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Get off my LAWN! "Grumpy Old Farts"

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#22,401
Fat Freddy said:
And the Spirit of GOF's Award of the week goes to.....
(Imagine a drum roll...I fired the drummer)...

Pauses for effect after fumbling with envelope.....

@GonePlaid Now THAT was funny!.....:laugh:....

View attachment 3598712:hyper:
Click to expand...
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week. Take care of your wait person and the bartender.:thumbsup:
 
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#22,407
All of 12 years in 1968, memorable in part because of my copy of the 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack LP. Also sprach Zarathustra permanently entered the musical landscape for the general population (along with Ohio Express, for good or ill). But here we are well past 2001 as we vye for paid seat upgrades for another inch of legroom on oversold flights, instead of sleeping in zero G on a Pan Am commercial flight to a space station.

Need a refund for this ride.
 
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#22,411
mikeoso said:
Click to expand...

Obviously not a "new" song as "The Katy"(Missouri, Kansas, and Texas)Railroad merged with the Missouri Pacific RR in 1988, well after Amtrak took over all passenger train service in 1971.
So many great songs referencing railroads that no longer exist by their well-known names.
 
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#22,412
GonePlaid said:
Obviously not a "new" song as "The Katy"(Missouri, Kansas, and Texas)Railroad merged with the Missouri Pacific RR in 1988, well after Amtrak took over all passenger train service in 1971.
So many great songs referencing railroads that no longer exist by their well-known names.
Click to expand...
:jawdrop:......You're rapidly becoming a contender for Old Fart of the Month......:thumbsup::)
 
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#22,415
beans-on-toast said:
In this case, each cabinet requires an AC outlet. That leaves one for a wireless unit or something else.

The self powered power amp cabs were ahead of their time but not unique. Leslie organ speaker cabinet were power amps as well and pre-dated what Ampeg did.

Fender’s wireless unit. James Jamerson was photographed using one.

Introduced in 1961.
View attachment 3597212

View attachment 3597219
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I had the Gibson Les Paul bass amp.

Similar deal- a small solid-state head that provided some initial gain and EQ, and fed a 200 watt power amp that was stuffed in the bottom of the matching twin-15 cab.

I bought it on impulse in the early '70's, after seeing it up in the roof at the Canadian Norlin warehouse. I used to go up on this catwalk to look at all the B-stock stuff, like LP Juniors with minor finish blems. They typically went for about $80, IRRC.

Anyway, I had seen the ads in Guitar Player for the Les Paul guitar stack, with this huge, compound-driver cab. It had 10's, 12's and whatever else they could find to stuff in there, and it looked pretty majestic. I never saw or heard one out in the wild, so I have no idea what they sounded like. However, they looked pretty majestic.

Anyway, I had just finished my first and only recording project with my dad, and had $225 burning a hole in my pocket. The amp was sitting up there looking lonely and the price was right, so I grabbed it and ran.

Just like the guitar version, the bass stack had a lot of visual presence. Little pea-bulbs behind an acrylic front plate, so each section of the control panel was colour-coded. The cab had blue-ish grille cloth with tinsel woven into it, which looked pretty surreal under stage lighting. It didn't hurt that it was absurdly large for a 2x15, even accounting for the fact that it was intended for bass. It was loaded with square-magnet Emminence drivers, the first I ever saw.

Sadly, the experience on stage was pretty anticlimactic. It was punishingly loud by the standards of the day, but even with a Fender bass with the tone control wide open, it had almost no upper mids or treble. Just a big, pillowy rumble, like a whale calling it's mate from under water. Even when I pushed it into distortion, there was simply no definition to be had.

I can't even imagine what it would have sounded like if you paired it with an EBO with a mudbucker at the neck...
 
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#22,416
GonePlaid said:
Sometimes it works.
Click to expand...
It always works if you know how to just own the song. I always tell my band mates there's no starting over on tempo mistakes, own it and if it sucks it's a mistake we'll never make again. But really, it never actually sucks if you lean into it like you meant it. What sucks is speeding up or slowing down after the start.
 
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#22,417
Fat Freddy said:
I'm guessing that the specs are on top of your noggin....:thumbsup:
Click to expand...


IMG_20191116_051448.jpg
 
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#22,419
G-Dog said:
Yep, ahead of their time! I remember wondering about the "new, transistorized" Fender amps, while drooling over the tube amps in the catalogs. We knew what the tube amps were like, every live band had 'em. But, while transistors seemed new and cool, there was just too many rumors (or facts?) that they didn't sound good. I dunno, never heard one back then.

Click to expand...
The last store that my dad managed before he went out on his own, got stuck with a couple of those. A combo (I don't remember the model, but I think it was bigger than the Deluxe in that picture), and a PA stack.

There was a lot of interest initially- they had a certain space-age appeal. Trouble was, no-one seemed able to get a sound they liked out of them. They sat, and sat, despite several price drops.

Plus, old Fender tube amps were absolutely everywhere, and very affordable on the used market. Back then, tube TV's and stereos were still kicking around, so if a tube went out on a gig, you could often pick one up at the nearest variety store.

The store went under in 1969, and the day the bailiffs came, the two SS Fenders were still sitting on the showroom floor.
 
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#22,420
steve_rolfeca said:
I had the Gibson Les Paul bass amp.

Similar deal- a small solid-state head that provided some initial gain and EQ, and fed a 200 watt power amp that was stuffed in the bottom of the matching twin-15 cab.

I bought it on impulse in the early '70's, after seeing it up in the roof at the Canadian Norlin warehouse. I used to go up on this catwalk to look at all the B-stock stuff, like LP Juniors with minor finish blems. They typically went for about $80, IRRC.

Anyway, I had seen the ads in Guitar Player for the Les Paul guitar stack, with this huge, compound-driver cab. It had 10's, 12's and whatever else they could find to stuff in there, and it looked pretty majestic. I never saw or heard one out in the wild, so I have no idea what they sounded like. However, they looked pretty majestic.

Anyway, I had just finished my first and only recording project with my dad, and had $225 burning a hole in my pocket. The amp was sitting up there looking lonely and the price was right, so I grabbed it and ran.

Just like the guitar version, the bass stack had a lot of visual presence. Little pea-bulbs behind an acrylic front plate, so each section of the control panel was colour-coded. The cab had blue-ish grille cloth with tinsel woven into it, which looked pretty surreal under stage lighting. It didn't hurt that it was absurdly large for a 2x15, even accounting for the fact that it was intended for bass. It was loaded with square-magnet Emminence drivers, the first I ever saw.

Sadly, the experience on stage was pretty anticlimactic. It was punishingly loud by the standards of the day, but even with a Fender bass with the tone control wide open, it had almost no upper mids or treble. Just a big, pillowy rumble, like a whale calling it's mate from under water. Even when I pushed it into distortion, there was simply no definition to be had.

I can't even imagine what it would have sounded like if you paired it with an EBO with a mudbucker at the neck...
Click to expand...

Faceplate illumination and lights for functions was the state-of-the-art style back then. Ampeg did that as well with their electro-luminescent panels. Sadly they tended to not stand up very well.

A bandmate had a Garnet 212 piggyback guitar amp in the 60’s. It had a tremolo light that flashed at the rate that the effect was set to. It was the coolest thing to stare at. It could help you keep in time. Studios had visible lashing light click tracks.

I sometimes dream of the deals that I passed up back then. $80 for a blemished Les Paul Jr. was still a lot of money in the 70’s. For me it was three weeks worth of groceries, our budget was $25 per week, not a penny more.
 
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