Cool story, av8rmike - sorry you didn’t get first one, but it sounds like the one you got is great.
I went back to Ultra Sound today, since I knew I couldn’t justify the Komet 60 - too loud, too demanding. I tried a bunch of other amps and found a couple that I now have to get into a shootout by getting my record producer friend back to hear them. The two I have narrowed it down to are: 1) the Komet Constellation 30 (the smaller brother of the Komet 30, which wasn’t in when I was there a few days ago - sounds amazing and has two channels) and the and the Cornford Hellcat - Apparently, this fella Cornford is the big man of boutique amps in Britain - all I can say is that the tone of this amp blew me away - like a '67 vintage Marshall Plexi. Just amazing, and with a Master Volume that sounds great, so I can get the volume wherever I need it…
Ahhh Wordman! Well done! And just so you can rest assured that you’re not alone in the sonic persuit of excellence, may I interest you in the role that classic vintage microphones can play as well?
On Monday last, I received from the US a vintage 1965 Neumann U-67 tube mic (yeah I know it sounds like a bloody Submarine) but for those of you who are knowledgeable about mics, this is the one. This is the mic The Beatles did all their wonderful vocals through, as well The Righteous Brothers singing “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling” etc. A very, very expensive and famous mic.
So, the very first thing I did was sit down with a 1967 Gibson Hummingbrid (yes folks, the real deal) and hooked up the U67 and layed down a version of Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song” and I uploaded the results as an mp3. Even in shitty compressed digital mp3 form, the combination of the Hummingbird and that famous mic is just mesmeric - utterly mesmeric.
Now, my fellow guitarists will know what I’m talking about here - I was a bit sloppy in my playing. I hadn’t practiced the Rain Song on an accoustic in years so I fluff a note here or there, and I don’t play the ultra tricky parts like I used to, but it doesn’t matter - it adds to the humanity of the piece - and just listen to the tones. Unbelievable stuff. My goal was to try and capture that wonderful accoustic guitar sound that Jimmy Page got on some of those early Zep albums and I think you’ll agree I’m pretty close.
Oh by the way Wordman, if you look very carefully at the famous “Dazed and Confused” performance on Swedish TV in 1968 you’ll note that Jimmy Page is indeed using his famous Telecaster, but he’s actually playing through, of all things, a Rickenbacker amp. Yep, Rickenbacker. I didn’t even know they made them.
Those “cheap ass caps” in the tone circuit are likely black beauties or “bumblebees” by Sprague, a very high quality capacitor at the time, among the best. For most electronic equipment leakage current is a bad thing and they are routinely replaced after all these years, the paper dialectric degrades.
You won’t find a single cap that tests OK after all these years, not a one. No sane tech would ever install them if he could help it, not in critical coupling or bypass circuits. Not so with the vintage guitar crowd! I see them on eBay (apparently .022µF 400 volt) for 50 to 60 bucks a piece, used. You couldn’t pay me to put them in a radio or stereo, but for guitars those leaky caps must be just the ticket for the tone.
Ummm… they are… well, Caroll Shelby is making 450 units at between 80 to 120 thousand US dollars which use original '67 and '68 Mustang Fastback shells and they strip 'em to the ground and dip 'em in a sodium rotisserie bath and then they’re building the car absolutely brand new from scratch with totally brand new components - including way wicked modern coil over shock aluminum suspension and 13" brakes and 17" wheels and stuff.
The GT500 you saw in the film “Gone in 60 Seconds” was NOT an original at all. It was one of the new GT500E’s being made by Shelby American and it’s by several orders of magnitude superior to the original.
But in regards to classic guitars? That’s a much more subjective area. With a car, you get metal fatigue. Rubber bushings wear out. You have lots of moving parts. Quite frankly, no car is in as good a condition after 35 years as it was new - even if it’s been mothballed. If it’s been a daily driver, you’ll be amazed how much better it’ll drive with modern suspension technology.
But classic guitars are treated like being at the altar of the Sistine Chapel itself. The slightest ding or scratch is met with despair. They really are treated with such care that they stay in wonderful condition. And the woods were different too. It was easier to get classic woods back then which have been aged and stuff. And it was easier to justify the costs of having hand craftsmen do their work back then as well. But as mass production crept in, so did the lack of care.
Another odd thing was the coil windings. Apparently, the humbuckers were spun on coil winding machines which were driven by hand. The spindles were designed to indicate when 5000 coils had been wound on. But some coils were wound short, and others were wound over 5000 as well. Gibson had no idea this would mean something but it did. Apparently, by sheer accident, some humbuckers were unusually loud or bright or warm, or some other distinguishing trait. 30 years later and they did the research and they discovered that the differences lay in the random number of winds per coil within each humbucker.
In my considered opinion, the famous Gibson’s of pre 1961 were famous far, FAR more so because of the unique characteristics of the humbucker coil windings than anything which can be attributed to tone capacitors. My point is this, the humbucker has to produce the raspiness before a tone pot can make a difference. A tone pot can only take away - it can’t actually produce that which isn’t there to begin with.
Even Jimmy Page has been asked, of all his Les Pauls, which is the best? And he says it’s his 59 Gold Top. Not because it plays any better or feels different in any capacity - just that it had something special about the pickups. They were simply louder and brighter than any other Les Paul he owned.
But he also said this… he’s played new Historic Shop Les Paul’s which have been purposely fitted with Gibson’s range of Burstbucker pickups. And they sound dead on like his most favourite vintage Les Pauls. And the reason? Gibson analysed the accidental random windings of their most famous 57-59 humbuckers and released 3 modern humbuckers which deliberately match the original winding numbers to the nth degree.
I’ll stake my bottom dollar that the '59 Sunburst Les Paul you played Wordman was one of the lucky one’s which had the real screamer humbuckers.
Also, getting back to the flaming on '59 Les Pauls being washed away? Umm all that stuff about the flaming affecting the maple is pretty much bullshit I’m sorry to say. The simple reality is that the pre 1960 Sunburst’s had a flaming dye which faded with age. In 1960 they changed the dye and it has resisted the years much much better. Other than that, the guitars were identical. Same hand wound random humbuckers. Same woods. Same frets.
It’s all in the humbuckers my friend.
Same deal with the Fenders. Old Leo Fender was forever trying to reduce hum in his single coils. Some years they aced the tone, other years they fluffed it.
I’m pretty cynical about a lot of the stuff you hear about classic guitars. So much bunkum and myth building. Once you learn the story about the randomness involved in the pickup manufacturing quality control of the era, a lot of the myth stuff goes out the window for mine.
I’ve emphasized your use of the word flame.
I’m not a guitarist, just a woodworker.
See this link for figure types. Curly figure is most commonly used for guitars. It’s often called fiddleback as well. Occasionally, a guitar will be made with quilted stock as well.
None of these figures are caused by disease. The cause of burl grain, so far as I know, remains unknown, but none of the “flame” figures are caused by disease.
The straight grain wood is probably more resonant, due to the fact that it is just that; straight. The figured stock has grain that meanders through with serpentine, sinuous line. The straight fibers of the plain stock are more like piano strings, or any other resonant media you care to name.
Figure is NOT due to disease.
All smart additions, Boo Boo Foo and Forbin - the figuring of the wood when it comes to flaming is a grain/burl thing, not a disease thing, thanks for the correction - I also did some reading up after I did the last post - so the guy knows his amps but perhaps not his wood. However his argument - that the non-flamed maple tops are more resonant - appears to have some basis in fact given what you said, Forbin. I have also seen another maple grain called Spalted, which apparently IS due to disease, but that is a different look than flaming - also very pretty.
As for the 'buckers and the windings, BBF, yep, that’s what I have heard, too. And yes, tone starts there - a combo of that quality/mis-wind of pickup and wood choices. But Tedster is right, too - I have been researching those Bumblebee caps and they matter - not in the generation of the tone, but in the way you can manipulate it. So if you roll off the tone of a non-musical-sounding cap, it sounds dead - but these bumblebees, when rolled off, for whatever reason or another (Tedster might know the tech specifics) they do so in a musical way. Same thing with volume controls - now, we are used to channel-switching amps that have clean and crunchy channels - back in the day, however, a player would simply roll off their volume pot to clean up the signal - it wouldn’t get much lower in volume, just overdrive the amp less and result in a clean tone. You can still do this - most boutique amps lack the master volumes, just like the vintage amps they are attempting to replicate don’t have them - so this is how you need to clean up your tone. Using a volume pot to clean up your sound is like reclaiming a lost art - like pitchers re-learning how to pitch inside when they grew up dealing with aluminum bats…and a lot of new guitars don’t have volume pots that result in a nice cleaned up sound that is pleasing and chime-y when dialed down to 5 or 6…
You are correct.
Spalted wood is decayed wood. Spalted wood is the name given to wood that has been attacked by a fungus. The fungus eats the wood, and the fibers turn punky and soft. A thin black line traces around the area of the spalting. The black line represents, as I understand it, the current attack of the fungus at any given time. The area surrounding the spalted wood is sound.
Spalted wood used to occur, and still does occur, with dead or fallen trees which had not been harvested. Water would often linger around such trees, and the fungus would have the optimum conditions for growth. Because of its unique beauty, spalted wood is now often created by design. There are formulas for spalting wood. Essentially, the wood must be stored wet, and other conditions arranged for optimal fungal growth. It isn’t my desire to do so, so I haven’t really read up on it, but many folks are doing this on purpose.
I can imagine spalted wood being a very poor performer vis a vis-resonance. The wood has a consistency similar to styrofoam after the fungus has ravaged it.
If you’re going to work spalted wood, be careful. I understand it is a significant resparatory hazard.