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

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A similar Dynacord bassking was my first real Bass amp. :) Loved it, but in the end not loud enough-50watt. Would love to have one again, I think... ;) next came a London city amp with an 18” speaker cab :) heavy ;)
 
1963 band; I had a Guild Guitar into my Epiphone. I liked bass but played "lead" cause I had reverb, sax man played thru mic in the other Epi channel (How can you play rock n roll without a sax?). Other guy played my Kay Bass in clean channel of A Silvertone Twin 12, and singer thru reverb channel.. Soon got out of guitar playing and back into bass. Now playing in a Boomer band. (After Chuck Berry wrote and recorded "Sweet Little Sixteen; there was no reason for anyone to write another song)
 
I dunno. You also had testimonials from doctors about how healthy smoking and sodas were. You had pleaded gasoline, smog, and a whole host of other things I wouldn't want to revisit.

As far as I'm concerned, the good old days weren't amazing. I'll take today's gear and knowledge any day. Was there some magic in the mud at Muscle Shoals? Something in the water at Motown? Talent to spare in the Wrecking Crew? Absolutely. But I'll take today's gear all day long. And some of the music made SINCE the 60s has been amazing too.
 
I dunno. You also had testimonials from doctors about how healthy smoking and sodas were. You had pleaded gasoline, smog, and a whole host of other things I wouldn't want to revisit.

As far as I'm concerned, the good old days weren't amazing. I'll take today's gear and knowledge any day. Was there some magic in the mud at Muscle Shoals? Something in the water at Motown? Talent to spare in the Wrecking Crew? Absolutely. But I'll take today's gear all day long. And some of the music made SINCE the 60s has been amazing too.
Totally agree! The best gear ever made is being made right now. And I’ll take YouTube over the 2 TV channels available when I was a kid.
 
Amp power plugs didn't even have the molding for the ground prong. They looked like this:
View attachment 3701822

When the plug was put in the wrong way the amp ground become "hot" and holding your guitar and touching someone else's guitar that was plugged in to another amp with the line reversed immediately gave you a big shock! When the microphone was plugged into an amp with the line reversed from your guitar's you got shocked in the lips!

That's why Fender had these "ground" switches in the back to reverse the line:
View attachment 3701823
Usually, when the line was reversed, there was a lot of hum and you flipped the "ground" switch to the position with the lesser hum. But, sometimes it was hard to tell and you still ended up with a big shock! I found out that holding one lead of a neon bulb and touching the other lead to the amp chassis was a good way to find out if the "ground" switch needed to be flipped. If the bulb didn't light up, then you were good.
Ahh, the ubiquitous "NE-2"
 
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:

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Good luck tuning to a turntable with a less-than-optimum belt. ;)
I learned to play leads from this record! Had a baby blue Hagstrom FII and played through my sister's boyfriends old Ampeg bass amp, and the bass player played through a Silvertone twin twelve. Eventually got my own Silvertone but never could learn how to get a good tone. The Hagstrom had a tone switch - on-off! Built a wah-wah pedal in High School Shop class, from plans by Craig Anderton in Popular Electronics magazine. Used a black painted light bulb with scratches to project "beams" to two photocells and the wooden pedal board (on a leaf spring) moved shadow masks between two photoresistors. Fortunately a few years later I picked up an electric bass at a party and found my niche.
 
Hi Paula :)

Nice thread! :thumbsup:



I was a kid in the seventies. So I can' t tell if there was a real used market for instruments.

But I remember that the 70s were about shiny and new. Used was just old
and usually ended in the attic, in a humid basement, in a barn or on a landfill. :(

Tube radios were replaced by solidstate. My Pa' s tube radio was moved to the garage.

My grandparents "old" but beautiful kitchen furniture was replaced

by a white Resopal (fiberboard) cupboard with orange!!!!! drawers. :vomit::vomit::vomit::vomit::vomit:

The word "vintage" was only used for wine.



They were still in use when I started in the early 80s.

They made a perfect antenna when you plugged them into a cheap practice amp! :D

You could pick up some weird radio programs in Europe that way.

Most of it was Armenian or Russian folk music during the day

and sometimes those weird "rows of numbers" in the evening. :smug:



I am in!!!! :D We have to find a bookmaker for that! :roflmao:


greetings


Wise(b)ass

The Washington Post had a Saturday supplement with a Teen's classified ad page listing instruments. Saw an ad for a Marshall 4 x 12 cabinet "Used Once by the Who". $50 (which for me would have meant mowing 17 lawns...) They also printed the lyrics and chords to a pop song each week.
 
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The Shure Unidyne and Unisphere series of cardioid dynamic microphones were vastly superior for live performance to anything else on the market at the time. I bet most of those microphones that still exist would work just as well now as they used to! Shure made a barrel transformer with a phone jack on one end and a cannon connector on the other to convert them to low impedance. You still can't go wrong with Shure.
My big sister's band had 4 EV 664's, a Bogen 4 channel head (100W) and two Shure VocalMaster columns. That was pretty big stuff for 1968. Dad had a station wagon and was their roadie!
 
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Our 70s pyrotechnics consisted of old metal ashtrays with gunpowder and a direct short-circuit to a motorcycle battery via old hifi speaker cable with a short piece of super thin wire that burned and set off the gunpowder.

My God we were idiots
If you stretch some saran wrap around the top and secure it with a rubber band it will hold the powder in place while moving and give a nice "Poof" sound and faster burn.
 
My big sister's band had 4 EV 664's, a Bogen 4 channel head (100W) and two Shure VocalMaster columns. That was pretty big stuff for 1968. Dad had a station wagon and was their roadie!

Your so right! The EV 664 was a very highly successful and vastly used cardioid dynamic, and made for an extraordinary vocal mic back in the day. If you could afford them, that is. I knew somebody who's dad had a pare of gold ones! He never let me borrow them, though. EV 664's would probably be just as good today, and I bet most of them that exist still work too! They were considerably more expensive than the Shure Unidyne's, and I think that's why they weren't used as often by bands.

But yeah, that would have been a superb PA setup, especially with the Bogen 100 watt mixer / amp which I think would have been superior to the Vocal Master head (never used one of those). Foothill College had a Bogen 4 channel mic mixer and two Bogen 100 watt slaves, and we used to use em' with A7 boxes and big Altec horns when we could get our hands on them if it was a big show like in a gymnasium, or something. I used to be able to sign out on the Bogen gear at Foothill as long as they weren't using it, and the guy who owned the four A7's would let us use them any time we wanted. We usually just used two of them. At one time he used to rent them out, but he let me use them for free! We thought we were hot #$%$# when we rolled that set up out! It wasn't ours, of course. But I never told anybody that!

Here's a picture of the old Bogen vacuum tube mic mixer I found on Google Images. They sounded sweet.

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This is the strange looking Bogen 100 Watt tube power amp slave that went with the mixer. They were very heavy, but put out the power.

2163166-bogen-100-watt-tube-amp-mo-100a.jpg
 
My big sister's band had 4 EV 664's, a Bogen 4 channel head (100W) and two Shure VocalMaster columns. That was pretty big stuff for 1968. Dad had a station wagon and was their roadie!

Your so right! The EV 664 was a very highly successful and vastly used cardioid dynamic, and made for an extraordinary vocal mic back in the day. If you could afford them, that is. I knew somebody who's dad had a pare of gold ones! He never let me borrow them, though. EV 664's would probably be just as good today, and I bet most of them that exist still work too! They were considerably more expensive than the Shure Unidyne's, and I think that's why they weren't used as often by bands.
I've still got a 664. Haven't used it in ages, but it worked last time I did (decades ago).
 
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Your so right! The EV 664 was a very highly successful and vastly used cardioid dynamic, and made for an extraordinary vocal mic back in the day. If you could afford them, that is. I knew somebody who's dad had a pare of gold ones! He never let me borrow them, though. EV 664's would probably be just as good today, and I bet most of them that exist still work too! They were considerably more expensive than the Shure Unidyne's, and I think that's why they weren't used as often by bands.

But yeah, that would have been a superb PA setup, especially with the Bogen 100 watt mixer / amp which I think would have been superior to the Vocal Master head (never used one of those). Foothill College had a Bogen 4 channel mic mixer and two Bogen 100 watt slaves, and we used to use em' with A7 boxes and big Altec horns when we could get our hands on them if it was a big show like in a gymnasium, or something. I used to be able to sign out on the Bogen gear at Foothill as long as they weren't using it, and the guy who owned the four A7's would let us use them any time we wanted. We usually just used two of them. At one time he used to rent them out, but he let me use them for free! We thought we were hot #$%$# when we rolled that set up out! It wasn't ours, of course. But I never told anybody that!

Here's a picture of the old Bogen vacuum tube mic mixer I found on Google Images. They sounded sweet.

View attachment 3702089

This is the strange looking Bogen 100 Watt tube power amp slave that went with the mixer. They were very heavy, but put out the power.

View attachment 3702090
OMG, I had a Bogen 4 channel mixer back in the seventies. I forgot all about that. It looked similar to the one in the top picture. My dad found it in a dumpster but it worked just fine. I sold it to a church for $40. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. :)

I had a couple EV 635a mics. You still see them occasionally, in the hands of news reporters from small market stations.

if I remember correctly, Bogen started out making photo equipment like enlargers and copy stands.