NPR Profiles did a great job of putting together this 4-part series titled “The Life and Music of Wes Montgomery”. I’ve put links to each part in the post below. Dig those beautiful sounds.
In a previous post I mentioned that I intended to make some improvements to one of my guitar amps. I have had my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe for years and it’s been a great workhorse amp. Among my general observations of this amp:
The stock speaker is fairly flat sounding. It lacks dimensionality and punch.
I only use the clean and “yellow” lead channels. The “red” lead channel is useless to me. It has far too much gain and makes the amp sound fizzy and over-distorted.
The amp breaks up into distortion far too early in the gain stage. I want it to be louder and cleaner.
The amp has been retubed and rebiased ever few years, but it never seemed to address my gripes. I’ve discussed my wish list with a number of shop technicians and came to the conclusion that I needed to make some changes to the amp in order to tailor it more closely to my needs. I decided to switch brands of tubes from the stock Groove Tubes to JJ Tubes. Their sales tech was very helpful in tailoring the tubes to my needs. Here is what we decided to go with:
The next big improvement was installing a Weber Ceramic Chicago 12 speaker in place of the stock Eminence 12. This process was actually pretty involved. I had to remove the back panel of the amp, pull the amp chassis, remove the stock speaker, install the new speaker and re-assemble the entire amp. It took about an hour to do all this, but fortunately I had a great hockey game on TV to watch while I was doing the work. The Chicago 12 speaker is pretty stiff and dark sounding until it’s broken in. I had Weber perform about a week of initial break-in, and I expect that it’ll take a few months of regular gigging / rehearsing to really bring out the full tone of the speaker.
So, after those modifications… the amp sounds MUCH better. First off: the tubes made a huge difference in the overall tone. It seems bigger, warmer and cleaner. That pesky “red” lead channel is actually usable and great sounding; it has the nice bluesy grit I associate with vintage Fender amps. With the addition of the new speaker, the amp’s voice seems bolder and cleaner. I think it’s delivering higher volume due to the speaker’s efficiency. Definitely a big improvement across the board. I’m really looking forward to hearing how this amp performs at upcoming gigs.
During the 2010 – 2011 season the Seattle Opera performed five fantastic operas:
Tristan und Isolde (Wagner)
Lucia de Lammermoor (Donizetti)
The Barber of Seville (Rossini)
Don Quixote (Massenet)
The Magic Flute (Mozart)
This is the third year we’ve been subscribers, and it’s been a genuine pleasure to hear and see their work. Our seats are in the upper balcony, in the almost the exact center of the fourth row, which affords us a great view of the stage. It’s also a nice reason to get out my fancy suits and ties, and to take my wife out for a fancy dinner! We’re looking forward to the 2011 – 2012 season as well. If you haven’t attended an opera production in Seattle, you are really missing out on a treat. The opera house itself is a fantastic experience, and our local opera company does an excellent job on these productions. Highly recommended!
Over the years that I’ve owned my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe, it’s seen a lot of stage and studio time. I don’t remember exactly when I got this amp; it must have been at least five or six years ago. In general it’s always been a solid performer with a few minor personality quirks: (1) the “red” gain channel is ridiculously overdriven and musically unusable (2) the amp breaks up far too early in the gain stage and (3) the stock speaker sounds like a ham sandwich.
A few years ago I experienced the most common of HRD ailments: the all-too-common cold solder issue with the 5W resistors (#R58 and #R59 on the PCB). It manifests itself as random channel switching and reverb switching. This is typically repaired by simply re-soldering the errant connections, but my local shop tech also added jumpers to help alleviate the overheating on these traces.
The first step for this amp will be a full retube. I have ordered a set of JJ tubes:
I’ll install the tubes and fully rebias the amp. Then I’ll install a new speaker. I’ve ordered a Weber Chicago 12 which I’m told is a very nice vintage-sounding speaker with lots of clean headroom. Once the speaker arrives I expect the amp to have a significantly improved clean voice. A post-upgrade report will follow…
Last year Gibson did a limited run of reissue Les Paul Gold top guitars with P90 pickups. I attempted to order one but they sold out very quickly and then started showing up on eBay at a premium. I kept an eye out for one in smaller local stores, but never came up with one. About four months ago I noticed that Gibson was doing another limited run on these guitars, and I placed a pre-order hoping for the best. I was notified that the instruments were back-ordered, then on street date the status immediately changed to sold out.
We left for a few weeks of vacation in Italy, and upon our return I found that the guitar had been delivered to the office! Hooray! I only brought it home last night and haven’t had much time to put it through its paces, but so far I quite pleased with it. This guitar will get a lot of action in the Dudley Manlove Quartet and the 1 Uppers.
On Saturday 3/5 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at The Triple Door in Seattle. This performance marked the 16th anniversary of the band. The show was sold out over a week in advance, and we knew this one was going to be a great party. When we arrived for load-in there were already people in the bar waiting for the main room to open. Loading into The Triple Door is a bit of an adventure. It starts in the alley between between the venue and the parking garage, pulling equipment up a short ramp into an elevator vestibule. From there it’s down the elevator into the back of the main room, and then you snake your way back and forth through every level of the booths to make your way to the dance floor in front of the stage. Then you hoist gear up onto the stage. Fortunately, all my equipment fits onto my cart, so at least it’ s only one trip.
With the horns playing on this show it meant adding another riser on stage right, putting them behind our keyboard player. The venue does provide bass and guitar amps, and a drum set. They do have a Fender 65 Twin Reissue, which is the same model of amp that I use with this band, but the last time I performed at The Triple Door I found the house amp was badly in need of retubing. My amp just returned from being retubed, rebiased, and generally cleaned up. So I brought my own amp to the gig. Steve played through an impressive GK stack bass rig that put out a whallop of low frequency. Every time I walked by that amp it was like getting a massage…
We kicked the night off and never looked back. It was probably our best musical performance since I joined the band. Everyone sounded really solid and we played really well. With such a big crowd there wasn’t much room for dancing but everyone managed to find places to boogie in the aisles and in front of the booths. I’m sure the wait staff was a little annoyed at having to dodge their way through exuberant dancers, but hopefully everybody made up for it with nice tips!
This was a very satisfying show and one that I’ll remember as a peak moment for the band. A high school classmate of mine, Chris Joss, is substituting on keyboards with us. He has done a very good job of covering the complex parts in our songs and is a pleasure to work with. Anybody ever in need of a great keyboardist should look him up! At the end of the night I spent time chatting with friends in the audience and didn’t get my equipment packed up until about an hour after the end of the show. Since Jeff and Steve had both used the house equipment, their loadout was very easy. I was the only one with a big pile of gear to haul back to the alley… fortunately the house sound operator helped me get as far as the elevator vestibule at street level, which left me only needing to fetch the car and load up.
Friends of ours joined us back at the house to celebrate the night with a few bottles of wine and snacks. I woke up the next morning with a sore back and slight headache (from perhaps one too many glasses of wine after the gig!). All in all, I’d say that is a successful evening.
In a previous post I outlined the need for some maintenance on my Fender 65 Twin Reissue. This amp is the workhorse for my gigs with The Dudley Manlove Quartet. Over the past year I’ve noticed that the tone seemed less dimensional than before, and that I seemed to be lacking clean headroom at gigs. I bought this amp used and had a simple shop inspection as part of the purchase.
I recently discovered there is a great electronic repair shop right in my home town of Burien, which is much more convenient that driving all the way into North Seattle for routine service. The shop tech and I discussed the work I wanted done, and he really did a nice job. All of the tube sockets needed tightening and cleaning, as did the jacks in the amp chassis. Once this was completed the entire chassis was inspected, and then the amp was completely retubed with new Groove Tubes.
The first post-spa gig was Saturday 2/12 at the Tulalip Casino. This is a big stage and gives me an opportunity to really check out the sound of the amp. It sounded much better than before. There is a lot of warmth and big tone that was not present before the tune up. I know the power tubes were previously mismatched, and I suspected the preamp tubes might have been getting pretty tired. The sound of the freshly retubed and tuned amp is inspiring, and I look forward to many years of using this amp. Based on the recommendation of my tech, I’ll probably do a full retube every three years on this unit from now on.
On Friday 2/11 the 1 Uppers performed at Conor Byrne in Ballard, along with our friends Ranieros and Side Saddle. We’ve performed at Conor Byrne many times and we’re getting to have a good solid following in that club. The staff is always friendly and supportive of bands, which makes it all the more fun to be there.
The stage at this venue is pretty small, and a significant portion of it is occupied by a piano (which I have never actually seen anyone use). So as a six-piece band we have a fit ourselves up there like a puzzle, but once we’re in place it works reasonably well. Another interesting aspect of the Conor Byrne is that since the club is small, we usually do not put microphones on any of the drums or instrument amplifiers. The only microphones onstage are for vocals and everything else is just adjusted by the musicians onstage based on instinct and the occasional feedback from audience members (can you hear me now?). We played most of the original material from our recording project and threw in a few favorite covers as well. The band seems to be developing a decent following, so we have some faithful friends to let us know how things are going out front.
At this show we had a solid crowd from the beginning of the night. I went up to the front door right before we went on stage to add a friend to the guest list, and the door man informed me the show had sold out already. Good thing they had space to fit one more person in the room! Another very good show with this band. We look forward to getting more shows in the area soon.
On Saturday 2/5 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at The Showbox in Seattle. This shows was a double bill with our friends Super Diamond, and held a lot of promise for being a popular event. About four days before this event we were informed that all advance tickets had been sold, and that the Showbox would be releasing the remaining tickets usually held for day-of-show sales. This certainly indicated the level of interest that was being generated for the performance.
We arrived for load in and discovered there were already some brave people standing in the rain waiting to be admitted. Between our equipment and Super Diamond’s the stage was pretty well packed. We completed our soundcheck and trotted across the street for a quick dinner. Looking down the street we could see there were now several hundred people waiting in line to get in. We finished dinner and returned to the venue which was now fully at capacity with people still arriving for admission. Off to a great start!
Because my main DMQ amp (a 65 Twin reissue) was in the shop this weekend, I used my Fender Hot Rod Deluxe for the show. It sounded great even if it slightly edgier with the crunch channel breaking up at stage volume. I thought it was a good driving sound for the show.
The night was easily one of the best DMQ performances to date. We played a powerhouse set of hits with our horn section providing their big sound. It’s the biggest audience reaction we’ve gotten in quite a long time, and we’re looking forward to doing more shows in the near future.
This week I dropped my 65 Twin Reissue for some routine maintenance including replacing some tubes, and tightening up tube sockets. The amp generally rides in a flight case when being transported, so it’s in pretty good condition. The biggest environmental impact to my amp is probably the temperature and humidity of the northwest. So far I’m pretty satisfied with this amp; it produces a characteristic Fender tone with plenty of clarity and volume. It’s likely I’ll eventually replace the speakers with something like Weber Californias, but the tone of the stock configuration is reasonably faithful to the original hand-wired models from the mid-60s. I have a suspicion that replacing the speakers will make the amp more efficient and produce a tighter punch at stage volume.
I recently discovered there is a great amp technician right in my neighborhood, and I’m looking forward to hearing the Twin when he’s gone through it. Once this amp is back from being beautified, I’ll probably drop off the Hot Rod Deluxe for a similar spa treatment.
