Things we didn't know or do in the 60's and 70's

[pocket_groover]

This may be dating myself. Our lead guitar player had a analog tape echo delay in my first band. We played lot of surf music and it came in handy on many songs. When we first heard it we though it was the coolest thing ever.

We started out on surf music too (Surfaris, Chantays, Ventures, etc) Our guitar player had the Fender “echo chamber” as they were called. He also got the very first fuzz, it was the Gibson Maestro fuzztone. (Back to 2019 ... )

 

[Richland123]

Played through an Electro-Harmonix Power Booster. I still have the one I bought in the early 1970s.

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[pocket_groover]

We had a 4-input passive mic splitter. Output was so low we pre-amped into a VM tape recorder (the one with the green "magic eye") which fed a Twin Twelve head and 2 homemade 2-12 cabinets.
Great times. The first time we used our 2-12 PA cabinets, we wondered why our new 'marvels' were not loud enough. Haha. We ripped the PEGBOARD off the front and VOILA!

You mean “Voice of Music” tape recorder (VM)? Those were really quality recorders.
Here’s the “magic eye” in action:

 

[bumperbass]

Exactly! It was the coolest thing about the whole PA. At least we didn't overdrive the thing. lol

 

[bumperbass]

Played through an Electro-Harmonix Power Booster. I still have the one I bought in the early 1970s.

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You mean “Voice of Music” tape recorder (VM)? Those were really quality recorders.
Here’s the “magic eye” in action:

My friend and I hooked up three LPB-2's in series one day in the music store. With one power chord, we blew both speakers in a Twin Reverb.

 

[*ToNeS*]

Or you could look at it this way: He gave his life for a worthy cause rather than just waste away in hospice.

Cracked make a much better case for why Invalid Link Removed

 

[bumperbass]

Sears Silvertone guitars and amps, Farfisa and Vox keyboards, Baldwin and Standel amps, Mosrite and Hagstrom guitars, University and Banshee Pa horns, Echoplex tape echo,

Mongomery - Wards had Harmony guitars. Just too freekin' cool. The Silvertone 610 tube amp was a beast, BTW.

 

[juancaminos]

I am grateful for the improvement in live sound. Note that: GRATEFUL. So I get really, really aggravated when bandmates or someone in a band I am watching gets all bent out of shape when their monitors are not perfect. "More vocal! Less guitar! More bass" and whatever.

Like many of you I can still recall singing without monitors. Trying to "cheat up" close to the VocalMaster columns. (How did one drummer I played with sing so well without being able to hear himself?) I can even recall the first time I encountered a monitor!

Now it's everyone waving and screaming at the sound man for changes in their individual monitor mixes.

Krikey, be happy you can hear yourself at all.

Geez...yes!

 

[juancaminos]

Mongomery - Wards had Harmony guitars. Just too freekin' cool. The Silvertone 610 tube amp was a beast, BTW.

Hail, hail Silvertone!

 

[keyboardguy]

In the early 60's, my local music store had either Fender or Gibson guitars (WAY too expensive for a 14 year old)
Or JUNK Japanese guitars. There was no middle ground; either top notch or cheap stuff from japan.

I bought an import that smelled nice, but the strings were about half and inch from the frets. I couldn't understand why it was so hard to play chords.......

 

[JKB1957]

We thought 2 X 15 cabs were portable, but it was ok, because keyboard players thought Leslie 147s were portable.

 

[JimmyM]

We didn't know basses needed to be set-up. We just played them.
We assumed intonation had been done at the factory.
We had two cords. We used them interchangeably between speaker and instrument.
We didn't carry a spare bass. If we needed to change a string we had drum solos.
We thought a 15" folded horn could be used full-range. We didn't need anything over 300 Hz. anyway.
We didn't know you couldn't put any speaker in any cab, so we put a JBL or an EV in everything- It didn't matter which model. In 1978 we decided Fender bass cabinets sucked (they did), and we took out the speakers and put them in TL 606 cabs. This was the single biggest improvement in bass sound since the invention of the electric bass.(not including the Fridge, which is still cool)

If we did so many things wrong, how come we made the best music of the century?

We?

 

[Samatza]

The basses were cool though. First bass I ever played in 1970.

 

[Winslow]

This thread is digging stuff out of my brain... I hadn't thought about this record in forever.

If anyone asks what people did before youtube tutorials, here's one answer:

Good luck tuning to a turntable with a less-than-optimum belt.

 

[MegaSwing]

Gig bags.

 

[Axstar]

If we did so many things wrong, how come we made the best music of the century?

You didn't.

Talkbass: endless Boomer nostalgia-gasm.

Also Talkbass: "why is live music dying?"

 

[Thumpin6string]

We didn't know that there would be any bass string lower than the E string or any higher than the G string. We didn't know that someday there would be cabs that were light weight but would put out up to 1000 watts without sounding like a fart. We didn't know there would be bass amps that you could put in your case or gig bag that would weigh less than a wa wa pedal and could blow the garage door off our practice space. Oh how naïve we were.

 

[40Hz]

I'm glad someone finally said it.

Me too. I had a small bet riding on it that somebody would show up in fairly short order to Do the Troll.

 

[40Hz]

Yes, heaven forbid we have a little fun and reminisce a bit. What a horrible crime against whatever it is has somebody's panties in a twist today

Yep. Seems you can’t talk about anything that doesn’t involve some people without them feeling all threatened and defensive because they can’t accept that it’s not somehow being directed at them.

Like Oscar Wilde so aptly put it, when it comes to some people, the only thing they think worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all.

 

[Nashrakh]

You didn't.

Talkbass: endless Boomer nostalgia-gasm.

Also Talkbass: "why is live music dying?"

Exactly. Considering the developments in modernist music right at the beginning of the century and jazz taking off shortly thereafter, that's a pretty nonsensical claim, though I wouldn't take it as a serious one. I hope.