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common old school myths and legends

#61
BigOldHarry said:
Here's a simple one: All gear / music / recording tech from 30 years ago was SO MUCH BETTER than today... Now *there's* a myth!
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my 69 precision had severe neck dive,and a dead spot on the g string at band i hated it then....it was the closest thing to a jazz i could find and afford..... i fell in love with the jazz the first time i ever saw one,and the i always considered the p a poor sub....fast forward 30 years,and the pre is the holy grail,and even i remember the beast fondly....a guy i played with took the finish off his les paul and talked me into doing the pre.....after which i hated the way it looked too....oh well....sold it in the 80's for 350 bux,around 50 more than i paid in 71 or so.....not counting the 75 dollar fret job that was not done properly and had some buzz issues
 
#65
as to the OP, i'm not particularly old, but i'm aware of some of the myths that were popular at various times... some still are!

there are lots of myths about ways to get more sustain including: heavier basses (the T-40 was deliberatly made to be that heavy because Hartley Peavey was convinced it gave better sustain), string-thru-body basses (there's a concurrent thread on this as we type), neck-thru probably has some factual basis, but in general it still seems like more of an old-wives tale than anything else. I own both neck through and bolt on, and they seem to have a slightly different feel more than anything, but the difference in sustain is pretty negligible.

actually the string-boiling thing is a myth too according to a lot of folks. YES, it will clean the crud out, but it also causes the strings to slowly rust from the inside, or at least that's what lots of thread-folks have said.

a real old one was that the pickup covers on old Fenders were meant to reduce hum, which they didn't do at all.

some would say the "sonic differences" between maple and rosewood fingerboards are a myth, but that's another can of worms entirely, and folks will argue to the death for both views. and you can add the possible "myth of tone woods" into this category. i'm not making a statement on it!

i'm sure there are more, but that's all i had off the top of my head.
 
#66
In the 70's, I couldn't figure out how in heck Chris Squire was getting that trebly tone, me with my 66 P Bass and flats....It wasn't until the mid 80's I discovered round wounds....now I'm back to flats for the most part.
 
#68
BigOldHarry said:
Here's a simple one: All gear / music / recording tech from 30 years ago was SO MUCH BETTER than today... Now *there's* a myth!
Click to expand...

Good points there, Harry. The construction and fit and finish of modern gear and recording gear is so much better then 30 years ago...but i don't know about the sound...

But vintage instruments are in demand for a reason, as are old tube amplifiers....2" Tape machines and Analogue recording consoles are still a stable part of the recording industry, and for a good reason! The quality of their sound...nothing beats that thick, buttery sound of tape saturation :)...Protools and other DAWS and digital systems simply make life easier for us in my opinion! haha.
 
#69
Ric5 said:
"common old school myths and legends"

****************************

Old vintage basses are better than new ones

Old vintage pickups are better than new ones

Old vintage amps are better than new ones
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A whole lot of pretty prolific musicians still use old stuff. URB players use really old stuff. Could be a comfort zone. Could be something else. FWIW, I love my old stuff more than my new stuff.
 
#71
silvertones said:
Well I bought my new Fender P for $275.00. La Bella flats and for awhile the tapes....
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According to my favorite Invalid Link Removed, $275 in 1965 is equivalent to $1850 today.

If you couldn't afford a Fender or Gibson, the variously named Japanese copies (e.g., Univox which is now Aria) were one lower cost route, but another was Danelectro/Sears Silvertone and Supro/Montgomery Ward Airline.

That's one detail the film "That Thing You Do" really got right. When they were a local band, the leader--singer/songwriter and most serious of the bunch--had a Gibson Melody Maker and the other guitarist and bassist had Danelectros. After they have the hit record and start touring the leader has a Rickenbacker and the other two have Fenders.
 
#72
one of the biggest differences I notice...

mid 80's.......one microphone into each L and R channels of a cassette deck, record live, and everyone does the before and after song silent "shhhh" thing........dub "tape-to-tape" recordings for friends.

2010.......digital recorder into a computer with editing software, master the live recording, post on internet.
 
#75
I remember that in the late 70s or early 80s, perceived wisdom was that Fender's QC had self-destructed and the Japanese made stuff by the name of Squier was actually a whole lot better. There was perhaps some truth in that, too.

There were at that time some real cheap and nasty knock-offs floating around, too. But a few companies went a little upmarket and made some very good "lawsuit" reproductions of, in the main, Fender and Gibson instruments. Antoria and Tokai spring to mind in this category. Some of these fetch good prices today.
 
#76
bassybill said:
There were at that time some real cheap and nasty knock-offs floating around, too. But a few companies went a little upmarket and made some very good "lawsuit" reproductions of, in the main, Fender and Gibson instruments. Antoria and Tokai spring to mind in this category. Some of these fetch good prices today.
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Yea, some of the Antoria stuff was pretty good. I had an Antoria P copy in the late 60s and it was really nice to play. I thought I would set it up and managed to shear the truss rod, it probably wanted a couple of washers adding but I just kept turning it. Sold it to a smart a$$ who was going to 'put a new one in'. I bet it went in the bin. I keep looking out for another as I have a real soft spot for it but have not seen one for ages.

I also have a 1962 Antoria 992 guitar. Not a bad one really, mahogany body with a baseball bat for a neck. I learned to play 6 string on it and after that anything feels slim. I did play it to a few gigs when I had a stint on lead in the 80s/90s just to say it had gigged. Weird body shape though, it looks like they started off making a Strat shape, then changed their minds and carved SG style horns on it.
 
#77
zachoff said:
URB players use really old stuff. Could be a comfort zone. Could be something else.
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I would guess the reason for that is the same reason why most top earning violinists use 250 year old instruments. They actually sound better (less harsh etc.). This is also why a few companies have started to make acoustic instruments out of carbon fiber rather than wood (cause it sounds as good as an old instrument without the ageing needed).
 
#79
Not a myth by any means, but back then I had to work out every (cover) song by ear. There was not such thing as www Bassmasta AZchords etc.

When considering/buying new gear , I had to rely on my own review in the shop or the ocasionally review in our local Guitar Magazine, there was no www to read hundreds of reviews of actual owners of gear.

Choice of strings was very limited.

Westone/Ibanez (eighties) was the cheap and decent bass to go for ,if you could not afford Fender/Musicman/G&L etc.

Cassette tapes took hours to forward & rewind and decreased in quality by the minute (when working out bass parts of a song).

Yes, things have improved a lot!

Michel
 

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