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John Entwistle equipment!

#9
can we say overkill?

jae-89-rigdiagram.gif
 
#12
sonic assassin said:
can we say overkill?
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Yes, yes we can. John Entwistle is my principal inspiration for all things bass-guitar-related, and the very reason I took up the instrument in the first place...but I personally thought his sound peaked around the late '60s / early '70s - I greatly prefer the simple overdriven growl he has on the Live at Leeds and Live at the IoW 1970 recordings to the over-complicated sound he was using from the '80s onwards.
 
#14
Its strange that the larger his rigs got the worse his tone got. I quite like his Leeds tone though I don't think it sits well with Townshend's almost acoustic P90 flakeyness. I also quite like the 1978 stuff for Shepperton filming, it really makes the most of that bottom-end-of-a-Steinway-piano tone. However at some point he got into fuzzing up the high end and adding chorus. By the 1990s his tone is epically horrible but people still rant and rave about it.

Actually even the Leeds tone is little more than a P bass with the action set really low, fresh roundwounds and buckets of overdrive. You just need to do the whole typewriter technique thing and you get that tone. I don't think John did anything advanced in his life technique-wise, he just got lucky and got their first with the whole HiFi bass concept and had a lot of money to blow on experimental gear.
 
#15
AuntieBeeb said:
Yes, yes we can. John Entwistle is my principal inspiration for all things bass-guitar-related, and the very reason I took up the instrument in the first place...but I personally thought his sound peaked around the late '60s / early '70s - I greatly prefer the simple overdriven growl he has on the Live at Leeds and Live at the IoW 1970 recordings to the over-complicated sound he was using from the '80s onwards.
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Meddle said:
Its strange that the larger his rigs got the worse his tone got. I quite like his Leeds tone though I don't think it sits well with Townshend's almost acoustic P90 flakeyness. I also quite like the 1978 stuff for Shepperton filming, it really makes the most of that bottom-end-of-a-Steinway-piano tone. However at some point he got into fuzzing up the high end and adding chorus. By the 1990s his tone is epically horrible but people still rant and rave about it.

Actually even the Leeds tone is little more than a P bass with the action set really low, fresh roundwounds and buckets of overdrive. You just need to do the whole typewriter technique thing and you get that tone. I don't think John did anything advanced in his life technique-wise, he just got lucky and got their first with the whole HiFi bass concept and had a lot of money to blow on experimental gear.
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I also agree that the "Leeds" tone is iconic. Pure and simple bass "balls"; those raging Reeves era early Hiwatts on "11"...
Ah, I remember well the first time I heard those recordings. ;)
 
#17
John's rig in the later years may have been overkill, I've never seen or heard the benefit of splitting the bass signal as John did. I've tried it on a smaller scale and always preferred playing without splitting signal.
His sound filled in a great deal more than a normal bass player, there is an article or interview with Pete Townsend where Roger Daltry always complained about the volume of John's bass killing Roger's hearing!, when they lowered his volume on a tour in the late 80's they had to add horns, backup vocals to fill in the void according to Pete.
 
#19
I was watching "John Entwistle: An Ox's Tale" and pulled this quote out, by Pete Townsend, which I found hilarious:

"One of the reasons why he and Roger never were really able to fully grow into what could have been a really great and nurturing, creative friendship was because Roger could not function onstage with this thing called John Entwistle and his stack... When these arguments happened about volume and Roger would say 'You know John just has to turn down.' I would say 'Well, in a normal world, yeah, but this isn't a normal world. This is the Who. That's John Entwistle.'"

NetFlix has the DVD, and has it on streaming, and it is highly entertaining.
 
#20
gttim said:
I was watching "John Entwistle: An Ox's Tale" and pulled this quote out, by Pete Townsend, which I found hilarious:

"One of the reasons why he and Roger never were really able to fully grow into what could have been a really great and nurturing, creative friendship was because Roger could not function onstage with this thing called John Entwistle and his stack... When these arguments happened about volume and Roger would say 'You know John just has to turn down.' I would say 'Well, in a normal world, yeah, but this isn't a normal world. This is the Who. That's John Entwistle.'"

NetFlix has the DVD, and has it on streaming, and it is highly entertaining.
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Thanks for the tip! I have Netflix and just placed it on my streaming queue.
 

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