pull-boost (curiously on the bass EQ pot) gasses gain anddistortion throughout all six settings on the rotary switch, andsurprise… we liked the sound best in the #3 position. We alsooften found it necessary to roll off some treble on our singlecoil guitars when using the boost circuit. As on-board boostcircuits go, this one is pretty good, but not exactly ‘plug &play.’ You need to shape your tone for the best results.

Noverb The reverb on the Orangutan seemed almost like an apolo-getic afterthought. The short-pan Accutronics was screweddown to the floor of the cabinet without a vinyl bag (OK,what do we know, maybe they were never necessary), andone deft video reviewer (Lance Keltner) described the reverbsound as “very unique sounding in that it really doesn’t havea lot of a spring or boingy sound – almost like a really goodstudio reverb that kind of ducks back behind what you’replaying in the background and is only apparent betweenphrases.” Translation: You might could hear it for a second,but only when you stop playing. All we can say is, if youcan’t really hear it, why not just leave it off and give us amidrange control instead, maybe. We didn’t dig the no-verbreverb, but we did end up digging the amp.

Good Intentions Once we began to grasp the true intention of the Orangutan,we started to get ‘it.’ We had decided pretty quick that it was-

n’t no blues amp, and as soon as we got our mind right on thefact that the Orangutan wasn’t gonna spew huge steaming


effects

gobs of low end and low mids, we backed off, cast aside ourinitial impressions and began to simultaneously experimentwith those six rotary positions and the bass and treble EQ,often dropping the treble well below where we are accus-tomed to set most amps and/or goosing the bass – backfillingthe fuller midrange frequencies where the guitar truly lives,while knocking down some of that toppy top-end. We’ve gotnothing against trebly 6V6 compression or the classic rhyth-mic tones lurking within sides from Wayne Fontana and theMindbenders, but we don’t want to live there exclusively…This is the challenge in really getting your mind around anamp. In one cat’s hands, a vintage AC30 sounds strangledand one-dimensional, then you hear what Kid Ramos orDaniel Lanois does with one of them and you view the poten-tial of that amp very differently. So as we explored a broaderrange of EQ settings on the Orangutan, we discovered whatwe considered to be more useful tones that, if we must resortto comparisons, hover somewhere between an AC30 and a 20watt Marshall without the sonic patina of an original.Definitely more ‘British’ than ‘American.’ The Orangutanwas intended, in our opinion, to be played with the jangly,chimey edginess that oozes from its very core. From there,it’s up to you to dial in a subtle balance that emphasizes thespecific tone notches lurking within the tone controls and the

pre-set Voice control to taste, tailored to the specific guitar,pickups and the vibe you’re seeking. Of course, there is plen-ty of gain and sustain available from the boost circuit, butyou don’t want to go there in some of the brighter Voice set-tings we’ve described without knocking down treble or fillingin the mids. We also found the Orangutan to be slightly moresingle-coil friendly as long as you manage treble from theguitar or the amp. Humbuckers seemed a little flat, as theyoften do played through a Vox. Come to think of it, howoften have you ever seen a humbucking guitar played througha Vox? A little more transparent reverb would have helpedadd some air and lift to the narrower sound of our Les Paulplayed through the Orangutan.

In terms of power and volume, this 1x12 rig is rated at 30W-36W, and we would compare it to a strong blackface Deluxeor brown Vibrolux in terms of perceived power and volume.With its single speaker, the Orangutan doesn’t develop thefull impact of an AC30, for example, and the threshold forclean headroom is moderate. You could certainly use thisamp in small to medium-sized club settings, but consider thehead & cab version for larger venues. The Orangutan 1x12

combo impressed us as a very stylish race car of an amp – alittle temperamental under practical conditions, requiring abit of tweaking for maximum versatility, but uniquely capa-ble nonetheless.

www.3monkeysamps.com , 219-696-6755

Imagine,if youwill, sit-tingdown ona brightand coldwinter’sday withyour gui-tar and

amp du jour, comfy-cozy in worn denim and flannel, asteaming cup of dark San Francisco roast Sumatran withineasy reach, and outside your window the world is dusted inpowdered-sugar snow as you wistfully think of hot KrispyKreme donuts coming down the line just minutes away onPonce de Leon Avenue. While ‘snow days’ in the deep Southmean snogging with a rented DVD for many Atlantans,today is a work day – deadlines loom, which is why yourfoot is poised above a Z.Vex Mastotron silicon fuzz. The redjewel light on the brown Vibrolux cheerily glows in anticipa-tion, the goldtop in your lap has been prepared with exqui-site care for its intended purpose, and with a quick sip of theSumatran you step on the Z.Vex, strike an A minor-ish chordwith open A left free to drone, push the guitar into a steady,pulsing, quaking, rhythmic throb, and as you close your eyesand move through the spontaneous melodic combustion fir-ing in your brain, the 10x20 room in the snow-covered bun-galow is transformed into the hall of the mountain king,reeking of gooseberry, cloves and akevitt. Suddenly, soft

denim turns to an adder skin cod-piece as knee-high jack bootsswallow your woolen socks…your thick mane of chestnut hairspills over a wolf pelt vest and asilver amulet hangs from yourneck in the image of mightyOdin… the coffee you were drink-ing is now a pewter goblet ofJuleøl, and a red-headed Russiandrummer named Yegor is pound-

ToneQuestZ. Vex Mastotron FuzzZ. Vex Mastotron Fuzz

TQ

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ing the living shit out of an old Slingerland double kick setwith a putrid Belomorkanal dangling from his purple lips,smoke curling to the soaring ceiling of a stone banquet hallwhere it coalesces to form the living image of RokyErickson singing “Cold Night for Alligators” with BillyGibbons playing a Vox tear drop 6-string bass through dou-ble SVTs, nodding to the beat with a two peso smilecloaked beneath a grey KGB Fedora and not-so-cheap sun-glasses. When you finally manage to shake off theMastotron, safe again in the cozy warmth of the bungalow,you stare deeply into the fire for answers, and the voice ofan angel whispers from the hearth, “It’s alright, baby. Letme fix you some chicken and waffles.”

Z. Vex Mastotron… Legal trippin’ with none of the after-effects. $149.00. We dare you.

www.zvex.com

Among all the dif-ferent musicalstyles played onthe guitar, theblues may be themost challengingwhen you reallywant to standoutfrom the crowd.What hasn’t beenplayed? Sure, wecan think of a fewliving playerswhose tone, tech-nique and phras-ing are unmistak-ably theirs alone…Clapton, Buddy

Guy, Ronnie Earl, Jeff Beck (when he chooses to go thatway), Junior Watson, Kid (David) Ramos, and undoubtedly…Kal David.

Kal’s musical career began in Chicago, where he wassigned at a young age to Vee-Jay Records and formed aduet, The Rovin’ Kind, with guitarist Paul Cotton. Kal andCotton soon created a new band in Los Angeles, IllinoisSpeed Press, recording two albums for Columbia Records.When Cotton joined Poco, Kal moved to Woodstock, NewYork where he formed the Fabulous Rhinestones with for-mer Electric Flag bassist Harvey Brooks and Buckingham’s

keyboardist Marty Grebb. The band recorded three critical-ly acclaimed albums before Kal found himself back in L.A.where he became the musical director for the weekly Pro-Jam at Hollywood’s China Club, which frequently attracteda who’s who of exceptional artists, including Stevie Wonder,Larry Carlton, Brian Wilson, Stephen Stills and Joe Walsh.

Kal and his partner, singer Lauri Bono, moved to PalmSprings in the early ‘90s, forming a new band, Kal Davidand the Real Deal, and in 1998 they opened the Blue Guitarblues club in downtown Palm Springs. We first met Kal andLauri in Palm Springs at the Blue Guitar. Playing his vintage‘63 Firebird V and accompanied by an extraordinarily talent-ed band, Kal and Lauri put on a show we would never forget,and as we drove back to L.A. that night, we were energizedby having met and discovered a ‘new’ guitarist with suchincredible phrasing, taste and truly signature tone. If youplay the blues, you deserve to discover Kal, and now youcan, like never before.

The Blues Guitar Master Class Series is unlike most instruc-tional programs in that Kal has carefully developed scale-based exercises that will not only help you become a betterand more nimble guitar player, but also dramatically improv-ing your grasp of the instrument on every level. We’re over-simplifying things a bit, because the complete video andprintable lesson plan spans ten different sections covering avast array of scales and exercises, chord forms and chordexercises, reading Nashville charts, Vibrato techniques, pick-ing techniques (very underrated), tone, attack, dynamics, andassignments involving complete songs that enable you tofully appreciate and measure your progress. There is workinvolved, and some of the exercises may force you to breaksome long-standing bad habits, but in the end, you’ll be abetter player, and happier for it. We asked Kal to explain whyhe decided to develop his course and what he wished toaccomplish:

TQR: Had you ever given lessons in the past and were you self-taught, Kal?

I have been approached by a lot of up and coming guys aboutgiving them instruction, but I was just never interested. Iwould do it now for people that had taken my course who arededicated and sincere. I’m pretty much self taught, and when-ever I heard something I wanted to play I’d find someonethat could show me how to play it and imitate them. Earlyon, I’d just get the record and learn from that it, so I’m basi-cally self-taught, like a lot of people. I can read the heck outof a chord chart and I can read music, and I get called forrecording sessions both as a guitarist and a singer. I don’tread as fast as most of the guys that do it all the time, but I’mfortunate to be associated with a couple of jingle houses asthe ‘blues guy,’ so that’s what I’m usually called to do.

TQ

ToneQuestWorkin’ Out with Kal DavidWorkin’ Out with Kal Davidthe Blues Guitar Master Class Series


instruction

-continued-

TQR: When and how did the idea for the course emerge?

A friend ofmine suggestedthat I teachsome classesand maybemake a video. Ithought about itand my wifeand partner,Lauri Bonoencouraged meto do it, so I puttogether thiscourse based on

exercises I had created out of necessity. I was living inWoodstock, New York and there was a guy there namedDavid Sanborn who used to hang out and jam with us a lot,and I consider David to be one of the greatest improvisationalblues players in the world. Even though he’s known as ajazzer, everything he plays is really rooted in the blues. Soone day I asked him what I should practice, and he said itwas very simple – that he practiced pentatonic scales. So I satdown and practiced pentatonic scales like a madman forabout a year, and my solos really didn’t improve – not onebit. My dexterity improved a little because I was practicing alot, but that was it. I realized that I needed more than justscales, and I devised this system of exercises based on thescale using four notes at a time, where I would play the firstfour notes, and then starting with the second note I justplayed, play the next four notes, and so on. I worked on thatfor awhile and I noticed that it was impacting my playingtremendously, and I really got into it. Once I started doingthis, muscle memory quickly took over… You play the exer-cise enough and your fingers start to remember where theyare falling on the fret board. Anywhere I would put my handon the guitar there was something there to play. There are

five posi-tions onthe neckfor everypentatonicscale andeverymajorscale, soyou can’tfail…anywhereyou putyour hand– up onefret or

down there is a scale you can go to and you really can’t playa wrong note. When I’m playing solos now, I don’t eventhink about where I’m playing – I’m just thinking about whatkind of phrase I want to play. I like to think of an expressionI’ve heard… “repetition is the mother of skill.” What thatmeans to me is that when you do something over and overenough times, it becomes automatic. When I don’t play for afew weeks I may get a little rusty, because there is no amountof practice that can take the place of playing gigs, but once Istart playing those pentatonic exercises, I know I can rightget back to where I left off.

TQR: We were having a conversation with a friend who was quite thrilled with the idea that he was being taught the entire fingerboard and that his ability to ‘see’ every note on the fingerboard would enable him to dramatically expand his grasp of the music.

I think the problem with having to think about somethingyou’re playing is that you have to think about it. I wouldrather not think about how something is being played… I’mat the point where I’m just trying to create beautiful solos.I’m not really thinking about which finger I’m using… it’s amatter of trying to not think about it. Trying to clear mymind completely… I’m not thinking about anything. Laurisays, “He’s gone. He’s in that place. He’s playing a solo nowand he’s completely gone.” I’m not thinking – it’s pure play-ing, and these exercises I believe lead to that. Your handsremember what you have to do, and that’s the point we wantto get to.

TQR: So you’re removing any physical barriers to will your fingers to do what you’re hearing in your mind… You’ve been playing guitar in this way most of your life because you have that gift. You have the gift of being able to hear music that you can play, and that people enjoy hearing over and over again. That’s where we aren’t all on the same page, perhaps.


instruction

-continued-

26

That’s a good way to put it. Everybody hears something fil-tered through their own musical taste. I listen to some thingsthat resonate with millions of people and I think, “What arethey hearing in this?” There’s no explaining it. People ask mehow I get my tone. Well, my tone is in my heart and in mybrain before I ever pick up an instrument. I know what toneI’m going for, and whatever guitar I’m playing, I’m trying tomake that guitar sound like the tone I’m hearing in my head.I have come up with what I think is the tone that I like, and itis filtered through my personal taste, influenced by every gui-tarist I have ever really listened to. For example, some play-ers have a fast vibrato, like Michael Bloomfield, who had ahyper personality. Clapton has a slower vibrato… I have aslower vibrato. But it’s a matter of personal taste – how youwiggle it (laughing. It depends on what you like to hear –which pickup do you like to play on? I like to play on theneck pickup a lot. All of this defines your tone.

TQR: You also talk about picking or ‘right hand’ tech-nique in the course. It seems that picking techniquecan hang someone up as much as the fingerboard…

When I’m teaching a class I always insist that people pickproperly. In other words, when it’s an up beat you pick up,and when it’s a down beat you pick down. Now, that’s notalways the rule when you’re actually playing, but it’s a reallygood rule to practice with. Using all four of your fingers,

includingthe pinkie,(and I knowa lot ofplayersdon’t use itat all, butyou’ve gotto), theright handpicking hasgot to bedone theright way,otherwiseyou’llscrew up inone meas-ure playing

these exercises. The one thing that addresses these techniquesis the warm-up exercise in the video. It stymies peoplebecause you can’t play it with just three fingers, and youhave to play it correctly with up and down strokes. That isthe basis of the entire course – four notes played with all fourfingers using up and down strokes.

TQR: Which, even for experienced players, can address

some bad habits.

That’s true. I had a student in a class who had never used hispinkie and I told him that I would be watching him to see ifhe tried to cheat. I busted his chops a bunch of times… Hewould try to play what we were playing without using hisfourth finger and I told him he was limiting himself so much.By the time we finished he was using all four fingers and hisplaying improved dramatically. When I first heard Claptonplay at the Bottom Line in New York in the ‘60s, he wasn’treally using his pinkie. He was using a wah-wah pedal whichI went out and bought at Manny’s the very next day, but hewasn’t using his fourth finger. He is now, and he’s come along way as a player over the years, strange as that maysound.

TQR: Your warm up exercise starts off going up the fin-gerboard. It seems to me personally to be much more difficult going down the fingerboard on solos.In fact, it’s infinitely harder…

Well, probably the first time you play the warm up exercise,you aren’t going to be able to play the whole thing. It’s sim-ple, but the hard thing is to pick properly with down beatsand down strokes and upbeats and upstrokes.

TQR: So the first class is typically a train wreck, then everyone goes home, practices for a week and…

They do much better in a week or two. Results happen prettyquickly depending on the time spent practicing. You canmake great strides practicing thirty minutes to an hour a day,and it’s a very fulfilling thing. When you begin seeing animprovement, you actually want to practice, and the feedbackfrom people who have been practicing with the DVD hasbeen very positive.

TQR: And do you also make an honest attempt to reveal any subtle tricks?

Yes, although I really don’t like to teach licks. How do youteach licks? By knowing the scales they are derived from. Ialso discuss dynamics. The three major elements of musicare, of course, melody, harmony and dynamics. Changingdynamics is very expressive and really brings the listener in,and I really stress thinking dynamically… You cue the bandto drop it down, and that gives the audience a chance to go,“Wooo” (laughing). And then when the band comes back instrong again after playing at a whisper, it’s almost like atrick… You’ll always get applause.

TQR: Tension and release.

Yeah, you just can’t play all the notes at the same volume.


instruction

That’s my bitch with drum machines. You can’t get nuanceout of a mechanical device. I over-emphasize dynamics, andyou really can’t over do it.

TQR: You also talk about your favorite chords…

Yes, four-notechordsthat I useall thetime, andit soundsas if fournotechordswon’t befull, butthey are.I oftenstick

chords into the middle of a solo because it needs it. Thereare things in the course that reveal that, and I do talk abouthow I play with the pick and the third, fourth and pinkiefinger of my right hand. It’s something that’s been calledthe ‘claw’ style that was first done by Jerry Reed, and youcan actually make it sound as if there are two guitars play-ing. So I demo that, as well as different things I do with myguitar and amp to get my tone.

TQR: And the best way to get the DVD is to order it fromyour web site, as well as your excellent CDs and digital downloads, which we recommend…

Yes, and it includes a downloadable 32-page workbook in aPDF, and we update it on an ongoing basis based on feed-back we get from our students. It’s only 33 pages, but it’sall the stuff you need to become more fluid, fast and confi-dent on stage. I don’t really feel that speed is so important,but it’s the one thing around the world that I am alwaysasked about. How can I get faster? There’s nothing wrongwith playing fast, but I really feel that the space betweenthe notes is as important as the notes themselves. I like toplay like a sax player. I play something and then I take abreath. I think the listener needs to take that breath withyou, and explaining how I feel about these things… playinga little softer sometimes, louder at others, and taking abreath is really the most effective way to make an impres-sion on your audience.

www.kaldavid.com

It’s back! Weare nowresuming lim-ited produc-tion of ourmeticulousrecreation ofthe original1959DeArmondR15 1x12amp. You mayrecall that we

initially produced a limited number of TQ Clarksdale amps in2006, before our supplier for the original chassis informed usthat small runs would no longer be possible. We’ve found anew supplier, and the TQ Clarksdale ‘DeArmonds’ will bebuilt again by Jeff Bakos with our original specs – pine cabi-net construction and design identical to the original, originalMercury Magnetics Tone Clone transformer set cloned fromour original ‘59 DeArmond, hand-wired chassis, premium

componentsincludingSozo caps,CelestionG12H 70thAnniversaryspeaker,premium JJ

and Tung-Sol tubes, Evidence Audio speaker cable, customgold grill cloth and blonde tolex covering. This 22 wattdesign represents one of the rarest and most toneful combosever built. The original 1959 DeArmond 1x12s were built forjust one year in Toledo, OH, and a clean example recentlysold on eBay for $7,000. In 2006 Jeff Bakos meticulouslyblueprinted our original DeArmond, Mojo created CADdrawings for the original cabinet design, and we sent thetransformers to Mercury Magnetics to be cloned. The result isa phenomenal 1x12 that will generally kick any tweedDeluxe straight to the curb with a bigger, bolder voice andlush, musical distortion cranked. The 4-input, cathode-biasedClarksdale can be operated with dual 6V6s and 5Y3 rectifierfor optimum burn, or a pair of 6L6s and a 5AR4 for slightlymore power and clean headroom. Blonde tolex only, simplybecause it’s the coolest...

TQ

TQClarksdale

To order, please call 1-877-MAX-TONE or placeyour order and deposit at www.tonequest.com

Price: $2300 with 50% deposit, FedEx Ground ship-ping not included. Because each amp is custom-builtfor each owner, please allow 120 days for delivery.


28

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The ToneQuest Report TM (ISSN 1525-3392) is published monthly by Mountainview Publishing LLC, 235 Mountainview Street, Suite 23, Decatur, GA. 30030-2027, 1-877-MAX-TONE, email: [email protected]. Periodicals Postage Paid at Decatur, GA and At Additional Mailing Offices. Postmaster: Send addresschanges to:The ToneQuest Report, PO Box 717, Decatur, GA. 30031-0717.The annual subscription fee for The ToneQuest ReportTM is $89 per year for 12monthly issues. International subscribers please add US $40. Please remit payment in U.S. funds only. VISA, MasterCard and American Express accepted.The ToneQuest ReportTM is published solely for the benefit of its subscribers. Copyright© 2010 by Mountainview Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No partof this newsletter may be reproduced in any form or incorporated into any information retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright hold-er. Please forward all subscription requests, comments, questions and other inquiries to the above address or contact the publisher at [email protected] expressed in The ToneQuest Report are not necessarily those of this publication.Mention of specific products, services or technical advice does notconstitute an endorsement. Readers are advised to exercise extreme caution in handling electronic devices and musical instruments.

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