Yes, you can The Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone · PDF fileThe Player’s Guide to...

theMountainview Publishing, LLC

TMReportThe Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone

Tommy Malone

INSIDE

$15.00 US, October 2013/Vol.14 NO.12

www.tonequest.com

“Madame Lily Devalier always asked “Where are you?” in a way that insinuated that there were only two places on earth one could be: New Orleans and somewhere ridiculous.”

—Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

There is no place on earth that can compare to New Orleans. We know this well, because we have a bit of history there, having finally gotten marriage right in the penthouse of the Ponchatrain Hotel, the late “marrying judge’ of the First City Court of New Orleans, Dominic Grieshaber presiding. There are ancient spirits rest-ing above ground in New Orleans, the water table demands it, yet the entire city is also cloaked in the spirits of the living and those who have passed, and music stirs the potent drink that is New Orleans. The warm humid air carries the sounds of music throughout the city, from street buskers to packed clubs in the Quarter where sidewalk greeters urge timid tourists to “come on in and party, ya’ll”, and secret little neighbor-hood places where the locals go. The Rockin’ Bowl is still rockin’, Tipitinas carries on, and the spirit of New Orleans remains as resilient as the mighty Mississippi, fully recovered from the dark memories of Katrina.

Like many in New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane, Tommy Malone held on tight for awhile, but he finally had to let go and head for higher ground. We remember calling him and hearing the sound of hammers in the background as he described what he had lost and what had been mercifully saved from his flooded home. A few years in Nashville couldn’t break his bonds

Yes, you can go home again…

Tommy Malone is back in NOLA with a new band,

new guitar, new record

and more great music

5Tommy’s modified

Fender BlacktopJaguar recreated

6Achieving a

tonal erectionwith the

Z Vex SHO

8The Grammatico

LaGrange

10Still one of the best amps we have ever

heard…The CornellPlexi 18/20

12Message in a bottle…

13Chris Hersey,

the Bard of B+The ELEMENTCopperhead

17The

Country Girl…Why we unloaded

one of the best Historic ‘59s we have

ever owned…

Photo: Jerry Moran

-continued-

TONEQUEST REPORT V.14 N.12 October 20132

with NOLA, and home he went in 2010, back to the place where he and his brothers had played music for decades. With a new band, new songs and a new record, Tommy is truly back where he belongs, and he has never sounded better. We spoke to him from his new old home in Metairie, happy with his new band, his new guitar, and life rejoined in New Orleans. Enjoy…

TQR: Well, Tommy, it’s been awhile… You moved to Nashville after Katrina and now you’re back where you belong in NOLA.

Yeah, we left New Orleans in the summer of 2006, spent three years in Nashville and we came back in 2010 I guess, although it sure doesn’t seem like it’s been that long.

TQR: Did you go back to your old neighborhood?

I did, fairly close to the old neighborhood. I had some help from Johnny Allen, the original bass player from the Subdudes. He helped us get back and he put us up in half of a big double house in mid city until we could shop around a little, and now we’re in Metairie. We found an old lady’s house that we renovated.

TQR: And you played with your brother Dave for awhile last year…

Yeah, at first I played with Johnny and some other local guys, I wrote a little bit, and then Dave and I

got together and toured for about a year. The new band I have now came about from a bunch of happy accidents. I started playing on Tuesday nights at this little club on Canal Street called Chickie Wah Wah. An old friend of mine, Jim Scheu-rich from the Dust Woofie days who played with me and David and my other brother John and sister-in-law Susie back when I was 17 kind of re-entered my life. Jim kept showing up on Tuesday nights and we got our friendship back on track and started writing together. We had written one song ten

years ago that’s on the new album called “Distance.” Then the owner of introduced me to two guys that have made a big difference in my life, the first being John Porter, the British producer. He told me that he had wanted to work with me for

years, so I was thinking OK, how do we do this? There is a way that you can do it on the Web where you raise the money online, sort of groveling for cash for poor artists (laughing), but I didn’t want to go there. The next part of the puzzle was another guy in the picture – a gruff lookin’ dude who wore a little hat and sat in the back of the club, and that was Ruben Williams who has turned out to be my manager. He has been working with the Royal Southern Brotherhood, Devon Allman, Tab Benoit, Voice of the Wetlands… all that stuff that is coming out of Louisiana now. We had a coffee and a conversation and I asked him if he thought I could get a deal anywhere, and he said, “Yeah, I do.” He booked me into a little uptown studio and I started demo’ing songs – just guitar and vocal, very simple stuff. He booked some gigs, and he got Mark Carpentieri who runs MC Records to come down to a show, we met the next day for breakfast and agreed to a deal. John Porter was in as producer, and we made the record – Natural Born Days.

TQR: It sounds as if that project happened because every-body involved really wanted to do it. Imagine that. How did the band on the record come together?

Yeah, everybody really did want it to happen (laughing). I met David Hyde, the bass player, the first day in the studio. I had known Shane Theriot because he was the guitarist for the Nevilles and he had been in a band with me last year. Vince Barranco the drummer is from Jackson, Mississippi and has lived in Nashville

for 20 years or so, and he’s great – also an excellent singer, and I was looking for more vocals in the band. John Cleary is on keys, and I think I met him when he first moved here from England in the late ‘70s. John Porter put it all together, and this is one of those cases where I just got out of the way for once and didn’t try to control everything. John made the calls, and I just showed up. I have never done things that

cover story

John Cleary

-continued-

TONEQUEST REPORT V.14 N.12 October 2013 3

way, and I have probably made it way harder than it needed to be at times. I told John that there were a lot of harmonies that needed to be on the record, and I could have done a lot of them it myself, but I thought we needed a female voice. So we got Susan Cowsill and she came to the studio in John’s house and just nailed it. Susan was the little girl that played the tam-bourine in the Cowsills and she’s all grown up now and lives with her husband in New Orleans.

TQR: It would seem listening to you that the music scene in New Orleans is completely back.

Oh, hell yeah. There is a lot of stuff going on. It’s real diverse, too with the funk, jazz, R&B and Dixieland music we do in New Or-leans, but there is a resurgence of the

roots stuff, and a renaissance going on at the back side of the Quarter off Esplanade on Frenchman Street. There has been an influx of Bohemian musicians in New Orleans that are very good – I don’t know if they are from the east or west coast, but it is a cool scene.

TQR: Let’s turn to tone now. I always remember you playing that gold Strat with the finish all off of it… Your slide playing and the tone you got in the stu-dio on the new CD are really exceptional.

Thank you. I used that gold Strat you mentioned through… a buddy of mine in Denver gave me a ‘49 tweed Deluxe that I used on those sessions.

TQR: That’s one I’ve never played through, but it sounds incredibly good

on your record. Real rough and tumble old school – the kind of greasy sound you could never get out of a new amp. Have you kept the original pickups in the Strat?

No, I changed them about 15 years ago to a Lindy Fralin blues set and they have been in ever since. I also blocked the tremolo off with a piece of wood.

TQR: OK, so let’s talk about the candy apple red Fender you’re wearing on the cover of the new CD…

Is that some wacky shit, man? I luuuuuv it! What happened was I had an old reissue double cut Les Paul Special and the headstock was cracked on the

road. I wanted something different with a new sound and a new look, and I had put Lollar mini-humbuckers in that guitar because I really liked the sound of them. Then it gets broken… This is why Fenders travel so well, because you don’t have a pitched headstock. They don’t break, but there are times when I want something with a little more meat. So I found this Blacktop Jaguar and bought it at Guitar Center. It’s a $500 guitar. Just a candy apple red Blacktop with a small scale that I like just fine. I ripped the whole thing apart, took out the soap bar P90 pickups, the bridge, the tuners and the nut, I put a Schaller roller bridge on it, Planet Waves locking tuners, the Bigsby, a Nirvana nut and Lollar mini-humbuckers. I did all that and it’s just a screamer man. I love it. Unbelievably good.

TQR: Did the Schaller drop right in? We just modified a Jazzmaster for a Mastery bridge that required drill-ing and dowels… It would have been nice to have had a drill press.

No, it required some drilling and dowels. My brother John who was a bass player was here visiting for a week just when I got the guitar. He is really good

with tools and electronics so we went in and figured out what needed to be done. We should have used a drill press, but we just got on top of that sucker and did our best to keep a right angle and drill it out. There were these big holes left from the stop tailpiece when I put the Bigbsy one that I had to fill. The radius seemed to be close enough with the Schaller, and I got one of those Vibramate claws that allows you to string up without the ball ends of the strings popping off the Bigsby. That’s a fine invention.

TQR: Did you consider using a Vibramate to mount the Bigsby?

I did that first. It wasn’t coupling and transferring energy as much as I would have liked, and I had a string that kept popping off because the angle wasn’t the same as it would be

cover story

Photo: Jerry Moran

Photo: Jerry Moran

-continued-


with the Bigsby sitting flat on the body. So then I was stuck with these big holes from the tailpiece, so I went to Wal-green’s with a photo of the guitar and I matched some candy apple red sparkling red nail polish and painted the top of the dowels (laughing). It was definitely commando but I had a lot of fun. The neck feels good, and I love the fact that the guitar has this funky shape… I guess I’m the only one that has one.

TQR: For now… And you definitely used Lollar mini-humbuckers with the screw polepieces… I ask because people get them confused with the Firebird pickups that don’t have polepieces. Some people seem to think they are the same thing.

It’s interesting that you should say that because I originally tried a Lollar Firebird in the neck, and in a way I preferred it, but I couldn’t match the output of the mini in the bridge.

TQR: Were you able to use the original pickup rings?

Yeah, I ordered the rings from Lollar and we may have had to tweak the edges of the routs a little but not much.

TQR: Did you mess with the wiring harness at all?

No, I may need to at some point. The 3-way switch may be a little suspect and I might need to change the jack.

TQR: What else did you use on the record?

My ‘61 J45 on the acoustic stuff, and an old Silvertone with those gold foil pickups in open G through the TV front Deluxe. In fact, that’s what I used on “Mississippi Bootlegger.” John Porter also let me use a ‘53 blackguard Tele through a blackface Deluxe. He told me that guitar had been played by both Beck and Clapton on some record John was involved with.

TQR: What are you using live?

It depends if we’re backlining, and most of the backline stuff is shit as you well know. When I’m able to bring my own stuff I have really found some interesting things. I’ve been using a late ‘60s or early ‘70s Japanese-made Univox tube amp with a single 12 – maybe 15 or 20 watts. It’s another thing that was given to me 20 years ago and I never thought it sounded right – it just sucked. I left it in the closet for years and then Todd Sharp in Nashville went through it and I put a Pyle Driver 12 in it. I fired it up when I got it back from Todd and I loved

it! When I paired it up with the Jag I was like, “What’s that? Wow, lis-ten to that… Holy shit! I just love it. Then I’m us-ing an L.R. Baggs Venue high fidelity preamp with all the stuff and I really dig it. I still have the Pendulum rack preamp

but this one is really good for traveling.

TQR: Have you kept the same pickup in your J45?

Yeah, a Baggs Copperhead under-saddle with an on/off switch wired into it, and I use the My-Si system – a super capacitor that stores energy. You plug it into a wall wart for about 60 sec-onds and it stores enough power to run my acoustic guitar rig for 4 hours. It works like a champ. I’m usually sending an XLR

signal to a house system, and if I can, I will still bring my old Trace Elliott TA-100 acoustic amp. I just hate the tone of an acoustic guitar through a regular wedge – it’s never right. I’ll put the Trace Elliott off to the side to control feedback and I like it to sound like it’s coming from somewhere else for a more ambient sound. The Trace sounds very good.

TQR: Are you using any pedals with your electric rig?

Yeah, the ever-changing nerd rig… What am I using this week? I use a Boss tuner, a T Rex Mud Honey, and I’ve been using a Nobels vintage tremolo. I found it on eBay and I think it’s made in Germany. It’s all circuit board electronics, and Shane Theriot had one that I tried last year. I found one and it’s the shit. I’ve got three or four tremolos – a Keeley modified Boss, a Demeter, a Caitlin

Bread that is nice but not as easy to use on the fly. I use a Z Vex Super Hard On, still one of my all-time favorite pedals, and a Boss DD-5 with the tap tempo. Finally after all these years I’m learning how to use a delay pedal (laughing). There is one little concept that I’ve been thinking about… There is a local tech here who is also a big fan of the Super Hard On, and we have wondered about mounting the circuit in the gui-tar so that it’s always on at unity gain, and the fidelity would

cover story

4

-continued-


be unbelievable. You could have a mini switch to kick it up at some preset level at maybe 5 or 8 dB, and that might give me that elusive tone in the neck pickup that I

was almost getting with the Firebird neck pickup.

TQR: We just happen to have a Lollar bridge Firebird pickup and a neck mini-humbucker left over from some other projects, so I think we’ll try that combi-nation in the Blacktop we buy for this issue.

Well, let me know how it works, because that might be an-other combination to consider.

TQR: So what’s coming up? You cut the tracks for the new CD with your studio band and…

I must have auditioned 15 drummers and two or three keyboard players, and I finally have a band that I really like. It’s David Hyde on bass from the record, Poco’s drummer George Lawrence from Nashville, and from Jackson, Mis-sissippi, Sam Brady on keyboards, who was a real find and a gem. So that’s my band now, I’m real happy with it and we’ll be out there playing. The new CD is selling well and I couldn’t be happier.

www.tommymalone.net

As soon as we spied Tommy with his modified candy apple red Jaguar on the cover of his new CD Natural Born Days, we knew we would recreate it for your consideration. The Black-top Jags are made in Ensenada, and you can choose between the 90 model equipped with P90s in candy apple red or 2-tone burst, or the HH in black or silver with humbucking pickups. We bought our 90 model online from Dave’s Guitar Shop inventory in LaCrosse, WI for $499, purchased the nickel Bigsby B5 from Dave’s for $110.00, and the Mastery bridge direct from Mastery online for $175.00. We had the ‘07 Lollar mini humbucker, Firebird pickup and black pickup rings on hand from a previ-ous project, so we sent them to Carl Meine, tech at Dave’s for installation in Lacrosse. Our thanks to Dave Rogers for offering Carl’s expertise in creating what must be only the second version (for now) of Tommy Malone’s unofficial ‘signature’ Jaguar.

It seems to us that any linger-ing resistance to buying guitars online has been overshadowed by the con-venience and selection offered

on the Internet, and especially when retailers offer very gener-ous 30-day return policies. Where’s the risk? At most, you’ll pay return shipping, and we have absolutely no fear in buying guitars and amplifiers – new and old, online. We couldn’t do what we do in these pages otherwise.

This is the first time we have bought a new guitar that was modified prior to receipt, and thanks to Carl’s capable care, this project couldn’t have been any easier or more rewarding. The work was completed over several weeks and when the Jaguar arrived here in Atlanta it was set up perfectly, ready to play. The workmanship involved – drilling and filling the body to mount the Bigsby and Mastery bridge was such that the gui-tar appeared to be factory original. Still, we really had no idea how it would sound and play prior to its arrival. We asked Carl to describe the process involved in modifying the Jag…

TQR: On a scale of difficulty from 1-5 with 5 being the most difficult, how would you rate this project overall, Carl?

Ha! I’d give it a two. If I didn’t have to worry about getting the Bigsby to line up straight, it would have been a one.

TQR: How did you go about positioning the Bigsby properly before actually mounting it?

Seems as if that would be an easy thing to get a little wrong without a template of some kind...

Funny that you ask… It’s a two man job. My favorite way to do it is to hold the Bigsby down manually, put two 10 gauge strings on the E’s and hold the balls in place. Then I’ll ask Phil (who also works in the shop) to pull the strings tight. It’s a matter of just eyeing it up. You need to make sure the string comes up straight over the top of the post and that each string comes off at the same angle relative to the bridge. You could certainly measure it all out, but the complex shape of the Bigsby makes it awkward.

TQR: I guess the Mastery installation was the most com-plex... Please describe the steps involved in modi-fying the guitar for the Mastery bridge.

guitars

5

TQ

Blacktop JaguarFENDER

Blacktop Jaguar

Photo: Jerry Moran

-continued-


Putting the bridge inserts in wasn’t all that hard, just tedious with lots of double and triple checking your measurements. I pulled the old threaded inserts out, recessed a wooden dowel about 1 mm under the surface of the finish and then laid dyed epoxy over the top. After some scraping and leveling, I had a flat shinny surface. From there it’s just a matter of establish-ing a center line and taking careful measurements. Because the tolerances on the Mastery bridge are so tight, you have to make sure the holes are in exactly the right spot and drilled 90 degrees to the surface. If you’re off at all the bridge posts won’t slide in.

The Blacktop Jaguar features an alder offset body, polyurethane finish, full C-shaped maple neck with skunk stripe, rosewood fin-gerboard, medium jumbo frets and a 24” scale. Equipped with the B5 Bigsby our guitar weighs 8.8 lbs. Subtract the 10.1 oz. weight of the Bigsby and the actual weight of the Jaguar was 8.2 lbs. Before you groan, keep in mind that the Fender offset body comfortably disperses the weight of the guitar

in a way that makes even a ‘heavy’ guitar feel much lighter. The Jag with the Bigsby produced intense resonant vibrations along the length of the neck and throughout the body with excellent audible sustain. We were also very pleased with the easy and precise travel of the Bigsby, and tuning stabil-ity is outstanding. Credit the timeless Bigsby design and the exceptional funkshun of the Mastery bridge. Overall, our modifications coupled with the fine fretwork on the Jaguar and Carl’s expert set up rendered an extraordinarily playable guitar – reassuring and comfortable in its classic styling.

Tone We first opened up the Jaguar on the Lollar Firebird bridge pickup through our ‘65 Tremolux in Larry Rodger’s blonde 2x10 cabinet. Intensely bright and jangly, the Fire-bird is a true chameleon among guitar pickups… It doesn’t sound like a Tele or a Strat, but it sounds damn good, rich with character and attitude, percussive, direct, confi-dent and proud, measur-ing 7.17K. Kick in an

overdrive pedal like the Lazy J Deuce Cruiser and the Firebird thickens with sustain and harmonic overtones. The tone of the wound strings remains strong and solid, and the Firebird’s sharp treble tones are balanced with full upper mids and ex-cellent clarity from string-to-string. Trebly but hardly thin, the Lollar Firebird bridge is a high-fidelity pickup that presents a vivid soundstage played clean, and a thick and raunchy over-driven tone that remains clear, brilliant and complex.

The Lollar mini humbucking neck pickup measures 6.39K and in terms of output seemed well-matched to the Firebird bridge. However, it seemed to lack definition and clarity in the Jaguar, producing a muffled and indistinct, woofy tone. We contacted Jason Lollar about acquiring a Firebird neck pickup, and he commented that the combination we had used was the reverse of what he might

have recommended, suggesting that a Firebird neck and mini bridge would have been a better choice. We received a Lollar Firebird neck pickup and it was a huge improvement, clear and defined with depth and a spirited, woody tone that cuts as well as any rhythm pickup we have ever heard, perfectly matched to the Firebird bridge. Outstanding and recommended.

davesguitar.com, 608-785-7704www.lollarguitars.com, 206-463-9838

This is hardly the first time we’ve featured a Super Hard-On in these pages, but Tommy’s endorsement got us thinking that 11 years is long enough to justify another visit… Zachary Vex was on a steady roll with eight different pedal effects when we first inter-

viewed him in May 2002, and he’s still rolling strong today. We asked him to describe the SHO in ‘02 and the ‘use by’ date for his pithy and informative explanation is still good because the circuit and components have remain unchanged as we confirmed with Vex this month. Listen…

effects

TQ

Still Hard To Beatthe Z Vex Super Hard-On…

Still Hard To Beat

-continued-


The Super Hard-On is a very high headroom booster. The volume knob re-adjusts internal bias and gain simultaneously,resulting in a little noise as it’s turned, but it’s reallythe most innovative approach to handling low-to-high gainsettings that has ever been offered in a booster. It’s adjustablefrom unity gain to a dangerous 60X boost that can melt outputtransformers. No louder pedal has ever been offered witha 9V battery. The input impedance is insanely high... mostmanufacturers are afraid of offering 5 million Ω as an inputimpedance, because it can highlight noisy cables and badconnections (Snap! Crackle! Pop!) but I’m simply not afraidof offering the best money can buy. I wanted guitarists tohave a chance at preserving the real detail of their guitars,magnified to astronomical proportions if need be, in a studiosetting as well as live. I now offer an LED version of thispedal after many years of production. I don’t know that there’s a really perfect pedal order. I think each musician has to determine that empirically. I’d always suggest this for Super Hard-Ons and Super Dupers: put them first for lower-gain applications so you can enjoy their high input impedance in keeping your guitar shiny, and put them last for high-gain ap-plications so they don’t blow the hell out of your other effects. Otherwise, keep pulling a switcheroo until you get what you want out of your gear.

Just about every guitarist has surely heard of the SHO, but have you really experi-enced one through your gear? Using an obvious anal-ogy, ‘hearing’ a

Super Hard-On through sound files online versus feeling and hearing what it can do in your hands is not unlike having guitar sex with a tone condom versus going all-in, bareback. Well, if you get off on sound files and that’s good enough for you, that’s fine – there are plenty on the Z Vex web site, but of course we can’t just listen to a digital file or watch a video and write a credible review, can we? No, we can’t. So we trolled eBay and found an original 2003 SHO hand-painted by Jason Myrold and signed by Zachary Vex in December ‘03. Price: $140.00 shipped. That was the starting price, but since no one seemed to want it, that’s what we paid. Meanwhile, obscene amounts of money were being squandered on whatever pedals may have at-tained cult status among the illuminati that dictate and promote such stupidity. Our battery-only Hard-On has the added LED, and while these older, hand-painted Hard-Ons lack a 9 volt power jack, we didn’t care because we wanted the original art, the SHO has an extremely low rate of power consumption, and the battery-only versions tend to be overlooked and under-valued. Here are a few more revealing comments from Zachary Vex regarding the unique design of the SHO:

Like all Z. Vex designs, current flow is low in this circuit (less than 2mA), enhancing battery life. The circuit board is hand-cut and sol-

dered with the critical component, a BS-170 mosfet transis-tor, placed in a socket for easy user replacement should it be necessary. Your dealer can provide you with a free replace-ment transistor upon request. The box is hand-drilled using no petro lubricants, and hand painted so that every box is unique. Knobs are Harry Davies, made with the same molds they’ve used since the fifties. Each effect is hand dated and signed by Zachary Vex.

WARNING: The very high input impedance of this pedal can cause strange reactions (sometimes mildly pleasant and/or arousing) when used with a vintage ‘junk’ (read ‘cool’) guitar. The solution is to simply lower the ‘crackle okay’ gain knob a little or leave the guitar volume wide open. Each Super Hard-On is unique in it’s reaction... you may have to try a few till you find one that perfectly matches a really strange guitar. They are optimized for the major brands. Any problems will only occur at the highest gain settings with an unusual guitar... Our Hard-On arrived in a couple of days from a seller in L.A. and it was in used but original condition with a fat strip of Velcro stuck to the bottom. We broke out the Goo Gone, rubbed out the spoodge and cleaned it up for pictures.

We’ll begin our review by stating that we just luv the old Myrold-painted pedals with their metallic gold base, clear lacquer top coat, multi-colored flower petals, the bee buzzing from

the footswitch and the tiny guitar and speaker images that identify the jacks. This is whimsical high art within the universe of guitar swag, and seeing the SHO again (we gave our original to Billy Gibbons in ‘02) just made us feel happy, wise and well-equipped, kinda like those horny jokers on the TV leering at their wives in the Cialis commercials… “Foxy Lady, I’m comin’ to gitcha…” Surveying our ever-changing Pedal Train pedal board, we decided to put the Hard-On last in the chain since we power our effects with a Visual Sound 1-Spot, and the idea of placing the Hard-On in front of an irreplaceable Fox Rox AquaVibe, Analogman-modded Boss

effects

-continued-


DD3 delay and the venerable (not venereal you idiot) Lazy J Deuce Cruiser seemed unwise. First or last also makes it a lot easier to pull the Hard-On out of the signal chain to conserve power when you’re not using it. Stand down, soldier!

Controls are prehistoric – one footswitch and a single knob labeled (not labium you idiot) ‘Crackle Okay.’

According to Vex, the “Crackle Okay” volume knob is a negative-feedback control styled after classic ‘60s record-ing console inputs. It does indeed crackle when you turn it, among other things…

As Tommy Malone observed, you could use the Hard-On as a fuller, subtle clean boost and leave it on at lower settings all night long with no changes in the fundamental tone of your rig except that it might sound better. The ‘clean’ effect is that good, adding just enough to make your guitar sound bigger without adding distortion. Gradually advancing the control beyond 9 o’clock adds distortion and an overdriven sound that retains the natural unaffected tone of your guitar and amp with increasing intensity and sustain as you turn the knob. For us, the usable

range of the SHO falls within the 8 o’clock to 12 o’clock range. We’re not suggesting that settings beyond 12 are unusable – far from it. The level of burn

enters the realm of a cranked Boogie and metal tones that we were able to push through our blackface Tremolux set on a clean ‘6’ on the volume control. We should also mention that despite the power of the SHO, high frequencies emanating from the B and E strings never sound sharp, razory or brittle. The SHO pro-duces smooth and musical distortion throughout its considerable range, and across all six strings. In other words, you get no big midrange bump, no tunnel tone where your guitar is compressed into specific frequencies, no jagged or sharp edges, no mud or undesirable distortion artifacts – just fat, rich cleans and fully engorged overdriven tones that leave you feeling cocky and satisfied. The Z Vex Super Hard-On may not be the pedal you would comfortably take to your church gig, but for all other lo-cations it remains among the most toneful and useful overdrive pedals ever built, yesterday or today.

www.zvex.com

If you have been paying attention and your mind ain’t gone, you’ll remember Texan John Grammatico and his reverent take on the narrow panel tweed Bassman presented here a few years back. He named it the Kingsville, it sounded fine, and Jimmie Vaughan became one of the Kingsville’s biggest fans. Grammatico has built a new little 1x12 in deference to those who can’t really tote a 40 watt 4x10 combo, and he had the balls to name it the LaGrange. Well, why not? John sent us an amp for review, and we asked him to describe the inspiration for his latest creation. Enjoy…

TQR: The last time we spoke you had completed the Kingsville – your take on the 4x10 Bassman that was embraced by Jimmie Vaughan. What inspired the 1x12 La Grange?

Thanks to Jimmie, the Kings-ville has gotten some good live exposure. I’ve received a significant amount of e-mails from people who said that they love the tone of the Kingsville, but were concerned that it would be too much amp for them and they asked if I was making anything smaller. After a few years it was time to bring new models to the brand. I

was commissioned to build several amps of a tweed Deluxe style which made the R&D possible, so I decided to make it the next model. The LaGrange is a logical continuance of my experience and knowledge of tweed tone but in a smaller package while providing a dirtier rocking tone at a more reasonable volume level.

TQR: Lots of 20 watt amps are being built today with variable similarities to the original tweed 5E3 Deluxe circuit. What can you tell us about your

new amp in terms of unique design characteristics, components, and the specific goals you had in mind in terms of tone?

I’ve had the privilege of hear-ing many vintage amplifiers, some

amps

TQ

LaGrangeLaGrange

-continued-


of them pristine, untouched examples, and I have found that they never seem to sound as good as the great classic recordings I know so well. I came to the conclusion that in addition to the great amps used, at least some of the magic happened in the stu-dio with great microphones, preamps, boards, compressors, ana-log tape, etc. contributing to those great recorded tones. So rather than attempting to copy any specific amplifier exactly, I use them as a starting platform and recordings become the reference.

The goal for the sound of the LaGrange was to capture the tones of many of the great blues and rock records. Such artists as Billy Gib-bons, Keith Richards, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Elmore James, Peter Green, Kenny Burrell and many others. I set out to make it sound organic, woody and

creamy with just enough metallic spank and sparkle to give it some bite, bringing out the natural sounds of the guitar. Many players have several guitars and can have quite a bit invested in them, so ideally you want to hear the subtle differences that makes them special and unique. I don’t want to mask those organic subtleties with a dominant synthetic plastic and veiled sound imposed by the amp. I wanted a dense, thick sound that stayed focused when turned up with a slightly rounded off top end, putting the energy mainly in the mids where it would sound fat in the mix. It should also maintain clarity and ar-ticulation while singing really well with lots of natural sustain and harmonics, with no raspy, grainy brittleness. I also wanted the amp to have a usable, interesting clean tone with decent headroom that can fill a room and sound big, round, warm and liquid, punchy and touch sensitive.

I wasn’t able to achieve these qualities with standard off the shelf parts. Some of the things that affect the tone of the amp are the lengths and

layout of the custom cloth wire, the design of the transform-ers using the right steel grades, the turns on the windings and the insulation material and the varnish formulation used to impregnate the paper layers. The Jupiter capacitors though expensive, have an authentic tone and break up characteristics that fit the amp. The most demanding aspect in developing an authentically vintage sounding amp is using all new produc-

tion components. It would be much easier to get the results with old parts, but another important design feature is the reliability and consistency of building with fresh new parts. Above all, I set out to make an amp that’s musically engaging and inspiring to play. TQR: Are you offering any options in regard to speakers

or optional features?

I tried out many speakers before choosing the Jensen P12Q. When used in the LaGrange it has a wonderful smoky quality, sweet rounded highs,

nice low end bark, throaty mids and the right mix of grind and chunk when pushed. Other speakers I would consider offering are the Celestion Blue and the Alnico Gold, an alnico Fane and the Eminence Eric Johnson speaker. Different tolex options are also available. The stock model is $1850 and is built to order. It can be purchased with PayPal through the Grammatico website at www.grammaticoamps.com.

Uh, Something’s Burning…Formerly home to the infamous brothel

known as the “Chicken Ranch,” LaGrange remains a charming little town of roughly 5,000 soulful souls located half way between Austin and Houston on Highway 71. The brothel was closed down in 1973,

but immortalized in song by ZZ Top, of course. LaGrange was originally

settled by Czech and German immigrants, and that heritage remains evident at Hruska’s Store & Bakery where traditional kolaches are served, the Prause Meat Market (sausages and barbecue), Weikel’s Bakery and the Rohan Meadery. Na zdraví!

John Grammatico’s LaGrange impresses us as a basic, custom-built booteek 1x12 amplifier that sits squarely in the wheelhouse of many players today, and especially those

who aren’t looking for an amp to use in cavernous arena gigs, although we’re not suggesting you couldn’t mic it for those, too. As for Grammatico, he builds amplifiers that

amps

-continued-


are based on his own personal gestalt, and you are likely to find some unique if not obscure component choices under the hood. He isn’t the best known custom amp builder when one considers the meteoric rise of builders like Michael Swart, but past experience leads us to believe that Grammatico is happy doing things his way while not being too concerned about becoming a commercial phenomenon. If it happens, fine, but he isn’t going to pander to the flavor of the month crowd.

Cosmetically, the oxblood version of the LaGrange we received presents an image more in common with a vintage Gibson than a Fender amp. The

4-input chrome control panel with single tone control and dual input Normal and Bright channels follows the familiar 5E3 Deluxe layout, as does the presence of dual 12AX7s and 6V6s with a 5Y3 rectifier. The cabinet is constructed of solid pine with a painted plywood baffle, and Grammatico has chosen to use the alnico Jensen P12Q speaker – in our opinion one of the very best among all Jensen speakers being made today.

Whether you play guitars with single coil or more power-ful humbucking pickups, the LaGrange offers limited clean headroom above ‘4’ on either volume control, the #2 inputs

being slightly cleaner than the first. In this regard it seems to share the character of many tweed De-luxe replicas, and while you can play somewhat clean

(especially with single coils) at low volume levels, Gram-matico’s amp seems best suited for mild to harder rockin’ overdriven tones that intensify as the volume and treble controls are advanced. We prefer the Bright channel, noting that the LaGrange remains very well-balanced with a full and even frequency response that you don’t always hear in 15-20 watt dual 6V6 amps. Treble tones are bright without sounding thin, midrange is robust, and the low end remains surpris-ingly stout, solid and unyielding, even at high volume levels or when using overdrive effects. The LaGrange sounds like a booteek amp should – rich and musical, dynamically pleas-ing in the ‘feel’ department with smooth sustain and deeply complex overtones. Cranked, it is fully capable of producing modern levels of intense distortion and sustain that were un-imaginable in 1959 – distortion fully worthy of your favorite burningest rock tones, pedals not required. In this regard,

like a pert and demure young math teacher we once met who turned into an insatiable she-devil rapist behind closed doors, looks are completely deceiving.

If you think you could use a featherweight and uncomplicated little amp with a comfy leather handle that is equally capable of swampy slide tones, jangly rhythms, bluesy leads, and the mighty

siren roar of the impending apocalypse, that would indeed be the Grammatico LaGrange. Hitch up yer pants, cowboy, hide the wimmen and chillun and Quest forth…

www.grammaticoamps.com, 512-535-3985

Ten years ago we noted that Denis Cornell’s Plexi was one of the best-sounding amplifiers we had ever heard. In that

respect, nothing has changed. We may have been the first to feature an in-depth interview with Denis in 2003, and at that time his distribution in America was not fully developed. Having played one of Jeff Bakos’ ‘69 Marshall PA20 heads and acquired one of our own for $900 in 2001, our sights were set high when the Cornell Plexi arrived. The market for 18 and 20 watt Marshall-style amps had yet to fully ignite in 2001, and the compact little PA20 covered in vintage green tolex remained a real sleeper as vintage amps go.

Today the popularity of the Marshall 18 and 20 watt amps seems to have surged, crested and perhaps resided slightly

since the days when so many small builders were min-ing these simple circuits and interest was white hot in the 18 watt Club on the web. Even Marshall eventually suc-cumbed to building

amps

TQ

Cornell PlexiREVIEW

Cornell Plexi

-continued-


their own hand-wired versions of the 2061X Lead & Bass head and 1974X 18 watt combo. When we were offered the opportunity to review a new and enhanced Cornell Plexi 18/20 head we were anxious to experience this new amplifier with a fresh perspective. Ten years and hundreds of amplifier reviews have passed, and we looked forward to hearing the Cornell with fresh ears after having frankly grown a little tired of the 18 watt phenomenon. Perhaps Denis Cornell felt it was time to make the basic Plexi design more versatile, too, because the new Plexi 18/20 head is loaded with practical new features while retaining the simplicity of the original baby Marshalls, and specifically the vintage PA20…

Cornell doesn’t run full page ads in magazines or lurk on guitar forums humping his products, so you may not know as much as you should about Denis Cornell, but as you are about to discov-er, he is an experienced veteran in the amplifier wars. Enjoy…

When I left school, I started an apprenticeship in electron-ics. The first years were very hard,

because I lost my mum to cancer, and she was bedridden for a long time. I have bad memories of coming home from school and having to look after myself. I carried this grief throughout my apprenticeship, and I felt that the world owed me a favour. One of the line managers knew of my plight and took me under his wing, and we often played guitar together. He would play the vocal line of the song and I would play the rhythm. I did not know this at the time, but thanks to Brian Lawrence, I could have easily become a different person than I am today. I therefore consider Brian to have been my first mentor. My second mentor was Brian Hucker, who I worked with designing Sound City Amplification. Brian was a typical RAF-trained engineer, and we designed all the later range of the Sound City amplifiers. I did not know it then, but we were carrying on the work that Dave Reeves had done on his own amplification called Hiwatt. Tom Jennings (founder of Vox) was to become the last man that I can say I have looked up to – not in a technical sense – but as a man that had the knack of knowing what was a good product and how to sell it. He in-sisted that the re-launch of Vox have nothing to do with Sound City in any way, and I was to become his technical manager only to work on Vox amplification. Certain things left an impression in my mind, since Tom and I came from different professional backgrounds, and therefore, had different views. I was concerned with technical aspects of the Vox range, and he more concerned with the aesthetics. For example, one of those things was when I wanted to use better quality resistors... Tom was under pressure from the company to keep the cost of

the amplifier low to make it more competitive. He stated that if I had come to him with a unique feature that improved the look and potential of the amplifier, it would be worthy of

investment! He would have no qualms in spending £1.00 on the look, but would argue to save a penny on a resistor. As an engineer, we tend to get lost in components and forget that the thing that sells a product often is the first impression. Another of his famous lines which I will never forget was, “an inch up and an inch in.” This was in reference to the position of the Vox logo on the AC30 cabinet. Tom’s attention to detail and perfectionism relating to his proud range of Vox amplifiers was to leave me with the awareness that technical knowledge was only a part of a successful product.

TQR: Among all of the vintage amplifiers you have come to know so well as a technician and a player, which are your favorites?

Sound-wise, early Vox, Mar-shall, and Fender were the bestsound-

ing amplifiers. They all sounded different, but fitted thejob perfectly. It’s like owning a Fender Strat and a GibsonLes Paul guitar — if you have one of each, you have a vastrange of tones to feed your imagination and create manytypes of music. A good amplifier built today can perhaps takeus part of the way in producing a range of tones that coverthe old Vox, Marshall, and Fender amplifiers, but the designand tones are too different for any one amp to sound likethose three together. Construction wise, Hiwatt led the field,and there has never been anyone to touch Harry Joyce as awireman. Anyone who knew Harry will smile when I say Ispent many an hour on the telephone with him! I think that ifI had to choose the best amplifier of all time, it would have tobe the AC30, which produced a classic tone, it was well con-structed, and it was built to stand the test of time. I know justhow much Tom put into them, so I may be a bit biased. It was sad to see the poor examples that were on the market follow-ing Tom’s death. I have made a fewAC 30’s myself, but there

amps

-continued-


is so much in them that unless you build a large quantity, the cost is ridiculous and just not worthwhile.

My ideal work is creating a sound for an individual — creating the ultimate ampli-fier. I feel that I can be likened to a tailor making a “made to measure suit,” as opposed to buyingone off the peg. I get the most satisfaction when someone comes to me with an idea to enhance their sound, or someoneneeds advice and inspira-tion on achieving that

special tone. Together, we produce their own individual tone, and what I hope is the customer’s ultimate amplifier. There are several major components and lots of minor ones in an amplifier that go to make up the tone. The typical example we all know of is the Fender Bassman and the Marshall Plexi. There is not a world of difference in the circuit, but we have a big difference in the tone. The major differences are down to a few components, like the middle response in the tone stack, the speaker, and the different output valves and the way they are biased. The tone is shaped with just a few major compo-nents, and the next step is to build on how these components work in different hands. Some of the results of my custom work go into my amplifiers that I market on our web site. My only interest is in producing top quality amplifiers. I do not have any marketing regime, and I do very little advertising. The amplifiers tend to cost more than the average Englishmanwill pay, but I will not go down the mass-produced road.

Cornell has kept the compact size of the original PA20 head, and inside you’ll find dual EL84s, 12AX7s and a GZ34 rectifier. The Hi inputs deliver 6db more gain than the Lo inputs unless used simultaneously, and the tone of Channel 2 is brighter than Channel 1. The 18/20 switch changes from a diode at 20 watts to a GZ34 at 18 watts, and the Lo/High switch changes power from 5W to 20W. Speaker impedance is switchable from 8-4 ohms.

ToneThe reason we originally tired of the 18 watt frenzy was bore-dom and fatigue. How many different builders can assemble their interpretation of a design that is by nature rather limited

and get a sig-nificantly different result? You might say the same thing

about the 5E3 tweed Deluxe. The low or no headroom charac-ter of the typical little Marshall circuit is such that most of us will set the volume on 6-8, tone on 7 and there they will stay. The tone control really doesn’t offer much usable range, and these amps have always been coveted for essentially one thing – smooth and pleasing sustain and distortion. In the booteek amp world distortion has always driven the market, and today low-powered, low-volume distortion rules. Here’s what you really need to know about the Cornell… it still delivers a classic low-powered Marshall tone, it just sounds far better than nearly every other amplifier we’ve heard in the same class – a fact that will be vividly apparent to you after a mere handful of chords. The only other compact head that comes close in its own unique way is the BC Audio No. 7 previously reviewed here.

Why does the Cornell Plexi sound better? Is it because

the Plexi is built in Southend on Sea, Essex UK? Probably not, but the British Majestic power and Danbury output trans-formers have something to do with it… Denis Cornell offers his own explanation:

“The Cornell-Plexi 18/20 is made to the basic circuit of the PA20 Plexi panel which was produced in the ‘60s. Additional Cornell design features like the switchable valve rectification and power reducer are fitted as standard. Complementary push-pull class “A” output has been used in many renowned amplifiers throughout the history of guitar amplification. The problem with this basic circuit, which has remained common to all manufacturers with some minor differences, was one of unequal current flow through each output valve and unaccept-able crossover distortion. At high output levels the problem is accentuated and results in a fuzzy sound. We have corrected the design and resolved the problem by balancing the output and reducing the crossover distortion. This results in a much smoother sound at high output levels, the output having very little crossover distortion. The difference can be seen and mea-

amps

Plexi ToneTen Years After

Plexi Tone

TQ

Denis Cornell


-continued-

13

sured on an oscilloscope. We have encapsulated the compo-nents and called it the Cornell-Cream Box which describes the output tone. We now use this circuit in all of our complemen-tary Class “A” push-pull output designed amplifiers.”

OK, so Denis has elimi-nated nasty crossover distortion… Bingo! We’ll also add that a visual inspec-

tion of the Plexi’s internals reveals a very tidy job of knitting together an elegantly handwired amplifier. The steel chassis is a work of art in itself, and the entire chassis simply impresses us as having been assembled with a level of care and attention to detail that is not always evident in other booteek amps… Reminds us of one of those old McIntosh hi-fi amps. Clearly, Cornell believes that his amplifiers should look as good as they sound.

The Plexi sounds beefy, rich and muscular like a vintage 1969 metal panel Marshall 50 watt in either channel, and we really

like the option of switching rectifiers for the harder attack of a silicon diode or the gentler sag of the GZ-34. The Lo power 5 watt setting also sounds every bit as good as full power, with none of the weenie tone we often hear in amps with “low power” switches. In all respects the Plexi is just that – your 18W-20W little Marshall with the tone and feel of the bigger amps, and a very vintage ‘60s character with absolutely no compromises. Played through our heirloom pine Bob Burt 1x12 cab the Plexi is plenty loud enough for recording, small rooms and arena rock with a good mic, and it sounds incred-ibly groovy and lush with our 4x12 cab loaded with Made in England 25 watt Greenbacks and pinstripe grill cloth. Simply put, for those who crave the classic sound of a ‘60s Marshall amp at friendly volume levels, the Cornell Plexi remains the alpha dog, the leader of the pack, the onliest one, the big how-lin’ wolf. Awoooooooo! Quest forth, mate.

www.dc-developments.comUSA Distributor: Timothy Penn, Boutiquetronics

Eden Prairie, MN www.boutiquetronics.com214-808-9392

More than one person has suggested that we must have the best job in the world. While actual work is involved, it’s the interaction with people that makes our job of putting together TQR most interesting and rewarding, and a lot of hilarious and bizarre things have happened over the past 14 years. In August we stopped by the Decatur post office to pick up the mail and check to see if they were holding anything that wouldn’t fit in the p.o. box. They were, but nothing we expected… A postal worker emerged from behind the big steel door with a very large box. We didn’t recognize the name on the return address, but we figured it had to be an amplifier, so home it went. This has never happened before, but how bad could it be? The box was way too big for anthrax or a pipe bomb… Opening the box and carefully peeling away layers of meticulously applied protective film (is it ticking?) revealed the work of an obsessive/compulsive mind. We would have used more bubble wrap, but the packing job was nonethe-less an exercise in intriguing detail and obvious forethought that piqued our curiosity. This guy must make one hell of a sandwich. Eventually an amplifier head emerged like noth-ing we have ever seen. To be honest, we took one look at the lacquered copper and black paint job boldly emblazoned with ELEMENT in solid steel letters, and we thought, “This must be what it was like when Howard or Alexander or whatever Dumble prefers to be called handed an amp off to his first customer.” Whoever built the Copperhead had envisioned some serious visual mojo, and they had succeeded.

We were jammed up with get-ting the next issue out, so we parked the Copperhead in the music room and within a few days we received an e-mail from the builder, Chris Hersey. It turned out that his amp had been sitting at the post office for a while, and naturally he wanted to be sure we received it. Satisfied, we thanked him for sending it (frankly wonder-

ing if we would be thankful when we turned it on), and he graciously advised us to take our time, enjoy the amp and let us know if we had any questions. We had one big question that would not be posed quite yet… “What the f is this?” Time passed, the Copperhead sat like an imposing museum piece circa 1967 lifted from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and when we had some breathing room between issues we opened an envelope that had been enclosed with the amp that read, “Optional read after trying out the goods…” Well, no, we’ll

amps

TQ

The Bard of B+Chris Hersey

The Bard of B+

-continued-


open it now, thank you very much. Inside was a 3-page letter that served to fill in the blanks on who Chris Hersey was. Not where he lived, worked or went to school, no names of his children, spouse or his dog, but why and how he built this

lacquered head that sat in our music room on top of the Super Reverb like a bold as luv totem to arena rock. As we read Hersey’s letter, it became obvious that he had not been sleep-ing through English class wherever he went to school. In fact, this was one of the most interesting pieces of correspondence we had ever received, written by either a very talented writer posing as an amp builder, or an amp builder with the instinc-tive communication skills of a savant. You are now about to meet Chris Hersey through the very same letter. Like his amp that appeared with no warning, his letter read like a mysteri-ous message found in a quart bottle of Mickey’s Malt Liquor bobbing in the dirty water of the River Charles. Our review follows. Drink deeply and Enjoy…

There is a perfect simplicity in an old vintage motorcycle. You can’t find a better mechanical antithesis than a modern car and the old rusty CB750 sitting in my drive-way. Nothing gets

under my skin more than not being able to wrench on a piece of precision-made machinery with infinite possibilities of imagina-tion. What kind of backyard mechanic would rather a computer science degree and a plug-in decoder over a socket set and a 14” crescent wrench? Who wants a computer to tell you what’s going on with something that should be so visceral and real?

“The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.”

― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainte-nance: An Inquiry Into Values

I can remember like yesterday thumbing my way through my parents’ record collection from the sixties and seventies. If you can recall a time when someone, anyone, wasn’t tell-ing you what was great or not so great or the next coming of

Jesus, it was like that in every way. Pure unadulterated dis-covery, no strings attached. All those Beatles albums were so distinct and inspiring and edgy in their unique way. Disraeli Gears was the most muscular and tangible sound I had ever heard. What a phenomenal thing for a kid to discover without someone rolling up all of their own judgments into a meal and serving it with stale bread. How many times have you fig-ured out what was great on your own without someone telling you what to believe? I was a kid skate boarding around the suburban neighborhood with a ratty pair of Vans and a Steve Caballero short board that some punk sharked off of my front yard. I still miss that board. That’s My Generation. Sure, my first tape was Licensed to Ill. And I can seriously remember like yesterday ghost riding my silly banana seater bike down the biggest neighborhood hill and crossing my fingers that the damage would get me that BMX Predator. It did.

My first guitar was my dad’s old no-name acoustic flame red thing with action like a suspen-sion bridge. Barring chords was like tackling a blue fish off of Plumb Island. I hacked away at that piece of hollow wood for a few years in college and I can assure you I got no chicks from my playing. But I got hooked. I bought a Les Paul a few years later and I made some noise

through it on a practice amp. Back then, I remember hearing Wes Montgomery thumb picking his chord melodies and emo-tive melodic lines that would literally stop me in my tracks. It was like eating the perfect appetizer pared with a glass of wine – that first half hour when life feels relaxed and perfect. Ideas are salient and easy to grasp, and you wonder why it’s not always like this. I am a fanatic for building pretty much anything that I can. Call it the builder’s Bucket List, which is always growing. So when that honeyburst Les Paul just wasn’t sounding like I wanted it to, I put in new pickups. I liked it better, but then I had to go for new pots. And I couldn’t leave well enough alone so in went PIO caps. It was like the first taste, turning into the worst and best kind of OCD.

A little Peavey amp and then a VOX were fine, but I had this niggling feeling that I had to make an amp cabinet. Queue in the dovetailed mahogany, birds eye maple and a couple of G12H30’s. Add a Marshall 1974 18 watt demon and I was getting it, but man, did I have to scratch another itch with a Fuzz and a Rangemaster. In my book these are standbys. The Rangemaster… how did I miss Rory Gallagher all these years? What a genuine and original rock god. I could listen to “Bad Penny” and “Million Miles Away” looped over and over all day. Add Free, Mountain, Derek Trucks, Sean Costello, Gary Clark Jr., Danny Gatton, Roy Buchannan and a hundred

amps

-continued-


other rock and blues acts I listened to, mind open. The more I scratched, the more I had this need to build my own amplifier from the ground up. I had this sound in mind, and even a feel.

I built a Tweed Deluxe first. Before that I might have had trouble telling you which were preamp tubes and which were power tubes, let alone a rectifier. I was a solder monkey connecting A to B with a little cerebral input, but not too much. I might have had a few beers along the way, too. That amp was a little dirty animal – like when you scratch a cat’s stomach too much and

the teeth and claws come out at the same time and latch onto your arm with a death grip. And when the Deluxe cleaned up you still knew that under that composed façade there was still something untamed. I really liked that control, and finding the edge of out of control. It’s electronics, but analog type stuff that Ohm’s Law, some ancient tube charts and the RCA Radio Designer’s Handbook could unravel. There is also a band of unbelievably educated designers and builders that dispense knowledge and design information without hesitation. They have rolled in the ivy, too.

Probably everyone that aims to design an amp from scratch has as-pirations

of reinventing pretty much every circuit in a guitar amp. How many ways can you design an amp? Take a stab at it because it is more than one and less than infinity. As much as anything, I see an amplifier as the sum of its parts, the efficiency of its design, the filtered distribution of power, and the shaping of the signal. Transformers are no afterthought either… One of the greatest freedoms in the world is discovering something for yourself. Rest assured I am no electrical engineer, so I probably attacked it differently than some would, which in this case may have been an asset and a liability at the same time. But when I got the concept that AC and DC could travel on the same piece of copper at the same time, it was really a bit of a revelation on how the pieces of an amp go together and why. So much of an amp design is shaping the tone, most would spend their hours tweaking it at the preamp stage, but I attacked it from the output in.

I have an old house, built in the early 1900’s, with an electri-cal system that just passes muster but spits out wall voltages between 110 and 117 volts like a geriatric variac, passing whatever voltage it wants. With my 5E3, I could tell there were huge differences in sound from day to day. I came to realize that it had a lot to do with wall voltage du jour, and it gave me a different amp each day. The differences were not tone oriented, they were rooted in the over-arching character of the amplifier. I spent a great deal of time pouring over the

great amps of yesteryear and some new ones, and what made power sections just right. In my mind, it’s about

getting the exact filtered voltage you want to each stage. Plotting those forsaken load lines for the power tubes was a chore, with an incredible wealth of information where theory meets practice. Seeing dry theory segue into useful knowl-edge was one of my favorite parts of it all. Most importantly, I could never reconcile using electrolytic capacitors anywhere in the amplifier. Having to repair worn out capacitors in an amplifier rubs me the wrong way when there is better tech-nology around. As a result, I packed in polypropylene caps at the power section and elsewhere. They are bigger than Little Debbie Rolls but their performance, ESR and life span are worth it.

At a certain point you have to design around the known and dive into the unknowns. I reminded myself that half the battle was field testing and tweaking until I found the sweet spot. I picked some well-respected iron for the OT, PT and choke. Transformers are the heart of an amplifier; and you can get totally caught up in the type of iron used, the interleaving, the wire and winding characteristics.

Some day I will wind one, but I was humble enough to call Mercury Magnetics and get their take on what I was trying to do. And they made a few suggestions in line with amp I envisaged, and I agreed with them entirely.

Onward through a hundred steps and a thousand decisions with the subtleties of the Long Tailed Pair and the Cathode Follower in the middle. I love those terms. At the front end of the tone, a Baxandall tone stack has the right impedance matching, simplicity and low insertion loss I was looking for. Coupled with a High Cut control and a mid shift switch, the versatility of the stack is just what I envisioned. I have a per-sonal hang-up on mid controls and their enigmatic interaction

amps

Sean Costello

-continued-


in tone stacks. I built in a few other tone shaping tweaks, and a Negative Feedback Loop and Presence control. I am work-ing my way backwards through the path of the signal, and at that very first stage, V1A, I debated on how to bias it. I went cooler and I loved the sparkle I got after finding the right point (at times, ‘too cool’ could create some ice pick feel especially with a Telecaster bridge). Bias this stage too warm and some of the definition is lost. The parallel partner to the bias resistor on V1A was my other project. Here is where the boost switch comes in and gives some options to pick your poison. Most amplifiers have large capacitors values here, and I found that a middle to low value really is the right range.

When I fired up the amp for the first time, it worked and I can attest that my family did not appreciate it late that night, but I did. It was by no means perfect from day one. In fact, I changed a lot of the lead dress and hammered away at small things until I was happy. The amplifier started out on the edge of stability and I tweaked it until it was there full time. An amplifier is a pretty simple machine. What’s compelling, is the art of mixing the components together with an antediluvian technology (tubes) to distort a signal into something with tex-ture and a singular voice. But the proof is in the playing. What really matters is making something that sounds good enough to inspire. Every amplifier I have made so far has been a one-off, pretty much by word of mouth. From a business perspec-tive, I can be reached at [email protected]. I am the one answering everything there, and while this is not a business model so far that Warren Buffet would stake a claim on, it is a nice place to be from a creative perspective. I would much rather communicate with someone looking for something in particular than have them put it in their “cart”. The build time for amps is around 4-8 weeks. A custom lacquer cabinet is closer to 8 weeks and an upcharge (this is a huge endeavor, but can look phenomenal and can and should be customized). I would gladly build a custom hardwood cab as well (likely oil finish). Custom orders are all entertained, because I love challenges, and this is why I do this. Pricing for the CopperHead depends largely on the components selected; Base $2950 for the head (as described above with standard cabinet and premium components).

The Element CopperheadChris Hersey’s amplifier may be a one-off prototype, but he has created a visual and

sonic impression that suggests far more historical significance.

He’ll resort to tolex to keep the price down, but the concept of finishing a cabinet in nitro lacquer over wood (Fender Pro Junior Relics) has always appealed to us. We also find Hersey’s use of copper front and back panels with imperfect hand-stamped graphics uniquely appealing. Debatable are the lack of any numbers on the front panel controls, although the set screws appear to be aligned at 12 o’clock. You are left to your own devices when setting the heavy knurled Tele knobs. The top of the chassis reveals notes in pencil from Hersey’s experimentation, but we found his lead glyphs perfectly ap-propriate for a true one-off prototype. The Copperhead is a 34 watt, dual 6L6GC amp with GZ34 rectifier and 12AX7 preamp tubes, shipped with an NOS Sylvania rectifier. The front and back panel controls are simple enough, but highly effective in altering the character of the amp in ways that are varied, significant and real.

Control layout: Boost Hi/Lo switch attenuates the input signal Bright Switch – Low – Off – High. Bass and Treble – the tone stack is a modded Baxandall. Mid Shift Switch – bumps mid-range signal higher or lower. Presence – This knob is only in use when the Negative Feed-back Switch on the back of the amp is engaged to either low or high.High Cut switch

Back panel:

Bias Points 1mv = 1ma on multi-meter. Bias pot inside the amp.High/Off/Low Negative Feedback (NFB) Switch.B+ 300 V / 260V switch – changes the primary voltage ap-plied to the power section of the amp. 4/8/16 ohm speaker taps

ToneThe Copperhead is an amp for hard rockin’ guitar players. Unlike some pricey dual channel booteek amplifiers that boast a ‘clean’ channel (usually the weak spot) and a high gain channel with afterburners, the Copperhead makes no attempt to produce anything close to our idea of ‘clean,’ as in the Fender kind of clean you get with a Super Reverb on 6, or a Twin Reverb or Showman on 2-8. You’re not gonna get that here. In terms of feel and character, Hersey’s amp does remind us of a vintage Hiwatt. Both share an unmistakably bold voice and unique character, but the Hiwatt offers a fundamentally cleaner, more midrangey tone, while the Copperhead produces

amps

-continued-


mild to intense underly-ing distor-tion and a wider frequency range with the

controls set appropriately. If you need an example of famous guitar tones that can be compared to the Copperhead, we im-mediately thought of ZZ Top and Deep Purple as we became more familiar with the amp. Put another way, the Copperhead is neither a touring sedan or a bluesy little commuter… It’s a finely-tuned yet tweakable race car that pretends to be nothing else. Come to think of it, it also shares a bit of sonic DNA with the unmistakable sound of a Harley echoing through the concrete canyons of Lower Manhattan – a sound we know well from our time spent on Mercer Street overlooking 4th and Broadway.

The variable distor-tion oozing from this amp

is fairly threatening no matter where you set it. We started out with the Boost, Treble Boost, Mid Boost, Treble Cut, Presence and Negative Feedback all off and the B+ at 300V. Playing one of our Historic Les Pauls with Ellis pickups, the tone is fat, smooth, rich and bright with natural overdrive and sustain with the volume at 2 o’clock that sounds nothing like a typical preamp boost circuit. It’s just bigger, very 3D, and hopped up on fat output tube distortion. The LO/High Boost switch jacks up the RPMs by preset degrees, and combined with the tone controls and Treble and Mid Boost switches, it doesn’t take much time to comprehend just how interactive and useful these controls really are. Experimenting with different set-tings produces an extremely wide and useful range of tones, distortion and sustain, and the effect can be heard in the way different harmonic overtones are augmented and diminished as tone and boost settings are adjusted. Very cool.

We found the Presence control to be the least appealing, its effect obscured by the power and voice of the amp. The Cut control, however, is very

useful in precisely managing high fre-quencies, shaping tone with different guitars and when engaging the Treble boost switch. We prefer the ‘High’ and ‘Off’ Negative Feedback set-

tings on the back panel. The Lo setting just seemed to make this big sounding amp seem smaller, which may be fine for some players, especially in close quarters – we just liked the ‘bigger’ tones better. With the amp set on the 300V B+ setting the sound is massive with huge low end and a room-filling presence that remains stout, firm, and lush. The 260V setting sounds narrower and subdued by comparison. Still good, just different. Most of the time we played the Copperhead through a 1x12 cabinet made from 100 year-old pine loaded with an Eminence Alnico Red Fang, and it proved to be a fine com-bination. At 38 watts Hersey’s amp can move some air, but it isn’t hurtful, even at high volume levels. If we were asked to compare this amplifier with anything we have reviewed in the past, only two come to mind – a Harry Joyce-wired mid ‘70s Hiwatt DR504, and a very early Two Rock Emerald 50. In an age where we have more choices among custom-built ampli-fiers than at any time in the history of the electric guitar, Chris Hersey’s Copperhead is entirely unique, yet mysteriously reminiscent of a voice from the past. “Hush, hush… I thought I heard her calling my name now…” Mmmm. What to do with that? Quest forth.

Chris Hersey – [email protected]

We have very deliberately acquired a lot of Les Pauls over the past 14 years. When Midtown Music was stocking dozens of Custom Shop guitars we would often walk in to find a new shipment of unopened boxes from Nashville stacked against the counter, fresh off the truck and still warm. Dave Tiller always encouraged us to open them, spread the cases out on the floor and cherry pick whatever we wished for

guitars

Depp Purple

TQ

The Country GirlThe Country Girl

-continued-


review, purchase, or just to play in the shop. We found and bought over 30 Historic Les Pauls from Dave, Dave Rog-ers in LaCrosse, and online – ‘54s, ‘57s, ‘58s, ‘59s and the somewhat obscure ‘68. We have described all of them in these pages over the years, usually accompanied by pickup swaps, and sometimes hardware and wiring changes, all in the quest to make these guitars as good as they can possibly be. That concept has been taken even further by a few shops that spe-cialize in refinishing contemporary (usually Gibson Historic

Les Pauls) guitars using ‘real’ nitro formulations that are suppos-edly harder (and thereby more toneful). They will also replace the rosewood

fingerboard with Brazilian, remove the plastic truss rod ‘con-dom’ and re-seat it in bees wax, and reset the neck using hide glue instead of Titebond. The Gibson Custom Shop has also recently begun using hide glue for neck joints, the theory be-ing that an adhesive like Titebond creates a barrier that stops the transmission of string vibration, while hide glue crystalliz-es to a hard surface that allows such vibrations to more freely pass between two pieces of wood. We don’t presume to be an ‘expert’ in these matters. We don’t have a graduate degree in chemistry or physics, but we have bought, played and studied a lot of guitars over the years, and in doing so we have formed opinions based on observation that we will share here for your consideration.

Our experience with Historic Les Pauls in particular has been rewarding and reveal-ing, and we feel better equipped to pass judg-ment on them having now owned over 30

and played many more. As we have said before, there is wood that makes exceptional guitars, and wood that doesn’t. Me-diocre instruments can be made with the most beautiful wood imaginable, but physical appearance doesn’t always leave clues as to how that wood will behave in imparting stunning tone in an instrument. We can’t recall having picked up a Martin Golden Era anything and not been treated to an excep-tional acoustic experience, but it seems to us that solidbody guitars are harder to get right. Chicken shit bingo.

Weight remains a big issue with a lot of players in respect to solidbody guitars. Not many of us would want a 9 lb. Fender, but we wouldn’t necessarily want a 6 lb. Strat or Tele, either. When it comes to Les Pauls specifically, the lightest we have

owned often lacked depth and felt as if some essential timbre was missing. The average weight of the ‘59 Les Pauls listed in the back of the Beau-ty of the Burst book

is 8.8 lbs, Jim Weider’s blackguard Tele is no lightweight, and focusing solely on weight seems to us to be a loser’s game. In our world, a little extra on the hips is better than a waif. We have also noted that neck pitch, or the angle of the neck to the body can dramatically affect the extent to which a guitar responds to string vibration. Steeper angles beyond 3 degrees that require you to raise the height of an ABR-1 bridge farther off the top seem to dampen resonance and sustain, creating a harder, stiffer sound and feel. The specification for most Historic Les Pauls is 3 degrees, but we have observed a lot of variation when directly comparing otherwise identical models. You might wonder why, after having written a glowing review about a recently acquired Historic ‘58 or ‘59, we would un-load it, which we have obviously done to arrive at the number we have owned. Well, that was the point – to acquire, experi-ence, consider and play as many guitars as we possibly could as a means of understanding the difference between a guitar that is utterly inspiring and those that just don’t have ‘it.’ You gotta be willing to play the field, understanding that no matter how good a guitar may be, you’ll never know if there is some-thing better unless you keep looking. Thanks to you, we have a pretty good excuse to do just that.

Our most recent find was a NOS 2010 ‘59 Historic Les Paul that we found among the large inventory of a seller/collector who is also an anesthesiologist. He must have had 20 pricey new Historics in his eBay store, and the 2010 had remained in the case unplayed, stored in the original box. The pictures revealed one of the coolest un-derstated and uniquely figured maple tops we had ever seen,

and we are a sucker for tobacco bursts, so we negotiated a price of $4,300 and spent the entire proceeds from the gear we had recently sold and did the deal. It did not disappoint. Weighing 8.8 lbs. it felt right – a real stunner without appear-ing gaudy, the cherry stain was deep and real, and once we had it set up with new Pyramids the ‘59 did indeed succumb to the vibrating strings with a strong and willing response from head to toe. Having not been played and still smelling of nitro, we knew it would only get better. All in all, another

guitars


great find, online, even. An expensive gamble, but one that paid.

We still have our ‘57 goldtop – an extraordinary guitar that we have become attached to as a benchmark, and it wasn’t going anywhere. We contnued to play both Les Pauls as we swapped pickups for review – our ‘60s Gibson patent num-bers, the LRPs, Rolph ‘58s, and Slider’s humbuckers. The ‘59 was among the best of the best we have found, but we expected that, since we have a theory that in late 2009 and

2010 Gibson was into some extraordinary mahogany. We still believe it, and if we were to buy another Les Paul, we would begin by looking for an ‘09 or 2010. 2007 seems to have been a good year, too, if less consistent. Ask Riverhorse… At his request we cherry picked his ‘07 ‘59 at Midtown.

As the summer passed we were busy with a lot of guitars you have read about here. From spending $4,300 we began buying $400 Squiers and the Epiphone Dot 335. While these guitars don’t quite embody the vintage details of Custom Shop instruments, we were shocked by how resonant and alive they were – all of them. Every time we pick up the Epiphone, the Squier Tele Custom or the J Mascis we

just shake our head in disbelief that a $400 guitar can be this good, but they are. Better than you can imagine. And that got us thinking, conflicted again. There sat our latest squeeze, the gorgeous ‘59, with an extra two grand invested more or less in that pretty maple top, and the goldtop still sounded every bit as good or better…

Ron Ellis sent us his ‘Bette’ humbuckers, and we occupied our time trying to get our mind around the difference between them and the Ellis LRPs. Upping the challenge, he also sent us a set of ‘MHW’ Bette’s, meaning ‘manual hand wound’ which is a specific pattern and tension he uses to handwind the coils in a ‘machine’ fashion. Well, they all sound so good, different by degrees, and it’s gonna take a few weeks for us to fully absorb the nuanced tones in each and clearly describe them here. Evaluating pickups with words forces a brain cramp that cannot be eased or rushed if you mean to do it

properly. Stay tuned…

Meanwhile, we were relat-ing our story about the ‘59 to a friend and reader with whom we have traded gear in the past, and he asked if we were keeping it. We had previously sold him a 2009 Historic ‘58 that we plucked new from a music store in Eastern Tennessee. If you have been to Eastern Tennessee, right up against West Virginia, you know that they ain’t many Les Paul players in them hills

– it’s Bluegrass Nascar country and nuthin else. Whoo-hoo do they run fast and tight in Bristol… The plaintop tobacco burst ‘58 had been sittin’, and they let it go at a fair price – shitfar, mebbe a hunnerd over cost knocked down by 10% more when Bing was offering rebates on eBay Buy It Now sales. My friend suggested that he didn’t need two bursts, but he was interested in the ‘59, and the memory of the ‘58 from Appalachia began to burrow its way back into focus. A quick check of the pictures we had taken of the ‘58 on our hard drive awakened vivid memories of its easy, reassuring feel and incredibly deep tone. “Baby, I don’t know what I did to hurt you, but I’m sorry if I did. Cain’t you leave that fancy girl and take me back? You marked me the deepest.” Mmmm, country girls are cheaper to keep and easier to live with, less fuss and worry all around. We knew that, and we knew this to be a fine one.

Reunited, we traded the ‘59 for the Appalachian ‘58 and cash with absolutely no regrets. We had found the ‘59, danced with it, admired its sophisticated natural beauty and moved on with a new old squeeze and enough cash for a week at the beach. Or a new amp… The ‘58 is a magnificent guitar, 9 lbs. exactly with a bodacious neck and a generous and wil-lin’ heart. The honest grain in the plain maple top peeking

out from the dark molasses edges of the golden sunburst reminds us of a charred white oak whiskey barrel, and when you see this guitar you want to play it, squeeze it and let the good times roll. If for just one dance, country girls will snuggle tight as if to say, “I’m not yours, but you can pretend I am ‘til the music stops.” Laissez les bons temps rouler…

guitars

TQ


PERIODICAL POSTAGEPAID AT

DECATUR,GAAND ADDITIONAL MAILING OFFICES

the

ReportToneQuest

TMPO Box 717 Decatur, GA. 30031-0717

the

ReportToneQuest

TM

Editor/PublisherAssociate Publisher

Graphic Design

David WilsonLiz MedleyRick Johnson

EDITORIAL BOARD

The ToneQuest Report™ (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 address changes to:TheToneQuest Report™, PO Box 717, Decatur, GA. 30031-0717.The annual subscription fee for The ToneQuest Report™ is $89 per year for 12 monthly issues. International subscribers please add US $40. Please remit payment in U.S. funds only. VISA, MasterCard and American Express accepted. The ToneQuest Report™ is published solely for the benefit of its subscribers. Copyright © 2012 by Mountainview Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced in any form or incorporated into any information retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright holder. Please forward all subscription requests, comments, questions and other inquiries to the above address or contact the publisher at [email protected]. Opinions expressed in The ToneQuest Report™ are not necessarily those of this publication.Mention of specific products, services or technical advice does not constitute an endorsement. Readers are advised to exercise extreme caution in handling electronic devices and musical instruments. The ToneQuest Report™ STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION. Publisher David Wilson. Owner Mountainview Publishing, LLC. 235 Mountainview Street, Decatur, GA 30030-2027, P.O. Box 717, Decatur, GA 30031-0717. Filing date 10/1/13. Number of issues published annually: 10. Average number copies each issue nearest to filing date: 1600; Total number of copies: 1600; Paid/other non-USPS: 82; Mail Subscriptions: 1119; Total paid and/or requested circulation: 1201; Free distribution by mail: 59; Free distribution outside mail: 0; Total free distribution: 59. Total distribution: 1260; Copies not distributed: 340; Percent paid: 78%. Issue date of circulation data: October 2013. I certify that these statements are true and complete: David Wilson Publisher, PS Form 3526.

Analogman

Tom AndersonTom Anderson GuitarWorks

Mark BaierVictoria Amplifiers

Jeff BakosBakos AmpWorks

Dick BoakCF Martin & Co.

Joe Bonamassa

Phil Brown

Dan ButlerButler Custom Sound

Don ButlerThe Toneman

Steve CarrCarr Amplifiers

Erick ColemanStewart-McacDonald

Larry CraggNeil Young

Jol DantzigJol Dantzig Guitar Design

Ronnie Earl

Dan ErlewineStewart-MacDonald

Larry FishmanFishman Transducers

Bill FinneganKlon Centaur

Lindy Fralin

Peter Frampton

Greg GerminoGermino Amplification

Billy F. GibbonsZZ Top

Joe GlaserGlaser Instruments

Tom GuerraMambo Sons

Johnny Hiland

Gregg HopkinsVintage Amp Restoration

Mark JohnsonDelta Moon

Phil JonesGruhn Guitars

Mark KaranBob Weir & Ratdog

Robert KeeleyRobert Keeley Electronics

Gordon Kennedy

Ernest KingGibson Custom Shop

Chris KinmanKinman AVn Pickups

Mike KropotkinKCA NOS Tubes

Sonny Landreth

Albert Lee

Adrian Legg

Dave MaloneThe Radiators

Jimbo Mathus

Shane NicholasSr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitar Amplifers

René MartinezThe Guitar Whiz

Greg MartinThe Kentucky Headhunters

Richard McDonaldVP Mktg, Fender Musical Instruments

Joe MloganoskiCo-Founder K&M Anaslog Designs

Todd MoneyManager Gibson Repair & Restoration

Justin NorvellSr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitars

James PennebakerArtist Relations, Fender Musical Instruments, Nashville

Riverhorse

Tommy ShannonDouble Trouble

Todd SharpNashville Amp Service

Tim ShawFender Musical Instruments Corp.

Randall C. SmithDesigner & President, Mesa/Boogie Ltd.

John SprungAmerican Guitar Center

Peter Stroud

Buddy WhittingtonJohn Mayall & The Bluesbreakers

Greg VLos Angeles

Lou Vito

Mike VoltzR&D / Product Development, Gibson Memphis

Date post:	08-Feb-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	vuthu
View:	230 times
Download:	1 times

Yes, you can The Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone · PDF fileThe Player’s Guide to...

Documents