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

[matriarch]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22507 ... show_music

[daveweyer]

That Fillmore East tone really sounded like a 6550 amp, hard shoulder clean sound with breakup only at the top of the range, and most of the distortion coming from the fuzz. It looks to me like he uses the guitar volume to get the fuzz when he wants it. When he punches in the Wah, it has very little effect on the fuzz volume, but the fuzz actually diminishes the sound of the Wah by becoming the main harmonic generator.
This would be consistent with a modified fuzz, but one which had more gain from the second stage, and an input stage set up as a current source i.e. an input resistor.
Doesn't it seem to you that increasing the guitar volume mainly increases the fuzz, say as opposed to a large volume increase?

Sony kept interrupting the performance with advertising............

[shakti]

I'll be sure to post my impressions here as soon as I get the 6550s into my own amp. I must say that the settings you posted here have put me in the right direction. Cranking the presence control a little further really does help in balancing the bypassed and the fuzz sound, and makes it sound better if you roll back the volume a little even with no fuzz engaged. It cuts through better, which is essential for that snappy, clean-ish Who Knows tone.
Throughout the BOG recordings there are sooooo many different shades between clean and full on fuzz, but we know there's onle one fuzz in action, and you can see him switch it on and off. So some of the clean sounds are guitar straight into amp, yet it's often very hard to tell whether it's a clean straight sound, or a clean sound with fuzz and volume rolled back. A good visual clue is in Stepping Stone as I've mentioned before. He plays with a semi-clean straight into amp tone, then steps on the fuzz and gets a considerable sustain and gain boost, but not so much volume.

Funnily enough, one pedal that always gave me a decent approximation of the BOG fuzz sound is a Pro Analog Power Driver. It's a boost pedal based on the Coloursound Overdriver, so it's a silicon transistor based overdrive/boost, but you can set it to extract a lot of gain from the transistors, to where it really begins to sound fuzzy. It works great to get that sort of "velcro" ripping gain that you can hear in the Stepping Stone recording, but it doesn't clean up very well. A West Coast modified fuzz is intriguing, perhaps that would do it? The thing is, if you really want to know if you've found the "secret" fuzz, you have to replicate the whole chain so you get the whole thing interacting in the same way that it would have done that special night. That means coiled cords, Uni-Vibe preamp, daisy-chained amps and all (as well as a good sounding maple fretboard Strat with low output pickups).

You can hear that velcroish sounding fuzz on the Baggy's sessions as well, just listen to Ezy Ryder. It's not as wild and splattery as a cranked regular Fuzzface, it's warmer and tighter yet has a lot of gain and sustain. West Coast mod perhaps? Or a ROger Mayer creation? I'm still curious to try the new Dunlop FFM6 which is supposedly close to an Octavia (minus the octave up part), which is itself close to an Axis fuzz circuit.

[Xplorer]

but we know there's onle one fuzz in action, and you can see him switch it on and off. So some of the clean sounds are guitar straight into amp

i'd say that all we can be sure of, is that there was only one fuzz enclosure ...
i really don't hear a strat straight into the amp, for clean sounds, no way for me. you couldn't get these notes without the help of the clean fuzz. it'd be too clean, too thin, the long bends wouldn't be consistent like it is with a clean fuzz, for clean tones. and you might say : crank the amp ... no , same thing + different results.

off course it's an hypothesis, but we're talking Hendrix fuzz, not the usual fuzz we can see arround. everything is possible.
at least, when testing it, it fully answers the strange reaction of the fuzz which can give special cleans and raging endless notes at the same time. two fuzz.

we can either say that we can see him switching between a fuzz for cleans, and a double fuzz for raging tones.
add to that the volume of the strat, controling the cut of the clean tones, and the wildness of the raging tones.
really it works.

[matriarch]

Couple of things. ONE fuzz is seen at all times. This "clean" fuzz or whatever such gibberish has no basis in reality.

As to the BOG vid, it depends on the tune. The fuzz is not even used on some tunes (Who Knows, Changes) it is on/off on others.
The straight sound can be heard on Who Knows, save for the Octavia at the end.

[Xplorer]

Couple of things. ONE fuzz is seen at all times. This "clean" fuzz or whatever such gibberish has no basis in reality.

As to the BOG vid, it depends on the tune. The fuzz is not even used on some tunes (Who Knows, Changes) it is on/off on others.
The straight sound can be heard on Who Knows, save for the Octavia at the end.

for you, yes.
for me, no way.
each one his own truth !
or someone will have to sound BOG at all levels with an on/off fuzz, cleans, raging tones ... with a fuzz OFF and ON, and playing with the strat volume .
Even Randy Hansen attempted to do it, it doesn't sound like it.

just try a 45/100 with your strat straight in it, test various amp levels and settings, various volume settings on the strat .... and show us what you end up with in a clip.
Now get a Dunlop blue Hendrix fuzz ( this one works better than many others i've tried for this purpose ) , put the fuzz down to zero, the volume to the max, and adjust the strat volume to your liking, you'll get all the shades of the clean BOG Tones, and even a bit wild sometimes. then get back with clips to compare.

that's what i'll do anyway, it'll maybe be more clear then.

you have to think out of the box sometimes, and what you recommend has no basis regarding the real tone. you see one fuzz face enclosure and you're getting quick conclusions from it, not knowing what's Inside.
testing things the way it LOOKS and not hearing the same results .... well, it means that there's something missing.
you'll argue that it's because of the amp, the cables, the univibe, the speakers, the Fillmore east etc etc etc ... i know that, but it won't do it.
now testing things the way it could be, logicaly, regarding sound tests and getting conclusions from this, and getting the same results ... ( with no effort ) which can LOOK the same, all in just the same unique fuzz enclosure, now that's interesting, i think.

+ it is spot on to what Dave said, regarding the Fuzz and amp settings he observed by himself back then.
+ Jimi was after more, more ... i think even for cleans ! and the wild fuzz tones are Wilder than a normal fuzz + colored in a special way.
+ see how well the univibe, octavia react spot on thanks to this tiny change of perception regarding the settings.

that's a lot ...

i saw your great video of who knows, and what you call the straight sound is simply the volume of the strat rolled down , for example at the end of who knows, before he plays machine gun, to tune his strat. you can see him dialing with the strat volume btw, to get back to the normal level.
so one might make a confusion thinking it's a fuzz OFF because it sounds clean and straight, but the clean fuzz is ON.

Now for Machine gun, ( fantastic one btw, the recording has been improved versus the version i had ) the video can say different storys, as allways.
right before he starts this endless note, you can clearly see him turning up the strat volume, i think that it is very clear. to me, this pushs the third stage of the fuzz ( or anything added to the "clean fuzz" ) , which was set ON ( somewhere between the begining of machine gun and a little before the endless note ) , when he kicked the footswith of the fuzz, going from the "clean fuzz "to the "clean fuzz + raging fuzz".

by the way, this site is cool to save youtube, daily motion and vimeo videos , so you don't have the damn commercials :

http://savevideo.me/ru/

[daveweyer]

Well, Martriarch has thrown down the gauntlet.
If you want to convince him, you're going to have to come up with a clip that really captures the sound. Then you can discuss whether or not that sounds like the actual performance.
I don't think the fuzz had to be any more than a two transistor unit, with maybe a 10K OR 20K input resistor, and the output taken from the collector of Q2 directly.
That would allow you to use the pedal in the circuit for both clean and dirty distortion, simply turning up the guitar volume knob would control the gain in the first stage for the fuzzy stuff. You could probably crunch the amp with only a third or half guitar volume.

[Xplorer]

indeed, but i think that even in front of a spot on two fuzz stuff clip showing all the shades of the bog tone, he'll still say
"nah , it's the standard fuzz way up, and the amp up to 10, and no 6550, it's all BS" ...



yes that could also do it. if the volume of the strat works that well in such configuration, to get from a clean boost to a raging tone with the same caracteristics, why not. but the cleans would have to look like the cleans from a fuzz with the volume up and the fuzz down, maybe not easy but that's possible.

the fuzz base i did a year ago was a germanium fuzz initialy, with a switchable third stage, and a switchable octavia section.
there was also a switch to take the output directly from the collector of Q2, for more gain.
but it was low gain germaniums, not fitting the bog tone.
i don't think that boosting the "clean fuzz" should be made with much fuzz gain. rather volume, once more , and it sounds a bit fuzzy anyway, but more articulated, and just pushing the preamp even more, hence some cool feedbacks, endless notes ...
so that's what disturbs me a with a fuzz providing more fuzz, when you turn the strat volume up. i'd rather like more sustain.
i'm not sure if taking it from Q2 directly ( still in this perspective with fuzz gain to zero and volume on 10 ) would bring enough power.

anyway, it requires many tests and clips, to confront ideas.

what will come out in the end , even if all of our various theorys won't proove anything, really, is that we'll get a tone closer and closer, not bad.

[Xplorer]

wow, i must say that the preamp of the univibe has a huge role into the bog tone. we already knew that but i wanted to work on it more.

the interaction of the fuzz ( volume up and fuzz down ) and the univibe preamp is amazing.
without it, it's ... no way ...

i simulated the Hendrix univibe "bypassed" , by turning the intensity down to zero on my RM Voodoo vibe. the bias control helps also to set the range of frequencys , so it affects the tone too but anyway, it's probably set the way an original univibe is. i'll try with a megavibe too but i prefer the Voodoo vibe with this amp, and the megavibe has less volume out when compared, but if i lower the Voodoo vibe volume, it's really the same but each has tiny difference, and the Voodoo vibe has more control.

so i compared this non true bypass vibe simulated, to the true bypassed Voodoo vibe, and the difference is huge.
it drasticaly change the result for electric ladyland for example, or who knows, new rising sun Berkeley , etc etc ...

same observation for the "clean fuzz" . without it, you can play the non true bypass univibe, it'll color the sound but it won't be the same.
really, this interaction between these two precise elements, and the 45/100, is very interesting.

anyway, i must say that with this amp presence set high, after all , the fuzz volume at max and fuzz gain down to zero is not so far from this, and with the fuzz completely bypassed ( and the amp in these conditions ) , it's after all possible that bog "cleans" were without fuzz.
i did more tests and i think it's better with it, but without , mmh .... not so far. so i could be wrong off course but i keep thinking that without it, there's something missing.

[daveweyer]

Fuzz was probably between 2 and 4. You can't turn it all the way up, that shorts out the feedback and then the guitar volume control has no effect on changing the gain of Q1---because it's already at infinity (whatever its maximum gain can be) when the fuzz control is turned all the way up.
Using the guitar to control the fuzz intensity requires that the fuzz control be less than maximum.
It's a summing amp, the current in the guitar pickup against the current in the 100K feedback resistor.......

[swankmotee]

Exactly Dave as I mentioned somewhere way back in the thread the fuzz being maxed created the squealing oscillation and sent the trannies into cutoff where the signal completely drops out and high pitched squeal takes its place. But if you back off the fuzz control a couple of cents the squealing will stop and the signal will come back on. You can hear an example of this on "I Don't Live Today" from the Jimi Hendrix Concerts album where throughout the tune this cutting out goes on. In other words, to get the most effect at the volume knob on the guitar it has to backed off a bit. On the BOG gig he ran the FF on quite a bit and just turned up and down to taste and that is the enhanced clean/grind thing that Xplorer is describing not two independent levels of gain that are switched back and forth. All of us FF owners know that when its on and the guitar vol is down that it acts like an enhancer that brightens and sweetens the clean tones specially on the neck and middle pups.

[matriarch]

Fuzz was full. All you gotta do is use your ears. When he used a Si FF, like late 1970, as soon as he hits the wah ON w/ the FF ON, the oscillating starts.

Before that it was Ge FF. Again w/ the fuzz full. There are a few occurrences on the BOG shows where the wah is heel-back w/ the fuzz ON and a low squeal is heard, though nothing as savage as the Si FF.



The I Don't Live Today (from the Concerts album) was likely a shorted cord cause that sound doesn't appear for the entire show save for that one tune.

If the fuzz was not full and turned down, how come every latter 1970 show with the Si FF, it squeals like a banshee when used w/ the wah?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJx5626euOo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ0NOKmxM0M

[swankmotee]

Every single BC108 or 183 version does this Carl and you know this too! Yeah cords were a problem back then but silicon fuzzes do this with modern cables, every one of mine will do it except for the germanium version.

[Xplorer]

Fuzz was full. All you gotta do is use your ears. When he used a Si FF, like late 1970, as soon as he hits the wah ON w/ the FF ON, the oscillating starts.

Before that it was Ge FF. Again w/ the fuzz full. There are a few occurrences on the BOG shows where the wah is heel-back w/ the fuzz ON and a low squeal is heard, though nothing as savage as the Si FF.



The I Don't Live Today (from the Concerts album) was likely a shorted cord cause that sound doesn't appear for the entire show save for that one tune.

If the fuzz was not full and turned down, how come every latter 1970 show with the Si FF, it squeals like a banshee when used w/ the wah?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJx5626euOo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ0NOKmxM0M

it doesn't sound fuzz gain to me. a fuzz volume , boosted, can produce this.
your "all along the watchtower" links sound totaly like the sounds i got with the vol up and fuzz down. believe me or not.
if i go the fuzz up and vol lower, it'll be far from it.

with the fuzz gain to 9,5 or 10, you end up with a fuzzy mess, which isn't the Hendrix sound. if you clean it up with the strat volume, i agree, you'll get something closer, but this isn't it ... it has too many limits regarding the Hendrix sound.
your ears should tell you how his saturated tone is very transparent at the same time. good example by the way, thanks.

before, i used to do it your way, and i was convinced like you. i totaly hear what you're saying.
but in the case of a fuzz with the fuzz gain up to the max or just a little under it, Rolling down the strat volume too much to get cleans will kill the magic balance of this special signal. and when bypassed, strat straight into the amp, this magic balance doesn't occur anymore.

this is something beautiful occuring in these conditions ( volume up, maybe boosted, fuzz down ) , delivering a better tone, meaty , transparent, rich in harmonics, cuting, bright, bold, creamy ... all at the same time. enhancing the univibe tone, the octavia tone ...
this is different from the bright effect you're describing Tommy, this isn't what i meant.

don't forget that it's still a fuzz, you look like you think it's a transparent volume pedal or something .... it is not. it's going through the transistors stages, with no need of the fuzz control up, and it'll also push the preamp. As Dave said, "it's not like there's no fuzz". and it can be boosted too, with i don't know ... a west coast mod on a silicon fuzz, a secret RM stuff, a third stage, a second fuzz, we don't know. we can try and hear.

that's how you get the difference between randy hansen and jimi Hendrix. IMHO.
i hear you anyway.

[swankmotee]

The difference between RH and JH is night and day! LOL! Sorry to beat a dead horse Xplorer but Carl is right that the fuzz knob was cranked and I wish you much luck on your hypothesis and tonal quest but you're trying to conjure mystical things that just didn't exsist at that time. There weren't any multi-switches for different stages of gain and Hendrix just danced on the FF all night.