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

[Xplorer]

i guess we all have various ways to get there what counts is that we may have fun in the end, right ?

saying Carl is right about it .... well, it's all relative, right ? , and so is my hypothesis.

you don't need to wish me luck, i think i'm there already. i'll try to do some better clips which may show all the shades, and answer the contradictions. then i'll compare it to the way you do it, and it'll be a blind test ok ? fun ?

i never mentioned a multiswitch stuff. i just mentioned the one and unique switch, having another function than on/off. that could answers the various contradictions we're facing sometimes, regarding his tone.

[matriarch]

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.

I know we've not agreed on much, but some of the fiction in this thread is just sad. There's no magic potion here. Jimi's Marshalls are what Marshall's sounded like back then. Parts changes, tube changes, whatever. They are still THAT ERA Marshall and sound that way.
As to the fuzz and where the controls are set, just listen to the shows. You can tell which shows are Ge or Si FF just by listening to what happens when he hits the wah.
Roger Mayer states the Octavia wasn't used often live due to fear of it getting ripped off. Wouldn't it stand to reason the same fears would apply to a one-off custom FF? Studio- sure.....live, I doubt it.

This thread is as far-fetch as some of the VH myth threads. Let it go. Nobody will get those tones regardless of what was used.

[mathd]

I think xplorer is right.
I have been playing like this for months.
Maby hendrix did not do it this way. but to me, its the only way to have "the hendrix sound". Everything else fail.

[Xplorer]

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.

I know we've not agreed on much, but some of the fiction in this thread is just sad. There's no magic potion here. Jimi's Marshalls are what Marshall's sounded like back then. Parts changes, tube changes, whatever. They are still THAT ERA Marshall and sound that way.
As to the fuzz and where the controls are set, just listen to the shows. You can tell which shows are Ge or Si FF just by listening to what happens when he hits the wah.
Roger Mayer states the Octavia wasn't used often live due to fear of it getting ripped off. Wouldn't it stand to reason the same fears would apply to a one-off custom FF? Studio- sure.....live, I doubt it.

This thread is as far-fetch as some of the VH myth threads. Let it go. Nobody will get those tones regardless of what was used.

i understand. well, this is still relative truths.

Ge ans SI, yes, we can hear the différences. this doesn't compromise my theory at all.
Roger mayer story ... well, why having fear regarding JH custom fuzz ? i think they were almost all this way anyway.

VH myths .... well , what you recommend, good thing to mention it, is myth and fiction, i think. or peoples would sound Hendrix, they don't.
arguing that it's because of Hendrix soul, fingers, amp mods, theater acoustic, speakers, recording, cables etc etc .... and that we'll never get the same conditions ... well it has its limits, and i think it's totaly possible to get these tones anyway.

what i described didn't come from nowhere, and what Dave said made sense.
i think that these amps from back then, or good replicas, can get to these tones with these conditions.

if you could stop with these " " , this would be great , you don't need this at every comment to state your thought. this isn't a cow boy confrontation he he.

[yladrd61]

Say what you will about my friend Randy Hansen, however he is the closest thing to Jimi Hendrix that I have ever seen. And he is light years ahead of you guys
http://youtu.be/AjdZDOfszr4?list=UUy3WW ... FqwlfY45og
http://youtu.be/R_eHBelX12A?list=UUy3WW ... FqwlfY45og
http://youtu.be/pRiEM9o-RSw
http://youtu.be/DKSHAn65Q6g

[matriarch]

Say what you will about my friend Randy Hansen, however he is the closest thing to Jimi Hendrix that I have ever seen. And he is light years ahead of you guys
http://youtu.be/AjdZDOfszr4?list=UUy3WW ... FqwlfY45og
http://youtu.be/R_eHBelX12A?list=UUy3WW ... FqwlfY45og
http://youtu.be/pRiEM9o-RSw
http://youtu.be/DKSHAn65Q6g

Randy doesn't sound like Jimi IMO. As far as how good he is, speak for yourself. I think he's good but I've heard guys play the Hendrix stuff better, IMO.

[matriarch]

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.

I know we've not agreed on much, but some of the fiction in this thread is just sad. There's no magic potion here. Jimi's Marshalls are what Marshall's sounded like back then. Parts changes, tube changes, whatever. They are still THAT ERA Marshall and sound that way.
As to the fuzz and where the controls are set, just listen to the shows. You can tell which shows are Ge or Si FF just by listening to what happens when he hits the wah.
Roger Mayer states the Octavia wasn't used often live due to fear of it getting ripped off. Wouldn't it stand to reason the same fears would apply to a one-off custom FF? Studio- sure.....live, I doubt it.

This thread is as far-fetch as some of the VH myth threads. Let it go. Nobody will get those tones regardless of what was used.

i understand. well, this is still relative truths.

Ge ans SI, yes, we can hear the différences. this doesn't compromise my theory at all.
Roger mayer story ... well, why having fear regarding JH custom fuzz ? i think they were almost all this way anyway.

VH myths .... well , what you recommend, good thing to mention it, is myth and fiction, i think. or peoples would sound Hendrix, they don't.
arguing that it's because of Hendrix soul, fingers, amp mods, theater acoustic, speakers, recording, cables etc etc .... and that we'll never get the same conditions ... well it has its limits, and i think it's totaly possible to get these tones anyway.

what i described didn't come from nowhere, and what Dave said made sense.
i think that these amps from back then, or good replicas, can get to these tones with these conditions.

if you could stop with these " " , this would be great , you don't need this at every comment to state your thought. this isn't a cow boy confrontation he he.

What compromises your theory is you cannot account for the wah/ fuzz combination oscillating with the fuzz's controls set the way you claim is the sound. Case closed as far as I'm concerned. That alone blows your theory out the water.

[daveweyer]

Gotta remember that it's the output impedance of the device that's plugged into the fuzz which determines how much of the AC feedback is shorted. If it's close to zero, the first stage gain goes to infinity, even if the second stage gain is unaffected. This is also the case if the fuzz control is turned down. All the fuzz control does is short out the AC feedback to Q1 and bypass the emitter resistor on Q2 to give it more gain at the same time.
So any low impedance on the input can turn the device into an oscillator, which is what happens when you hear that squealing sound. The device is oscillating up above the 50K range, and you hear a subharmonic of that; because the unit is max out on the waveform, there is no ability to pass audio, it just modulates the HF wave a bit.
A lot of things can make it oscillate, especially those crappy cables Jimi used, the battery, the state of the Wah, etc etc.
So hearing a squeal when a Wah is energized is common and has several causes.
One thing it usually means is that the fuzz circuit is a close relative of the original design, a summing amp.

And one more thing to keep in mind, the first transistor in that circuit has only about .2 volts on its base junction; any negative going wave sends the device into cutoff, which means a lot of distortion with even the smallest signal.
So negative feedback from the Q2 emitter is needed to clean up that waveform to keep any semblance of a clean signal.
So you can't just turn down the guitar for getting that because if the fuzz control is all the way up you get a clipped waveform anyway. You have to have some negative feedback to get the range from clean to real dirty by just using your guitar volume control. That was really the accidental magic of the original FF.

THAT'S WHY, IN ALL THE HENDRIX FF UNITS THAT CAME THROUGH WEST COAST FOR REPAIR, I NEVER SAW ANY WITH THE FUZZ CONTROL TURNED ALL THE WAY UP, EVER!
And I can't imagine the Hendrix roadies carefully turning all the fuzz controls down in that big metal box of pedals they toted around just so they could fool me into believing that Jimi never turned the fuzz control all the way up.

[Xplorer]

What compromises your theory is you cannot account for the wah/ fuzz combination oscillating with the fuzz's controls set the way you claim is the sound. Case closed as far as I'm concerned. That alone blows your theory out the water

this isn't an argument at all, you blow yourself out the water.
maybe you didn't experiment much with your toys, and you just spit on anything different from your .... faith in some potential myths.
the case is closed for you, ok fine, i hear you. I hope that we can continue our crazy stupid bad theorys without disturbing you.

what Dave said, from what he directly saw and did, made so much sense, and it sounds like it.

Randy Hansen is a fantastic guitar player, very good for Hendrix, and he's playing Hendrix through his own filter, which differs from other "Hendrix players" , playing with their own different filter.
i imagine that all combined, they'd be a fantastic Hendrix !
no disrespect for Randy Hansen at all, and i heard him live near Seattle, it was amazing.
the only thing i said is that his tone isn't the Hendrix tone. it makes you think of it, a lot, but it's different. because ..... one thing going among some others, is that he's going the carlygtr way a bit, i think.

[Tone seaker]

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.

I could not disagree more. RH is amazing and his tone is very close to Hendrix. Lets see you duplicate this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A28-ur ... A&index=27

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqpYGJ0 ... A&index=26

[swankmotee]

Toneseeker, Randy Hansen is a very good cover artist for Hendrix but he has nothing of the originality or creative spark that Jimi had. I can and have copped Jimi in different gigs but am not interested in being another clone of someone that has already come and gone. I'll leave that up to you guys to bitch and whine about who is the best!LOL!

[frenchie]

Toneseeker, Randy Hansen is a very good cover artist for Hendrix but he has nothing of the originality or creative spark that Jimi had

that is true swankmotee ...... adding a brick on top of the great pyramid of ghysea doesn't make you the builder of the highest pyramid , just a guy who knows how to climb .....
he climbs with a robust sense of style though

[Xplorer]

+1

to be a Hendrix, you'd have to invent some castle made of sand, electric ladyland, machine gun, little wing , so many wonders ... just like breathing.
+ sound better the first time than any other cover attempts made even decades after
+ do a deep revolution in the music field in a very short time
+ all that before 27 years old
+ make peoples Wonder about your tone on forums, 45 years later
+ be the coolest guy on earth
+ ..........
...........
.....

no one will ever reach the ankles of Jimi Hendrix.

But Randy Hansen is cool to listen to, lot of good things in it for sure and he's soooo much better than so many famous guitar players. i wish i'd hear more guitar players like him on the radio !

[Tone seaker]

Toneseeker, Randy Hansen is a very good cover artist for Hendrix but he has nothing of the originality or creative spark that Jimi had. I can and have copped Jimi in different gigs but am not interested in being another clone of someone that has already come and gone. I'll leave that up to you guys to bitch and whine about who is the best!LOL!

I agree RH is no Hendrix when it comes to music writing or Improvisation. But I thought this was all about tone and RH has Tone and chops. I try and channel Hendrix at every gig but play very few Hendrix songs since most of my stuff is original. A lot of times I think what would Hendrix play here and go for it.

[Tone seaker]

You guys are talking about tone and the Univibe affect on it. I use a Deja Vibe that is supposed to be just like the Univibe. What do you guys think about it? Have any of you tried it or compared it to others?