Good PAF tone

[greenfingers]

I sacnned that pic of Jimmy's Guitar for you RedHouse, i just need to know were to post it,

Yea +1 Green, Allman and Bloomfield all had better tones, but they didn't cause as much of a impact? go figure.

[RedHouse]

...I remember where I saw that before now. It's from the old Yahoo 18-watter site. There were maybe two? (IIRC) original 18-watters from which pictures were obtained, and that was one of them...

Ahh good idea, and from that site here's a few more pic's, you can decide for yourself

The two sockets in the center of this pic are the output tube sockets, they are NOT octal's...
(KT66's use octal sockets)


another amp, again, these are also not KT66's...


and another, again, not KT66's...


and finally, to remove any doubt that it's an EL84, here you can read the tube number yourself...

...(and also, a lot of guitarists seem to use the album--Bluesbreakers, Van Halen I, AYE, etc. as a basis for comparison...

Dai, the VH-1 amp is a 100w '68 12xxx series Super Lead head, no mistake, it is what it is, and it's extremely different than a Bluesbreaker combo.

David, with all due respect, I'd avoid using Wiki as a ref, anyone can put anything there, doesn't make it true or fact. A great example is the Univibe, look that up on Wiki and it says Roger Mayer "invented it for Jimi Hendrix" sheesh, what moron put that up there? anybody in the effects field can tell you the Univibe was invented and produced by Shin Ei in Japan.

[RedHouse]

I sacnned that pic of Jimmy's Guitar for you RedHouse, i just need to know were to post it,

Yea +1 Green, Allman and Bloomfield all had better tones, but they didn't cause as much of a impact? go figure.

Sending you a PM

[dai h.]

Ahh good idea, and from that site here's a few more pic's, you can decide for yourself

The two sockets in the center of this pic are the output tube sockets, they are NOT octal's...
(KT66's use octal sockets)


another amp, again, these are also not KT66's...


and another, again, not KT66's...


and finally, to remove any doubt that it's an EL84, here you can read the tube number yourself...

yes I know what the difference is between a noval and a octal socket as well as the difference between an EL84 and KT66. More importantly, posting pictures of 18-watters over and over doesn't make them Bluesbreakers.

Originally Posted by dai h.
...(and also, a lot of guitarists seem to use the album--Bluesbreakers, Van Halen I, AYE, etc. as a basis for comparison...

Dai, the VH-1 amp is a 100w '68 12xxx series Super Lead head, no mistake, it is what it is, and it's extremely different than a Bluesbreaker combo.

yes I am fully aware of that. I'm saying some guitarists A/B their "cloned sound" against the album, using the album as the reference. For example someone trying to cop the Bluesbreakers album uses the album as the reference sound, or someone trying to cop early VH uses VH 1, or the Are You Experienced album sound with the album, etc. etc.

[David Schwab]

The Bluesbreaker is a Bassman circuit but just in a combo format. Head version = JTM45.

And with different tubes. But yeah, the original Marshall amps were based on the Bassman.

[greenfingers]

RedHouse here it is for you. that Email address didn't work for some reason?

[David Schwab]

David, with all due respect, I'd avoid using Wiki as a ref, anyone can put anything there, doesn't make it true or fact.

That's true, but you are supposed to cite references. You can also go in and fix articles yourself, I do it all the time. The Marshall article does have links to where the info came from.

The same can also be said for any book on the subject. I've read a lot of erroneous information in books on guitars and other subjects. You know the old adage, "don't believe everything you read". Anyone can write a book on anything.

In the Wiki article the part about the Bluesbreaker amp has the foot note that the info came from an interview with Jim Marshall that is at the Premier Guitar site:

http://www.premierguitar.com/archive...m_marshall.htm

So that info is coming from the horses mouth, so to speak, and not a book by someone that isn't Jim Marshall.

The rest of the info seems to have come from an article in Guitar World magazine and other interviews with Marshall.

But like with any company, the parts often change as new things are tried, or better prices are sought.

I have little experience with Marshall amps, since I'm mainly a bass player.

[David Schwab]

Speaking of Portland, Oregon, that's where Roger Giffin (who made that LP above) is located now.

Have you met him Dave?

[Possum]

Page, Portland, amp tones..... :-)

Wow, cool pix of the switches under the pickguard, I was never sure that was a true story or not, very cool.
No I don't know that guy, Dave, Saul Koll is the only guitar builder I know around here, makes killer stuff.

Yeah, its a huge mistake to try to make an amp sound like Clapton's recorded Beano tone, I sure wouldn't buy an amp that sounded like that on its own. He used that treble booster, and clamped down on the treble on his guitar or amp, and someone is going to make an amp that sounds like that as a stand alone tone, thats just ridiculous. On the same vein its really stupid to make pickups that emulate a recorded gimmicked tone like Eddie Van Halen as well. Way too many guitar players think EVH was using some 16K five pound copper coil, when all he was using was a PAF he rewound, the rest of the tone came from an amp running on low voltages with a variac and his fingers. If you make a pickup that sounds like all that stuff mashed in there, thats all it will ever do and be useless for other things. Hey but we all know it also SELLS :-) Kind of the bottom line for good tone is LEARN HOW TO PLAY REALLY WELL :-) I see guys at jams who play really poorly and would make even the most expensive dream rig sound like total crap :-) right?

[RedHouse]

...posting pictures of 18-watters over and over doesn't make them Bluesbreakers....

Well ok then Dai, I must be mistaken (don't feel mistaken, but nevermind) as I have always called the combo's Bluesbreakers and this must account for our discrepancy.

Can you post a link to a chassis pic(s) of any JTM45 Bluesbreakers for me?

All the pic's I've seen (except the following) are of the 18w combo so many of us call a Bluesbreaker. After trolling a dozen pages of google-hits (on "original bluesbreaker amp" and JTM45 Bluesbreaker) I just couldn't find any pic's of a JTM45 combo/Bluesbreaker. I do see the reissue up on Marshall's site, but that's not an original as all the "lore" would have it, and I do understand all the written up diatribe about it, but haven't actually seen any.

Trying the reverse-approach (finding a combo called Bluesbreaker that used KT66's) I can only find one single pic on the internet, and it's not a JTM45 but actually a 50w chassis.
http://www.geocities.com/stompbox2001/bluesbreaker.htm

Which makes me wonder if there might have been relatively few of the JTM45 Bluesbreakers produced, that might explain why there are virtually no chassis pic's of them found on the internet.
(I say chassis because they all look nearly the same from the front)

I did find this snippet regarding the production run: "There were two series of the amp manufactured: Series 1 which was from 1965 to 1966 and Series 2 from 1966 to 1968"
(the series 2 was said to be the 50w chassis)

[RedHouse]

...In the Wiki article the part about the Bluesbreaker amp has the foot note that the info came from an interview with Jim Marshall that is at the Premier Guitar site:

http://www.premierguitar.com/archive...m_marshall.htm

So that info is coming from the horses mouth, so to speak, and not a book by someone that isn't Jim Marshall.

I'm not seeing any definative text about the JTM45 being the Bluesbreaker from the horses mouth, but y'all are quite adamate about it, so I'll let it rest.

I read where it mentions Clapton, and it simply say's "Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix were two other very famous Marshall users in the early days but they both came along a little later. Eric used to practice in my shop and he was one of the first guitarists to ask me to build a combo. He wanted one so it would be easy for him to put the whole thing in the boot (the English term for 'trunk') of his car."

To me this speaks of how deciding to make a combo occurred, not so much that it was made from a JTM45. I've been searching for some pic's of a JTM45 Bluesbreaker, but haven't found any real pic's of them on the net.
(not frontal pic's, but chassis pics)

[RedHouse]

....a recorded gimmicked tone like Eddie Van Halen as well. Way too many guitar players think EVH was using some 16K five pound copper coil, when all he was using was a PAF he rewound...

I would add that he (Eddie) was also a huge mis-information merchant much like Page. We don't really know if he in fact "rewound" it as his story tells.

In interviews he said "one coil was dead and so I rewound it".

But I mean think about it, everyone here who has built a winder or say just rewound a pickup, can anyone picture Eddie sitting down and putting together a coil winder to fix one pickup one time? and knowing what we do about aquiring wire, where did he (Eddie) get his wire from back then to rewind that "PAF"? and being so successful at winding and aquiring a "sound" why didn't he wind all his pickups? ...hmmm... with all due respect to Eddie fans I can hardly even imagine him tapeing a coil to a Black & Decker drill to "rewind" it..no offense to anyone but that's just me I guess, 'cause everybody else buy's the story.

[RedHouse]

RedHouse here it is for you. that Email address didn't work for some reason?

Wow it seems like that story is a combination of two stories, back when Gibson put out it's (90's) Page model they said the push/pull pots were to simulate the under-the-pickguard switches that #2 had, so now this article has it that #2 had both pickguard switches AND push/pull pots!.

They also have #1 as the 58 and #2 as the 59 which seems opposite of the "experts" on the LPF and MLPF, though it is a popular debate.

Thanks for scanning and posting it here, appreciate it much!

[Possum]

....

I do think the story about Eddie, what he says anyway is true. He was a tinkerer and he wound that/those coils by hand and didn't use a winder, said he broke alot of wire doing it that way and took many tries to get one coil wound with no breaks. Also the comment that he wrecked a bunch of PAFs by potting them too long in hot wax is another clue that he actually did mess around with his pickups. What I do wonder though is where did he get the magnet wire to wind it with? What are the odds that he got the rigth guage wire when he did that? I've seen old bucker bobbins wound with ridiculously fat guage wire from the old radio stores before, so Eddie wasn't alone in thinking along those lines....

OK, so now you guys got me totally confused. Was the Beano amp an 18 watter or something else? Huh?

[RedHouse]

...OK, so now you guys got me totally confused. Was the Beano amp an 18 watter or something else? Huh?

I'm gonna have to say for the record ...I don't know... I thought I knew, now I'm not so sure.