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Berry Oakley's rig?

#41
Here's a couple more. One from the same concert and another taken last month in Florida. Oteil is sitting down due to an injury from a motorcycle accident!:eek:

Deja vue!

Oh yeah! A buddy that I work with (Harold Thomas) is sitting in on sax!:D
He tours with the Gregg Allman Band and stayed around to play the set with ABB.
 
#44
Dave Martin said:
Playing the black strat looks like none other than Jack Pearson, the best slide guitarist ever. (and yeah, I'm including Duane in the list of 'not as good as jack'...).
Click to expand...


Good eye there (especially with his head down) but
I was actually talking about the guy playing the les paul!


P.S. Of course, taking Duanes style another step was easier having his playing as an example & inspiration and how much better whould Duane have gotten if he had lived longer?
 
#47
I have a video of a concert from the summer they got Oteil and Jack Pearson....man!....Pearson has to be one of the most underated guitar players out there! I just pulled that video out a month ago and thought about it's a shame more people don't know about him. Outstanding player!
 
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#49
jeff_bass28 said:
I remember seeing footage of a show and he was using Peavey Series 400's; which I thought was pretty damn cool, considering that's what I had. What a piece of crap that thing was! :rollno: at least mine was. anyway...
2 channels
channel 1 had low/mid/high eq, fuzz and distortion
channel 2 had low&high bass, low&high mid, and low&high treble eq.
There was also a master volume and eq "slope."
Two inputs per channel, plus inputs for running the 2 channels in series or parallel.
Footswitch gave control over channel mixing, fuzz, and distortion.
210 watts @ 2ohms
I've seen other models come up on ebay that had similar features, but weren't quite the same.
Click to expand...
Ok, well we all make mistakes, right?
I just heard "Sweet Home Alabama" on the radio, and I suddenly remembered that I'm thinking of Skynyrd's bass player...oops!:o :hiding:
 
#50
jerry said:
I have a video of a concert from the summer they got Oteil and Jack Pearson....man!....Pearson has to be one of the most underated guitar players out there! I just pulled that video out a month ago and thought about it's a shame more people don't know about him. Outstanding player!
Click to expand...

Yah, I had Jack out to play on a project I recently produced - I can tell you that sitting 6 feet from him (and watching close), I still can't figure out how he does what he does. But damn, it's fun to play along!
 
#53
Dave Martin said:
That's true, of course. Have you heard Jack play standards? His jazz chops (including knowing a zillion tunes) are every bit as scary as his blues/slide chops.
Click to expand...

I haven't heard Jack play standards. Harold, the sax player in one of the pic's, told me that Jack's playing was absolutely smoking at the gig (Wannee Festival April 2006).
He is suppose to get me a copy of a DVD they made during the weekend. I look forward to hearing it!
 
#54
Back to the orginal question:

1) Has anyone now figured out what the actual B.O. rig was during the Fillmore East concert? (did he have multiple amplifiers? what were they)

2) How was the bass rig recorded? (Microphones, direct box ?) If microphones, what type? I understand that there were only 16 tracks on the original recording.

3)Does anyone have insight to the methods used on other intruments in that recording? (microphones, placement, etc)?
 
#55
A lot of the magic of "At Fillmore East" comes from Tom Dowd's amazing production job. Recordings from the other nights the Allmans did at the Fillmore are floating around and all of them are much rougher around the edges than the original Fillmore 2xLP.

Pickup placement is key to getting Berry's sound - you want a big ol' humbucker just in front of where the neck pickup would be on a Jazz.
 
#56
Frankie Fender said:
He also played very jazzy spiraling lines, also a great (IMO) part of his appeal. He definitely took the bass to new places. One of the greatest unsung heroes of bass. Glad to see the youngin's finally discovering him. Jaco never did it for me, he didn't have the soul IMHO.
Click to expand...

I am a blues oriented bass player and Berry Oakley and the ABB were/are at the top of my listening/learning list and enjoyment. But Jaco rocked soulfully on Fannie Mae IMHO, while singin pretty good too!
 
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#57
As one of the folks who was around in the early years of ABB, seen them live with Duane and Berry, and also having used JBL D140's, I would bet cash that the speakers were JBL D140's. I saw them (ABB) at Lehigh University in either fall 70 or spring 71, and Berry was using those vertically striped black and silver grillcloth cabinets (I think someone identified them as Casino's(aka Kustom) ) with JBL D140s - 15".

If you want to hear a very similar sound from guaranteed all JBLs, go and listen to some early Grateful Dead, like Live Dead - early on Phil Lesh was using a Guild hollowbody bass and JBLs (with various amps) and has that same kind of smooooooth sound. When you play higher on a D140, there is a certain smooth characteristic 'bark' that only they have.

Berry's tone was killer. And, the the way he positions his bass lines, like in Hot 'Lanta on the Fillmore East recording (listening to it now) is masterful. You can hear him listening to the lead line, and positioning his bass line appropriately - he knows when to go up in his register with respect to the lead line, when to sweep down into the depths for big bottom and massive support for the band.
 
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#58
As one of the folks who was around in the early years of ABB, seen them live with Duane and Berry, and also having used JBL D140's, I would bet cash that the speakers were JBL D140's. I saw them (ABB) at Lehigh University in either fall 70 or spring 71, and Berry was using those vertically striped black and silver grillcloth cabinets (I think someone identified them as Casino's(aka Kustom) ) with JBL D140s - 15". I think I remember seeing Sunn heads in that setup, too.

If you want to hear a very similar sound from all JBLs, go and listen to some early Grateful Dead, like Live Dead - St. Stephen - early on Phil Lesh was using a Guild hollowbody bass and JBLs (with various amps) and has that same kind of smooooooth sound. When you play higher on a D140, there is a certain smooth characteristic 'bark' that only they have.

Berry's tone was killer. And, the the way he positions his bass lines, like in Hot 'Lanta on the Fillmore East recording (listening to it now) is masterful. You can hear him listening to the lead line, and positioning his bass line appropriately - he knows when to go up in his register with respect to the lead line, when to sweep down into the depths for big bottom and massive support for the band.
 
#59
I saw the original ABB at a festival in the early '70s and loved them.

Oddly enough, I was setting up at a club last week and they were playing some of that old live stuff through the house system which really emphasized the bass and drums, and quite honestly the groove felt a little stiff and clunky. I thought I was nuts until my drummer commented on it about a minute later.

It might have just been that track. :hmm:
 

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