Thoughts On The 9/16 Dudley Manlove Quartet Performance
On Friday 9/16 The Dudley Manlove Quartet performed at the Wallingford Wurst Festival in Seattle. It’s an event the band has performed in years past but was my first time. The event occurs at a local Catholic grade school in Wallingford. Just entering the building was a flashback to my elementary school years in Catholic school. It’s funny how eerily similar all such schools are – especially those that appear to be of the same approximate vintage. Seeing that classic linoleum and tile environment made me nostalgic and slightly anxious (I have a completely irrational fear of yardsticks as a result of a few thousand thwacks from irate nuns).
Our performance took place in the auditorium, which was also the beer garden for this event. Washington State has a law prohibiting musicians from drinking onstage, and whenever we perform in bars we’re reminded that there will be no drinking permitted onstage. Ironically, Catholic grade schools seem to be exempt from this law, so the band was delighted to have cups of tasty IPA while playing. For this show I put the Lonestar on the amp stand, placed about two-thirds of the way toward the back of the stage. It seems to me that most Boogies have a tendency to be “beamy”; they produce a very tightly focused output that doesn’t fill the stage. My Boogie Mark III, and my Boogie 1×12 cabinets had a very tight pattern onstage that allowed my to place the amp very far away and still hear it – provided I stood directly in line with the speaker… just a single step to the left or the right and the sound was gone. The Lonestar has a much more “Fender” type spread and cleanly fills my playing position with usable volume.
At this gig I tried running the clean channel a little hotter. It’s interesting that the clean channel on this amp still has considerable headroom even at the higher end of its gain structure. My Strats are wired with medium output pickups so I generally don’t wind up with much unwanted grit. The lead channel on the Lonestar has a good bark to it but still has clean articulation for chords. Compared with my Fender Twin, the Lonestar has a truer gain structure; it seems to me the Fender AB763 circuit has a tendency to naturally compress the guitar dynamics. I’m finding the Keeley compressor is more usable with this amp than with the Twin. The entire gig was an opportunity to try new settings on my pedalboard, with new clean tones and more amp-based drive in the lead settings. It’s especially good for big driven tones for songs like “Rio” and “Don’t Stop Believing”. The gig was a great success and we look forward to the next event!