The 6550 Experience

[neikeel]

To me it seems 90% of guitar players hear any old strat-through-old-marshall sound and think it cops hendrix

Oh dear, if you add a good wah, decent fuzz and relaxed feel playing I am afraid I am one of those people . I agree BOG is different but personally prefer the Experience stuff .

[daveweyer]

And the older gear kept coming into West Coast Organ and Amp along with the plexi stuff for repair, so Jimi must have wanted to keep it running to use whenever he felt like it. I know he liked the older Marshall stuff, all that "mojo" and the subtle tone differences.

[daveweyer]

Bill Bokey,
I'd love to hear your impressions of the old 6550s. How do they strike you as different from the new models available from Russia?

[Billy Batz]

To me it seems 90% of guitar players hear any old strat-through-old-marshall sound and think it cops hendrix

Oh dear, if you add a good wah, decent fuzz and relaxed feel playing I am afraid I am one of those people . I agree BOG is different but personally prefer the Experience stuff .

I guess its not that crazy but honestly I hear 99% of guitar players using a hendrix setup to get a hendrix tone and they are all missing something. It sounds more like all the other artists thatve used that same setup over the years but not hendrix. I originally gave thought to this because I thought it was ironic that all the study of minutia over the VH sound and I think those guys are 99% there but theres not at all the same scrutiny over Hendrix, people act as though you pick up any strat and old marshall and fuzz and bam- its there and whats missing must be "the hendrix factor". To the degree thats always a factor in anyones sound, sure, but I have heard few people actually nail his sound, even if theyve done justice to his playing style.

[Xplorer]

To me it seems 90% of guitar players hear any old strat-through-old-marshall sound and think it cops hendrix

Oh dear, if you add a good wah, decent fuzz and relaxed feel playing I am afraid I am one of those people . I agree BOG is different but personally prefer the Experience stuff .

I guess its not that crazy but honestly I hear 99% of guitar players using a hendrix setup to get a hendrix tone and they are all missing something. It sounds more like all the other artists thatve used that same setup over the years but not hendrix. I originally gave thought to this because I thought it was ironic that all the study of minutia over the VH sound and I think those guys are 99% there but theres not at all the same scrutiny over Hendrix, people act as though you pick up any strat and old marshall and fuzz and bam- its there and whats missing must be "the hendrix factor". To the degree thats always a factor in anyones sound, sure, but I have heard few people actually nail his sound, even if theyve done justice to his playing style.

+ 1 !!!

There's so much subtility in many various hendrix tones, attributed only to his playing, while very few of his tones have been really nailed. Even randy hansen sounds randy hansen.
It deserves a lot more work, and it has great perspectives now , with what Dave explained

[bill bokey]

Bill Bokey,
I'd love to hear your impressions of the old 6550s. How do they strike you as different from the new models available from Russia?

I'll tell you more about the old vs new 6550s with the SL69 I'll be modding soon. The Tung Sol RI weren't really broken in when I sold the amp and I didn't use your 6550s for too long, as the heater voltage was too high and I didn't want to damage them.
Nevertheless my first impressions were good, the old one being less stiff and fatter/warmer sounding. But as I kep^t modding the amp I never quite had the same setup with both types of tubes, so I'll definitely spend more time ABing them next time

[C J H]

double post...

[C J H]

triple post...

[C J H]

Very nice to be finally able to recap what has been going on here during the holidays! As usual both this and the "WestCoast" thread offered some nice pics, cool info and sweet clips!

When talking about clips I finally got hold on some mics and started experimenting with recording yesterday. Settled on this;
SM57 miced off-axis on one of the 55hz g12h-30s in my slant cab, adding a bit reverb in postrecording for the "livedepth". As I promised you guys some better ones after those crappy iPhonerecordings, enjoy;

https://soundcloud.com/pippo1448/machin ... ne-samples

https://soundcloud.com/pippo1448/machinegun-take1

Yep, machinegun-time. As usual nothing note-for-note, just trying my best to capture the "vibe" (..pun) of the original tune. 1 clip is just the first couple of bars over and over switching between neck/middle pup and fuzz/no fuzz. Second is just me jamming on the backingtrack available on youtube.

Here is the gear used;
62ri strat with ´69 CS pups (.. and still with badly worn frets), FullTone Clyde wah (buffer disengaged), Modded fuzz (the old JEN thing..), Dunlop JH Octavio, Sweetsound Mojovibe into Marshall JTM "Blackflag" replica running 6550´s in class B pushing two vintage cabs.

The Amp is untouched since those crappy iPhoneclips. Well not untouched, I´ve played it heaps, but haven´t changed the circuit or tubes. The Fuzz; I did try moving the leg on C3 as per your recommendation Dave but it made it way too wild for my taste.. and noisy so I put it back the way it was. It still has "volume" hardwired on full, fuzz is set around 8-9 and bias around 3-4 in the clips.

Sorry if the fuzz-discussion doesn´t belong since this is the 6550-thread. To sum up my own experience;
The 6550 in class-B is definitely adding something I was previously missing when going for Jimis´tone; I loved this amp with EL34s for other stuff but for late Jimi; atleast I´m covinced 6550s are the way to go!

I did have first-hand experience with something else these past days also affecting tone; micing and roomlayout.. So I agree very much with Shakti that no matter if we get the exact same gear Jimi used on that legendary NYE in ´69 and rig it up at home we are still going to miss something. I found that depth and levels of highs/lows were greatly affected by how and with what you mic up, not to mention where. I´m sure this is old news to most but I guess I´m trying to say that I agree with Shakti that there is always going to be some factors we can´t fully replicate. But off course we should keep these threads alive and try to get as close as we can!

Hope everyone had a great christmas, gotta get back to studying (.. and modding my jtm45 for el34´s).
Jake

[Xplorer]

i like your clips

very interesting, definitely something occuring that we hear into Jimi's later tones.
this thing occuring is quite present when you hear the two other machine gun versions from the 1999 cd . a bit different from the special night but still very close.

[bill bokey]

Cool clips !

Can you remind us how your am is set up ? B+ ? bias ? etc...

[C J H]

B+ is around 520 VDC IIRC and bias somewhere between 26-28 mA.

The amp is built like a single rectifier "blackflag" but with slightly higher filtering. All cans are 47uf instead of 33uf, yielding 47uF mains, 23,5 uF on PI and Screens. Dual 32uf on V1 and V2.

Preamp is pretty much a straight Superbass but WO mixercap and a 100pF (..or 500 pF, can´t remember) brightcap. Signalcaps are a mix between Sozos (all 0.22 uF) and mustards (all .1uF). NFB is 27k, again can´t remember to which tap but 8 ohm I think. V1-V3 are all 12ax7, new production tubes (2 tung sols and a mullard..). The 6550´s are TungSol RI´s from mother Russia.

Settings were; Pres:10 Bass:4 Middle:7 Treble:4+ Loudness I:7+ Loudness II:0

Settings on the MojoVibe were; Chorus (internal switch set to "vintage") Volume: 8+ Intenstity: 7+ Speed: 1 o´clock

Will get back with some more once my other Strat is back to life and for the fun of it I will find a 12at7 to drop in the PI until then as well.

Thanks for the compliments on the clips!
Jake

[peter25]

Awesome tones CJH. They are very close. They have that vibe to my ears. Great playing helps. Yeah the 6550 is the way to go. I was sceptical, but now I'm convinced.

[daveweyer]

I have to add my compliments as well CJH, great tones, sounding scary close. Put it in the right environment and you'll be able to tell for sure, anyone for carting their rigs around to all the old rooms Jim played?
Be kinda fun if you had an unlimited budget.........

[Billy Batz]

Al these clips sound close enough to sound like they could be another performance on another night. Its why I think the tone of that particular performance is all in the room and the way it was micd.

Lets look at this from another perspective. Is there any info on who produced that live album and the engineers who recorded it?