Jimi Hendrix' Gear and Mods at West Coast Organ and Amp

[shakti]

About the Strat with Tele neck:

- does anyone know whcih guitar Hendrix used for his own Newport gig? Apparently the story goes that he was dissatisfied with his performance and showed up the next day for a long jam, where he used the Strat with Tele neck.

AFAIK, there wasn't much guitar smashing going on in 1969 and 1970. He started using two Strats almost exclusively from the end of 68, the black and the white (Woodstock) one, both with maple necks. COuld it be that the white one actually got smashed up sometime in May/June 69, and they had to put a quick replacement neck on it temporarily? So the white one ended up with a Tele neck for a short while, before getting a correct replacement maple cap neck from Fender (and at least in time for the Woodstock performance).

IOW, maybe the infamous Woodstock guitar actually had a replacement neck, but a genuine Fender same era neck, and was used temporarily with a Tele neck?

I see much less reason for any pickup swaps. Why would a brand new pickup suddenly crap out? Old ones sometimes do from deterioration over the years, but a less than two years old one?

[shakti]

And one more thing that is still unclear to me:

- the speaker swapping: was this something you routinely did? Or was it just to replace blown speakers? As I understand it, the March 1969 shipment contained several cabs. Did you make any modifications to these from the start, or was this done for maintenance at a later date?

It should be fairly easy to find photographic evidence of the new gear onstage, which was presumable premiered for the US tour starting April(?) 1969. Not detailed, of course, but spotting different tolex and/or grille cloth is easy enough.
And furthermore; the gear Hendrix used in the US prior to this (fall 68 tour) was primarily pinstripe cloth cabs, well worn. If the slant cabs were of the older, strap handle style, then presumably any recovered cabs would also lack side handles. Does anyone know if the slant cabs used during the fall 68 tour had side handles or not?

[Tone seaker]

About the Strat with Tele neck:

- does anyone know whcih guitar Hendrix used for his own Newport gig? Apparently the story goes that he was dissatisfied with his performance and showed up the next day for a long jam, where he used the Strat with Tele neck.

AFAIK, there wasn't much guitar smashing going on in 1969 and 1970. He started using two Strats almost exclusively from the end of 68, the black and the white (Woodstock) one, both with maple necks. COuld it be that the white one actually got smashed up sometime in May/June 69, and they had to put a quick replacement neck on it temporarily? So the white one ended up with a Tele neck for a short while, before getting a correct replacement maple cap neck from Fender (and at least in time for the Woodstock performance).

IOW, maybe the infamous Woodstock guitar actually had a replacement neck, but a genuine Fender same era neck, and was used temporarily with a Tele neck?

I see much less reason for any pickup swaps. Why would a brand new pickup suddenly crap out? Old ones sometimes do from deterioration over the years, but a less than two years old one?

That is exactly what Eddy Kramer said about Newport except that the guitar was borrowed> I read it in the new book by Kramer. That Newport pic is the only pic I have ever seen with that guitar

[matriarch]

The Strat/ Tele neck was also used on June 20, 1969. One other photo of it at a club jam in this time period. The notches on the frets? I didn't buy it when I read it in the old Guitar Player article Still don't buy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ1hkMVZZgA

[Tazin]

Dave, I know this isn't a gear mod related question, but I was wondering if Hendrix was a difficult customer to work with? He seems like he was adamant about his gears reliability and also trying to achive a certain tonal palette from his stuff.

And yes, you are correct that the USA export amps were connected for 120Vac even though taps are present to accommodate other supply voltages.

[Tone seaker]

The Strat/ Tele neck was also used on June 20, 1969. One other photo of it at a club jam in this time period. The notches on the frets? I didn't buy it when I read it in the old Guitar Player article Still don't buy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ1hkMVZZgA

you can do a search and the only pic of it is Newport

[daveweyer]

Tazin,
Thanks for the info, I thought it was like that but you guys are the absolute experts on configurations and so on. That really wasn't my gig, even though I knew the circuits by heart.
I have talked to everyone who worked at West Coast Organ and Amp Service to compare memories and notes about what happened. Of course everyone had their own specific memories that they had retained, and a lot of them surprised me. I dealt directly with Jimi and a lot of the other big stars, for some reason I was the contact man for the performers, probably because they were completely fascinated with my so called "ability" to take totally right-brained metaphor-based requests and devise a circuit which attempted to answer the desire. Things like, "Can you make sound more orange?" That sort of request.

Jimi was totally right-brained, emotional and feeling, but VERY polite and friendly. He was extremely easy to work with and made me feel like I amounted to something, even in our brief encounters, bestowing one of his Wahs on me as a gift during one visit. But the pressure he exerted on me to make his amps more reliable was not the usual kind, like threatening or berating, he simply expressed his deep frustration about how it made HIM feel on stage in the middle of a jam when he had to stop and change something. I took his own frustration upon myself and tried to remedy it with whatever I knew about at the time, really wanting his approval at heart.
Admittedly my efforts were pretty limited, I've learned a few more things about amps in the last 45 years, but I definitely got at least a degree more reliability out of the amps, and had a chance to try out some circuit designs for a man who would advertise them for me to a world-wide audience, silently, without anyone ever knowing the sounds they were hearing had at least a microscopic particle of my own amp DNA in them.
That Jimi Hendrix would use them, report back from time to time about what he appreciated in them, and what else he wished he could get from them, and how much he appreciated me, indicates the measure of the man. He wasn't just a visionary trail-blazing guitar player by any stretch. Supremely human and feeling. (Contrast this say, to the way Steve Stills treated the staff at West Coast Organ and Amp)

I see and feel some doubts about the white Strat with the Tele neck. As ever I respect skepticism, because that's how we learn, but skepticism must be held on a leash.
The fret notches are ABSOLUTELY real, and were cut into the neck by Neal Moser, right in front of me.
Anyone who touched those guitars back then felt the grooves, and it was well known in the musical circle that Jimi had those grooves put there on purpose.
You can give me the polygraph on this one!
Doubters risk living with a diehard misconception!

Jimi asked me to make sure the grooves were there whenever we installed a new neck or rebuilt one. There were not a lot of necks, but a few.(Some were earlier rosewood fingerboards) I leave it to the Jimi aficionados to decipher the films of his performances to determine exactly when new/changed necks showed up.
It appears that late in '69 we replaced the Tele neck, by then we were the only outlet for Fender necks, CBS having abandoned the factory service department all together as a cost saving measure, contracting directly with West Coast Organ and Amp Service for all service related activities. It was during this transition I got to know Leo Fender, who was still working at the company in an advisory role.
We probably did the neck job during the big build up for the Woodstock performance or thereabouts, Jimi advising me that he loved the Tele neck, but he wanted both guitars to play identically so he could use either one as he felt the urge, based largely from what I understood to be stage and visual issues, contrasts or matching his outfit, dark or light mood, that kind of thing. (Typical Jimi)
There was a story floating around that Jimi gave the Strat with the Tele neck to somebody, and got a new Strat, but you would have to have accurate serial plates to determine that. As I have mentioned, that too is risky business because of all the swapping that went down.
Kramer's line misses the point; the guitar came in with Jimi's equipment, broken, and WE put the neck on. End of story!

So that's how the Tele neck thing happened according to all who were DIRECTLY involved, if you have some info which will modify our recollections to be more chronologically or factually accurate (or even fill out the story a little more), please share it.

[matriarch]

The Strat/ Tele neck was also used on June 20, 1969. One other photo of it at a club jam in this time period. The notches on the frets? I didn't buy it when I read it in the old Guitar Player article Still don't buy it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJ1hkMVZZgA

you can do a search and the only pic of it is Newport

Another pic of the Strat w/ Tele neck. June 16th or June 17th, 1969 from Thee Experience, a club in LA during a jam with Blues Image)

[Tone seaker]

Thanks for setting it strait the only thing I have ever been able to find was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msX9VCW1SqQ with no marshall's the links you have must be his fri show. I wonder if its the Woodstock strat. If so he clearly had the correct neck on it a month latter for woodstock

[matriarch]

PS, Jimi certainly ran the Fuzz full up on his Fuzz Faces. Blatantly obvious when listening to live shows such as Atlanta, Rainbow Bridge, Isle Of Wight. For whatever reason, at some point during his 1970 tour the red FF, as hears at Woodstock, Berkeley was switched out for a Si FF. The wah/ FF interaction when he uses both is obvious. It howls like a banshee. This happens when the Si FF FUZZ knob is full out and a wah is stepped on.

[daveweyer]

Matriarch,
Thanks for the shot of Jimi at Thee Experience! Brings back a lot of memories of a place Frank Zappa called sarcastically "A psychedelic dungeon". By the 70s it had become a dark and ominous place with scary vibes, filled with bearded Seconal addled biker types, dealers, and freaked out acid cult castoffs.

I'd like to try this topic one more time given the solid belief that Jimi used his FF at full fuzz.
I have been on stage where Jimi performed and observed the following settings; gain-7. treble-4, mid-6 bass-4, presence-9, fuzz-2, gain-10.

When the FF units would show up at West Coast, the fuzz controls would always be turned down, and the amps would all turned to "11". The longer you stand in front of super loud amps, the more you need as your hearing desensitizes.

Here is the point regarding the original FF circuit, when a Wah is plugged in first, and then switched on, it shorts out the AC feedback from the 100K resistor, the same resistor which is used to LOWER the gain in the first transistor.
In other words it electronically turns the fuzz up regardless of where the knob is.
As I explained in the Catfish Blues post, Jimi couldn't control it, and it did not sound good.
That's where all the mods came in.
Both the mods from Roger Mayer and West Coast changed the circuit to modify this behavior. As I also posted the quotes from Jimi which explained that he didn't want fuzz in his fuzz tone, but rather SUSTAIN, I thought the connection would be made by the dear readers of this forum that sustain means GAIN. To that end, the mods we did and mods Roger Mayer did were to some extent or another designed to get rid of a major portion of the distortion in the first transistor, raise the gain of the second transistor, and spread whatever distortion was created within the entire gain structure of the system between the two devices and the amplifier input stages.

I don't know if this is possible, but if you can wrap your heads around that principle, it is easy to hear Star Spangled Banner, and realize all the feedback and sustain is coming from a lot of input gain, with distortion coming from every stage along the way in a reasonable balance so that the howling is controllable, and the notes are actually still distinguishable.
And if it is impossible to take my word for it, then by all means please read what Roger Mayer has to say about the same subject in his own words, describing the need to get past the sound of one device pushed into a square wave distortion waveform on its own, as was the case with the original FF unit.

And if you have an original FF, which won't give you the kind of gain you need to recreate Star Spangled Banner without turning the fuzz control to maximum, then you may begin to see why those of us who worked for Jimi changed all those pedals to one circuit or another, different configurations which would give him the gain and sustain he needed without making the notes into indistinguishable hash, and putting him outside of the feedback control envelope.

[Xplorer]

i'm fully convinced, rediscovering my fuzz clones. very interesting, very simple. clearly explained.

so you put a resistor or a trimer on the collector of the second transistor ( 10 ... 22k ) , and a resistor up to 50k ( or trimer but not grounded ) , at the entrance of the fuzz ?
using some 2n525. then a 4,7 uf in the input and a 0,047 in the output ?
i suppose : a 33k at the collector of the first tranistor , is it right ? and a 470 R / 2k2 resistor just before the output cap ?

i heard again red house at Woodstock, and it clearly uses such fuzz settings.

thanks !

[matriarch]

i'm fully convinced, rediscovering my fuzz clones. very interesting, very simple. clearly explained.

so you put a resistor or a trimer on the collector of the second transistor ( 10 ... 22k ) , and a resistor up to 50k ( or trimer but not grounded ) , at the entrance of the fuzz ?
using some 2n525. then a 4,7 uf in the input and a 0,047 in the output ?
i suppose : a 33k at the collector of the first tranistor , is it right ? and a 470 R / 2k2 resistor just before the output cap ?

i heard again red house at Woodstock, and it clearly uses such fuzz settings.

thanks !

The fuzz isn't on in Red House at Woodstock

[matriarch]

Matriarch,
Thanks for the shot of Jimi at Thee Experience! Brings back a lot of memories of a place Frank Zappa called sarcastically "A psychedelic dungeon". By the 70s it had become a dark and ominous place with scary vibes, filled with bearded Seconal addled biker types, dealers, and freaked out acid cult castoffs.

I'd like to try this topic one more time given the solid belief that Jimi used his FF at full fuzz.
I have been on stage where Jimi performed and observed the following settings; gain-7. treble-4, mid-6 bass-4, presence-9, fuzz-2, gain-10.

When the FF units would show up at West Coast, the fuzz controls would always be turned down, and the amps would all turned to "11". The longer you stand in front of super loud amps, the more you need as your hearing desensitizes.

Here is the point regarding the original FF circuit, when a Wah is plugged in first, and then switched on, it shorts out the AC feedback from the 100K resistor, the same resistor which is used to LOWER the gain in the first transistor.
In other words it electronically turns the fuzz up regardless of where the knob is.
As I explained in the Catfish Blues post, Jimi couldn't control it, and it did not sound good.
That's where all the mods came in.
Both the mods from Roger Mayer and West Coast changed the circuit to modify this behavior. As I also posted the quotes from Jimi which explained that he didn't want fuzz in his fuzz tone, but rather SUSTAIN, I thought the connection would be made by the dear readers of this forum that sustain means GAIN. To that end, the mods we did and mods Roger Mayer did were to some extent or another designed to get rid of a major portion of the distortion in the first transistor, raise the gain of the second transistor, and spread whatever distortion was created within the entire gain structure of the system between the two devices and the amplifier input stages.

I don't know if this is possible, but if you can wrap your heads around that principle, it is easy to hear Star Spangled Banner, and realize all the feedback and sustain is coming from a lot of input gain, with distortion coming from every stage along the way in a reasonable balance so that the howling is controllable, and the notes are actually still distinguishable.
And if it is impossible to take my word for it, then by all means please read what Roger Mayer has to say about the same subject in his own words, describing the need to get past the sound of one device pushed into a square wave distortion waveform on its own, as was the case with the original FF unit.

And if you have an original FF, which won't give you the kind of gain you need to recreate Star Spangled Banner without turning the fuzz control to maximum, then you may begin to see why those of us who worked for Jimi changed all those pedals to one circuit or another, different configurations which would give him the gain and sustain he needed without making the notes into indistinguishable hash, and putting him outside of the feedback control envelope.

Hard to believe this is with the Fuzz knob off or at 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFgx9G7H7w

[Kind Of Loud]

i'm fully convinced, rediscovering my fuzz clones. very interesting, very simple. clearly explained.

so you put a resistor or a trimer on the collector of the second transistor ( 10 ... 22k ) , and a resistor up to 50k ( or trimer but not grounded ) , at the entrance of the fuzz ?
using some 2n525. then a 4,7 uf in the input and a 0,047 in the output ?
i suppose : a 33k at the collector of the first tranistor , is it right ? and a 470 R / 2k2 resistor just before the output cap ?

i heard again red house at Woodstock, and it clearly uses such fuzz settings.

thanks !

This is from R.G Keen. http://www.geofex.com/
Basically what Dave has already said.

There is a set of changes collectively referred to as the "Hendrix" mods or the "Roger Mayer" mods. These are

* Replace the 470 ohm output resistor with 1K
* Replace the 8.2K resistor at the collector of the second transistor with 18K
* Replace the 1K control in the emitter of the second transistor with 2K.

This mod primarily seems to increase the output level and gain of the second transistor.

Another is to connect a 50K pot, again as a series resistor, in series with the input of the circuit, before the 2.2uF input capacitor.

If that last one seems a little odd, think back to what I said about the low input impedance. With a low input impedance, the input loads a guitar significantly; the base can only move a few tens of millivolts before cutting off or saturating the first transistor. If you put a resistor in series with the guitar pickup, it raises the apparent source impedance of the pickup, making it look more like a current source (albeit a tiny one) and less like a voltage source. A signal from a current source lets the input of the effect seek it's own voltage level, and merely supplies a varying current. This can be much more linear than a voltage source drive. As a result, the variable resistor allow you to radically clean up the distortion that the FF produces, producing subtle shades of softer distortion.