for you old farts out there

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What about the old Roland 60 watt tube amps?
man those amps were awesome but it is like they have all dissapeared from off the face of the planet:confused:
 
My band's manager has two vox super beatles in his basement. They need work, but they're there. He's so far unwilling to let me 'borrow' them.

Think about it: crappy no-name band from boston playing one guitar through two Super Beatles in stereo? That ain't shit you see every day.
 
Most , if not all, of the Super Beatles we got in the states were the solid state amps and were pretty terrible. They were cool though.
And just last week a collector friend got a Kustom with two 2-12 cabs in blue.
I almost tried to see what he'd sell it for .................. until I played thru it.
:D
It was awful ................. and not in some good retro way .... I mean as in unusably awful!
:D
 
ggunn said:
I was at that show, and it's true.

It was a three band show: Country Funk, The Allman Bros (with Barry and Duane), and Pink Floyd doing the Ummagumma album. Four bucks. The show lasted from 8 PM until nearly 3 AM, and I saw John and Yoko in the Cafe du Monde at about 4 AM.

The Floyds' trailer (or was it a truck?) was stolen after they packed it up after the gig.

Does that make me king of the old farts? ;^)
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You get my vote, Fartsy.
 
I'm no old fart, but I sure love my 74 Fender Bassman Ten. Four 10" speakers, nice cleans, loves pedals, and freakin loud. My wife seems to think it would make a nice nightstand in the guest room. Now I just plug in and play it in there.
 
ggunn said:
Does that make me king of the old farts? ;^)
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Get in line, sonny.

I still have my '63 Silvertone Twin Twelve (definitely NOT crap) and just last Spring I traded off my early '70s Music Man HD-130 Reverb head and 2-12 sealed back cab. I can remember buying an Altec-Lansing powered mixer, four channels, mono, no meters, no features, just mic inputs, faders and speaker outs. If it had been a car it would've been an AMC Pacer with plaid seats.

Oh yeah, and Alamo amps, made in San Antonio.
 
lpdeluxe said:
Get in line, sonny.

I still have my '63 Silvertone Twin Twelve (definitely NOT crap) and just last Spring I traded off my early '70s Music Man HD-130 Reverb head and 2-12 sealed back cab. I can remember buying an Altec-Lansing powered mixer, four channels, mono, no meters, no features, just mic inputs, faders and speaker outs. If it had been a car it would've been an AMC Pacer with plaid seats.

Oh yeah, and Alamo amps, made in San Antonio.
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Who are you calling "sonny", sonny? :D

When I first started playing, our "PA system" was high-Z mics plugged into the "normal" channels of our old Fender amps. When we finally got a system, it was a Shure - I don't remember the model, but the tall skinny speaker columns had several 6 or 8 inch speakers (a sort of linear array WAY ahead of its time, although it sounded like hammered crap). When our lead singer got an Echoplex, I was the one who figured out how to hook it up, which made me the Sound Man, a role I continue to play to this day.

I saw Paul Revere and the Raiders (with Mark Lindsay) and Herman's Hermits in person.
 
ggunn said:
Who are you calling "sonny", sonny? :D

When I first started playing, our "PA system" was high-Z mics plugged into the "normal" channels of our old Fender amps. When we finally got a system, it was a Shure - I don't remember the model, but the tall skinny speaker columns had several 6 or 8 inch speakers (a sort of linear array WAY ahead of its time, although it sounded like hammered crap). When our lead singer got an Echoplex, I was the one who figured out how to hook it up, which made me the Sound Man, a role I continue to play to this day.

I saw Paul Revere and the Raiders (with Mark Lindsay) and Herman's Hermits in person.
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Haha. We played a party one time where everyone but the bass player and drummer were plugged into my Twin Twelve -- vocals included.

Let's see: how about Lightnin' Hopkins, Brownie McGee, John Vandiver...you gotta be old just to know the names.

Another common thread: "sound man" status conferred by those even more ignorant. I still have multi-dub reel to reel tapes, done by recording a track, then bouncing it to the second track while you added a part, then bouncing to the first one while you added a part -- if you were lucky it didn't start sounding like an 8-track cartridge until the third or fourth bounce. When a friend brought by a Sony that allowed simultaneous playback on one track with synchronized recording on the other, I thought I was in heaven.
 
lpdeluxe said:
Haha. We played a party one time where everyone but the bass player and drummer were plugged into my Twin Twelve -- vocals included.

Let's see: how about Lightnin' Hopkins, Brownie McGee, John Vandiver...you gotta be old just to know the names.

Another common thread: "sound man" status conferred by those even more ignorant. I still have multi-dub reel to reel tapes, done by recording a track, then bouncing it to the second track while you added a part, then bouncing to the first one while you added a part -- if you were lucky it didn't start sounding like an 8-track cartridge until the third or fourth bounce. When a friend brought by a Sony that allowed simultaneous playback on one track with synchronized recording on the other, I thought I was in heaven.
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Ah, yes, "sound on sound"; I remember it well. We also used to use RtR tape as a delay line for performances. It controlled the length of our sets; when the tape ran out, we'd have to take a break so we could swap the reels.

I have a vault of something on the order of 300 reel to reel tapes of various descriptions. I've got 8 tracks, too, and even a few 4 track cartridges.

I saw Lightnin' at Liberty Hall in Houston one time. He called up Howlin' Wolf from the audience to sit in, but he was so drunk that Hopkins told him to go sit back down. I remember Vandiver; I don't know if I ever saw him live, though. Wasn't he a Houston guy?

Ain't this a walk down Memory Lane? I'll bet we're boring the hell out of the whippersnappers. :D
 
lpdeluxe said:
Get in line, sonny.

I still have my '63 Silvertone Twin Twelve (definitely NOT crap) and just last Spring I traded off my early '70s Music Man HD-130 Reverb head and 2-12 sealed back cab. I can remember buying an Altec-Lansing powered mixer, four channels, mono, no meters, no features, just mic inputs, faders and speaker outs. If it had been a car it would've been an AMC Pacer with plaid seats.

Oh yeah, and Alamo amps, made in San Antonio.
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I bought an Alamo Montclair Reverb amp 33 years ago when I was in college. I wish I still had it. It wasn't a very fancy amp but it got the job done. Only 22 watts RMS, but it was all Class A and it was enough to play through in an ampitheater that would hold 10,000 people and be heard at the top of the bowl.
 
I had a sunn Colliseum had 8 12 " Altec Lansings Not JBL's as someone else said. I bought mine new from Manny's. What a loud Mofo! Even the guys with the Marshall super leads were impressed. Think I paid a grand for it. Before that I used a Standell, and before that a BF Bandmaster. I built an ext. Cab with two lifetime jensons in it. The cab was huge it was as wide as the regular 2-12 cab when it was horizontal and twice as high. I used to put the regular cab on top of it. It was huge and sounded great, I could never get that sound again. Took two guys to carry the bottom cab. Never got a picture of it.
 
ggunn said:
I remember Vandiver; I don't know if I ever saw him live, though. Wasn't he a Houston guy?

Ain't this a walk down Memory Lane? I'll bet we're boring the hell out of the whippersnappers. :D
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John ran with Shake Russell, Dana Cooper and that crowd -- at one time I had a vinyl LP they all put out. That was when recording and mixing an album could not be done at home. I made the mistake of lending it out (the same fate as that of my Fred Neil LPs).

John and his wife were murdered in Magnolia, TX in '85 -- the papers said it was a drug deal gone wrong.

Now I'm thinking of Bob Claypool, also long gone, who wrote about people I knew in the Houston Chronicle (note: I'm not in Houston).

But ya know what? Reminiscing has its place, but it's the next gig that's important. I sure like the digital recording gear, and the lightweight, good sounding amps and nice guitars and basses available now -- not counting my Dobros and acoustics, none of my axes are from earlier than 2000 (except the '70 Les Paul Deluxe in my avatar).
 
lpdeluxe said:
John ran with Shake Russell, Dana Cooper and that crowd -- at one time I had a vinyl LP they all put out. That was when recording and mixing an album could not be done at home. I made the mistake of lending it out (the same fate as that of my Fred Neil LPs).

John and his wife were murdered in Magnolia, TX in '85 -- the papers said it was a drug deal gone wrong.

Now I'm thinking of Bob Claypool, also long gone, who wrote about people I knew in the Houston Chronicle (note: I'm not in Houston).

But ya know what? Reminiscing has its place, but it's the next gig that's important. I sure like the digital recording gear, and the lightweight, good sounding amps and nice guitars and basses available now -- not counting my Dobros and acoustics, none of my axes are from earlier than 2000 (except the '70 Les Paul Deluxe in my avatar).
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I saw Shake, Dana, and Friends several times back in the day; quite possibly John was with them. That's where I remember his name from, anyway.

I use ProTools, and I record all our gigs on my Roland Edirol recorder. I used to hang condenser mics and cables, and then I had to have a phantom power supply and preamp, and then either a tape machine or (later) a minidisc deck. Wires, cables, and boxes all over the place. Now I take the Edirol out of my pocket, hit "record" and set it on a table. It's great.

My basses and bass amp are new, but my main guitar rig is an early 60's Strat and a '64 BF Deluxe Reverb, so I guess I'm both Old School and New School (if anybody calls it that). I'm always in school; that's the secret to not feeling the years so much. :D
 
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ggunn said:
My basses and bass amp are new, but my main guitar rig is an early 60's Strat and a '64 BF Deluxe Reverb, so I guess I'm both Old School and New School (if anybody calls it that). I'm always in school; that's the secret to not feeling the years so much. :D
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It's hard to call: I have a couple of recent Precisions, which are reissues ('51 and Classic '50s) and my 335 is the reissue Dot. That way I can have my cake and warranty, too.

It's not nostalgia, just my private belief that Leo and Ted got it all right the first time, and everything following is frou frou.

(Come to think of it, alongside my solid state Jazzmaster Ultralight -- a XXI Century amp if ever there were -- are my '63 Silvertone and my tweed Fender.)
 
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