Quick old amps question

[Len Rabinowitz]

All:

For some insane reason, I have been spending time lately learning licks from the Abbey Road album. Great fun riffs, and I have always been curious about how they got the guitar sounds on those last 2-3 albums. Definitely sounds like Fender amps to me.

I went on YouTube and found a clip of the rooftop concert from Let It Be. VERY hard to see, but I was pretty sure that in one shot I could see a kind of "jumper cable" in George Harrison's amp (Looked like a Twin to me) going from one of the inputs in channel one to one of the inputs in channel two.

I have heard of this set up before. What do you do it for? Does it make the first channel act as a kind of gain circuit for the second channel in order to overdrive the second channel? I know that these old amps didn't have master volume circuits or anything like that.

Thanks!

 

[shimmilou]

I thought that the Beatles used Vox amps, even solid-state Vox amps. But on the last few albums, I'm not sure what they used. Every live picture that I've seen, they all had Vox amps (not that I've seen them all of course).

But, using a jumper in a real two-channel amp, like a Twin Reverb, is simply to use both channels at the same time (normal and vibrato), actually called "channel jumping". When jumped like this, the guitar signal passes through a resistor in the amp before going to the second channel, giving a little less input to the second channel, as opposed to using an AB switcher box which would give equal signal to both channels. Depending on which amp it actually is, the two channels can be out of phase with each other, which can give some interesting sounds. Some people modify their amps to have both channels in-phase, as the out of phase channels can cancel each other depending on volume adjustments of the two channels.

 

[Len Rabinowitz]

They used Vox amps a lot, but it is defintely a lot of Fenders for the Abbey Road/Let It Be sessions. You can see it in YouTube clips. It explains a lot of the tones on those albums. I still get knotted up about the tones on the White Album, but I don't think those are Fenders. The tone on something like Birthday sounds to me more like a transistor amp (a lot of people used them in the mid to late 60's and I think Vox did make them) with an old fuzz box or something. I could be wrong. I don't know. It's a unique tone.

 

[shimmilou]

Interesting, I'll have to check out some of the YouTube videos. I am a Beatles fan, and I like all of the albums (I think that I have them all), but especially Abbey Road, Let it Be, Revolver, Rubber Soul, and of course my first introduction to the Beatles which was the White Album. Amazing that their music is still relevant today, and I enjoy it just as much now as when I first heard them in the '60s.

Have you heard the "Love" album released a few years ago? It's just remixes and new combinations of existing songs, still cool though, and familiar in a sense.

 

[Len Rabinowitz]

Yeah, I thought Love was a fabulous album- Like what the Beatles would do if they were young and new today. Take a fresh listen to the White Album distorted guitar tones. Maybe you can pin down what it is. I know on some things they plugged right into the old tube board and drove the shit out of that, but I don't think that is everything. Good examples of what I mean would be the distorted guitar tones on Birthday, Everybody's Got Something To Hide..., and Helter Skelter.

I think the White Album is their best album- it's really crazy in parts- although it was criticized at the time. Too much stuff, too disjointed... ahead of its time I think.