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The gear
The Gear (Hendrix sound)
Hendrix sound |
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| By Arthur Gaba | ||
Fuzz Face |
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One of the things that particularly shaped Hendrix sound, especially on the first album, were the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, which is the red round effect you can see on some pictures, that looks like a smiling face. It were the Fuzz Face that gave him the overdriven sound, and that were responsible for the raw some times little uncontrolled sound. In some songs he uses the Octavia in front of the Fuzz Face, to give an octave higher mixed in, and more aggressive sound. If you back of the volume knop on the guitar, it is possible to ´clean up´ the sound from the Fuzz Face, so that you just get a little bit of snarling on the clean tones, when you hit the strings harder. I dont know how much Jimi used this, but he certainly has a snarl on many of his clean sounds. |
Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face |
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The Wah pedal, mostly of the make VOX, is first heard on the album ´Axis Bold as Love´, and the UnivVibe comes in around 1970. The Fuzz Face were originally made with a now obsoleted transistor technology, made of Germanium. They overdrive in a special way, but is technically quite primitive. ( Heat make them float, they have a high leak current and they are in all ways not easy to deal with ). That means that in earlier times you had to be there when a dealer got a load of Fuzz Faces - to pick the one that sounded best. Later Arbiter came out with a blue model, with Silicium transistors, which had a brighter and more raw sound, that not so many people liked. Jimi is also reported to have used those at certain times. People sometimes laugh at it, but the battery is to a certain degree part of the sound, so often you would try to have half worn batteries at hand to shape the sound of the Fuzz Face. With regards to amps there were certain small changes to the 100w plexies, even ones from the same year, but right now ( summer 2006 ) Marshall reports that Jimi requested a certain change in the tone stack ´to get more treble´ and Eddie Kramer is cited so say that ´those KT66 had a major influence on the sound´ ... and that is now when everybody says that a part of his sound came from the EL-34 tubes ;-) It could be a marketing stunt from Marshall to get the ´new´ amps sold, because the earlier 1959 re-issues did not exactly nail the old sound - they were too bright. And then you also have to consider the loudspeakers. OK, everybody knows that Jimi used 4*12" Marshall cabs - but what did he put inside them ? In the start he could have used 15 or 20w Celestion Alnico speakers, which Celestion made without the bell for other vendors than VOX, who explitely had made an agreement with Celestion, not to sell the Blue Bulldogs to other than VOX themselves. 15 / 20w does not sound a lot, when a 100w Plexi can deliver about 140 w on full throtle - but they were quite robust. Later Marshall used the ceramic G12M-30 - also called Greenbacks, but rumor will know that Jimi allways changed the speaker configuration to G12H-30 wich at that time were used in bas cabs. It sounds reasonable in that the Greenbacks has a somewhat loose bottom end, which can not be said about Jimi´s sound. To make things a little bit more confusing the G12H-30 came in 2 flavors: 55 Hz and 75 Hz, and the dont sound alike. It would probably be the 55 Hz version he used. There are also few rumours that he should have used JBL 120F-6 speakers - it can be true, but I think not that often then. For the overall sound you also have to consider what happened after the initial recording, being: Doubling of guitar parts, phasing, flanging, room, strong panning, echo and reverse recording, right from the first album - which also can be heard when you compare the sound from records with live concerts. One man is NOT able to play that much at the same time - not even Jimi ;-) |
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