1. hobbies and interests
2. guitar

INSIDE
The Jeff Beck Issue!
The early
years...
heroes,
bands
& gear
The
Yardbirds...
How they
shaped rock music
for decades
Mountainview Publishing, LLC
the
The Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone
$10.00 US, July-August 2010/VOL.11 NO.9-10
Report
TM
Jeff Beck
Breaking out
at the Fillmore
with Ronnie & Rod
“I don’t care about the rules. In fact, if I don’t break the rules
at least 10 times in every song then I’m not doing my job properly.” – Jeff Beck
Questing
into the unknown...
Deaf & Dumb at
a mega-decibel
cage match with BB&A
Over the past four decades and change, a river of ink has been spilled by giddy music wags struggling to describe the genius of Jeff Beck. Comparisons to his peers have been useless, since it
is abundantly clear that his ability to render the full range of human emotion and fantasy from
a guitar is incomparable, nor does his mind linger long within the traditional framework of
What’s
that chord?
The enduring
influence
of Max Middleton
2010 Tour...
Our interview
with Beck’s tech,
Steve Prior
The Gear...
An inside look
into Jeff Beck’s
guitars, effects
and amplifiers
Tube & speaker
recommendations
19
Fargen Hot Mods,
plus our interview
with Ben Fargen
21
2010 Custom Shop
'60 Relic Stratocaster
25
Lee Jackson’s
Active Gain
Boost
26
Eminence’s
Alnico Blue Frame 10s
rock and blues. The use of adjectives to describe the sounds Beck coaxes from a guitar is laughable, and his mischievous sense of melodic composition and timing simply cannot be adequately
described in words. You’re either present to experience Jeff Beck’s high wire performance or not,
and once consummated, nattering pillow talk seems awkwardly impotent and unseemly at best. A
hearty cheer and a satisfied smile will do, as you return home, log on to Amazon and arrange to
savor every crumb of Beck’s music you can find, if not the music that first inspired his own inspiration, too.
www.tonequest.com
cover story
It is context that interests us in this edition of the Quest...
Clues to understanding how a kid from the London borough
of Wallington, Surrey became the artist we know as Jeff Beck
today, and in doing so influenced, shaped and defined an
era spanning nearly 50 years of music with humble beginnings cultivated by humble young men from the American
south like Gene Vincent, Cliff Gallup, Johnny Burnette, Paul
Burlison and Scotty Moore, among others. Beck thirsted for
this music at an early age, and at a time in England when it
wasn’t always so easy to afford or locate the precious A and
B sides recorded in Chicago and Memphis. Like many of his
peers enrolled in the ‘future British rockers apprentice program’ called art school, American records in England were
shared, consumed and digested with the fervor of a communal feast, thus nourishing the aspirations of so many players
we would come to know – Hank Marvin, George Harrison,
Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend,
Peter Green, Albert Lee, Alvin Lee, Peter Frampton, David
Gilmour, Richard Thompson, Mick Taylor, Andy Summers,
Mark Knopfler, Brian May, Ritchie Blackmore, Gary Moore,
Rory Gallagher, Robin Trower and James Honeyman-Scott,
among others.
Interestingly,
whatever
difficulty Jeff
Beck may
have had
in getting
his eager
hands on
rock & roll
records from
America
Paul Burlison, Johnny Burnette, Gene Vincent, Dorsey Burnette L-R
was dwarfed by his meager prospects for acquiring a guitar,
so he resorted to building one (sort of) with a grotesquely
elongated neck that he would carry around from one tentative
petting session to the next. Could this happen today? “Uh,
dad, I want to play the guitar, and Guitar Center has the one
I want for $600...” “Really? Well, here’s a tool box and you’ll
find some wood in the shed. I’ll buy the strings when you’re
done. Have fun!”
Gene Vincent
When Beck’s father threw his
first home-brewed guitar out into
the garden following a youthful indiscretion, young Jeff built
another, which he fretted with
bits of metal as best he could to
resemble a real guitar. Naturally,
the fret placement was off, but
he remained undeterred... “The
scale was so bad that it was
only playable with a capo at the
fifth fret... I was interested in the electric guitar even before
I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The
electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of
wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one.”
With no money to buy a pickup, he boldly nicked one from a
local music store, screwed it over a small opening in the top
and plugged into the family radio. Beck played his yellow
‘Beckocaster’ for nearly two years with a 30 watt amp built
at school, playing his first public ‘engagement’ at the age of
fourteen, and the seeds were thus sown to begin exploring his
prospects for playing music in and around London in earnest.
Beck’s first real working band was the Bandits – an instrumental group that backed a number of Gene Vincent
wannabes touring England in the summer of 1960. He
continued to study and absorb
the influences of his heroes –
Cliff Gallup with Gene Vincent,
Johnny Burnette’s guitarist
in the Rock & Roll Trio, Paul
Burlison, Eddie Cochran, Buddy
Holly, James Burton, Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry
and Les Paul, before discovering the Chicago blues of Muddy
Waters, and most significantly,
Buddy Guy. Naturally, Beck
struggled early on, playing in
moderately popular bands like the Deltones and Crescents,
while working day jobs that included driving a tractor at a
golf course, painting, and learning to work on cars at an auto
body shop. He was known for quickly drifting in and out of
groups as soon as he lost interest or sensed that viable prospects were dim, but things improved substantially when he
joined a popular R&B group called the Nightshift, who were
regularly booked at Eel Pie Island and the 100 Club in London. In 1963, Beck landed with the Tridents – a high-energy
R&B band that truly suited his uniquely energetic and inventive style. By now, his range as a musician was expanding
exponentially with the benefit of steady work in a band that
gave him space to freely roam. Perhaps most significant
to his future career prospects, however, was an ongoing
fascination with echo, distortion, and the use of controlled
feedback, alternately using a Baby Binson, Klemt Echolette,
and a fuzz box built
by the Tridents’ bass
player, Paul Lucas,
to great effect that
did not go unnoticed. Playing in the
Tridents, Beck had
truly found his voice
at the age of twenty,
and just in time...
-continued-
2
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
cover story
In 1965 Eric Clapton
decided that the kind
of ‘blues’ the Yardbirds
were cookin’ wasn’t to
his taste, so off he went
to join John Mayall and
the Bluesbreakers. Beck
and Jimmy Page had long
been well acquainted
through Jeff’s sister, Annetta, and Page, who was
very much in demand as
a studio player, brought Beck in for occasional session work
when a particularly creative part was needed. Upon Clapton’s
departure from the Yardbirds, Giorgio Gomelsky offered Page
the job, he deferred, and recommended Beck. While his loyalties remained with the Tridents, with whom he had traveled
up and down the length of Britain building a loyal following
of fans, in Beck’s words, “the Yardbirds appeared to have
good management, and seemed to be going places.” He played
his first show with the Yardbirds on March 5, 1965, the very
same day the hit single “For Your Love” was released, which
uniquely featured harpsichord and bongos. The simple 4-chord
hook proved an instant dashboard hit, yet Clapton had despised
this song for its lack of a guitar solo and overtly pop leanings.
Shapes of Things
Alternately featuring Eric Clapton,
Jeff Beck, Beck
and Jimmy Page,
and finally Page
alone, the Yardbirds were the most
electrifying band
to emerge from
England in the
mid ‘60s. Yes... they were. No one else – and we mean no one
merged hook-laden guitar riffs with embraceable pop lyrics,
bluesy call and response exchanges between guitar and harmonica, distorted fuzz solos tinged with modal Eastern riffs,
or took a perfectly agreeable Top 40 tune and set the whole
thing on fire in a howling, scratching, pounding crescendo one
minute in like the Yardbirds. And the ignition source for the
Yardbirds’ psychedelic sexual energy was Jeff Beck. Classics
like “For Your Love,” “Heart Full Of Soul” “Evil Hearted
You,” “Still I’m Sad,” “Shapes of Things,” “Over, Under,
Sideways, Down,” “Train Kept a Rollin,” “I’m a Man” and
“Jeff’s Boogie” defined the band’s raw energy and ability to
thoroughly mine a well-crafted hook. Indeed, it is the rare
Yardbirds song that isn’t anchored by a memorable guitar
hook, and it was undoubtedly Jeff Beck who laid the groundwork for what would ultimately evolve into the first ‘heavy
metal’ band – Led Zeppelin. Ironically, the original name of
that band was to
be the New Yardbirds... Indeed,
The Yardbirds
were instrumental in launching
the careers of
three of the most
important rock
guitarists in history, all of whom resided within a very small patch of ground in
and around London less than 20 miles square.
Beck-Ola
Now a recognized
force in rock music, Beck formed
The Jeff Beck
Group with Ron
Wood and Rod
Stewart – a tumultuous collaboration that produced
two classic albums before the band dissolved in 1969 – Truth
and Beck-Ola. Success and recognition did not come quickly,
however... Ron Wood had to resort to stealing a Fender Jazz bass
from Sound City in London when he joined the group, and the
entire band were down to stems and seeds until their appearance at the Fillmore East on June 14 -15 1968, where they were
called back for repeated encores, and in the words of New York
Times reviewer Robert Shelton, “... upstaged for one listener at
least, the featured performers, The Grateful Dead.” The band
continued a successful extended tour of the US throughout the
summer, signed with Epic in the US, and in August Truth was
released, quickly ascending to #15 on the charts. In no small
way, Truth was a definitive and elegantly forceful coda to the
unfinished business Beck had begun in the Yardbirds, boldly
confirming Beck and Stewart’s status as emerging stars in a
landscape dominated at the time by two very heavy purveyors
of psychedelia – Cream and Jimi Hendrix.
After a series of fits
and starts punctuated
by a car accident that
left Beck with a fractured skull and a prolonged recovery, his
next move was a brilliant one that would
influence some of his
best work for years to
come, teaming with
classically trained
pianist Max Middleton in a new version of the Jeff Beck
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
3
cover story
Group that included drummer Cozy Powell, Clive Chaman
on bass and a rough and ready singer from London by way
of Trinidad, Bob Tench. Middleton patiently schooled Beck
on melodic jazz chords, scales and more complex, bluesy
passages that fully emerged on the band’s second album. Referenced as ‘the orange album’ featuring a picture of an orange
on the cover, Jeff Beck Group was recorded in Memphis and
produced by Steve Cropper. While not a particular favorite of
Beck’s, who felt that the band members were an odd match,
we considered this record to be a life-changing experience
for any aspiring guitarist at the time it was released in 1972.
Perhaps more important than the group’s recordings, however,
was the enduring effect that Max Middleton exerted on Beck,
inspiring him to evolve and explore a much broader range of
music than ever before in the coming years with great artistic
and commercial success.
Beck had been itching
to unleash a power
trio with Tim Bogert
and Carmine Appice
of Vanilla Fudge and
Cactus prior to his
car accident, and in
1972 he finally got his
wish. Beck, Bogert &
Appice fulfilled his
desire to stretch out
with a leaner, brutally
hard rockin’ crew, and given our personal experience at the
Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum in 1972, Beck’s ongoing
battle with tinnitus surely must have begun with this incredibly loud band. Like the tie-died t-shirts we wore that day, the
memory of Beck, Bogert & Appice will never fade...
Hitchhiking 60 miles to a rock show was nuthin’ in 1972.
There were people in our college dorm (called ‘The Zoo’
since the university placement office quarantined all the
freaks there), who would hitchhike from Indiana to Miami
and catch a cheap flight to Negril, Jamaica without a second
thought. We prepared for the BB&A concert by dropping a hit
of orange barrel in the afternoon before grabbing a ride to I69
South with Chucky – a 6 foot
3 inch, 260 pound lineman
who was headed north on I69
to Mishawaka and momma’s
cookin.’ Fueled by a case
of Stroh’s fire-brewed beer,
Chucky’s claim to fame was
his ability to expertly rock
all the Eskimo Pies out of the
basement vending machine
on request like a trained bear.
Within 30 minutes of being
dropped off at a shady overpass, we flagged a ride in a primergrey Chevy van from Michigan driven by two bikers. As we
climbed into the
back of the van, the
driver cheerfully
introduced himself
as ‘Oat Willie’and
his partner, who
bore a remarkable
resemblance to
James Gang drummer Jimmy Fox,
mumbled something unintelligible from behind his aviators
as he handed us a giant bong made from a round Quaker Oats
canister. The van was outfitted with a bitchin’ 8-track stereo
system blasting “Straight Brother” from Leon Russell and
Mark Benno’s Asylum Choir, and crumbled in the deep bowl
of the bong were several generous chunks of red Lebanese
hash – just what the doctor ordered for two day trippers hurtling south to see Jeff Beck in the middle of God’s Country.
Oat Willie and his pal were headed to the same place we were,
and such serendipitous moments weren’t all that uncommon
on the road. Instead of being surprised, we just smiled and
nodded, as if this too was meant to be as the first rushes from
the acid began to paint the golden glowing sun as it sunk low
over the Indiana grain belt. Aside from an unfortunate pit stop
where the roar of a flushing toilet cued a disturbing illusion of
the floor beneath our feet swirling down into Mordor, the trip
to Indianapolis was agreeably far out.
With the exception of
Grand Funk Railroad, Beck, Bogert &
Appice was the most
painfully deafening
band we ever saw
throughout the ‘60s
and ‘70s. Roam too
near the elevated PA
speakers flanking
the stage (the security cops had fled) and the sound pressure
created by the bass and drum kit was lethal, leaving innocents
feeling instantly ill and off-balance. “No, Chills, you’re not
having a bad trip – it’s the speakers... We gotta moooooove.”
“Whaaaaaat?!” Beck held his own in what amounted to a cage
match with two gorillas, but not without difficulty. Even by
‘70s arena standards, BB&A were murderously loud and undisciplined, and at times it seemed as if Beck was merely tapping on a triangle above the roar of an F5 tornado. Weak-kneed
and catatonic, we shuffled across the street to the White Castle
to suck down a milkshake and hustle a ride back to Muncie after the show, feeling two feet tall and very deaf. While the acid
had worn off by morning, our ears rang for days, but we had
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
cover story
succeeded in finally seeing Jeff Beck (we caught the Yardbirds
too late and had to settle for Page), marking another essential
rite of passage on the rock & roll highway.
Like Clapton in Cream,
Beck tired of the power
trio trip soon enough and
eventually rejoined Max
Middleton to record a
masterpiece with producer
George Martin, Blow by
Blow. This 1975 recording solidified Jeff Beck’s
place in rock history as
the most innovative guitarist of our time, completely
unencumbered by the self-imposed boundaries of any single
musical style, and his complete mastery of the full sonic
potential of the guitar was, and remains incomparable. If you
must make qualitative comparisons, only a handful of names
seem remotely appropriate in respect to their imaginative gifts
– Les Paul, Roy Buchanan and Jimi Hendrix. Everyone else
please get in line. Blow by Blow shook the music world to its
very core, leaving many other talented guitarists respectfully
dumbfounded by Beck’s soaring imagination and complete
grasp of his instrument.
Beck’s follow up to Blow by
Blow provided another artistic and commercial milestone the very next year with
the release of Wired, featuring drummer and composer
Narada Michael Walden and
keyboardist Jan Hammer.
Beck was in full stride now,
with both albums winning
gold and subsequent platinum awards, and a 7-month
world tour with the Jan
Hammer Group followed.
For many less gifted and imaginative rockers, this might have
marked the zenith of a fine career that had run its course...
Disco exploded in 1976 with Donna Summer’s 17-minute
horizontal dance track “Love to Love You,” The Sex Pistols
spawned punk with the release of “God Save the Queen, and
FM rock hit an odd patch dominated by hair bands and predictable anthems to sex, drugs and rock & roll – not exactly
the sweet spot for a player of Jeff Beck’s impeccable taste
and energy, but to paraphrase a Hendrix line, “He just kept on
going.” Throughout the next three decades and change Jeff
Beck has continued to create exceptionally varied music of his
choosing, albeit on his terms, recording when so inspired and
touring when and as it suits him, racking up Grammy awards
for Flash in 1985, Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop in ‘89, Jeff in 2003,
five Grammies for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and
his excellent 2010 release, Emotion and Commotion is now
his highest charting album ever in the UK. If you haven’t been
able to catch him during this year’s tour, may we recommend
the excellent DVD Performing This Week: Jeff Beck Live at
Ronnie Scott’s.
This is as good a spot
as any to reflect for a
moment on how an eager
young spitfire from the
London suburbs managed to create music on
the guitar that was, and
continues to be otherwise
quite unimaginable.
There are no Jeff Beck
tribute bands, nor will
there ever be. The only contemporary guitarist we are aware
of who has remotely approached such territory with any
degree of taste is Phil Brown, but that is another story already
told in these pages. Beck seems the ultimate enigmatic rock
star, maintaining the physical presence of the consummate
British rocker well into his ‘60s, while scrupulously avoiding all other stereotypes, artistic, or otherwise. Well before a
a particular sonic trick, effect or musical direction can begin
to define him, he
will dodge it and
move on. And
unlike more than
a few of his peers,
we’ve never had to
read about battles
with alcohol or
dope, trashed
hotel rooms, or sordid buggery with an under-age girl in a
public park at 4 a.m. ripped out of his mind with an ounce of
blow in his pocket. No messy divorces – all neat and tidy. Be
kind to animals (and please don’t eat them), do some charity
work, acknowledge those who inspired you by showing up
when asked, keep the house
in order, work on the cars,
record a new album when
you’ve something new to say,
and support it with a tour, but
nothing too grueling. Well
done, Jeff. Beck is a deft and
enthusiastic collaborator,
but not necessarily a joiner...
He has creatively thrived
in partnerships with Tony
Hymas, Jan Hammer, Max
Beck & Jennifer Batten Middleton, Stevie Wonder,
-continued-
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
5
guitars
Stanley Clarke, Buddy Guy, Nile Rodgers and many others,
while acknowledging the talents of lesser known, yet deserving artists such as Jennifer Batten and Jimmy Hall by giving
them a job of work that resulted in extraordinary music. With
Beck, it has always seemed to be about the music rather than
self-indulgent posturing and over-exposure. His habit of
deliberately keeping to the periphery of the overblown, cultworshipping vortex of the music business has enabled him to
approach his art more or less on his terms, and you’ll find few
compromises evident in his recorded work, past or present.
The music has evolved, certainly, but the essence of the man
doesn’t seem to have changed.
On a jungle-hot night
in June we were
treated to another
stellar Jeff Beck performance at Atlanta’s
Chastain Park, and he
was better than ever,
running through a
mix of familiar and
new material with one
of his best backing
bands ever – now
reunited with drummer Narada Michael Walden, the fiery and
comely Rhonda Smith on bass, and Jason Rebello on keyboards. Unfortunately, with most legends of Beck’s tenure and
stature, it’s often a good time to take a piss when a new song
is played..With Beck, however, the new material is welcome,
energetic and fresh, yet reassuringly familiar – just more of
what you came for – impeccable performances that are vibrant,
alive, and loaded with sonic surprises in every measure. His
performance of “Over the Rainbow” and “Day in the Life”
were all that, if not an apt description of the entire show. We
simply couldn’t have asked for more. Now in his mid ‘60s,
Beck is fit as ever, smiling, nimble, razor sharp, completely on
his game. Throughout the night he toys with us, teasing notes
with mere whispers of swerving harmonics, surging vibrato
crescendos, and sudden growling, guttural assaults that rip the
night sky before gracefully
skidding into another new
and unexpected space – a
space entirely owned and
created by Jeff Beck. And of
course, his tone is not of this
world...
Guitars
If the Yardbirds provided
the launching pad for Jeff
Beck’s career, the music that
followed would largely be
inspired and defined by his
adventurous and bizarre relationship with the Fender Stratocaster. His first ‘real’ guitar was a Guyatone LG-50, identical
to the model played by Hank Marvin prior to his acquisition
of a Stratocaster. The Guyatone was briefly replaced by a
Burns Vibra Artiste, and in 1961 Beck finally scored a real
Stratocaster, purchased new with his mum co-signing for the
loan while playing with the Deltones. Just shy of seventeen,
he had already left home and art school to play music, labeled
by his teachers as nothing more than a “banjo-twanger.”
Ever the
compulsive
tinkerer,
Beck’s
sunburst
Stratocaster
suffered the
indignities
of being
re-painted red, then white, re-wired (badly) and ultimately
thrown off his bed in disgust where it split in two down the
back. It wouldn’t be the last time. He eventually sold it for a
car and settled for playing a borrowed Telecaster for a while
in the Deltones. In the Tridents, he acquired a white ‘59 Telecaster top loader with rosewood fingerboard that he eventually
gave to Jimmy Page, who used the guitar on Led Zeppelin I,
the first American tour, the Stairway solo, and our personal
vote for one of the all-time tastiest blues guitar solos ever
recorded – “Since I’ve Been Loving You” on Led Zep III. If
you consider yourself to be a blues player, cue that one up and
enjoy playing in a different scale for a change...
Soon after joining
the Yardbirds, Beck
acquired a ‘54 Esquire
from John Walker, the
guitarist in the American band The Walker
Brothers, whom Beck
met while playing on
a package tour with
the Kinks in 1965.
Walker had contoured
the top and back in
the style of a Stratocaster, leaving the bare wood exposed, and Beck removed
the original white pickguard, replacing it with the black one
from his ‘59, which apparently created quite a buzz amongst
guitarists in London. This is the guitar used for his main
body of work with the Yardbirds leading up to The Yardbirds
album released in 1966, which featured his first ‘59 Les Paul.
You’ll recall the Limited Edition Custom Shop Jeff Beck ‘54
Telecaster that appeared several years ago for something like
$11K. Jeff paid $70 for his.
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
guitars
Smashing Bumpkins
Beck’s first ‘59 was also
destined for a difficult life
on the road, first broken (and
repaired) after a disagreement between Beck and the
Yardbirds’ singer Keith Relf
escalated to such a pitch that
Beck, holding the guitar aloft
while taking aim at Relf’s
head, thought better of it,
and simply threw the ‘59 to
the floor. Life on the road
with the Yardbirds was clearly not all tea and toast... Pictures
can be seen of Beck playing this guitar before and after he
had refinished it in natural blonde, identified by double cream
PAFs. Further insults occurred following another accident on
tour at a repair shop in Memphis, where the neck was replaced
with an unacceptably skinny imitation, and the original PAFs
were pulled and replaced with ‘new’ Gibsons. But wait, there’s
more... The guitar was damaged again on tour, and this time
the repairman inlaid the repaired headstock with the Gibson
vine design featured on archtops, an entirely inappropriate old
style ‘The Gibson’ logo, and a bold ‘JB’ inlay on the fretboard
for good measure. This guitar has understandably not been
seen since, no doubt relegated to the attic.
Singing Pigs
Thanks to Rick
Nielsen, later
of Cheap Trick,
Beck acquired a
second ‘59 burst
for $350 with
a zebra PAF in
the neck that
would become
his favorite Les
Paul of all time,
so of course, it was stolen in 1972 during the second Jeff
Beck Group tour in the U.S. While dabbling with Les Pauls,
Beck clearly never lost interest in Stratocasters... When the
refinished Les Paul was broken on tour, he bought a stripped
‘54 Stratocaster that can be heard on the Jeff Beck Group
“Orange” album and Blow by Blow. This guitar would meet
a familiar fate a few years later when Beck threw it down on
stage, breaking it into three pieces after some malfunction occurred (loose jack, perhaps?) As luck would have it, a rowdy
night of jamming with Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott concluded with Beck being given another ‘54 Stratocaster by humble
Steve. Marriott had replaced the original neck with one from
a Telecaster (not uncommon in the ‘60s) and Beck replaced
it with a Stratocaster neck from a ‘58. The original pickups
mysteriously disappeared on tour (what were you paying your
roadies, Jeff?), and in Beck’s words, “It weighs a ton, it’s difficult to play, it goes out of tune and all that, but when you use
it properly it sings to you.”
May we pause here for a minute to savor those words? In a
world where anxious players fuss over what kind of space age
alloy their bridge saddles must be made from, Beck is telling
us about his favorite singing pig. I’ll take two, please! Beck
also reportedly owned several white Strats with rosewood
boards, and one in particular that had been given to him by
John McLaughlin was described as “the best white Strat ever.”
It disappeared in 1976 while being transported by taxi from
JFK to Jan Hammer’s New York studio, where the case was
delivered minus the guitar.
In 1974 Seymour Duncan
also gifted Jeff with a ‘TeleGib’ he had assembled using
a battered ‘59 Telecaster.
The rosewood fingerboard
had suffered from a very
badly done re-fret, so Duncan
removed it altogether, added a
maple fingerboard, and routed
the Tele for two ‘59 PAFs
Seymour Duncan
that had been salvaged from a
Flying V belonging to Lonnie Mack. Damaged when the original covers were removed, Duncan had to re-wind both pickups
with wire that he found at an auto supply store (this was 1974).
This guitar was subsequently played on “Cause We’ve Ended
as Lovers” and “Freeway Jam,” among others.
Oxblood
When
Beck’s
favorite ‘59
Les Paul
was stolen
in 1972, he
immediately began
trolling for
a replacement and bought one for $500 in Memphis from a local guitar
player named Buddy Davis. The guitar was a ‘54 Goldtop
refinished in a dark brown, nearly black ‘oxblood’ color,
and it had been routed for humbuckers (PAFs) leaving the
original wrap-around tailpiece intact. This guitar is most often
associated with Beck’s masterpiece, Blow by Blow. As the
story goes, Beck had initially planned to use a white 1970
Stratocaster with rosewood board, but the piercing sound of
the Fender was so offensive to producer George Martin that
Beck relented and played the Les Paul, relegating the Stratocaster to a secondary role. Our discussion with Beck’s current
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
7
guitars
tech, Steve Prior, revealed that this story is a bit off the mark,
however, with Beck’s stripped ‘54 Stratocaster having been
used prominently on this record. In January 2009 the Gibson
Custom Shop built 150 replicas of Beck’s ‘54 Oxblood, with
the first 50 aged, signed, and as the promo stated, “played”
by Beck as well. List price for (we assume) the unsigned, unplayed models was $8235. Beck plays the #1 prototype of this
replica model on the current tour for his tribute to Les Paul.
The Stratocaster
With the
exception of
his pink
3-pickup
Jackson
Soloist
played
on
“People
Get
Ready”
and much of Flash (there were two more made for him in
orange) and the ‘50s Bigsby-equipped Gretsch DuoJet used
for his tribute to Cliff Gallup, Crazy Legs, Beck has steadfastly relied on various versions of his signature Stratocaster
since its introduction in 1990. The earliest signature models
featured a huge neck that surely challenged more than a few
owners, and the neck specification has since been altered to a
more traditional ‘60s C shape. Other notable features on the
stock model include medium jumbo frets, a contoured neck
heel for easier access to the upper frets, an LSR roller nut for
smooth trem action and more brilliant harmonics, locking
tuners, rosewood fingerboard and Fender ceramic noiseless
pickups that replaced the original Lace Sensors with double
coil bridge pickup. Beck’s preferred signature Strat played
for most of the Atlanta show in June is an older J.W. Black
Custom Shop parts guitar with a superficial crack on the back
of the neck and plenty of honestly acquired road wear. Note the
heavy wound strings, big frets and
the adjustment of the tremolo that
enables Beck to alter pitch both up
and down with the short tremolo
arm. He played this guitar for
nearly the entire show and never
had to tune once. We asked Beck’s
tech, Steve Prior, to describe his
#1 Stratocaster and 2010 stage rig
in detail...
TQR:
We weren’t surprised to see that Jeff’s #1
Stratocaster is a beater, complete with a repaired
crack in the neck...
It’s a J.W. Black neck that dates to 1990 when the custom
shop signature models first came out. He initially told Jay that
he wanted a Strat with the feel and punch of the ‘54 Oxblood
Les Paul, (which he still has – with the same five strings
left on it from the last time he played it, a long time ago…)
As you noticed, the neck on the Stratocaster is in pretty bad
shape, with cracks and dings here and there – and heavy wear
to the rosewood fingerboard after twenty years of use. These
guitars are effectively tools to him and he really doesn’t get
that precious about them. When he gets in a showboating
mode he’ll throw the guitar in the air and catch it, occasionally with unintended results. There were one or two necks that
he has kept coming back to over the years, and this one was
originally on the seafoam green Strat with Lace Sensors that
was signed with a stiletto by Little Richard on the upper bout
above the scratchplate.
It was before my tenure, but one night he threw the guitar in
the air, caught it and then bounced it off the floor of the stage,
and the neck bolts sheered off, splitting the body in half. The
neck survived, although there was a bit of carnage at the heel
that had to be repaired. The body on the guitar he is playing
now is a basswood prototype made by J. W. Black dating to
1993, and it is the only one made of basswood from that early
era that we have. It has kind of a curious, dark, middy tone to
it that Jeff seems to like. The pickups, which are fairly unique
John Suhr prototypes, were made during the early development of the Fender Noiseless pickups. I’m not sure of the
composition of the magnets – whether they are Alnico, Selenium Cobalt or otherwise – you’d have to ask John Suhr, but
the polepieces are corroded and they look quite different from
any of the other pickups I have from that time. The resistance
measures at around 10K and they aren’t that bright compared
to other pickups we have. John Suhr told me that he could
make additional sets for us at any time, but I have yet to take
him up on it. Michael Frank-Braun at Fender has also made us
a noiseless set comprised of Alnico 2, 3 and 5 that are in the
Strat Jeff uses on the song “Dirty Mind” in E flat tuning with
a low B, and that guitar sounds fantastic.
Beck’s #1 Strat
Editor’s Note: We contacted
John Suhr and Michael FrankBraun about these pickups
and their comments follow...
John Suhr: “It really came
about while J Black was working on and rebuilding Jeff’s
guitars. According to J Black,
Jeff was complaining about
microphonics and noise from
his current pickups – the Lace
pickups. J and I were friends
from New York (he actually
talked me in to coming to
-continued-
8
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
guitars
Fender) and were both Senior Master Builders. Since I was
doing pickup R&D at the time along with my building responsibilities, J asked if I could whip something up. So I did and
Jeff liked them, I did a few more versions which he liked, and
from what I hear Jeff is rougher on his guitars than I could of
ever imagined. I heard some of them fell apart from bouncing
guitars around and he wound up with just one or two sets left.
I have since figured out how to make them ‘Jeff proof.’ The
production issue was that they don’t fit in a standard cavity, so
they would not be good for production. I actually made those
pickups before Bill Turner came to work at Fender. I talked
Bill into coming on board and had known him for many years
from EMG.. Bill then took my design after I left Fender and
modified his new version of noiseless pickups to be more
like my prototypes for the Jeff Beck model guitar. Bill was
bound by some tooling and construction differences, so it was
not possible to make them identical and universally fit it the
production guitars. Mine were stacks, basically, but there are
construction methods that let them breathe and have more
output than traditional stacks. I should be offering something
similar this year since I have received so many requests.”
Michael Frank-Braun: “Our goal was to design a pickup
which sounds and behaves as a Fender single coil but without
the hum. Primarily, I was more interested in getting the sound
and the dynamics right as in the hum reduction. I thought as
long it is close to a side by side humbucker I would be happy,
but I can proudly say the N3 pickups hum cancel better than
any standard humbucker design. To achieve this, we used
Alnico 3 for the neck pickup, Alnico 2 for the middle pickup
and Alnico 5 for the bridge pickup. These rod magnets have
special lengths and work together with special center cores to
achieve the desired Vintage Fender sound. These special core
designs have a different alloy combination for each pickup
position. This design completely surrounds the magnets and
is an important part of the active coil.
Guitars on 2010 tour
By working with other
artists I learned how
important the physical
properties concerning height, width and
length of the whole
design are for the sound
and dynamics. The
top and bottom bobbin
design interacts with
the center core in a way
which prevents any
shorts of the magnet
wire to the magnets and
maximizes the dynamic
response. Magnet wire
gauge, coating and
elongation are a important part of the design and specially
manufactured for Fender.
An important focus was to get the sparkle and low end punch
of a Fender single coil without any compromise. This is an
important part for the musician to have the dynamic tonality
change and headroom they need to express their musical ideas
without the single coil hum. This is so important in any situation – live, studio or in front of your home recording setup.
Every N3 pickup is magnetically tailored for the individual
pickup position. This is important so when you switch from
the Front, Middle or Bridge pickup each of them responds
and feels the same. The only change of course is the different
sounds resulting from the pickup location in relationship to
the strings. So we are proud to say we got the Fender single
coil sound and feel without the hum tailored for each pickup
position – the best marriage between the Fender Vintage
sound and the modern demands of the musician are combined
in the N3 pickup.”
Steve Prior: I had Todd Krause
at the Custom Shop make up
three new basswood bodies in
Olympic White without the
top coat that causes them to
turn piss yellow, because Jeff
absolutely hates that, and I
swapped over the bodies on the
main spare and E flat guitars,
which both have Todd Krause
necks. So now we have the #1
guitar with the Suhr pickups,
a backup with the same Suhr
#1 Strat back
pickups, and the third Strat
with the N3 pickups made by Michael Frank-Braun. He is the
principle engineer for pickup development in Corona and he
is also making the pickups in Rhonda’s basses. We have experimented with a number of different pickups... The set that I
had originally in the E flat guitar were Lindy Fralin noiseless
blade pickups, which sounded great, but they weren’t entirely
noiseless, and didn’t seem to suit the 9.5” radius of the neck
– so I removed them to try the N3’s, and I’ll try the Fralin’s in
another guitar. As you noticed, the #1 guitar does take a bit of
a beating on tour. It needed work and had turned the dreaded
yellow, so I had it re-sprayed Olympic White after the Clapton
shows earlier this year by Charlie Chandler, with only three
days to do it! Being basswood, the body is very soft, and I’ve
had to plug and re-drill the holes for the neck plate, springclaw, strap buttons and so on several times whilst on tour. Occasionally, he’ll look across at me at a show when he’s taking
bows and as long as I’m looking at him he’ll give me a wink
and throw the guitar to me. On a couple of occasions he’s
been unaware of the fact that the guitar cable is still plugged
in or snagged and it has taken a nose dive into the stage long
-continued-
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
9
guitars
before it got to me! So I got the guitar refinished, filled a
crack in the back of the neck with Super Glue and essentially
put it back in shape to go back out on tour.
same way he does the more modern guitars with the Wilkinson roller nut.
TQR:
TQR:
Given the attention to minutia that guitars often
receive today, the idea that he prefers a rough beater is refreshing, to say the least...
There’s nothing
fancy about it,
really... The most
I used to have to
do with it was
change the bridge
whenever a tremolo arm snapped
in the block. I’ve
actually got him
to move over to
a push-fit steel arm that he’s much more comfortable with now,
but it is also more difficult for us to bend and shape the arm to the
precise angle he likes. It kicks up and across the strings so that he
can do what he does with the tremolo comfortably.
Yes. We think the neck that
is on the ‘54 now came from
the stripped, brown ash Strat
with the lower horn on the
scratchplate cut off. That’s the
Blow by Blow Strat... Everybody assumes that since the
pastel portrait on the album
cover depicts him playing the
oxblood Les Paul, that’s what
was used, but much of the
album was cut with the Strat.
It was a pawnshop beater that he picked up along the way and
it had numerous necks on it. Sadly, that guitar is now in the
possession of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because Jeff put
it up for a charity sale years ago.
‘Blow by Blow Strat’
TQR:
TQR:
So you are actually taking a short arm and custombending it to the proper angle for him?
Yes, that is critical. You saw how he plays... He needs constant
access to the arm while also doing volume swells, moving
the tone controls, muting with his palm, changing the pickup
selector switch and at the same time using his thumb and
forefinger to pluck the strings. He is a master at getting a wide
range of tones from the guitar, and nothing goes unused.
TQR:
I spoke to Bill Callaham this week and he told me
that he had created the 2006 vintage enhanced steel
block as the result of having received a request
for a trem block on behalf of Jeff through Charlie
Chandler in London...
Yeah, the rolled
steel block... I did
fit it to the guitar
and Jeff liked the
presence and sustain from it very much, but the arm was a
bit whippy for him and didn’t have quite the same feel. The
problem with the vintage Fender arm is that there is a weak
point above the threads and he would pull up on the arm, bend
the string above the Wilkinson nut and pull the arm back to
where the trem is flat on the body, and then bing! the whole
thing goes jazz and he has to change guitars in the middle of
a show, and he doesn’t like changing guitars. As you know, he
has a ‘54 with a steel block set up with five springs and he just
loves the sound of it, although he can’t use that guitar in the
That’s the guitar that came from Steve Marriott
with a Telecaster neck on it originally?
Is the wiring in all of the Strats standard?
Yes, mostly. I change the 250K CTS pots when needed, and
I use the cryogenically treated pots from Bill Callaham.
We have the second tone control wired for the bridge and
middle pickups, with the first tone control for the neck, and
Jeff uses the middle
pickup quite a lot.
He uses the 5-way
switch probably more
than anybody I’ve
ever seen. Everything
is grounded to the
volume pot – in fact,
I was discussing
grounding just this
week with my good
friend Phil Taylor, who works with David Gilmour. We
hook up occasionally to natter over a cup of tea about all
of the various new things we’ve found and discovered, and
we get to do it in the luxury of David’s warehouse, which is
full of everything he has ever used – an amazing place!
TQR:
Yes, Phil is not only an inspired sound and guitar
technician, but also the curator of a virtual museum,
it seems...
Indeed. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Phil on David’s
live shows, and I’ve met a lot of professional technicians
and some of the biggest names in the guitar-tech world, but
nobody does it like Phil.
-continued-
10
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
guitars
TQR:
Do you use a standard shielding plate in Jeff’s
Stratocasters?
Yes. We have the black oxide paint in the control cavity and a
little extra shielding here and there, but apart from that we’ve
not changed too much.
TQR:
I think most guitarists would be amazed by the
fact that as much as he is leaning into the trem arm
in both directions all night, bending strings and
generally manhandling his Strat, it never required
re-tuning during the entire show.
No... Well, a lot of that is preparation, and sometimes I will change
his strings twice in one day (again
after soundcheck). He can actually
leave kinks in the B and E strings
from bending the strings and
hammering-on, and you can’t risk
having a string fail, because then
you’ve got to hand him a spare
guitar that he doesn’t want to play.
So you have to carefully stretchout all the strings over their entire
length and lubricate every point of contact the strings have
with the guitar – sparingly, as too much goop will give you
other problems. Jeff uses Ernie Ball strings: .009, .012, .016,
.028, .038, .052.
TQR:
Do you use any kind of lubricant to prevent the
strings from binding or not returning to pitch?
You have to be careful with guitar parts, in that you can’t keep
loading them up with lubricant that finds its way into the fingerboard or screw holes in the guitar. I will very sparingly use
something like a machining grease with a little bit of teflon
or graphite mixed in, but there many different products out
there, so try them and see what works for you. The Wilkinson
nuts were quite crudely made with the same pot metal alloy
that the bridge blocks are made out of. I’ve got a lot of them
that rattle like hell and others where the rollers don’t move at
all, so a little bit of something on there is good, but too much
is bad. Jeff can easily deal with a string that is a little off by
making subtle adjustments to notes – whether he’s playing a solo or chords, by giving a little pull or a nudge where
needed.
TQR:
You would also think that with the bridge canted up
off the body of the guitar, bending strings on a solo
might cause the pitch to drop...
Well, like that really fast vibrato effect that he gets with the
palm of his hand, sometimes he will just ease a note up with
his palm if needed. He used to
have the tremolo
kicked right up
in the air... It
was ridiculously
high, to the point
where it was
difficult to get a
radius profile on
the saddles to correspond with the fingerboard radius, but the bridge has come
back down since. You know, he does five things at once with
his right hand – volume swells with his pinky, pulling up on
the trem arm with his ring finger and pushing down with his
middle finger, subtle effects with his palm, all the while picking with his thumb and forefinger.
TQR:
And he has had a few unfortunate accidents along
the way that could have ended it all...
Well, yes, in November of last year with the album overdue
and final overdubs to be done, he managed to slice off most of
the tip of his index finger on his left hand. Fortunately, he got
to a specialist fast enough to get it put back without any significant nerve damage.
But one of the worst
ones was when he
was rolling back one
of the roadsters out of
his workshop. He had
dropped the engine
and the transmission
bled a lot of fluid on
the floor of the garage.
He was pushing the
car with his rear
against the grille, slipped in the transmission fluid and fell in
such a bizarre and awkward way that he badly bruised and
stretched the tendons in both hands. We thought that might
have been a career-ender right there! He’s a talented metal
fabricator, welder and mechanic... a self-confessed ‘grease
monkey’ that basically plays guitar to fuel his car habit.
TQR:
It’s a lot of hard work keeping things together as
you do with no room for error, but I get the sense
that working with Jeff Beck also has an energizing
effect on you as well, Steve. It’s not your average
day job...
Sometimes there are clues hidden in what he says and you
have to be perceptive to get close to what he’s after. He’s very
aware of what’s going on, and in great detail, even though
sometimes he doesn’t let on… That all comes with the territo-continued-
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
11
effects
ry and you just try to do the best
you can for him. If I try and sit
down and talk to Jeff about all
of this stuff we’ve been discussing, he’ll glaze-over pretty
quickly. I like to think he trusts
me to give him the things he
needs, and I guess I do thrive on
it. I started playing guitar as a
ten year old and have been tinkering with them for over thirty
years now and I’ve worked for
so many of my heroes – Jeff, Rory Gallagher, Brian May, David
Gilmour... I know I’m lucky to be able to stand at the side of the
stage and listen to him play. It’s never boring.
them.
He has
helped
me a lot
over the
years.
He
builds
a lot of
very
clever
switching systems, and while he’s not a musician, he is very
interested in interacting with musicians from the standpoint
of the backline in a musical sense to help them achieve what
they want to accomplish. So he makes these buffered splitters
that are very discrete, very clean, very low power consumption, and what they enable me to do is to run the signal
Effects
Beck’s use of the
early Colorsound
Tone Bender is
well known, but
it has also been
said that he built
his own boost
devices and had
others given to him
before custom fuzz
and boost pedals
became widely available. He is also known to have used a
very early fuzz made by Roger Mayer while a member of the
Yardbirds. Other effects used in the past include an Echoplex
tape echo, Roland digital echo units, and an Alesis midi-verb
rack unit. Assorted wah pedals have included a DeArmond
wah and volume pedal, and of course, Beck was one of the
first to use the ‘Talk Box’ also exploited by Joe Walsh and Peter Frampton. A Pro-Co Rat distortion pedal was used in the
‘80s, and Beck was a big fan of the DigiTech GSP-21 Legend
signal processor for delay, which can be heard specifically
on Frankie’s House. You can pick them up today for as little
as $100 and most users agree that the modulation effects are
very, very good. Distortion? Not so much. Again, we asked
Steve Prior to comment on Beck’s effects and pedalboard:
TQR:
In addition to vintage effects devices and the Klon
we noticed the presence of Gig Rig Loopers and
Mike Hill B.I.S. boxes...
“Yeah, buffered isolated splitters. Mike Hill does a lot of highend building here in England, and was 32 years at Marshall.
The JCM800 was one of his designs, and he is an extraordinarily talented electronics engineer. He was at Marshall from
the early ‘70s onwards and is a fountain of knowledge on all
amp related topics, and the science and technology behind
low impedance. The guitar goes in high impedance and out
through the first buffer low impedance, through all the pedals,
and this makes them quieter and the switches operate much
more quietly. When you’re kicking signal into some of these
old ‘70s effects through a very long signal path of 40 feet and
back again, you need to give it a little low impedance goosing. You saw the Snarling Dog wah, MXR Flanger, Mutron
Octave Divider and Maestro Ring Modulator, and he also
uses the Hughes & Kettner Rotosphere Mk2, which is also
rather noisy. I’ve done various things with those as well, like
replacing the 12AX7 with a 12AU7, and it does significantly
improve the signal-to-noise ratio, but then you’ve got to run it
hotter and it’s a trade-off again.”
Beck’s current
boost device on
stage is the Klon
Centaur – the only
pedal to have ever
appeared on the
cover of TQR other
than a Teese wah
years ago. We have
covered the Klon
extensively in the
past (now sadly out of production), and it seems that various
versions with either the gold or silver finish with or without
the Centaur figure have attained cult status, with some play-continued-
12
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
amps
ers apparently believing that the earlier gold versions with
the Centaur figure are somehow ‘better’ than later versions.
They are certainly more valuable... Early gold Klons with the
Centaur figure now sell for $1000 or more on the used market,
while later silver versions without the figure typically run
$500-600. We asked Klon founder and designer Bill Finnegan
to clear the air:
Finnegan: “With two exceptions, there is no difference
whatsoever in terms
of circuitry between
the very first units
I built and sold in
late 1994 and the
very last ones I built
and sold earlier this
year. One of the
changes I made makes no difference at all sonically... In 1995
the circuit board was redesigned by a great board designer
who worked at Bose doing all of their short-notice prototype
boards. On these new boards we improved the grounding to
give the ICs some protection against damage from any kind
of static charge hitting the input of the circuit. Improving the
grounding involved adding three resistors, and protecting
against static charges involved adding one resistor – a resistor
that should have been there from the beginning in terms of
standard practice. There was no change at all sonically, which
I proved with a bunch of blind listening. The other change
did have a slight effect sonically, which is why I made it.
At some point around 1996 or so, I began to feel that with a
classic Fender rig – say a Telecaster into a Twin Reverb – the
circuit didn’t quite provide the amount of warmth I wanted to
hear, so I started experimenting and ended up adding a resistor in parallel with a particular cap in a critical part of the
circuit. Once I settled on the value for the resistor, it worked
like a charm, adding maybe 1.5dB of response in the low
mids, which subtly warmed things up without changing the
overall frequency response in a way that many people would
notice. Whenever I listen to an older unit without that resistor
now, it just sounds a little lacking in warmth to me, so I’m
still pleased with the change.
to almost 8000 production units, I think it’s safe to say that I
understand the circuit better and know more about what it’s
capable of than anyone else, so when I read online that some
would-be cloner is claiming that his box “sounds identical to
the Klon” or some such thing, I have to laugh. A little while
ago a cloner downloaded the info on my circuit from the
cloner forum, bought some badly redesigned boards and a
little baggie of parts from one of the guys who sells that stuff,
and he’s somehow managed to capture everything that’s good
in what I created? I don’t think so.
TQR: You seem pretty confident about that.
Well, aside from everything else, I do have my ace-in-the-hole
– the NOS germanium diodes I chose after months of listening to a ton of different germaniums. The one I chose as being
clearly the best-sounding one in my circuit – a particular part
from a particular manufacturer – was no longer in production
in the early ‘90s zwhen I chose it, so it’s been out of production almost twenty years now. As far as I’m aware, none of the
would-be cloners have figured out what my part is, and even if
they do at some point, I wish them luck in trying to find some
of them – I’ve tried myself, and unlike them, I know exactly
what to ask for.
TQR: So how did this myth about the early Klons come
to life?
I think it’s mostly human nature… If something is made of solid unobtainium, you want it more and tend to think more highly
of it. Certainly a guy trying to get a thousand bucks for his early
Klon on Ebay or one of the forums has a built-in incentive to
claim that “everyone knows the early ones sound better.”
TQR: When is the new version going to be available?
I have no idea, but I’m working on it.
www.klon-siberia.com
The Right Tool for the Job
TQR: Have there been any changes in the parts you have
used?
From start to finish
I used exactly the
same parts. Given
that I spent almost
five years developing the circuit and
then spent the next
fifteen years building and listening
Aside from his early
homemade amp,
Vox AC30s were the
obvious and most
available choice
early in Jeff Beck’s
career (including
one launched out a
second story winVox AC30 Sixteen Twin dow of a club when
it overheated). Beck quickly embraced 100 watt Marshalls
and 4x12 cabinets on stage in the Yardbirds, and during dif-continued-
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
13
amps
ferent phases of his career he used them with Univox speaker
cabs, and 200 watt Sunn heads with Univox and sometimes
Fender cabinets. On recordings we know that he has used
50 watt Marshalls, Fender Twins and Princeton amps, but
he also owns dozens of other amplifiers, so references made
here should not be considered exclusive by any means. For
example, we found a video from 1974 on Youtube where he is
playing through a silverface Princeton Reverb and an Ampeg
VT-40 for a live television program and interview. A tweed
reissue Bassman was also used for the Crazy Legs sessions...
Prior to this year, the last time we saw Beck in 2005 he was
using stacks of Marshall DSL 2000 heads and 4x12 cabinets,
but like most of us these days, lately he’s gone ‘small’ for a
host of good reasons...
“People ask me, ‘How can I get Stevie’s tone?’ and I tell
them, ‘If you were going to sound like Stevie, you would have
done it by now.” – César Diaz
For some, the quest
for tone can be a deep
and perilous money
pit resonating with
seductive pitches based
no more in reality than
the bloated promise of
misguided fantasies
allows – which isn’t
much. But don’t blame
the people who build
and sell dreams of
tonal deliverance... they’re just trying to make a living, and
when it comes right down to it, they aren’t the ones responsible for saving you from yourself, freeing your inner muse
from the stale temptation to become someone you’re not every
time you pick up a guitar. Some guitar players are funny that
way, and we know of no other enthusiast-driven market where
visual and sonic images of fantasy rule consumers with such
deep intensity. “Hello, ToneQuest? Hey, have you heard the
Bitch Goddess Aqua Pussy Fuzz? It’s on fire on the Gear
Page...” “Really? And what would a burning bitch goddess’
aqua pussy smell like, exactly?
The desire to emulate and honor our heroes is perfectly natural, of course, if not essential to acquiring an early grasp of
the instrument. But sooner or later, there comes a time when
we are compelled to discover our own voice – and if you are
lucky, the journey will last the better part of a lifetime. Afterall, when you proclaim the quest for tone to be over, well,
then, you’re done, and all prospects for further discovery end
with it. Most of us, however, will carry on with an enthusiasm
that ebbs and flows beneath the current of day-to-day life,
experimenting as time, opportunity and cash flow allow. And
in our quest, we never quite seem to lose the burning desire
to know and understand which gizmos our heroes use to ‘get
their tone.’ In our practical, behind-the-scenes experience,
the answer is often as straightforward as it is varied from one
player to the next... Most professionals simply choose the
right tool for the job.
“Well, what is that
supposed to mean?”
you may ask. “That
doesn’t help me find
a guitar or an amp
or a pedal that will
help me sound great
in a club, or our gig
at the Swamp Possum
Festival at Black
Mountain ...” Oh, yes
it does. It may not be the simplest or most convenient answer,
no, and it does require more than a little thought, but in the
end, selecting the right tool for the job is the only thing that
can possibly help you pare down the ridiculously vast number
of choices confronting you to those that truly deserve your attention. Thus approached (with a perpetually open mind, mind
you) you might even be pleasantly surprised by the realization
that the answer to your dreams is right under your nose, easily
available for a song, more or less. Still, the story that is about
to unfold could easily seem unbelievable if it weren’t for the
bloke who at this very moment is proving it to be true, while
mesmerizing guitarists and fans with a vengeance as he has
done now for well over four decades...
You can’t believe everything you see and hear, can you?
– Paul Caruso, “EXP” Axis Bold As Love
Seventeen years ago Fender was determined to kick-start
their amplifier business, much in the same fashion that Leo
Fender and company had shrewdly filled the needs of aspiring ‘students,’ garage band players and pros alike throughout
the ‘50s. Fender’s marketing manager for amplifiers in 1993
was Mike Lewis – an experienced and accomplished guitarist
who had also worked as a salesman in retail music stores and
keenly understood the importance of meeting specific price
points offering a broad
range of thoroughly gigworthy amps that conveyed
Fender’s heritage of dependability, value and tone.
Lewis gathered together
Fender’s design team to
create a successful new trio
of affordable, professional
quality tube amps that
remain popular today – the
Mike Lewis 15 watt 1x10 Pro Junior, 40
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14
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
amps
watt 1x12 Blues Deluxe, and the 60 watt 4x10 Blues Deville,
all covered in tweed with chrome chassis and chicken head
knobs. To compete in the ‘boutique’ professional market,
Lewis, Zinky and company also introduced the magnificent
60 watt Vibro-King, and the powerful Tone-Master and Dual
Professional amps. With the introduction of these new models and others slotted at every price and power point, Fender
successfully strengthened its reputation for building the most
extensive and versatile range of guitar amplifiers made in the
world. Our focus in this edition of the Quest rests with just
one 15 watt amplifier – the Fender Pro Junior. Why? Steve
Prior explains...
TQR:
Let’s talk about Jeff’s amps on the current tour.
The rig you’ve put together for him not only sounds
incredibly good, but it is nothing one would expect.
It smacks of genius, really.
The
Sonic
Blue
Pro
Junior
relic is
miked
with a
Sennheiser 509 – a great guitar mic, by the way. Charlie Chandler
got hold of this amp and the original speaker was blown, so
he put in a new Jensen P10R Alnico that had been in a reissue
Bassman or a Super, I think. I’d been looking for a relic’d Pro
Junior for a while – for my collection, so I bought it. The only
trouble with those speakers is they sound very sharp when
new and take forever to break in, but it’s well played-in now.
TQR:
The Pro Junior does seem to benefit from a brighter
speaker... Do you still have the Jensen in it on tour?
Yes, and that
amp is an odd
one... I have
seven Pro Juniors
of different
generations, and
this one does
something more
when you turn
the tone pot up – the sound kind of leaps and it has this
really nice boost and trebly zing that my other Pro Juniors
don’t have. I thought I might see how it worked for Jeff, as
he recorded most of the new album with a tweed Pro Junior
belonging to the producer/engineer on the record, Steve
Lipson. It’s his favorite amp for recording – a very early
tweed Pro Junior with one of the original blue Eminence
Alnico speakers. He uses that on almost everything he
does, and I believe it dates to the first year – 1994. All my
Pro Juniors are slightly different and I’ve toyed with having one re-vamped with Mercury Magnetics transformers
just to see what it might do, but haven’t done it yet. I’ll
keep experimenting with different speakers and trying out
various tubes though.
TQR:
We were shocked to see the volume on both of the
Pro Juniors on stage set at just 3-4.
Yeah, that’s it. You
get much beyond
4 on that amp and
it’s nice, but a little
too much grit. They
sound great driving
a 2x12 cabinet
and we did some
recording with that
set-up early on, but he just preferred the sweeter, cleaner tone
at lower volume and the Klon is used to drive the amp. A little
goes a long way with this rig because if you turn the amp up,
it not only keeps the sound engineers on their toes, but the
volume of the side fills comes up dramatically. The side fills
are L-Acoustic Arcs, so if the volume comes up on the amp he
can quickly lose the mix he is hearing with the band.
That’s the reason why I have the fail-safe tweed Pro in the isolation box. It’s also the same as the amp he used for most of
the record, along
with a Marshall
Lead & Bass
20 and an amp
that a friend of
mine built here
in London called
a ‘Lil Chopper – a 7 watt,
single-ended
Class A amp with a single EL84, 12AX7, and a tone stack you
can switch in and out. It’s a brilliant little thing with endless
sustain if you need it, and it was used on the song “Nessun
Dorma” from the new album.
TQR:
There was also a Marshall DSL 2000 head on stage
with a 4x12 cabinet positioned at the back of the
stage...
Yes, and it’s a physical thing related to the way I split the signal... He can turn it up viciously loud sometimes, and as soon
as you touch the tone stage... if you push the mids and treble
too hard, which he sometimes does – it sonically affects how
the amp works in phase with the Pro Junior. It’s not in the
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
15
amps
side fills, and
since we’re
using two
Pro Juniors,
the one in the
isolation box
is providing a
constant feed
to the front of
house and the
side fills, no
matter what Jeff may do with the settings on the Sonic Blue
Pro Junior or the Marshall.
TQR:
And is there any signal running through the two
4x12 Marshall cabinets beneath the Sonic Blue Pro
and Marshall head?
No – not unless something goes horribly wrong! They are
just there for the look, and for something to put the amps on.
The 4x12 at the back is generally pointed up stage. He always
likes to know that the Marshall is on, and it adds an ambient
quality to his onstage sound.
TQR:
But what we were hearing at the show were the two
Pro Juniors...
Yes. Over the years he has shied away from having too much
volume coming from the backline behind him, preferring the
side fills to be his primary on-stage mix. The other thing that
is critical in the rig is the digital frequency converter, which
is locked at 117 volts/50 Hz to keep Jeff’s amps sounding exactly the same where ever we are in the world. For UK players
coming over to play in the US it can make a huge difference,
because you hear a different array of harmonics and the amps
sound quite a bit different. It’s basically a digital variac. In
certain parts of Australia when you’re playing the outdoor
fairgrounds you can see as much as 270 volts out of the wall,
and that really scares the hell out of everything. Whenever we
have not had the facility to properly manage the power supply,
Jeff has heard the difference.
Details...
The Junior’s beginnings
were simple enough...
Designed in 1992 and
launched the following year, it remains in
production today as part
of the Hot Rod line, but
during the past seventeen
years it has also provided
a platform for some very
interesting and creative
special editions that are now quite rare. Originally offered
with classic tweed appointments, the Pro Junior was uniquely
conceived as a dual EL-84 1x10 combo utilizing a very simple
printed circuit board, two 12AX7 preamp tubes and a single
volume and tone control. It has been accurately described as
a tweed circuit with a modern power supply, and designer
Bruce Zinky was quoted as saying that the Pro Junior was
specifically designed to not have a bad tone in it. The Junior
continued to be built at the Fender factory in Corona through
2001 before manufacturing was moved to the Fender facility
in Ensenada, Mexico in 2002.
A robust cottage industry has developed around modifications and component upgrades for the Pro Junior, Blues
Junior and Blues DeVille, and in the case of the Pro Junior,
online research reveals and interesting mix of contradictory
user experiences. Some Pro Jr. owners have complained that
the amp is inherently noisy, sighting ground issues related to
the top/center back panel mounting screw on early models
touching the chassis and creating an annoying hum. Others
have speculated that the amps made in the USA may be ‘better’ than those made in Mexico, but we took this as nothing
more than the usual assumption that ‘made in America’
must be better... The Sonic blue relic Pro Junior Steve Prior
selected for the Beck tour was made in Mexico, and as he
noted, it does seem to sound special when compared to his
other Pro Juniors – a further reminder that modern amps can
vary just like the old ones...
You can also find comments
about the importance of tube
selection in the Pro Junior as
it relates to noise, but this is
nothing new to us – different
preamp tubes in particular can
vary in the amount of noise or
microphonics they produce,
and they certainly vary in tone.
Even our vintage RCA, GE
and Amperex 12AX7s can
vary in tone in the same amp
as much as an actual change in component values. Steve Prior
informed us that he is using matched JJs in Beck’s amps. The
most popular and simpler ‘modifications’ include adding a
bias control (the Pro Junior seems to run hot), and speaker
swaps, although as you’ll soon discover, complete upgrade
kits addressing all the main components on the circuit board
and both transformers are available for enterprising and motivated tonefreaks...
Early Pro Juniors were equipped with the very desirable 20
watt blue Eminence Alnico 10” speakers with paper voice coil
former coveted by owners of early Bassman reissue amps.
When these speakers were phased out in the Pro Jr., they were
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16
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
amps
replaced
with a
30 watt
Eminence
ceramic
‘Fender
Special
Design’
speaker
with gold
label that remains in use today. The cabinet for the stock
production model Pro Junior is made from particleboard,
and aside from various ‘limited edition’ models, the standard
covering is black tolex with silver grill cloth.
Special Editions
This is where the lineage of the Pro Junior gets interesting,
and we spent a lot of time attempting to decipher all the
variations on limited editions that have come and gone. If we
have missed one that you own, it’s nothing personal... Some
very cool amps
were created at the
Custom Shop using
the Pro Junior as a
foundation. In the
summer of 2001,
Pro and Blues
Junior ‘Woodies’
were built in very
limited numbers
featuring polished
bubinga hardwood
cabinets with carved wooden handles, cream grill cloth and
white chicken head knobs, styled after the vintage Fender
1947 Model 26. Who says Fender can’t do ‘booteek’?
Woody Junior Ash
Also during the summer of 2001, a brief run of Pro Juniors
were built at the Corona Custom Shop in what would be the
last year of USA manufacturing. The cabinets for these amps
were built from 3/4 inch solid ash with 1/4 inch pine plywood
baffleboards, finished in blonde nitro lacquer with Oxblood
grill cloth, and each cabinet was signed and dated by the
cabinet painter. Another interesting feature is the black floral
fabric used to cover the back panel. While the amp itself is
a stock USA-made Pro Junior, you can’t argue that the solid
ash cab with blonde finish makes a striking statement, and the
presence of all that wood certainly doesn’t compromise tone.
colors. These amps are among
the coolest of Fender cool from
any era, and according to current
Fender marketing manager for
amplification, Shane Nicholas,
they were built in very small
numbers – tens rather than hundreds. We have seen these relic
amps painted in Sherwood green,
Dakota red, Sonic blue and
Shoreline gold, and as Nicholas
observed, they are extremely
rare. When offered with the original relic Stratocaster or Tele in
matching custom color, prices for the pair were astronomical,
and oh how we wish
Fender could find a way
to separately reproduce
the custom color relic
Pro Juniors again. They
would be hard to pass up.
Woodies & Tweeds
Since their initial introduction, the ‘woody’ Pro
Juniors in ash cabinets
with carved handles,
red grill cloth and three vertical metal strips reprising the ‘46
Fender Model 26 have re-appeared from time to time, and
they can still be found used and as new old stock today, usually selling for around $600. In 2007, 150 George Fullerton
Limited Edition ‘57 Stratocasters and relic tweed Pro Juniors
were built as a matching set to commemorate Fullerton’s
career as one of the founding fathers of the Stratocaster, and
the relic tweed version of the Pro Junior is another variation
we wish could be re-issued as an enduring option. Perhaps
the marketing minds at Fender feel that players who would be
attracted to a relic Pro Junior wouldn’t feel quite the same lust
for a printed circuit board amp made south of the border, but
in our opinion, the Pro Junior offers far more than a pedestrian pcb import.
Finding Blondie
Relics
You may also recall briefly seeing a short run of limited edition Pro Juniors and matching Custom Shop Stratocaster or
Telecaster relics that were sold together in matching custom
Once hooked on
the idea of acquiring a Pro Junior, we
quickly decided to
avoid the easier route
of purchasing a new
Jr. for $399, a gently
used stock model for
$250, or a used model
that may have had a
speaker upgrade for
$350. We spent more
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
17
amps
time than we care to admit searching for comparatively rare
limited editions, finally scoring a 2001 blonde ash limited
edition amp on Gbase. The seller turned out to be Mike Teepe,
owner of Acme Guitars in St. Louis, who assured us that the
amp was in pristine condition, having been traded by a local
collector who owned no less than 17 vintage Zemaitis guitars,
which if you know anything about the history of Zemaitis, is a
cubic shitload of those guitars. The man had taste.
When the Junior
arrived a week later,
we plugged straight
in to obtain a point
of reference with
the original speaker
and tubes – the
Eminence ‘Special
Design’ ceramic
10, Sovtek Groove
Tubes EL84s and
12AX7s. The
condition of the nine year-old amp reflected what you would
expect from a fastidious collector – new, with only slight
fading of the stenciled numbers encircling the chickenhead
volume knob on the chrome control panel. This was one of
the last Corona Pro Juniors, with a handwritten cabinet date of
6-01 signed ‘H. Jugan.’ Granted, there was nothing particularly unique about the amplifier itself aside from being built
in the USA. All the caps on the board are standard Illinois
electrolytics and metalized polypropolene, and the circuit is
a celebration of simplicity, but the custom ash cabinet and
see-thru blonde finish with oxblood grill create an exceptional
look that contemporary custom builders might want to note in
their ongoing efforts to get noticed...
the TADS were equally good, but if you’re inspired to go the
NOS route, the RCA and GE EL84s will deliver a smoother,
more detailed and richer sound. The RCAs are typically
warmer, while the GEs display their typically brighter, more
aggressive tone.
Our attention then turned to the
preamp tubes, where we tried different combinations of a dozen 12AX7s
– contemporary Mullards, NOS JAN
Philips and Sylvania, RCAs, GE, Tesla
and Amperex. These tubes are also
individually variable in the tone they
produce, and we noted subtle to stark
differences with different tubes in both
V1 and V2. We narrowed our initial
preferences down to a single vintage
GE and two Amperex Bugle Boys, but
then we experienced an epiphany inspired by an RCA 5751 and Telefunken smooth plate 12AX7.
Who knows where the Telefunken had come from – probably
a vintage amp that has come and gone, but we usually do not
like the sound of these excellent hi-fi tubes in guitar amp circuits. Too clean and sterile. But given the ample rapid gain of
the Pro Junior, we decided to try the RCA 5751 in V1, which
was a very good move indeed. The RCA further smoothed the
overdriven tone of the Pro while balancing out the overall frequency response and calming down the rizzy high frequency
distortion artifacts we were hearing with the amp cranked.
We’re absolutely sold on the 5751 in V1, but don’t skimp on
this tube – buy NOS.
As for the Telefunken, call it a wild
hunch, but we teamed it with the RCA
in V2 and damned if it didn’t further
balance the amp while producing clearer,
vivid harmonic content. The effect of
these two tubes was easily equal to
what you might expect from a speaker
replacement, if not an internal component modification. Again, you needn’t
kill your budget chasing down a smooth
plate Telefunken 12AX7... The point is,
try different tubes in this amp and choose
the combination you like best...
Tubes
The Junior sounded
good enough with
the stock tubes
and speaker for
us to imagine its
potential, and
unlike some of
the comments we
had read online,
our amp was quiet at idle. Our first move in optimizing tone
was to replace the Sovtek EL84s with a pair of Dutch Philips
‘Miniwatt’ tubes we had been saving since our last vintage
AC30 buy, and we knew they would impart a rich roundness
to the tone of the amp with more character than the Sovteks
possess. Thanks to Mike Kropotkin at KCA NOS Tubes, we
also evaluated matched sets of new JJs and TADs, as well as
NOS GEs and RCAs. You don’t really need NOS tubes for
your future Pro... JJs are very good, reliable, $20/pair, and
Speakers
The Pro sounded a little dark with the stock ceramic speaker.
The highs were present, but hardly vivid, and overwhelmed
by dominant midrange. Even with the tone control ramped
up, there was something missing on the top. Having just
developed an extensive review of ten inch speakers for our
‘76 Silverface Princeton, we were still flush with tens, and
as we considered each of them it wasn’t difficult to men-continued-
18
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
amps
tally categorize
our options. We
would first try the
Celestion Alnico
Gold (if it fit),
and an Eminence
Legend 1058 and
1028. As with our
Princeton reviews,
all of these speakers sounded good – just different, and the
brighter Legend 1028 seemed to match up best with the
Pro. The Celestion with its big bell cover barely cleared
the dual EL84s, and it too sounded predictably robust and
ballsy, but we were still craving more treble presence than
any of the speakers we had on hand were able to produce.
The Pro still sounded boxy and restrained. Then we noticed
another speaker that we had written off several years ago,
acquired for a ‘58 tweed Vibrolux that never quite met our
expectations. Dating to the 23rd week of 1972, the Jensen
Vibranto MI 101
had sounded thin
and listless in the
Vibrolux, rejected
as a decorative last
gasp in Jensen history that had been
sitting on top of a
speaker cabinet for
at least two years.
Eyeing it now, we wondered... Well, why not? Vibrantos
have been a favorite of ours since we first bought a Pro Reverb loaded with two of them.We mounted the Jensen, fired
it up, and it was instantly clear that we had scored a bullseye
with the first chord. Now the Pro Junior revealed essential
sparkle and shimmer in the high frequencies with our Strat
and Tele, and all the treble presence we had been missing
with humbuckers and P90s. Perfect. We wouldn’t hesitate to
install a new Jensen ten in this amp either – just be patient as
the speaker breaks in.
Our success with the Vibranto got us thinking about what
other forgotten gems might be lurking in our speaker stash
upstairs, and a quick search turned up a vintage C10Q dating
to the 16th week of 1965. We popped the Jensen in and heard
nearly identical results as the Vibranto... So how does the Pro
Junior sound, now enhanced with great tubes and a cherry
bomb speaker? Like a hybrid chameleon with the smooth
compression of the Philips Miniwatt EL84s and the Vibranto
rendering a tone and feel that is almost British, yet there is
also enough Fender tweed DNA present to produce a more
open and less beamy, narrow voice than a typical 15 watt,
dual EL84 amp. Distortion emerges quickly as Steve Prior
noted, and we too found that setting the volume on 4 with
the tone on 8 using a moderate boost like the Bob Burt Clean
Boost or Lee Jackson Active Gain pedal produced a remarkably lush and classic overdriven tone. The Pro Junior also has
plenty of power with the single ten, or even more volume and
attitude with our 2x12 cabinet loaded with 30 watt Hellatones.
We’re not suggesting you’ll channel Jeff Beck’s chops... that
ain’t gonna happen, and besides, you should be working
on becoming you, not someone else, but the Pro Junior can
definitely help you get there with a big smile on your face
for mighty low dough – often as little as $200-$300. With the
right speaker, this isn’t just a good, inexpensive amp – it’s a
truly great amp, and you can take that to the bank. We should
also tell you that most of our listening sessions included a Lee
Jackson Mr. Springgy reverb pedal goosed just enough to add
some depth.TQ
www.kcanostubes.com,703-430-3645
www.fender.com
Fargen Hot Mods
OK, so perhaps
you’re sold on
snatching a stock
Pro Junior, but of
course, you want
it to sound the best
it possibly can...
Should you wish to
dig a little deeper
in the quest for
tone, veteran amp
builder Ben Fargen
has developed a line of Hot Mods for stock production
amplifiers – lots of them, including the Pro Junior, and we
asked him to describe the inspiration behind his concept for
the Hot Mods...
“For a number of years I had a lot of people wanting me to
work on their vintage Fender, Marshall and Vox amps, and I
really never had the time until the economy slowed down in
2008. A local customer asked me to take a look at a Marshall
JCM 800, which (laughing) really isn’t the kind of amp I’d
usually be interested in, but I agreed to look at it, got in touch
with Mercury Magnetics, went through the schematic, and
wound up turning it into a really great sounding high-gain
amp that would appeal to people who like that sound. I had
also done some design work for Carvin when they wanted to
optimize a production design and get the most out of it, so
when the economy slowed down I began taking in specific
amps to upgrade, and from there we started developing mod
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
19
amps
kits. Customers send just their chassis in, which isn’t expensive to ship, we do the work and ship it back.
Through
the later
part of
last year
we were
doing
about
one mod
project
a day,
at first taking in just about anything, but we’ve since whittled it
down to specific amps like the Pro Junior, Blues Junior, Blues
Deville and the reissue blackface Deluxe Reverb, for example.
With these amps it’s not the design that’s the problem – it’s just
that the component selection is based on what is most practical and economical for an affordable production amp. We take
those amps and optimize the sound as if production cost was
not an issue, and we have customers who have had two or three
different amps modded now, because they are basically getting
a boutique amp and the tone that comes with it.
TQR:
In the Pro Junior specifically, what areas of the circuit do you focus on for the mods?
There are
really only so
many ways to
wire up a tube
amp circuit,
and in most
cases we’re
focusing on
the same
key areas in
each amp – plate resistors, coupling caps in the EQ and phase
inverter, the slope resistor for the EQ, and cathode resistors and
cathode bypass caps are huge and often overlooked... We hone
in on the tone-shaping improvements that give us the biggest
bang for the buck, and of course the Mercury transformers
make a big impact. You can do any of these mods alone and
improve the sound, but it’s really the cumulative benefit of using
specific high quality components and the Mercury Magnetics
transformers that determine the end result where you really hear
the magic. We aren’t the only people doing mod kits, but you’ll
notice that we use specific brands and types of caps and resistors
in very specific places with our mods, and that’s the result of my
having built amps for 12 years and learning what specific types
of components are going to do in a particular part of the circuit.
TQR:
20
You also added a power supply choke in the Pro Junior you modded for us...
We add the choke because it is so critical to what I call pick
dynamics – the note response to pick attack, and improved
sustain. Most budget amps just have a power resistor separating the B+ and the screen voltage – it works and does the job,
but the correct choke in a circuit really adds a huge amount of
that ying and yang you want to hear between the power amp
and the preamp.
TQR:
And what is the cost of the Pro Junior mod as
you’ve done this amp?
With the full Mercury transformer set it’s $499 without a
speaker swap. All the Hot Mods are in the $349 to $549
range until you get into 100 watt or JTM45 Marshall reissues
and things like that. We’ve also done a lot of mods for the
reissue Bassman... As you know, there is nothing like a great
Bassman, and there are a few revisions that Fender made that
are just not happening at all, but when you get rid of those
they can sound fantastic.
Here’s the deal... You economically ship your chassis per Fargen’s instructions and they ship it back fully optimized. We
asked Ben to send us a Hot Modded current production Pro
Jr. for review and we directly compared it to our stock 2001
Junior, fully loaded with our NOS tubes and Jensen Vibranto.
The modded amp Ben sent included stock Groove Tubes and
a new Celestion Greenback ten.
As soon as we played
through the Hot Modded
amp, we heard the same
dominant midrange push
and lack of treble presence we had heard at first
in our own amp. Less
pronounced with brighter
single coils, yes, but still
too middy for our taste, so
we subbed in the Jensen
C10Q for the Greenback
and the angels were singing again – sopranos, altos, tenors, and
baritones all present in the choir. In fact, both amps sounded similar with the stock tubes in the Hot Mod Pro and our stock model
with the NOS tubes – thick, rich, and very smooth with excellent
dynamic response and full, clear fidelity. Fargen’s Hot Modded
Pro Junior possesses a smoother, warmer overall tone while our
Pro still sounds brighter and a little glassier overall. We suspect
that a bias pot and lower voltages would tame the intensity of the
distortion, but the 5751 does a nice job as an easy workaround.
Fargen’s amp was also a little quieter at idle than ours, although
we hadn’t noticed this until we had a quieter amp for comparison.
For more information on all of Fargen’s modifications, check out
the Hot Mod pages on the web site. TQ
www.fargenamps.com, 916-971-4992
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
guitars
2010 Custom Shop
'60 Relic Stratocaster
Of course, there was never
any doubt that we would
review a Stratocaster in
this issue, but since we
wished to include pickup
reviews and perhaps try
some other ‘optimization’ features that would
require us to purchase a
guitar (you can’t pull the
pickups or replace hardware on a new loaner), we
decided to see just how
much mojo the Fender
Custom Shop is workin’
with in 2010, and for that,
we went to the source – Dave Rogers’ inventory at Dave’s
Guitar Shop in Lacrosse, Wisconsin.
We were quite certain what we wanted... a stellar Olympic
white, rosewood slab Stratocaster. Simple enough if you
ignore the reference to ‘stellar,’ because in our experience,
while the choices at different price points are nearly infinite,
the Fender Stratocaster is one of the most difficult and challenging guitars to buy if your intention is to score a righteous
keeper. The variations among different models past and present are endless, especially when you consider the more modern variations that purposely depart from the original vintage
specifications – a good thing when properly conceived. You
may recall our past experiences optimizing and reviewing the
basswood
Japanese
reissue Strats
(January
2000),
Robert Cray
signature
models made
in Ensenada,
an early
Clapton
Signature Blackie, various early Custom Shop guitars built in
the ‘90s during the J.W. Black era, the Vince Cunetto relics
built in the mid ‘90s, the USA Fender Hot Rod series, the
Classic Player Series designed by Custom Shop Masterbuilders and built in Mexico, and various other USA reissues. In
short, we’ve bought and reviewed a lot of Strats since 1999...
Today there are more Fender Stratocaster models being made
in Asia, Mexico and the USA than ever before, and even
discriminating players for whom a Custom Shop instrument
would have once been their
default choice might now
consider less expensive
‘Thin Skin’ USA Strats,
the ‘50s and ‘60s Classic
Players, or recent Roadworn
Relics built in Mexico, and
we considered them all. Jim
Rolph shared his enthusiasm
for the Roadworn Strats,
commenting that he and his
brother picked out a total
of three, ultimately keeping their favorite, and that
they were all more or less
outstanding guitars for the money.
Still, individual guitars are extremely variable by nature,
and aside from such variation in materials, construction and
design, our underlying preferences were specific: We did not
want a guitar smothered in heavy coats of polyester lacquer
or relic’d in a way that is less than believable (and relic jobs
are either right, or they’re wrong); we wanted medium jumbo
frets on a rosewood fingerboard with a ‘60s C shape neck
with some meat on it, and we weren’t gonna do a refret; we
required a ‘good’ weight between 7 and 8 pounds, and while
we intended to audition different pickups, we did not necessarily want to get into replacing tuners or a complete wiring
harness; of course, we wanted a ‘ringer’ – two pieces of wood
randomly joined to create an exceptional instrument. In other
words, a well-crafted happy accident.
We revisited familiar
models with origins in
Corona and Ensenada,
pondered more than a
few new and lightly used
instruments, and since
we were buying online,
we ultimately decided to
acquire a new Custom
Shop relic from Dave
Rogers. Why? Well, first
of all, this is the ‘Beck’
issue, and we felt dutybound to conjure something as special as the
featured artist himself.
A refried Roadworn was
tempting (hey, it’s only
$7700 pesos!) but we
know the weight of these
things is highly variable, and buying one online just felt like
too much of a gamble. We could have trolled for a Japanese
-continued-
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
21
guitars
reissue with a basswood
body and assembled a parts
guitar, roughly re-tracing
the mixed heritage of
Beck’s #1 Strat, but that
road is littered with potential pitfalls, including mismatched replacement parts
that force unwanted compromises, ill-fitting neck
pockets, dicey tuners, fret
jobs and necks that can no
longer be adjusted straight.
For this issue we wanted a
sound keeper, and we chose
Dave’s as a source because
as it states on their web
site, he specifically works
closely with the Custom
Shop to obtain guitars that
are built and finished to his
specifications and high standards. We have mentioned
in the past how we were once cruising through the Arlington
show and ran into two very accomplished players who were
both raving about a particular new Fender guitar in Dave’s
booth (one of them was Greg V). The truth is, you would
walk through the aisles of new guitars from Dave’s – Fender,
Gibson and Gretsch – and before long you’d be wondering
what kind of connection he had... Something was up, and
that ‘something’ is Dave. He owns a very large collection of
vintage guitars, and as a dealer, he knows what he wants and
clearly understands how to insure that he gets it. Buy a guitar
from Dave and shipping in the lower 48 is free for ToneQuest
subscribers. www.davesguitar.com 608-785-7704
We scanned the plentiful Fender inventory online, where
prices, multiple pictures and weights are listed for each
guitar, rolled the dice and picked one – a 7 pound ‘60 relic in
Olympic white with alder body, rosewood slab board, a nicely
rounded C neck, big frets and a thoroughly artful relic job.
Dave gave us the same very fair and reasonable deal he’d give
to you, and when we confirmed our preference via e-mail we
added, “If one of the Shoreline gold ‘60 Strats is a substantially superior instrument in your opinion to the one we’ve
picked, ship it instead.” Color preference must never stand in
the way of superior tone... He shipped the Oly white, and we
were not disappointed (and if we had been, we could have
sent it back).
Pickups
The aged ‘60s custom Fender pickups revealed a gradual
increase in the amount of corrosion on the beveled polepieces
from the neck to the bridge, and the resistance readings on all
three
pickups
hover in
the 5.8K
range,
yielding
lots of
clarity and
sparkle,
and the
middle pickup is not reverse wound (we’ve never understood
that, anyway – it seems to muffle the snappy tone of the 2 & 4
positions). The stock Custom Shop pickups described simply
as ‘60s vintage,’ are very good, and most players would not
feel compelled to immediately begin searching for a replacement set.
Adhering to the school of ‘you never know until you know,’
we also asked Jim Rolph to send us a ‘57 Strat set equipped
with his ‘HR’ noiseless rig that employs an extra coil that
sits beneath the tone pots inside the pickup cavity. Better
still, Rolph’s noiseless HR system is also offered for P90
guitars and Telecasters. Beneath the covers, Rolph’s Strat
coils are meticulously aged to pass for an authentic vintage
set, and they sound as authentic as they look. One of the
telltale characteristics that many old Fender coils seem to
display is a bright intensity, but with rich underpinnings that
are rarely
shrill,
thin or
painfully
sharp.
Rolph’s
pickups
have
all that,
along
with a
big, solid
bottom
on the
wound strings in all three positions, and lots of shimmer
and sparkle played clean with resistance measurements of
6.33K neck/6.36K middle/6.24K bridge. His HR noiseless
system will set those of you who battle single coil noise on
small stages absolutely free. We detected no change in tone
or dynamic ‘feel,’ and to make the comparison easier, Jim
had wired the second tone pot as an on/off control for the
noiseless system, enabling us to rotate the pot from noiseless to normal and experience both sounds immediately on
the fly. We did detect a miniscule decrease in top end presence with the HR system on, but you’d have to be planted
in front of your amp in a dead quiet room and intensely
-continued-
22
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
guitars
listen for
it to be
noticed,
which
is to say
that in
real world
situations
where
you’re
playing music with a band rather than acting the paranoid
tone geek, the change is of little consequence given the
noiseless benefits. In fact, we preferred the noiseless sound
particularly in the bridge pickup. Jim also sent us vintage
pickup covers and authentic, aged short skirt ‘54 knobs and
a vintage bayonet switch tip custom made by his brother to
the original specs. If you play an early Stratocaster, these
are the real deal.
er Custom Shop for acknowledging that rust really does
never sleep. The fret work on
our Strat was excellent, with a
nicely rounded crown on the
medium jumbo frets, and the
dark, figured Indian rosewood
fingerboard is a premium piece
of attractive wood, although it
does seem to be a little drier
than the typical Madagascar
used by the Gibson Custom
Shop... The moisturizing effects of our routine treatments
with lemon oil between string changes don’t seem to last as
long, but we’ll be happy to grease it up naturally by simply
playing it.
Trem Block
We also really wanted to try a set of the new Fender N3s as
described by Michael Frank-Braun, but their taller design
won’t fit in a standard vintage pickup rout. (Hint – the new
2010 American Standard Strats are equipped with N3s).
Under the Hood...
We also
replaced
the stock
polyester foil
tone cap
with a
vintagestyle
Luxe
replica
paper-in-oil ‘chicklet’ cap from RS Guitarworks, which added
subtle warmth, depth and a rounder tone overall. We had no
problem what-so-ever with the stock fender CTS 250K pots.
They displayed a smooth consistent taper and very little resistance when rotated, enabling volume swells and bowed violin
tones using effortless pinky rolls. We were also happy to see
that the stock, aged hardware – specifically the vintage nickel
tuners and bridge saddles – are no longer corroded by the
aging process to the
point of being visibly and functionally compromised,
as we had noted in
our review of a ‘63
Relic Telecaster
several years ago.
Kudos to the Fend-
No, it’s not a wing in a
maximum security prison...
Tim Shaw at Fender would
tell you that the proper name
for this all-important gizmo
is an inertia block – that big
rectangular, tapped block of
metal that your strings load
through to create the spring
tremolo on yer Strat. Being
the terminus for the ball
end of the strings, the trem
block can encourage resonant
sustain and rich harmonic
overtones by not damping string vibration, or if it is made
from the wrong stuff (cheap ‘steel’ or zinc) it can have the
opposite effect, damping the frolicking sound of six strings
resonating together in a choir of fundamentals and harmonic
overtones – tone.
At this point, the smartest guy in the room might be thinking, “Wait a minute – the tremolo block sits well beneath and
behind the bridge saddles... How much difference could it
make?” You go, boy. Hit a chord on your Stratocaster and put
your hand back there on the trem block. What’s happening?
OK, now take the back cover plate off and try again, Einstein.
Feel that? Hopefully, nothing much is happening at all. If the
trem block is soaking up too much energy from the strings,
string vibration will decay faster, affecting tone, resonance,
sustain, and that happy thing that makes a Strat with tremolo
sound like a Strat. Ideally, you should be able to feel the body
of your guitar sympathetically pulsing and resonating with
specific dominant frequencies emanating from the strings,
and the primary job of the tremolo block is to do nothing that
impedes or dampens string vibration. An inertia block!
-continued-
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
23
guitars
We first
featured Bill
Callaham’s
custom
replacement parts
in 2001,
and they
have been
prominently
featured in
nearly every published review article in which we have optimized the tone of Stratocasters and Telecasters. We will also
be featuring a new Callaham ABR-1 style tune-o-matic bridge
in our next Les Paul adventure... Now, it’s fine and good that
there are lots of energetic entrepreneurs hawking ‘superior’
alloys in custom guitar hardware that comes in contact with
and potentially affects string vibration, but the bottom line is
this: if the metal used to make those parts doesn’t agreeably
improve the tone of the specific guitar you are installing it on
(another variable), your expensive ‘bleeding edge’ fling with
custom hardware can amount to nothing more than a pointless waste of time and money. So how do you, lacking the
assistance of a metallurgist and a physicist with an acoustic
analysis lab, determine which replacement hardware to buy?
With your ears, of course. But like anyone, you would prefer
to make the right decision the first time... Who wants to burn
through three sets of strings and the better part of an afternoon
swapping out trem blocks? Well, we did on your behalf, but
we really didn’t have a choice. We’ve covered this topic in
detail as it relates to stop tailpieces and Gibson-style bridges
with Dwight Deveraux, founder of TonePros (TQR, September ‘09), and for Fender-style guitars, the man you want to see
is Bill Callaham.
The dirty little
secret with custom
hardware is that
all alloys are not
created equal.
Titanium has no
place on a guitar,
and you don’t
necessarily want
zinc, either, which
is used for the trem
blocks in many imports. But even when it comes to ‘steel’
and ‘brass,’ variable interpretation can be every bit as great as
the difference between your momma’s potato salad and Aunt
Velveeta’s. No, it isn’t quite rocket science, but any joker with
a mind to sell ‘custom hardware’ to the uninformed can indiscriminately place an order for some really nice lookin’ stuff
made from the wrong mix of alloys that really won’t make
your guitar sound better, and that joker can still be successful.
Guitar players encourage this because so many of them are
such easy suckers for the buzz. You don’t really need to know
how to make quality stuff in the guitar business to be successful... but you do need a buzz. The stark differences we have
experienced between certain custom ‘brass’ and ‘steel’ vintage
Tele saddles, for example, are just stunning – so much so that
several years ago we called Bill Callaham for an explanation
of how ‘steel’ and ‘brass’ could possibly sound so different
(it’s the ‘recipe’ for the alloys used). Complicating matters
even more, a bridge, tailpiece or trem block that improves the
tone of one guitar won’t necessarily produce the same desirable results on another instrument made with different materials. Some guitars seem to need the treble tones calmed down
a little, while others may not have enough... You have no
doubt noted how a Fender with an alder body and rosewood
fingerboard sounds quite different from one with an ash body
and maple board, or how a solidbody Gibson is quite unlike
a semi-hollowbody model... We can point you to options, but
we’re not presenting them as a one-size fits all magic bullet.
Different guitars benefit from different strategies, and the
thinking man achieves the better result.
In 2006 Bill Callaham received an inquiry from Chandler Guitars in London
on behalf of Jeff Beck. They were (understandably) having a bit of difficulty
with Jeff’s trem arms breaking off in
the block due to metal fatigue. Callaham had already been making his own
version of a custom trem block with
American cold-rolled steel for years,
but Beck’s dilemma inspired Callaham
to create what is now described as his
‘Vintage Enhanced’ design, best used
with one of his stainless steel trem arms
made in three different lengths, although
not required. The enhanced block features the same high quality, non-leaded,
Callaham enhanced block
cold-rolled USA steel, but now with a
Delrin bushing in the channel for the trem arm that supports
it all the way to the top of the block. No more sloppy play in
your trem arm, far more precise tremolo action, and Callaham
guarantees that your trem rig will be unbreakable. Didja glaze
over the part about ‘cold-rolled’ steel? Here’s a definition: The
rolling of steel or other metal at room temperature to preserve
its original crystal structure. Just so you know...
-continued-
24
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
effects
Well, few
of us will
ever bend a
tremolo arm
as Beck does,
but it is nice
to use one
that doesn’t
have any
wobbly play
in it (unless
you like the
wobble), and you’ll hear the effect of the Callaham trem block
with the first chord... It creates a different type of intense,
resonant string vibration and range of dominant harmonic
overtones due to the unique steel alloy used, and Callaham’s
enhanced trem blocks are made to fit virtually any model
(including lefties). A few imports require a repro Callaham
bridge plate, but all the details on getting the right fit the first
time are clearly listed on the trem block page. We installed
an enhanced trem block on our new ‘60 Strat and noted again
how it produces a different and unique range of dominant
harmonic overtones and qualities of sustain – slightly stronger
with sustaining overtones present on the top three strings.
Think of it as a resonance and sustain boost device for your
Strat. You’ll also note that Steve Prior is using cryogenically
treated pots from Callaham. What’s up with that? Callaham
has been experimenting with cryo’d hardware, wiring harnesses and pickups for years, and we have reviewed them in the
past. Like a well-made, non-stranded guitar cable (Evidence
Audio), cryogenically treating components the signal passes
through results in enhanced transparency and clarity, as if a
veil had been lifted from your guitar. The effect is not unlike
wiring a pickup straight to the input jack in the style of David
Lindley. See the Callaham web site for details.TQ
www.callahamguitars.com, 540-678-4043
www.rsguitarworks.net, 859-737-5300
www.jmrolph.com, 859-448-9463
Lee Jackson’s Active Gain Pedal
Distortion is Truth
We were first turned on to Lee Jackson by Phil Brown, who
is a big fan of Jackson’s VL Series amps designed for Ampeg
in the early ‘90s. Now based in Austin, Jackson’s long career
spans time spent on the Fender R&D team with Paul Rivera
in the late ‘80s where he was involved in the development of
the Twin II, Concert, Deluxe Reverb II and London Reverb.
In 1983 Lee launched Metaltronix Amps in Los Angeles in
response to the ongoing demand for his Marshall modifications, developing the Blues ‘59 head, Maniac distortion pedal
and rack
mount guitar
and bass
preamps. In
1991 Jackson
was asked to
design amps
for Ampeg
in St. Louis,
where he
created the powerful VL Series, and the Stealth line for
Ampeg’s Crate division. In 1993 he launched Lee Jackson
Amplifiers, building the XLS-1000 and XLA-1000 Series,
which included exact copies of the amps he had built for
Steve Vai, George Lynch and Zakk Wylde. Lee continues
to build custom guitar effects and amplifiers at his shop in
Austin, and the first Jackson pedal we heard was the Active
Gain/Boost, sent to us at Phil Brown’s urging. We reviewed
this pedal briefly on page 19 of the December 2004 issue,
and by now surely that short review has been forgotten. But
that’s not why we are reprising it here...
In addition to the key strokes that are required to knit this issue together, there has also been a lot of pacing involved, and
caffeine-fueled soul searching in the music room, where our
attention has been
fixed on rendering
tones worthy of an
issue dedicated to
Jeff Beck. It isn’t
something we take
lightly. We could
conveniently throw
in a new pedal (we
have half a dozen
yet to be reviewed)
just to hit the required page count
and be done with
it, but we have always left such deadline-driven wank fests to
others. In fact, we had hoped to also review a new boost pedal
in this issue barely out of the prototype phase, until we heard
it. Had to tell the builder “Thanks, but no thanks.” Uncomfortable? Yes. But not nearly as much as if we had reviewed it
anyway, leaving the worst bits off the page and dressing up
whatever could be salvaged in a positive light. Can’t do it.
Won’t do it. So, we systematically rammed our guitars through
Blondie and what has become a sizable collection of overdrive
and boost pedals, and while many of them are very, very good,
Lee Jackson’s Active Gain/Booster remains exceptional.
First of all – the design is simple and intuitive. Two vintage
Marshall-style knobs (no coincidence) for Volume and Gain,
with a toggle in the middle for two different levels of clipping.
For a cleaner boost like a Klon, turn the Volume all the way
-continued-
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
25
effects
up, drop the Gain
to zero with the
clip switch in the
middle (off) position, then slowly
dial in the amount
of Gain from
the zero setting.
The beauty of
this pedal is that
it will not add a
midrange bump
or otherwise exert
unwanted changes to your EQ and overall tone. What goes in
is what comes out. The Active Gain pedal functions brilliantly
as a clean boost that can make your rig sound as if your amp
is set at a higher volume level, and that alone might be enough
to justify acquiring it, but Jackson’s box is way more than just
a ‘clean boost.’ You can literally dial in varying levels of distortion and dynamics that range from the sweet, edgy sound
of a tweed or blackface Fender rumbling on 5-7, to a moderately jacked Marshall JTM45 plexi, the more strident crunch
of a smaller Marshall PA20, all the way to the more intense
overdriven sound and gain of a late ‘60s metal panel 50 or 100
watt, right on up to a JCM800 or Silver Anniversary. Yes, you
can throw a party with Freddie King, Michael Bloomfield,
Roy Buchanan, Clapton (from Beano to Disraeli Gears), the
Voodoo Child, Santana (with the SG), the Rev, all flavors of
Jeff Beck and even the ever-slippery Audley Freed all rolled
into one little box. Chops, of course, not included.
And if this weren’t
enough to tip the
scales on versatility alone, Jackson’s
Active Gain really
stands tall in its ability to create such a
wide range of classic
distortion levels endowed with extraordinarily musical clarity.
This, of course, is
where all gain and
boost devices are not
created equal. It’s
pretty simple, really. If you have your rig lovingly fine-tuned
and sounding smooth, rich and sweet, you still want to hear
those qualities you’ve worked so hard to acquire when you
step on a pedal. Some boost and gain effects chop off high
end by pushing mids too far forward, and others create a gritty
grind that just doesn’t wear well over time. What’s bigger than
the new pedal market? The used pedal market. So should you
now be teetering on the brink of succumbing to the tempta-
tion of buying still another boost pedal, well, that’s the point,
in’t it? The Quest for tone... Lee Jackson also provided us
with an update on the Active Gain pedal: “I’m also making
a version with two in one – it’s called the IntelliGain – same
analog circuitry, and you can preset two different gain and
clip settings. I have used that same setup and loved the way
my Pro Junior sounded with the gain pedal. I have two Active
Gain pedals on my pedalboard... Victor Johnson from Sammy
Haggar’s band turned me on to using two – one on the front of
the pedalboard and one at the end.”
We’ve done our homework with due diligence and six years of
comparative reflection, and Lee Jackson’s Active Gain pedal
absolutely rocks. Quest forth... TQ
www.leejackson.com
Paint It Blue
There is no shortage of legend and lore when it comes to
classic gear, and for many experienced players, the Eminence
Alnico blue frame 10s are legendary. Most of us first experienced them in reissue tweed Bassman or Vibro-King amps,
and as you now know, two of Jeff Becks early Pro Juniors
are packing them as well. We’ve had a number of discussions
with Jeff Bakos lamenting the end of the blue frame era, and
plenty of other players have reverently mentioned them with
the same affection reserved for their first dog, girlfriend,
or… well, you can imagine. Is this another case of an extinct
product achieving exalted status merely because it is now
unobtainable, or were the original 20 watt blue frames with
paper bobbins really all they were cracked up to be? Such
questions call for credible answers, so we first sought out former marketing manager and now Eminence CEO Chris Rose,
and Shane Nicholas, Senior Product Manager for Guitar
Amplifiers at Fender. Both play guitar, by the way…
Chris Rose: We’ve been building the Fender 10” Alnico
(Spec 10446) for many, many years and continue supplying
Fender with it today. As far as I can tell, it remains faithful
to the original....blue basket, same cone, same magnet, paper
former and 20 watts. The Alnico model we currently offer
is the Legend 1028K. It is the same, except that it uses the
Kapton bobbin and handles 30 watts. For a number of years
we offered both models, but sales were very low on the paper
bobbin model and we stopped stocking it for branded product
sales. Fender is the only source now for that model.
I’m sure you are wondering how different they are sonically!
Frankly, I think it would be very difficult for me to be able
to pick one over the other in a blind listening test, but a more
discerning ear and/or touch sensitive player may well be able to
-continued-
26
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
speakers
make the distinction. Most people
tell me they
believe the paper
bobbin version
to be warmer
with smoother
break-up. I
should also point
out that we don’t
always know
what products an
OEM uses our speakers in, and that is the case with Fender as
well. We could not tell you with any degree of certainty which
Fender products were loaded with the 10446.
Shane Nicholas: John Sams was the design engineer for the
Pro Junior, and his name is on the original schematic. I don’t
know much about him, because he left the company about 15
years ago. Mike Lewis was definitely the product manager
at the time, and he
would have worked
with the engineer to
voice the amp to his
liking. I am pretty
sure he mostly used
his ‘57 reissue Strat
for the sound tests
in that era. The
10446 speaker is
currently used in our
Blues DeVille 410.
That speaker was also originally used in Vibro-Kings and ‘59
Bassman amps until Jensen reissued the P-10R. The Eminence Alnico speaker was used in the Pro Junior for maybe a
few years before we started using a ceramic Eminence, which
also sounds really good in that amp. We occasionally build
FSR (Factory Special Run) versions of the Pro Junior in various coverings and colors, sometimes with a different speaker.
The big take-home message here is that the blue frame Alnico
20 watters from Eminence are still being made… but only for
Fender, it seems, due to lack of demand as a branded Eminence product. Curious-er now, we searched the web and immediately found a page on the Angela Instruments site where,
guess what? They are selling new Alnico blue frame 10s in a
genuine Fender box marked as “Fender replacement speaker”
for $67.00 plus shipping via Fed Ex Ground. So of course, we
ordered one on your behalf. The blue frame with a 2009 date
code arrived in two days, and we had it installed in Blondie
within five minutes. With the volume set on 4 and treble on
7 we first plugged in the ’60 Strat, followed by two Historic
‘58s loaded with Rolph and Holmes humbuckers. From there
we goosed the volume on the Pro Junior up to 6-7 and flogged
them all some
more, alternately stomping on the Lee
Jackson Gain/
Boost, Bob Burt
Clean Boost, the
extraordinary
and overlooked
early Japanese Boss DD-3 delay, and our equally fine FoxRox
AquaVibe. And the verdict on the blue frame?
Well, we had more fun and got lost in the moment far longer (an
hour is a hell of a moment) than we had with any of the other
speakers we tried… Yes, given that the magnet and seamed, ribbed
cone are identical to the current Eminence Alnico Legend 1028K,
the paper bobbin seems to endow this speaker with a more responsive and dynamic
tone. Its voice is
beautifully bright,
fully capable
of revealing the
classic, shimmering harmonics
found in clean
Stratocaster tones,
and as you push
the volume of the
Pro into full burn,
the mids rise as
the speaker gracefully opens up. We could actually hear the blue
frame breaking in during the hour we poured the coals on as the
tone became rounder, deeper and slightly less strident on the top.
Beautiful. Four of them would make you cry. Granted, we’re in
geek mode here… But the bottom line is that we thought the other
speakers we auditioned in the Junior sounded good, too. But they
don’t sound like this. You know what to do. Quest forth…TQ
www.angela.com, 301-725-0451
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we wish to acknowledge Steve Prior’s gracious assistance in developing this issue on the cusp of the birth
of his second child, Alfie Ray Prior. Congratulations to you and
family, Steve. Without you, this issue would not have happened.
We also wish to thank Phil Taylor for inspiring us to think a
little longer and deeper... Gracias to Riverhorse, as usual, for
sending what was needed before we knew we needed it. Big ups
as well to Billy F Gibbons. Keepin’ it real is so underestimated... Many of the historical tidbits and factoids related to Jeff
Beck’s guitars were referenced from Annette Carson’s excellent
unauthorized biography, “Crazy Fingers.” Her work reflects an
obvious appreciation for her subject and an admirable knack
for unearthing details that matter. Recommended.
TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010
27
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Peter Frampton
Tom Anderson
Greg Germino
Tom Anderson GuitarWorks
Germino Amplification
Jimbo Mathus
Mark Baier
Billy F. Gibbons
ZZ Top
Shane Nicholas
Victoria Amplifiers
Jeff Bakos
Joe Glaser
Glaser Instruments
René Martinez
Bakos AmpWorks
Dick Boak
Tom Guerra
Mambo Sons
Greg Martin
CF Martin & Co.
Joe Bonamassa
John Harrison
Richard McDonald
Johnny Hiland
Justin Norvell
Phil Brown
Dan Butler
Butler Custom Sound
Pyramid Strings
Now in Stock
New Pyramids are in! Pure Nickel
Maximum Performance Pure Nickel
(original hex core) sets, .010-.046
Light and .010-.048 Light/Medium
roundwounds are in stock now, plus
Pure Nickel Roundcore Classics,
.010-.046 Light and .010-.048 Light/
Medium. To order, CALL 1-877MAX-TONE or visit www.tonequest.
com Free Pyramid/ToneQuest pearloid
hard picks included with each order!
Dave Malone
Analogman
Don Butler
The Toneman
Steve Carr
Carr Amplifiers
Mitch Colby
A Brown Soun
Gregg Hopkins
The Radiators
Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitar Amplifers
The Guitar Whiz
The Kentucky Headhunters
VP Mktg, Fender Musical Instruments
Sr. Mktg Mgr, Fender Guitars
Vintage Amp Restoration
James Pennebaker
Mark Johnson
Riverhorse
Delta Moon
Phil Jones
Gruhn Guitars
Tommy Shannon
Double Trouble
Todd Sharp
KORG/Marshall/VOX USA
K&M Analog Designs
Ben Cole
Mark Karan
Bob Weir & Ratdog
Tim Shaw
GHS Strings
Larry Cragg
Robert Keeley
Robert Keeley Electronics
John Sprung
Neil Young
Jol Dantzig
Gordon Kennedy
Peter Stroud
Hamer Guitars
Ronnie Earl
Ernest King
Gibson Custom Shop
Dan Erlewine
Chris Kinman
Stewart-MacDonald
Kinman AVn Pickups
Larry Fishman
Mike Kropotkin
Fishman Transducers
KCA NOS Tubes
Bill Finnegan
Sonny Landreth
Klon Centaur
Lindy Fralin
Albert Lee
Adrian Legg
Nashville Amp Service
Fender Musical Instruments Corp.
American Guitar Center
The Sheryl Crow Band
Laurence Wexer
Laurence Wexer Limited
Fine Fretted Instruments
Buddy Whittington
John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers
Greg V
Nashville
Lou Vito
Artist Relations, PRS Guitars
The ToneQuest ReportTM (ISSN 1525-3392) is published monthly by Mountainview Publishing LLC, 235 Mountainview Street, Suite 23, Decatur, GA. 300302027, 1-877-MAX-TONE, email: [email protected]. Periodicals Postage Paid at Decatur, GA and At Additional Mailing Offices. Postmaster: Send address
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TONEQUEST REPORT V.11 N.9 July-August 2010