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

[daveweyer]

Frenchie,
Glad to hear there is some generational awareness of the tendency of some in the Jimi history field to become the authority.
Forensics is great, I get to learn along with everyone else who is willing to sift through all the pieces.
I pretty well know what I did, and the techs who worked with me know what they did, so unless we all have a reason to lie about it, our version of events must eventually fit into the story and make sense, even if it displaces somebody's pet theory.

And Xplorer, the fret was the 16th, check out a few posts back where I quote Neal Moser on the subject.
I think there was a notch on the 12th fret on one guitar, but I can get no verification on that.

[frenchie]

Frenchie,
Glad to hear there is some generational awareness of the tendency of some in the Jimi history field to become the authority.
Forensics is great, I get to learn along with everyone else who is willing to sift through all the pieces.
I pretty well know what I did, and the techs who worked with me know what they did, so unless we all have a reason to lie about it, our version of events must eventually fit into the story and make sense, even if it displaces somebody's pet theory.

And Xplorer, the fret was the 16th, check out a few posts back where I quote Neal Moser on the subject.
I think there was a notch on the 12th fret on one guitar, but I can get no verification on that.

Don't worry dave you're the absolute last person i was thinking of , when i told about those blatant ego and money driven distortions of reality i felt sometimes .... I mean it's pretty obvious that everything you say "smell" right ... it's pretty instinctive ...

[Xplorer]

+ 1000 , it totaly feels right.

Dave, you also talked previously about some roger mayer prototype, this sounds coool, do you remember more about this ?

Also, i think we talked a bit about his 45/100 but mainly about the modded later superleads.
you started to say that you removed the kt66 in them, allways. Did you put some 6550 in there too ? and maybe some other mods ?

the 3/4 wounded pickups story sounds very cool, thanks for sharing it !

[Tone seaker]

So again were the amps used at the 1970 Berkeley show modded 6550 amps. Thks

[VelvetGeorge]

It could not be said any better Frenchie, bravo! I always say that the bullshit meter here at Metro is very sensitive, we can sniff hyperbole and hidden agendas a mile away. And we've chased a few bullshit artists out of here with their tail between their legs. I'm happy to say that Dave here has stood up to scrutiny and I personally believe the info and experiences he is sharing are genuine. I suspect investigating old photos and gear will corroborate what he is saying.

Plus, the first hand account of the gear is priceless for any Jimi fan. Epic thread!

george

[swankmotee]

AMEN to that G! I also feel that most of these yahoos need to take electronics 101 before sticking their foot up their butts!

[Tazin]

Dave, Did your outfit (West Coast Organ and Amp) install the voltage selectors on Jimi's '69 USA export amps (Marshall's) so they could be used overseas in different countries?

[touchnerd]

Dave, very much thank you for all gear details and stories you're sharing with us. Do you remember any mods done to JH Univibes? Was there any? You have said about different than stock circuit boards in Fuzz Face enclosures, do you have any notes on that, that you oki to share?

Thanks again. It's amazing to read it all

[daveweyer]

George,
Thanks for the thumbs up! I don't have a book to sell, or a pedal to hock, but would still encourage anyone viewing these posts to be REASONABLY skeptical. I'm only offering first hand fragments of a much larger puzzle which is obviously still missing some pieces, and if what I say doesn't fit, then it needs to be challenged with genuine information which can be used to resolve the discrepancies, either way.

This is nowhere more evident than the printed information regarding the shipment of amps to West Coast Organ and Amp. There are some serial numbers listed which supposedly were retrieved from Marshall's own company records, and indeed, some of these amps appeared to have ended up with J.H. EXP. stenciled on the bottom and have been snapped up by collectors as THE actual amps from this or that gig.
But when those amps arrived at West Coast, and we finally got past the surprise of seeing "Jim Morrison LTD" printed on the boxes, we discovered that the amps listed on the shipping document were not the same ones in the shipment.
We called Marshall right away to see why they couldn't even get their own name printed on the boxes, and why the shipment actually contained different amps than stated on the document.
If Marshall kept phone logs from that day, you would see several calls from Lynette Faust to shipping and receiving at Marshall trying to figure out what was going on.
In the end we got ahold of some guy who supposedly had pulled the amps from production and organized the shipment.

First of all, they didn't even realize that their boxes had the wrong name printed on them. Secondly, they didn't even care what amps were in the shipment, the guy telling me on the phone, "Just go ahead and prepare the stuff and get it to them; it doesn't matter, that's all we had lying around I could find for the shipment." Meantime I kept asking, "Are you sure Jimi wanted two trem units, is this what he really wanted?" "Are there enough bass units?"
The answer was 'I don't know, that's all we had'. Who cares?

And so it went, not just with Marshall, who was struggling with growing pains and lack of organization, but Fender, and most all the major companies who were trying to keep up during the incredibly hectic days of the late '60s, where most of the people employed at the outfits were young, underpaid, and stoned.

You could find literally ANYTHING amiss in brand new products which had supposedly passed quality control, and I spent a lot of time repairing brand new products, just so they wouldn't have to be shipped back to the factory and suffer the inherent delay.

It turns out that Jimi wanted a lot more bottoms for the eight or nine tops, even though Marshall thought that they wouldn't be needed since the bass player would likely be using Sunn or Guild bottoms anyway.
To make up the slack we rebuilt old Marshall bottoms, recovered them to make them look new, and used a mix of existing speakers which weren't blown, and augmented them with the alnico Rolas from Thomas Organ Co, and even added some Jensens, the special "Vibranto" series 100 watt models which we obtained from Yale Radio on Sunset Blvd, who was a Jensen distributor. (2 bottoms)

To top off the madness, when we went to pay for the Jensens and (100) 6550s we had charged to our account for the equipment build up, we were told by a very nice(stoned) employee named Don, that we should just forget about it, that it was so interesting to be involved with the whole Jimi thing, we could just have the stuff! And this happened many times! I could never understand how. Didn't anybody keep track of all this stuff? The answer was a pretty resounding NO.

I'm making a point here about the times, and the accuracy of supposed "records" which people obtain and then without contextualizing the information through the zeitgeist of the times, imagine must be factual, and distribute for the historical record as truth.

Imagine obtaining the records from Yale Radio and thinking you had some clue about what went where. You'd have lots of printed data of course, but it would be a totally inaccurate picture. (And TONS of Yale Radio parts went into Jimi's stuff, and Neil Young's, and Crosby Stills and Nash's, and Ike and Tina Turner's, and Iron Butterfly's, and Vanilla Fudge's, and so on and so on.)

I wish I could provide the actual models and serial numbers for the West Coast shipment, but I didn't keep notes about that, not my department so to speak. I can tell you that nobody can even agree on the number of amps shipped, or bottoms for that matter.
The only available historical document of the amps is apparently the list provided generously by George from the pages of the Hendrix history, and at least some of those have been identified by serial number, whatever that may mean in the context of the swapping and switching that went on during the touring years.
The reason West Coast Organ and Amp disappeared about the same time Jimi did, was because of completely disorganized and inadequate record keeping, which was all well and good until the men in the suits showed up and wanted records detailing where all the money went.
As I mentioned before, in the Jimi world NOTHING is as it seems, and I was one of the culprits, not out of deviousness, but out of necessity. Numbers and models mean something, but probably not what you think.
West Coast stickers mean the equipment at least visited us, and the collected information MAY mean something, just don't count on it. The pictures, FROM THE DAYS the equipment was on stage and being used, are the best graphic evidence. If anyone can find OLD pictures with enough resolution to see any numbers or mods, then it would be a great help.
If a REAL, actual owned and played Hendrix amp was not worth $100K, then it would probably be a lot easier to trace its origins, and decipher its actual lineage.

Anyway, I most respectfully hope you get my point.
DW

[tsma]

In a word: WOW!

This is riveting stuff! (And darn funny, too!)

All of us dorks with guitars and amps thank you!


-bryan

[shakti]

Dave,

what tolex did you use the recover the speaker cabs? What about grille cloth, was that replaced too? Where did you get that stuff from? And what about logos?

[daveweyer]

Shakti,
We had a nice supply of materials from the manufacturers of the equipment, but don't be at all surprised if you see a Marshall bottom with Fender Tolex on it, Marshall grille cloth, and a mismatched logo, or half a logo.
We'd go stock until we ran out of materials. If you could pull some of the bottoms apart you'd see new baffles made out of whatever was available, backs the same way, and probably some corner joints on the material which left a little to be desired. Rick was just learning the covering art, and it took us a while to perfect it.

[daveweyer]

Tazin,
I think we had to add some of the voltage selectors. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it seems to me that exports to the American only market were shipped with the transformer connected for 120, even though the taps were normally there for accommodating other supply voltages. Some companies like Fender, actually made export transformers which would only show up in models slated for export.
I do remember using an American transformer on one of the Marshalls which was only good for the USA, and ending up having to replace it with a multi-tapped primary model.
Later we provided some auto-transfomers for using USA only amps on the continent, I don't know if Jimi used any of these.

[daveweyer]

Tone Seeker and Xplorer,
Generally I replaced everything that came in with 6550s, and that may well mean the Berkley performance amps.
It was just standard procedure to upgrade the tubes, since the others were usually bad or weak/ microphonic.
I have nothing against the other types, just trying to please Jimi with more reliability, since it frustrated him no end when the amps blew during a performance.

The 45/100 amps were no exception. The reality of the situation was that I was trying to make 45/100s out of the Plexis, since they really kicked ass. A quick look at the schematics show almost identical circuits except for plate voltage and output tube P-P impedance.

And for the strange Fuzztones with unidentifiable circuits:

"We had another distortion circuit that was used that was not of the Fuzz Face configuration. You've got to realize that at that time I didn't have a casting, so we could put our electronics into the actual round Fuzz Face casting. If you see a round Fuzz Face on the floor, if you don't open it up and look inside, you don't know what circuitry is inside it, do you? Because there were quite a few Fuzz Face castings lying around that didn't work, so we took advantage of the outer casing. It's the same thing with the actual Fuzz Face circuit configuration - this is what I tried to tamper with."
Roger Mayer

So I'm guessing that was the situation there. The only time I would touch them was if they didn't work.


And now, about the Strat with the Tele neck. I contacted Neal Moser to see where the Hendrix In The West info came from:

"That may be true, someone else told me it was on that “Hendrix in the west” album. It may very well have not been on the cover, but the Newport poster. I was too busy gigging back them to pay any attention to any of that stuff. Remember, at that time Jimi was Jimi Hendrix, not JIMI HENDRIX, the legend. I just did the neck exchange and noticed that on the old neck there were notches filed in the frets and after messing with the guitar a bit I noticed that he had used them to get that intro sound in “Foxy Lady”.

You can quote this if you’d like. I don’t have time to post on yet ANOTHER social media page. haha"
Neal Moser

Let me know if I have missed any important points........

[Xplorer]

very cool ! Thanks to your friend Neal Moser !

since you made these superleads close to the 45/100, with higher power, did you also made them shared cathode like the 45/100 ? and did you also work on the tone stack values / preamp filtering ? like 16 uf, 32 uf , 32+32 ...

oh !! and one question which may haven't been asked yet, please do you remember the preamp tube models for V1 and V2 ( V3 being a 12AT7 or 5687 , which brand by the way ? ) that gave satisfaction to Jimi ? were they mixed types ?

and after Jimi, i think we would all agree that we should probably ask you some cool storys about Neil Young, crosby still nash , etc etc ... in another thread. What do you think ?

^^ thanks