theMountainview Publishing, LLC

TMReportThe Player’s Guide to Ultimate Tone

Campilongo

INSIDE

$15.00 US, April 2014/Vol.15 NO.6

www.tonequest.com

“New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.” – Henry Miller

Writing is not for the weak of heart, whether the writing is done in words or music. Some days the flow is surreal, pouring forth from some unfathomable place in the mind where creative ideas lay in waiting to be grasped and given up to the world. On other, darker days the mind seems locked, stubbornly refusing to start like an old, worn out car. No matter how many times you turn the key, all you get is a discouraging grunt of obstinate refusal. You are getting nothing today, Jack. Today, you have jack shit for brains… Worse still, writing about musical performances seems like such a futile loser’s game. It’s one thing to describe the sound of an instrument, but how can you honor the work of a musical genius by talking about it? You can’t. And we’re not gonna try… Music is created to be heard and experienced, not fawned over with flowery prose.

The featured artist in this edition of the Quest is an old friend. This isn’t his first appearance in these pages, but his most recent recording titled Dream Dictionary demands that he be called back for an encore. And since it is highly likely that you are an avid fan of music made with a guitar, it is incumbent upon you now to sweep the trivial distractions from your mind long enough to do what it takes to acquire a copy of Dream Dictionary for your own enjoyment. You can get it at Amazon in minutes. Do it. Do it, and savor the afterglow that Jim Campilongo’s music casts, lingering long after the last note has faded. No one is walking in Campilongo’s footsteps, nor is he treading in the long shadows of the past. You don’t listen to Jim Campilongo thinking, “Oh, I know

Meet one of the most innovative, creative and interesting guitarists of

our time…Jim on guitars, amps,

recording, tone, influences, evolving, and living and playing

in New York plus…

Recording Dream Dictionary

8Twenty-six…Riverhorse

on New York, subways,the call of nature

and catching Campilongo in Brooklyn

91974 – Rollin’

& Tumblin’

Remembering the Bluebird,

714s,a dead Nova,a new Caddie,

three weeks in Negriland the demise of

Dick Nixon

111974

SilverfacePrinceton Reverb…The best of them all

14We optimize a truly

mezmerizing amplifier with Sozos, a Celestion G10 Greenback and a

matched pair ofclassic RCA 6V6s

16Dave Baldwin

on vintage tubes – the ones you want and

how to buy them

16One of the best guitars we have ever found – the new Road Worn

Tele…

18Sliders

19The sound of toploading

bridges revealed

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 20142

where he got that…” Campilongo is creating his own space in the historical context of contemporary music, played against the backdrop of New York. You can hear the energy of the city in his music, and it is like no other on earth. We begin with a concise introduction that will provide you with essential and instructive details on Campilongo’s path as a musician, followed by our interview held in February of this year, and a journey of discovery in the Quest for tone that has been completely inspired by Jim. Enjoy…

“It is the provenance of a precious few who can so beautifully mine the harmonic depth of a Telecaster with the grace and fluid fantasy of Jim Campilongo, an artist who paints master-pieces with the guitar…” –TQR

Campilongo On Guitars…I saw Roy Buchanan about 45 times… That was a big part of my education. But access to different instruments evolved very haphazardly. I played an acoustic for several years, and we would amplify it by sticking a microphone in it. After that, someone lent me a Teisco that I played until I found my cherished (and sold) Gibson 330. From there I got a sunburst

Les Paul, then I found a home with a ’54 goldtop that I played for about seven years. I really thought it sounded like a Tele, and I had tried to get that tone out of every guitar I owned. That goldtop sounded great, even though it had a replaced neck on it. Joe Louis Walker bought it in the late ‘80s when I needed rent money. Honestly, it had never played in tune, but most everyone would hear that goldtop and think it was a Tele. Then I found my ‘59 … The ’59 Telecaster was given to me by a student and friend named John Jensen, who took lessons from me. Prior to the ‘59, I never felt that much of a bond with all the guitars I had played before – they all presented a bit of a struggle. For some intangible reason the ’59 was the first one that I really bonded with in a meaningful way. To be honest, I’m not obsessed with guitars – I’m obsessed with music. I don’t mean to alienate anyone reading this, but I will see a band, come home, and someone will ask me what model of instruments they played and I won’t even have noticed. Amps…Fender, Fender, Fender, Fender, Fender, Fender (laughing), and they have gotten progressively smaller. I have always played through Fender amps. My first was a silverface master

volume Twin. I used that for years and I thought it was a great sounding amp. Although people have run away scream-ing from them, I think the

silverface Fender amps are really great. Speaking of underrated amps – the ‘red knob’ series actually sounded pretty good too – a good clean sound, and if you played a hollowbody through them the sound was dynamic and thick. Right before I moved to New York, I bought a blackface Princeton Reverb from steel guitar hall of famer Bobby Black that was my main amp. I was wary at first because of it’s wattage, but I soon learned to appreciate and love it! Not soon after this – after de-tuning mayhem one inspired night, I blew a speaker. At the time, I only had one amp so I had to borrow one, but no one else’s amp seemed to meet my standards. I obsessively have my amps serviced about every four months. I prefer new old stock power tubes and it seems that something is always breaking – caps need replacing, reverb breaks, speakers blow… Bill Finnigan (Klon) suggested that I should get a few more amps instead of relying on just one, so that’s when the madness began, starting with a silverface Princeton with a Celestion speaker that just sounds incredible. I used it on the Martha Wainwright record, among other things. I’ll also take a blackface Vibro-Champ on sessions, and I’ve used it on my records. Recording…

I mic the back, the front, and then try to find a sweet spot somewhere, and we’ll spend hours on it. OK, I hear a sound in the room that’s really good… now, how can we get that sound on tape? I think mic’ing the front and the back of an open back amp is a great tip, even live – especially with a Tele. Another thing I like about the top-loader bridge is that it’s a

little more rubbery sounding. I didn’t even notice the ‘59 was a top loader at first, and I didn’t know they were only made that way for one year.

Tone…I do all kinds of moves that I don’t even think about. Gener-ally, everything is dimed, but sometimes I’ll be playing and realize that I’m in the middle position. I’m constantly changing everything… Sometimes I’ll switch to both pickups right before I hit a big chord. Depending on what the room

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is giving me, I may not use the neck pickup at all because it is sounding too muddy. Every room is different. I don’t really think about it, but I respond to what I’m hearing. I remember ten years ago thinking that the middle position was jive, but now I’m in the middle position a lot. I change so much within a tune – volume, tone… I used to always love to hear that ‘click’

when Roy would go to the bridge. I think the Tele rhythm pickup is a very under-rated jazz pickup, and that’s why the Telecaster is the greatest solidbody electric guitar, because it gets that sound. It does produce a very pleasing jazz sound, yet it has a little bit of Louie Armstrong in it. The wall of sound thing is cool, but I want to hear the pick rake across each string like a single coil tends to do. I often wish I could get the sounds I hear in my apartment when I’m out performing.

I work hard at playing melodies. Somebody told me once that a musician is only as good as the number of songs he knows. Now, I wouldn’t say that to The Edge, for ex-ample… He is a sonic artist, and he makes people happy, which is what you want to do,

but I do think that people should work more on making music, chord inversions, and playing songs. It really wore me out at the last guitar show I attended because no one played any songs! It was all blues licks in A. It’s not like I’m Wes Mont-gomery and I can play anything without even knowing what key I’m in… Could I sit down right now and play “I Want to Hold Your Hand” note for note without having to work it out? Probably not, even though I know that song so well. But sometimes I wonder why more guitarists don’t check out a new instrument and experiment with being a little less predict-able and less aggressive in their playing. I’m not oblivious to

tone, or done with it, and I am still curious about how, for example, Keith Richards got those tones on Sticky Fingers. It’s not that I don’t want to talk about tone, as if it bores me and all I want to talk about are chord inversions and George Van Eps… I mean, how did Keith

get that tone on “Can You Hear Me Knockin”? When I was growing up I went to the record store and bought records like Derek and the Dominoes Live, but we’re not sitting on a bed staring at LP jackets as we listen to vinyl anymore. There is such a glut of free music available today, not to mention all of the instructional videos available to guitarists… I buy some of them, but my friends also give me copies they make.

Influences… Many of my influences have

remained constant… Roy Buchanan, Eric Clapton with the Bluesbreakers, Cream and Derek & the Dominoes… I was also really lucky to be exposed to Django Reinhardt by a ceramics teacher when I was in high school. John

McLaughlin, of course, Jimmy Rivers, Jimmy Bryant, Chet Atkins… Coltrane’s Live in Japan was a big influence, and another was a record by John Fahey called On Christian Soldiers. I was really into a track on East/West with Michael Bloomfield and Paul Butterfield. I was also into Middle East-ern stuff and on Roy’s first record, he goes Middle Eastern… I saw Mike Bloomfield and it changed my life… Me and my buddy saw him at this pizza joint in Mill Valley, and we were just dying to hear music from Super Session… He was there

with an acoustic guitar and a film projector. He showed film of Hound Dog Taylor and talked about players like Son House and Blind Lemon Jef-ferson. We went home kind of disappointed, but the next day I went out looking for the re-cords he mentioned and I found the Hound Dog Taylor record, and it was the sleaziest, dirtiest stuff I had ever heard! I also

really got into Muddy Waters, and that really changed my blues sensibility. I was no longer so enthralled by the more straight, commercial blues – I liked the weird combination of swing and straight rhythmic changes that Muddy played, and I internalized that without really understanding what it was.

Evolving… I had a regular gig in San Francisco at Gordon’s Restaurant, and I could only use three guys – guitar, bass and drums, and we had to play at a really low volume – everything was done with an upright bass and brushes, and I played there for about two years. During that time, I began to conceptualize Ameri-can Hips, and what I realized is that I don’t have to be busy

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filling space all the time. I could hear the upright bass growl, I could anticipate the next chord and let it ring prematurely… I was less busy. Some people said I sounded like Bill Frissell, and I guess I can see why. So the entire thing came together at this restaurant, and what I heard within the setting of a trio just seemed so limitless.

Moving to New York… I feel like my playing improves

and suffers at the same time here, because there is so much work and struggle. I mean, you can’t get a whole lot of simple errands done in a single day in New York… Everything is harder in a way, but there is also a lot of inspiration, and a lot of serious people that are here to play. One thing that stands out to me about New York is the up-

beat attitude most everyone has about the gig, no matter how small or uneventful. There are no macho attitudes about “this shitty gig” or “misery contests.” Most of the guys I play music with here understand that playing music is a gift and a privi-lege. If one can realize that any musical situation can be done well, the chances of playing quality music are much greater. Before coming to New York, I encountered certain situations where I felt it was inappropriate or naive to feel enthusiasm and musical hope, but that’s not the case here at all.

Campilongo Interview, Brooklyn – February 2014

TQR: It’s great catching up with you again, Jim. How are things in New York?

I’ve been good, I feel like I accomplished a lot last year although in some ways I think things continue to feel more dif-ficult since the market crash in 2008. First off, I met Josh Dion and Chris Morrissey, a great rhythm section and great musical allies, formed Jim Campilongo

and Honeyfingers (Jonny Lam, Luca Benedetti, David Spe-ranza, Roy Edwin Williams) who are breathing fire and new life into my early Ten Gallon Cats original compositions, and of course I recorded Dream Dictionary with great reviews and a limited budget. I feel proud of all these efforts and currently I feel musically challenged to the point of anxiety! (laughing) Sure, it’s a bit annoying to compete with constant Youtube uploads of less then stellar gigs, and there seems to be a glut of this stuff since everyone has a video camera on their iPhones

TQR: Compared to a live performance, audio on the web is crap unfortunately.

Yesterday I was listening to Together by John Wil-liams and Julian Bream, and it’s a great, great record. I have the LP and I converted it to MP3 so I could share it. My computer has a wireless stream into my stereo, which is a McIntosh

preamp, a Dynakit power amp and two Klipsch speakers – the bomb, you know, and I walked from one room into the other and I have pretty good computer speakers… and it was a completely different experience. It blew me away that I had acclimated to what I thought was the true experience in my computer room, and then I walked into the living room and thought, “Wait a minute…” People are not getting that.

TQR: I don’t think most people know the difference anymore or care. The good news is, I bought the Dream Dictionary CD on Amazon and it sounds phenomenally good. Fascinating songs as always, superb musicianship and gonzo fidelity. There is hope for us yet.

Well, thank you so much. I’ll tell you the truth, one of my goals was to make Dream Dictionary as inexpensively as pos-sible because recording Orange was just too expensive. I was freaking out because I was trying to make a less expensive recording yet still with quality, and there were aspects of it that were really difficult.

TQR: You used Pro Tools or Radar then?

Oh, no… It’s an analog record – recorded on tape, not Pro Tools. The only recording I have ever done that wasn’t analog was Heaven is Creepy. It’s a really good record, but I didn’t fully appreciate how important analog recording was to the final sound.

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Jim & NY guitarist Scott Metzger

Bill Frisell

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TQR: That explains a lot, because you can really hear the natural phase shifting in your amplified guitar – it moves. You can also hear the bass roll and move. There is a spatial quality where you can almost visualize where everything is in the mix. The recording has depth and space, and although the musical styles are varied from track to track, the overall sound is just so vivid and real. Every once in a while I also

detected a Beatle-ly turn on “The Past is Looking Brighter and Brighter”.

You’re close. I was listening a lot to the Bee Gees at that time and some stuff off Saturday Night Fever and I was just thinking how great those songs were – the sounds of the ‘70s chord changes. There is also a change in there that is a little reminiscent of Roy Buchanan’s “The Messiah Will Come.”

TQR: What did you use for the tremolo effect?

That’s the guitar through a Leslie cabinet. Some people think it’s an organ, which is cool, too. That’s a live solo. Andy Tommasi the producer wanted me to play through a Leslie, and I had tried that before and it never sounded the way I wanted. “Badge” right? So I was being a little stubborn, like, “Yeah, we’ll do that tomor-row…” Finally he got me to try it and I’m glad we did because

you can really hear the changes. I think I used my signature Telecaster instead of the ‘59 on that track, too.

TQR: Were you using some kind of delay on “Here I Am” with Norah Jones?

The only thing that’s on there is a lot of different reverbs – a plate reverb and a digital reverb, and then I re-amped, which I always do on all my records. It’s funny because people will say, “Oh, yeah, I bought a Princeton reissue and it doesn’t sound quite like your records…” Well, you know, that’s why I spend the big bucks (laughing). The only amp I used was my Silverface Princeton Reverb with the Celestion G10 speaker, plate reverb, and then we re-amped through a Super Reverb that had belonged to Buddy Guy. I usually don’t like Supers but this one sounded amazing, so we re-amped through the Super and then we would blend the original Princeton track with the track we created with the Super. On that track (“Here

I Am”) Norah kind of threw us all off by nailing it on the first take, which I should have anticipated. I recorded my solo at the same time she cut the vocal, but I was still finding my way, and I played kind of a Kenny Burrell Midnight Blue thing – kind of jazzy, and

when I heard it played back I thought, “Well, it’s an apple, but I really wish it was a strawberry…” I wanted to overdub the solo, but we discovered that the original guitar solo had bled through the mic on the ride cymbal. I was really bummed. Josh, who had played drums on the session was in Russia, so we got Dan Reiser to come in and overdub the ride cymbal. That’s why we have an additional credit for drums. The funny thing is that both Josh and Dan live in the same apartment building here in New York. Dan and I also played together in the Little Willies. Anyway, we got to fix it and keep the overdubbed guitar solo.

TQR: That song reminds me of something that could have been on the soundtrack for the David Lynch movie Wild at Heart. It’s just a little twisted.

Well, I initially had it as kind of a swing tune, because it was originally recorded by Ray Charles. Norah came in and she said, “You know, you should make it more Jim.” So I started playing

the lick that’s on the record and she says, “Yeah, that’s it,” and of course she nailed the vocal on the first take.

TQR: In so many ways it takes much more talent, creativ-ity and risk to leave space in music the way you do. It isn’t always so obvious where you are going, which in turn creates suspense and mystery, and I find that much more interesting and appealing than listening to how well someone can play a very predictable style of music I have already heard for decades. That, and bad guitar playing sometimes seems to be a communicable disease… Just walk the floor of a NAMM show or visit a big music store on a Saturday – you hear the same guitar hero rapid-fire lead drivel shit that guys were playing in the ‘60s in an attempt to get some kind of instant credibility as a bad-ass. The guitar-slinger rut. You

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could indulge in that too if you wanted and leave people completely slack-jawed, but you don’t even drive by the neighborhood.

I don’t know what it is about playing in space and why people don’t do it. When I’m in a situation with one or two other gui-tar players and it’s kind of a ‘duel’ situation, I absolutely feel mute because I can’t hear anything in my head. I’m forced not to be able to say anything because there is so much being said. It’s like if everyone in the room is shouting, I would just sit down and wait until the shouting was over.

TQR: What are you using for guitars today?

Mainly the ‘59. I went through maybe six months when I was playing the signature Tele, and then I’d play the old one and I got back into that like

a security blanket, perhaps. There were some things about the signature that I really like – it’s easier to play, easier to keep in tune (laughing) and there is a certain volume that the signature has, but mainly I use the ‘59. I don’t know… it’s as if I can will things easier with it. Sometimes I’ll de-tune the 6th string, hit a harmonic and then shake the neck and lower the pitch by bending the neck and hit an Em chord and I feel like I just know how to make it work. The shit I do to that guitar… there

is even a tiny crack up in the head-stock, but I feel like I know how to make it work. It does what I want it to, and so does the signature, but it’s like a 2-year old guitar, and the ‘59 feels like a 50-year old guitar. So if I’m going to

record live in the studio I’ll use the ‘59. I’m getting the ‘59 re-fretted soon, though… I have to.

TQR: It’s all Telecaster, but it doesn’t sound shrill and too metallic. Lots of character there.

None of my guitars have that glassy shrapnel sound that some-times I love in the right hands, and I think it’s because of the top-loading bridge.

TQR: How did the pickups turn out with your signature Tele?

It worked out really well. I had a pickup that I really liked made by Curtis No-vak. I told Mike El-dred at Fender, and he was open to it, but felt that Fender Custom Shop should face the

“Pepsi challenge” and we should try to beat it. So we started with the Novak, and after many prototypes from Fender we came up with something I found even more suitable to my personal tastes, which is very focused on bass response.

TQR: What happened to the original pickups in your ‘59?

Technically I have the original pickups. Before I had ever recorded anything both of the original pickups died. They were like one of those old married couples when one dies and the other one dies within a week (laughing). I had them both re-wound by Seymour Duncan twenty years ago or more.

TQR: How do you find a Campilongo Tele? I don’t imaging you can buy the pickups sepa-rately either…

I wish they were selling them. I wish

they had a cheap little Jim Campilongo Christmas guitar with a cheap little amp, a strap and a set of strings (laughing).

TQR: The Jim Campilongo guitar kit, with a couple of lessons thrown in…

Yeah, me and Esteban (laughing) on QVC. Since they only made 50 of my signature guitars, it’s kind of like diamonds coming out of Africa. They all sold out, but there was one in Japan in a store that I saw. A guy in Nor-way bought it, I think,

but yeah, they are hard to find. Somebody sold a Campilongo pickup on eBay for something like $100 and it sold really

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 2014 77

quick. I can’t imagine that someone would take the pickup out of a $3,000 guitar, but who knows?

TQR: What did you use for the two acoustic tracks on Dream Dictionary?

I played a 1958 00-18 Martin and that was on the duet with Steve. The other one was a Gibson that belonged to Andy and I don’t remember what it was. I don’t ever notice and I don’t care. I went in one day just to see how the studio sounded and jammed with the great jazz drummer Mark Guiliana and my incredible bassist Chris Morrissey. We

jammed all day and Andy suggested I track something because we still had some time, and I had this acoustic tune I played twice. Andy’s guitar was a big sunburst Gibson acoustic and my arm barely got over the top. It sounded great and we kept that first take.

TQR: Did you just mic the acoustic guitars?

Yeah, we did and you can almost hear chairs squeaking.

TQR: On “Heaven is Creepy” there is almost this pitch-shifting wobble effect happening with your guitar. Is that just your technique?

Yeah, it is. I don’t know what happened during that tune but it was the last day, and it was the best we ever played it. We were kind of amazed… When I listened to it there was this weird spirit thing going on and at one point some of my notes seemed really unbalanced.

TQR: It was like a pitch-shifting wobble.

Yeah, like it was me shak-ing the neck or something. We were laughing as we were playing because it was so good. All of us… Chris and Josh are young, like in their 30s but really experienced guys – not babies, and we all agreed that track was the most unabashed performance in any of our careers. What’s funny is you are the first guy to even mention it.

TQR: Perhaps you’ve been talking to journalists who don’t play… You are also working out of a really cool scale…

Yeah, a diminished scale that is whole/half/whole/half/whole/half… It almost sounds… it flirts with sounding like a whole tone scale, but it’s a diminished scale as opposed to what we mainly we do as diminished arpeggios, which are more obvi-ous. I do that way too much. I love the diminished scale and I probably do it too much.

TQR: And the only amp you used was your silverface Princeton Reverb. Why that one?

Because it just sounded the best, whatever the best is. I have maybe three recording amps – the silverface, and a blackface Princeton that this steel guitar-ist Bobby Black sold to me and it has a Jensen C10N in it. It’s not Mighty

Mouse – you could probably blow that speaker up but he used it for steel guitar. I recorded all of American Hips with that amp, and it sounds brighter than the silverface with the Celestion in it. I also brought my Vibro Champ – I always try to play through that thing because it’s a great sounding small amp. I started out with the blackface Princeton and Andy said he kinda thought the silverface was working and so did I, so that’s what we used. That and the Buddy Guy Super re-amp.

TQR: Speaking of pedal steel… you were playing the coolest pedal steel licks on “Nang, Nang,” and not the usual bends you hear on guitar, but more like stair step chord voicings fingerpicked.

Yeah, you have really been listening! Really, there is a wealth of things you can do in that vein, and they are voicings. I fig-ured out this Buddy Emmons tune, “Four Wheel Drive” a few years back and I got a couple of 6th voicings and I applied them to “Nang, Nang,” and a couple things I made up. You know, I’ve done some interviews recently with some very smart people and no one has mentioned or picked up on that. No one connected those dots.

TQR: It’s hard to miss, and totally you.

It’s also a hybrid picking thing that makes it sound more steely, but mainly it’s the voicing.

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TQR: What’s the complete name of the studio you used and what’s been happening in terms of shows in New York?

The studio is Bedford Studios, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. As far as gigs go, the Living Room closed. The rent went way up and the owners are looking for a new space. Meanwhile we have moved to a club called Rockwood Music Hall in the Lower Eastside and it has really worked out well. It’s bigger than Barbes, but people get the feeling that

they are really lucky to be there, if you know what I mean. It’s a cool space. As far as bigger tours go, I have been work-ing like crazy to get something going in Europe. There is a guy who booked us into the Czech Republic and he has been trying to put a tour together for us in Europe. I know there is an audience for us in Europe and also in Japan, but you need someone to put it together. The money thing is tough every-where now. Where guys at my level used to play now you see bigger acts like the Yellowjackets, Stanley Clarke or Chick Corea. The people getting the gigs seem to be the big names, but I think we will put together a West Coast swing soon.

TQR: Brooklyn became very fashionable about the time you moved there.

Oh, man, this neighborhood has changed, and Manhattan has become like Venice, Italy. It’s not a place for normal people to live anymore (laugh-ing). But the Williamsburg thing is cool here in Brooklyn. There are a lot of clubs and restaurants, and lots of young people that like to go out, so it’s cool.

TQR: And you are still selling your lessons from the web site?

Oh, yeah and that’s going really well. We constantly add new lessons. “Suppose” from the new record is out, and we have added “Gotta Get Drunk” from the Little Willies, and I’m adding “Nang, Nang.” People really like them, and they are good lessons.

www.jimcampilongo.com/

“I went to New York to be born again…..when the train plunged into a tunnel under New York City, with its lining of pipes and wires, I was out of the womb and into the birth canal.” – Vonnegut

I’ll admit it. New York City is something else. For a Viking Indian from Texas, it isn’t surprising that I’m wide-eyed and beyond amused every time I land

there. Which is not often, for I prefer the thigh-moist winds of the south. It seems like things never cease in New York – the endless whir and hum of white collar posture and plunder. On the flip side, there’s always some sort of hell raising to be found. And I have.

Subway trains are strange. I can see how you could enjoy the mindless no-hands adventure of them, but once on board, just like a lot of things in life, we’re all held

captive trying to get somewhere else. Regardless, for this ride, I was fired up since we were heading to Brooklyn to see Campilongo do his thing. And so was D.W., who sat across from me riding shotgun next to a throng of pasty would be gangster rappers, cascading silk turbans, Macy’s bags, home-less souls, sport coats, and two hundred dollar jeans.

The fridge cooled 6-pack of Steelhead Ale we’d thrown down on the third floor of Hotel 17 was starting to bring the call of nature, but I guess they forgot to add restrooms to the subway cars. Probably a good idea. D.W. was not impressed when I

mentioned I needed to make a pit stop. “What?! If you make us head back up to the street you’re buying a round at the nearest bar before we get back on!” “Fine,” I said, “Seems fair enough to me.” So we pulled the rip cord.

By the time I hit the restroom and we’d cranked a pair of gin and tonics

New York

Twenty-SixTwenty-Six

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in the first bar we found, another half hour had passed and we kept rolling to the gig. “That piss just cost me 26 bucks.” “Get used to it, that’s the price you pay for mis-managing the call of nature in Manhattan,” howled D.W. I tried not to think of all the brisket, roadside tortillas, and Shiner Bock bottles I could have bought back home instead of that round. Yet for some reason, it was worth it.

Minutes later, and a short walk of a few hundred blocks with some absurdly rich and heady people watching, we pushed our way into a swank little standing room only lounge with a low-light, rouge curtain vibe. We could already see the shim-mer and shake of Campilongo’s smoky white telecaster having his way with the packed house. J.C. proceeded to mesmerize, astound, and transport all of us to another time and place, and it all appeared effortless. Because for him, it was. The man is one of the few. You know it’s good when no words are neces-sary, just grins as wide as barns. It was long past midnight before the lights came back on.

A couple weeks later, still trying to digest what I’d seen and heard that night, I hopped onto Campilongo’s website and ordered up an old school jazz lesson. “Mr. Sandman.” It arrived in the mail by the weekend with a hand-written note from

Jim saying he enjoyed the hang, encouraging me to get to it, and to give him a shout if I had any questions. Around here in Lone Star terra firma, is it admittedly a land of honky-tonk and blues, so for me to take a shot at decoding that piece, well, suffice it to say it was ever humbling. The woodshed was ugly. I often stepped away with a headache, still knowing I had tons more chords to comp out. And yes, that melody was schooling me. It certainly wasn’t about speed, for any damn fool knows that SLOW upends fast, always. More so, it had to do with FLOW, which is one of the keys to both playing music and finding grace in our lives, in all that we set our hearts to.

It wasn’t pretty, but eventually, I got there. And when I finally did, I realized that if you can play that song, you can prob-ably play most anything. Some-times you just have to seek out things that endlessly raise the bar for you, be it a song, a well thought out home-cooked meal, or if you are beyond lucky – a kiss that comes from nowhere

and calls you back for more leaving you starry-eyed and wanton. “Sandman” is one of those. That bell like chime from the neck pickup of the burst and the Deluxe Reverb, floating upwards into the ether and on to who knows where. It always makes me feel like I’ve hopped an open rail car out of here… I’m gone. – Riverhorse

“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.” – George Carlin

In 1974 Steve Miller’s “Joker” hit #1 on the charts, Robert K. Preston, a disgruntled U.S. Army private buzzed the White House with a stolen helicopter, gold hit a record $188 an ounce in Paris, the last Japanese soldier surrendered in the Philippines 29 years after the end of World War II, the most lethal tornado outbreak in recorded history scraped across the Midwest leaving 315 dead and 5,500 injured, the World Trade Center opened in New York, Paul McCartney released “Band on the Run”, Steely Dan released “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number”, Blind Faith played its first concert, John Len-non was ordered to leave the United States in 60 days, the Ramones debuted at CBGBs, Barbara Streisand’s “Memo-ries” was the #1 hit song of the year, and a Princeton Reverb amp – one among thousands built in 1974 was shipped from Fullerton, California to parts unknown. Forty years later it now sits in our music room in Decatur, Georgia by way of the West Village in New York, purely by chance. Maybe.

Other things happened in 1974 that don’t ap-pear in the historical records found on the Web… In the summer of 1974 three young and willin’ thrillseekers drove 50 miles south from Indianapolis, Indiana to Kirkwood

Street in Bloomington to hear John Cougar at the Bluebird. Half way through the night three Rorer 714 Methaqualone tabs were produced, eagerly swallowed by the slightly buzzed trio of young immortals, and that’s when the wheels began to come off the Bluebird trip. Mary, always a level headed girl, reminded us that she had to be back in Indianapolis to open the restaurant she managed by 7 a.m. Leaving the Bluebird at 2 left plenty of time for the return trip and a snooze, but making our way back to the car was tricky… Ludes and alcohol had left two of us leaning hard against one another,

1974

Jim with RIverhorse

TQ

Rollin’ and Tumblin’1974

Rollin’ and Tumblin’

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 20141010

every step a cautious bet between forward locomotion and a sloppy, laughing stumble, while the driver gently goaded and guided the other two forward to the waiting Chevy Nova sitting curbside on Kirkwood. Who has the keys? Oh, I do… Easing into the Chevy’s ample bench makeout seats, the driver

instructed all to fasten their seat belts. Leaving Bloomington it was agreed that a 6-pack of Stroh’s fire-brewed beer seemed like a great idea, and a 6-pack was provided by a convenience store clerk even though alcohol sales were prohibited at that late hour. Stumble on, my brother! Thirty minutes up the 2-lane highway still south of Indianapolis the right rear tire

blew, sending the Nova into a sickening, swerving tail slide. As the rear wheel caught a deep drainage ditch on the side of the road, the Nova flipped, first sideways, then end over end before landing upside down 200 feet down the road near a livestock fence. Spitting pulverized safety glass out of his mouth, the driver asked, “Is everybody OK?” And we were – perfectly unscathed, still suspended by the seat belts, hanging upside down in the trashed Nova like blinking and very alert fruit bats showered in broken bits of glass. An adrenaline rush shouted… Get rid of the beer. Where’s the beer? Still intact in a brown paper bag in the back, not one bottle broken (or consumed.) Steve, get out and hide that in the bushes now. Within minutes an Indiana State Trooper arrived, the sound of the crash and the Nova’s tumbling headlight beams having been seen at a Dairy Queen just up the road. Is anybody hurt? No. Slowly nodding and shaking his head, I thought for sure I was going to find bodies in that car or out here in the grass. Who was driving? Me. What happened? Rear tire blew, I was going about 65 and lost it in the ditch. The State Trooper had chocolate milk shakes brought to us from the Dairy Queen, re-traced the tire tracks and torn up earth and grass on the side of the road with his flashlight, and returned to ask who he could have the dispatcher call to come pick us up. No mention of a sobriety test was ever made. Times were different in 1974.

We took Mary’s insurance money to a Cadil-lac dealership owned by the mother of a high school friend and bought a 1970

lemon meringue Coupe de Ville convertible with 500 pounds of gleaming chrome bolted to both ends. Mary said she had always wanted a Cadillac… With the top down, long blonde

hair blowin’ in the wind, Wayfarers perched on her sunburned nose and the Detroit 8-track blasting, the sight of Mary be-hind the wheel defined the essence of living young, beautiful, free and female in America. Steve bought us all t-shirts to commemorate the demolition of the dead Nova – the shirts were green like the Chevy with white lettering, a big 714 quaalude pill on the front with a marijuana leaf in the center and nick names on the back. The driver drew ‘Parnelli Jones.’

A month later we left Indianapolis for Ne-gril, Jamaica. Rickie, a bartender we knew had told us that Negril was heaven on earth for all the obvious reasons, and a few that were less obvious but no less intense. We drove

the Cadillac to Miami and caught an Air Jamaica flight to Montego Bay, with a brief stopover in south Georgia for a speeding ticket in the middle of the night. The local cop had us follow him to a podunk jail in a small town off Interstate 75 to pay the $80 ticket, where a drooling mentally handi-capped jailer with a Georgia State Patrol patch sewn on the front of his overalls leered at blonde little Mary like a pork chop swimmin’ in gravy. We spent three weeks browning in Negril, renting a thatched hut on the empty 7-mile beach

for $10 day. The Jamaicans drank Red Stripe beer and played dominoes every night under a bare 100 watt bulb while the radio constantly spewed Eric Clapton’s “I

Shot the Sheriff,” which seemed really funny to us. As reg-gae goes it was pretty bad reggae, but the Jamaicans dug it. The ganja was rich, stupidly potent, ridiculously cheap and redolent with the pungent, earthy aroma of Jamaica’s unique

and universal sex scent – a mix of burning sugar cane and hardwood charcoal, volcanic earth, the tur-quoise sea, and flattened land crabs baking on the asphalt of the 2-lane road they crossed each night from inland bush to beach and back. For the land crabs, the big bauxite trucks that ran the island at night were their Qualuude gamble. After a couple of days in country you learned to limit yourself to just a

1974

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 2014 1111

couple of tokes off the giant spliffs the Jamaicans rolled un-less you wanted to be reduced to a mumbling zombie all day. … All fruits ripe, mon. Irie. OK, Trevor, if you say so. Where the fuck am I and how do you smoke this shit all day? By the way, we need to buy you a new pair of pants with a working zipper. Ah, you see I a grindsman! Nice up! What you need, mon, is jah mushroom tea from Miss Patty’s down da beach! What I need is an icy cold blender drink with those shorty ba-nanas and a half pint of Meyer’s rum to calm this lamb’s bread buzz you put on me. Cu yu! Doncha be a craven choke puppy, young David… When we returned to Miami we went straight to a Burger King, having eaten nothing but jerk chicken, escoveche fish and rice for three weeks, and that’s when we saw the newspaper stand and the Miami Herald headline that screamed, “Nixon Resigns!”

All fruits ripe.

In case you’re wondering why the Rorer 714 John Cougar Chevy demolition, a Jamaican holiday and Dick Nixon’s demise are relevant to a review of our ‘74 Princeton Reverb, it seems to us that it is only natural to recall what was happen-ing in your world at the time an old amp or guitar was made that has now come into your life. Doing so provides mean-ingful context, a heightened appreciation for the passage of time, and for the precious human beings who have randomly passed through your life. Sometimes, nothing seems random, but either way these things are important, and while we aren’t particularly proud of tempting fate, we were young. It happened. There is no fiction being told here. Time… Time… Time has come today… Where were you when your first heard the Chambers Brothers’ classic groove blasting through the dashboard?

By 1974 Leo Fend-er’s former com-pany had changed dramati-cally under the owner-

ship of CBS. The sprawling manufacturing facility that CBS built in Fullerton was producing clunky boat anchors encased in plastic finishes that were guaranteed to age badly, and Fender amplifiers had undergone significant changes since the

pre-1968 blackface era. Depending on what you read about the Silverface era today, you might be led to believe that all the Silverface amps were deeply flawed, compromised by questionable circuit ‘upgrades’, inferior component choices, shoddy cabinets made with dead particle board, and thin, life-less tone. The truth isn’t so easy to grasp, depending on the actual year the amp was built, the specific Fender model, and how the amp may have been affected by component drift or

modifications. Most of the people that bash silverface Fenders the hardest are the ones that own blackfaces… Don’t listen to them. In the case of the ‘74 Princeton Reverb model AB1270 we acquired, only a very minor change was made to a resistor value in the reverb circuit from blackface specs. Of course the familiar blue molded Sprague capacitors present in the blackface amps were substituted with

dark blue Paktrons and white Mallory caps, and the wire used was also changed from cloth-covered to plastic coated. Most significant, however, was the change from a 5AR4 recti-fier tube to a 5U4, and this is where some confusion exists surrounding the existence of an AA764 Princeton Reverb schematic and the subsequent AA1164 circuit.

While a AA764 schematic can be found on the web, it clearly does not appear to have been produced by Fender, yet most blackface Princeton Reverb tube charts and some from early silverface Princetons show the AA764 circuit that specifies a 5AR4 rectifier. The AA1164 schematic reflects the change to

a 5U4 rectifier with a 340 V power trans-former, while the ‘un-official’ AA764 sche-

matic specifies a 5AR4 with a 330V power tranny. Jeff Bakos confirmed the existence of the 330V transformers in blackface Princeton Reverbs as well. Whether Fender ever produced a AA764 schematic isn’t as important as understanding whether your amp was intended to use a 5AR4 or 5U4. You can follow the schematic as indicated on the tube chart, but be sure to check the bias on you’re output tubes. Prospective Princeton

amps

TQ

The ‘74 Princeton ReverbThe ‘74 Princeton Reverb

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 20141212

Reverb buyers will pay a premium for a blackface ‘transitional’ amp like the ‘68 model with drip edge grille. While we were trolling eBay a drip edge Princeton Reverb was listed as a late ‘67 model, complete with the desirable “AA764” blackface circuit indicated on the tube chart. Forty five bids were placed and the amp sold for $1,549.00. As far as schematics go, what you need to know is that the first blackface circuit can be identified as the mysterious AA764 (July, 1964), followed by the AA1164 and AB1270 circuits.

We found our ‘74 Princeton on eBay listed by a seller in New York for $975.00 – a price that reflects the average paid for a silverface Princeton in good condition with a pre-pull boost

AB1270 circuit. The circuit board components in our amp were completely original with the exception of one replaced resistor. The electrolytic can cap had been replaced with a new cap from CE Distribution, and the power transformer had been replaced with a correct, high quality blackface era tranny labeled Mojotone built by Heyboer. The replaced speaker was an equally fine Eminence Legend 10. The output transformer and choke were original, as well as the heavy duty AC cord.

The ‘74 cabinet is made from pine boards painted black, although

2-3 pieces appear to have been glued together to achieve the width of one board from the blackface era. The baffle is par-ticle board, and the cabinets were no longer built with finger joints, but rabbet joints where the side, top and bottom boards are glued together using locking grooves in each board. In a lightweight and portable amp like the Princeton Reverb we do not consider this construction to be detrimental to sound or durability in the least, and we owned and reviewed a big silverface Super Reverb amp (‘73) years ago that sounded fantastic.

We were floored by how gloriously, Fendery good the ‘74 sounded right off the UPS truck. Equipped with JJ 6V6s, an old GE 5U4 and assorted American preamp tubes, the Princ-eton sounded full, lush and bright with brilliantly deep reverb, and unusually strong and vibacious tremolo. The amp was dead quiet, classic Fender clean up to about 5 on the Volume

control, and it gradually slipped into a greasy overdriven tone with the typi cal squishiness of a 5U4 all the way to 10. We were more than pleased, thrilled, really, but

of course, we were hardly done… We called Jeff Bakos and he gave us a list of blue molded Sozo caps we would use to replace the Paktrons in the tone circuit. We would leave the reverb and tremolo circuits alone,

but we wanted to see how the Sozos might change the char-acter of the amp. Meanwhile, we bought two pair of matched vintage NOS RCA 6V6s from a very conscientious and help-ful guy named Dave Baldwin in Seattle for $85.00. A week later we brought the Princeton to Jeff’s shop in Little 5 Points and got to work. Curious, we first checked the values of the components on the board against the specs in the sche-

matic. They were all rated at +/- 10% and they all remained spot on after 40 years. Installing the Sozos took about 20 minutes. Jeff tightened a few tube sockets and jacks, and he also installed a bias pot, biased the RCAs at just under 30 mA and we were done. Before we proceed to speakers, here’s Jim Campilongo’s interesting take on Silverface Princeton Reverb amps…

I think the Silverface amps are not as bright, and even when I’ve done the blackface mod for $40, for $600 less I’ve gotten essentially the same sound. I love the Silverfaces because they are just way cheaper and you’ve still got something that you love. They just seem like there is a little less high-end, and

throatier. I’ve put the Jensen C10 speakers in them and they still sound mellower to me. They are both (black and silverface) great amps, and I couldn’t imagine play-

amps

TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 2014 13

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13

ing through a silverface and being bummed out about it, and if you are… perhaps you should reassess your priorities (laugh-ing). It’s kind of like staring at the moon… you’re standing there taking in the moon with someone and you’re thinking, “Well, I’ve seen better…” At that point you’re not enjoying something for the miracle it is (still laughing).

TQR: You’ve also said that you always use great NOS tubes in your amps…

Oh yeah… definitely, and I bias them really hot… in the 30s (mA). Enter at your own risk, and

some people don’t like it, but they are friggin’ loud, and in a way, that’s the secret. I mean, some people can’t imagine play-ing in a band with a Princeton, but if you bias that thing in the 30s and play the amp on ‘10’ with a Telecaster, it’s gonna cut like a knife. And if you play Woodstock, just mic it.

The combined effect of the RCAs and Sozos produced a slight-ly rounder, fuller tone with the mids filled in nicely, yet the Princeton retained the brilliant clarity, sparkle and deep fidelity we had noted the first time we played through it. Fender at its utterly classic best. The low end held together better with the volume cranked, and the overdriven tone of the Princeton was every bit as lush and pure as its clean tones. We liked the sound and feel of the amp with both rectifier tubes – it just depends on what you want – the looser jangle and squish of the 5U4 that saturates a little faster at high volume levels, or the slightly tougher sound and feel of the 5AR4. Now we were ready to try a few different tens…

Speak to MeThis is the second silverface Princeton Reverb we have bought and reviewed, along with two blackface reverb models, a brown and a non-reverb blackface, and every one of them sounded different. The ‘74 may be the best yet. No…

honestly, it is the best, beyond a doubt. You can ponder why some amps sound better than others, but given all

the variables in play, it’s best to simply enjoy them and resist the urge to struggle with ‘why’? Aside from installing the best tubes you can find and perhaps tweaking tone a little bit with some good new caps in the right places (or not), speaker swaps remain the simplest and most effective potential im-provement you can make to an amp. When changing speakers it is common to find loose speaker mounting screws in old Fender amps that turn in the baffle board when you try to tighten the nut down on the speaker frame. That had hap-pened with the ‘74 and someone decided to just remove one of the fours screws that was loose. Since we have pulled a lot of screws out of Fender baffles with 8 screws to fit a Celes-tion speaker that can only accommodate 4, we had plenty of spares, so we replaced the missing screw and permanently seated it in the hole in the baffle with a couple of drops of Su-per glue. Twenty minutes later we were good to go and ready to begin testing speakers.

Eminence Legend 1058Eminence Legend speakers remain among the best and most overlooked replace-ment speakers, including the ceramic 1058, Alnico 1028, Legend GB128, 1258, and the Legend 15. The Legend 1058 that was mounted in the ‘74 is an excellent speaker rated

at 75 watts with a 16 oz. magnet and 1.5 inch voice coil. The tone is big and warm, fuller than the Alnico 1028 and very well balanced across the full frequency range of the guitar. For some it might seem a little too vanilla, perhaps too balanced, culminating in a final impression that is, for lack of a better term, unremarkable in a 1x10 application. But we thought the Legend sounded really good in the Princeton – very transpar-ent and pure, basically delivering what the amp was giving. We have used 1058s with great success in Super Reverb amps with a pair of brighter Alnico 1028s, and it sounded very good in the Silverface Princeton – particularly with the brighter, original Paktron caps we replaced. As always, the key is to find the best match between the amp and speaker.

Eminence Ragin’ CajunIn the Princeton Reverb the 75 watt Ragin’ Cajun produced bold low end and midrange tones with subdued brightness and rolled off treble presence compared to the other speakers we tried. For single coil Fender players this could be a great

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 20141414

speaker that effectively fattens up a trebly Strat or Telecaster if that’s what you need, but in the ‘74 we missed the sparkle and clarity on the top. With its 1.5 inch voice coil and 30 oz. magnet, the Ragin’ Cajun might also sound better in a more powerful amp that can really move the motor in comparison to the 12 watt Princeton Reverb.

Eminence Copperhead The 75 watt Copperhead with 1.5 inch voice coil and 20 oz. magnet immediately im-pressed us with great clarity, rich, solid bass, and midrange response that was neither overbearing or too scooped. The treble tones were beauti-fully musical, pure and pleas-

ing – not in the least bit sharp or brittle, but vividly clear, and rich in harmonic overtones. The Cooperhead was absolutely one of our favorites among the speakers reviewed here, and we loved the dynamic touch-sensitivity we experienced with the Princeton. We suspect the lighter 20 oz. magnet might have something to do with that. The Copperhead is definitely worth considering as a 1x10 or in other combo configurations.

Celestion G10 Greenback Our Made in England 30 watt Greenback was spectacular in the Princeton – responsive, dynamic and lively. With a big 1.75 inch copper voice coil and 14 oz. magnet, the Greenback was the most dynamically pleasing speaker we tried, with outstand-

ing bass response, vivid upper mids, smooth and rich treble tones and lush harmonic textures throughout. This speaker just seemed best suited for the 12 watt Princeton Reverb, an impression that was confirmed in Celestion’s own online description that references “adding class” to small combos. If you should be inspired to follow our lead in acquiring a silverface Princeton Reverb, we can recommend the Green-back without reservation. Again, it seems that the smaller magnet and lower power handling characteristics matched up particularly well with the Princeton.

RCAsLet’s face it, we are fortunate that reliable tubes for guitar amps are still being made, so we won’t disparage contempo-rary brands like JJ, Groove Tubes, Electro-Harmonix, Svet-lana, Tung Sol, Mullard, Sovtek and Tube Amp Doctor. May they all remain profitable and thrive. However, we also aren’t

going to pretend that the sound of modern tubes can compare to a strong set of GE, Mullard, Tung Sol, Sylvania or RCA tubes. The difference in the quality of sound between mod-ern output and preamp tubes and their classic equivalents in direct A/B tests is usually de-pressing. No contest. For tour-

ing pros, burning up rare old tubes really isn’t an option, but for those of us craving tone with a lighter workload, we can still selectively find stellar vintage tubes at less than onerous prices. After we acquired the ‘74 Princeton, we trolled eBay for 6V6s to replace the JJs, and in minutes we had located two pairs of vintage RCA 6V6GTs – 3 NOS and 1 slightly used but testing new (ANOS) and all four were matched with

a Maxi Matcher draw-ing 20.6Ma, 20.6Ma, 21.5Ma, 21.8Ma under load. That’s good. And we paid a very fair $84.65 for the quad, while also getting to know the seller, Dave Baldwin in Seattle – a very helpful and knowl-edgeable tube hound. No doubt some of the magic

we have described in the Princeton can be attributed to the RCA 6V6GTs and the RCA and Sylvania preamp tubes that remain in our stash. These old tubes simply push the sound of your guitar and amp into full audio Technicolor, and we urge you to consider acquiring your own selection of classic tubes while you can. To help you in that endeavor, we asked Dave to provide some information and tips on buying classic vacuum tubes…

I grew up listening to classic rock in the 1970s, and early hand-wired amps running vintage glass have an undeniable magic. I play guitar and listening to good guitar tone is a great experience that has helped me upgrade many guitar amps for Seattle area musicians and studios.

Seven years ago I realized my amps sounded better with vintage tubes. I got lucky and bought nine full tube caddies along with a Jackson 648S emissions tester. I like the Jackson because it has a life test that indicates how much a tube has

tubes

Tubes According to Dave

TQ

Tubes According to Dave

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 2014 1515

been used. The life test strains the cathode and by seeing how fast and how far the needle drops you can judge the

remaining life. The Jackson is lightweight and matched what my Hickok 534 mutual conductance tester was reading. Large military contracts enabled early manufacturers to R&D to the best of their ability. They used high grade metals, coat-ings, and critical parts. Who knows if the current EPA would even allow the types of chemicals they used? All the vintage producers took pride in their work and competition was fierce.

In my experi-ence vintage tubes offer better clar-ity, warmth, smoothness, and bandwidth than new production and tend to

be robust with a longer lifespan. Vintage preamp tubes offer the biggest improvement in tone and I would suggest starting there first. Current production 12AX7s have been described as glassy, bright, and sterile. I agree. With the exception of the JJECC803 most new 12AX7 plates are very short which can give a feeling of stiffness and compression. Most new produc-tion 12AX7s have less than half the metal of a vintage long plate. Mass is good in electronics.

Current production JJEL84, JJKT77, and Sovtek 5881/6L6WGC among others are good sounding output tubes for the working musi-cian when paired with vintage preamp tubes. In fact, surprisingly, I liked the JJEL84 over several vintage brands. Vintage tubes all sound slightly different and knowing the variables can help dial in a amp for recording, live use, and specific styles of music. Humbuckers or single coils? Early breakup or high headroom? 3D and open or compressed?

The earliest 6V6G types produced from 1937 sound slightly more open, clear, and 3D than later GT types. These traits are also true for vintage 12AX7 long plates. Neil Young uses the 6V6G type in his outboard reverb and in his Deluxe he rebi-

ased the amp to run 6L6s. If your amp has the space to run these larger 6V6G types they are certainly worth the cost.

If you have an amp that doesn’t draw super high voltage and requires a 6L6GC, the early 6L6G, GA, GB can be amazing choices. These are rated at 360 volts but due to the construction are okay running a little higher if biased correctly. RCA, GE, Sylvania, and Tung-Sol are among the top US vintage output tubes. If you get lucky and find rare National Union 6L6GAs buy them. They are very warm and Mullard like and sound amaz-ing in guitar amps.

Generally RCA blackplate gray glass 6V6GT and Tung-Sol black glass 6V6GTs will have a nice warm creamy and smooth sound similar to European tubes. While recording and at low to moderate levels these are a good choice. In the right amp loud they are great too. Sylvania, Ken-Rad, CBS-Hytron are excellent choices especially when playing loud. Where RCA might start to compress too much and lose definition these later three brands shine the harder they are pushed. Sylvania and Ken-Rad have excellent clarity and chime. Raytheon 6V6GT have the highest headroom of all due to the large robust plates. What are the pitfalls of buying vintage tubes? Know your seller. Used ANOS vintage tubes are okay if screened proper-ly. They must be tested for emissions or mutual conductance, shorts, and life. When testing a tube the faster the needle goes up the better. If you don’t have a tester, here are some things to look for:

Does it have a dark burn in spot on the glass? Does it have heavy coffee colored staining on the bottom glass? How much of the silver flashing is remaining on top? Do the pins or base have clamp marks? How much dust is between the glass and base?

I would avoid sellers who do not have a return policy. Just because a seller has a box does not make a tube NOS. Old techs back in the day were notorious for putting used tubes back in the box. NOS are generally pristine with clean shiny glass, full silver flashing, no burn marks, perfect bases, and have most of the original print intact.

Strong tubes that test in the NOS range are important for guitarists. A strong tube will react faster to your input which is what you

need. A tired tube reacts slower and will not have the snap

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 20141616

you might expect. Tired tubes also tend to gradually lose the high end.

Output tube match-ing is critical. Properly matched tubes put less strain on the amplifier, run cooler, last longer, and have less crossover distortion. A seller that has matched output tubes in a Maxi-Matcher

at 400 volts or a real tube amp is who you want to buy from. They should be able to state the mA draw and the closer the better. Under 5mA apart is good but under 2mA is even better and you need to test a lot of tubes to get matching that close. I have tested 6V6s on regular tube testers with similar readings that were off by as much as 35mA. Most output tubes sold as matched with a Hickock or similar testers will not bias up properly and nobody wants their tech asking “where did you buy these?” Next up, all about vintage 12AX7 dating back to 1947. Cheers, Dave

Northwest Vintage Vacuum Tubesautolocate4u@yahoo.com

425-681-1782

We have been playing through the ‘74 Princ-eton now for nearly two weeks, and yes, even after acquir-ing amps for

review for 14 years and decades more simply playing them, this amplifier has inspired music, tones and a refreshing new perceptive mindset that we wouldn’t have experienced without it. The sound it produces is just so deep, 3-dimensional, touch-sensitive and clear that the slightest change in the way you touch the strings with your fingertips can be heard altering the layers of harmonics present in single notes and chords. The notes are vibrant and alive with rich, clear sustain, and the vivid reverb and tremolo effects add mystery, weight and

a dramatic edge to everything we play. The Princeton urges you to slow down and milk it for all its worth, and its worth is incalculable. While we may have been inspired again by Jim Campilongo to find this amp, the point is really not about sounding like Jim, but about encouraging discovery. We can’t promise that if you hunt down another ‘74 Princeton Reverb, the one you choose will sound like ours, but with some good tubes and a good speaker, we’ll bet you can get close. Closer than any reissue Princeton, definitely, and the silverface amps have a unique tone that is different from the earlier blackface amps. If there is a trick to successfully finding your own Princeton, it is attitude. Avoid approaching your search in fear expecting the worst – as if the odds are against you, that you’ll buy a dog, or wind up spending a fortune fixing something you should never have bought in the first place. If you shop online, read descriptions very carefully, ask questions, and verify that the seller is knowledgeable, conscientious, and has the feedback to back it up. Many dealers won’t divulge impor-tant details unless you ask. For a $900-$1,000 sale they can send you clear jpeg images of the circuit board and transform-ers, and plan on replacing all the tubes and the speaker. On the other hand, if you really connect with amps with mul-tiple overdrive and distortion circuits, don’t buy a Princeton Reverb. It isn’t you. But if the kind of lush and vivid purity of tone we have described here sounds appealing, you can do this. Simply Quest forth with confidence, and Enjoy…

Fender’s Roadworn Series built in Ensenada, Mexico was introduced in January 2009, and while the idea of an inexpensive beater Stratocaster or Tele finished in nitro was definitely

appealing, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to embrace (or ignore) the cheesy ‘aging’ found on the Roadworn guitars with maple fingerboards. It appeared as if the factory in Ensenada used a universal template and made no attempt to disguise the fact that the ‘aging’ had been done with a sander using a ‘wear’ pattern that was wholly unbelievable and contrived, so for years, we passed on the Roadworn guitars. With Jim Campilongo featured in this issue, we knew a Telecaster would be essential, but the prospect of finding a Campilongo Signature Tele was nil, and even if we were capable of bor-

guitars

TQ

Delivering the GoodsDelivering the Goods

TQ

Fender Roadworn TelecasterFender Roadworn Telecaster

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rowing a real ‘59, what good would that do you? We’ll leave the job of drooling over rare, mega-buck vintage guitars to someone else… The Quest for tone isn’t much of a quest if you can’t find or afford the stuff we review.

As we pondered our best move, we decided to take a look at the Road-worn Tele Series again online. We saw more of the same bad ‘aging’ in online pictures, and

we also noticed that Sweetwater, who always posts high-res images of all the guitars they have in stock, had no Roadworn Teles in stock at all.

We jumped over to Dave’s Guitar Shop and found a single blonde, and to our surprise, this guitar didn’t appear to have been aged in quite the same way as all the other Roadworns we had seen. We asked Dave to send it, and like the ‘74 Princ-eton, it is one of the best moves we have ever made.

Now, please try to suppress the typical knee-jerk tendency to view gushing reviews with a jaundiced eye, because that’s what you are about to get. Trust us – you have no idea…Unzipping the gig bag holding the Roadworn Telecaster fresh from Lacrosse, we lifted it out and froze in stunned disbelief. Somebody made a mistake… We sat down in our centry-old oak swivel chair, put the Tele in our lap and just stared at it laughing. Finished in classic see-through butterscotch blonde, the finish is so thin that we can feel the ash

grain beneath our fingertips, and the relic job on the body is fully reminiscent of the three Custom Shop Nocasters we have owned. The Roadworn Tele body had been artfully aged with just a few minor nicks on the top and edges and a moderate patch of belt buckle rash on the back. And the color of the nitro finish is dead nuts perfect – not too yellow or bright, but a creamy butterscotch with the unmistakable look and feel of nitrocellulose lacquer that is less glossy, more transparent and so very un-plastic compared to polyurethane. Damn!

The vintage 7.5” radius maple fingerboard has been lightly wet sanded or hit with steel wool just enough to slightly dull the lacquer, but the typical heavy Roadworn sanding seems to have been abandoned. The urethane finish on the back of

the neck also hasn’t been sanded down to bare wood, but just lightly dulled to

a smooth matte finish. In terms of execution and appearance, the artful subtlety of the aging on the neck and body is fully comparable to the work of the Fender Custom Shop or any other builder.

Cudos to Fender as well for keeping the vintage 7.5” finger-board radius. Combined with 6105 frets, we prefer it over the flatter 9.5” radius, and the Roadworn Tele feels and plays like a true vintage Telecaster. The neck shape is an ample and full, rounded C with smooth fingerboard edges and round shoulders, yet not as clubby as a typical Nocaster neck. The slightly aged vintage style Ping tuners work just fine, the control plate and knurled dome knobs also appear to have been perfectly tumbled and aged, and the wear on the black pickguard is far more con-vincing than the oval spot applied to a Nocaster pickguard.

There is one aspect of our Roadworn Telecaster that would perhaps fail to meet some guitar-ists’ criterion for the ‘perfect’ Tele – weight. Our guitar weighs 7.75 lbs. – a number that would qualify as a desirable feather-weight for a Les Paul, but the definition of ‘light’ changes with the model, doesn’t it? Unfor-tunately, it seems as if a lot of players still operate under the misconception that a 6.5 lb. or

7 lb. Fender is automatically going to sound better by default. We disagree. The truth is that super light solidbody guitars have been considered to be so desirable simply because they are comparatively scarce and harder to find. Like so many things in the dick-measuring hierarchy of the guitar world, if the lightest solidbody guitars are perceived as being better, and you own one, then your guitar surely must be better than all the heavier ones… Put in these terms the “lighter guitars always sound better” theory sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it? The extra 8 ounces or so that our Roadworn Tele measures over what might be considered an average or light weight seems to be adding something (intense sustain) to the tone of the guitar rather than detracting from it. So, sorry, but we are reveling in those extra 8 ounces. If a featherweight guitar

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 20141818

makes you feel better, fine, but let’s not pretend that it’s a guarantee of superior tone. We love the sound of our 6.4 lb. Thinline Cabronita, but it is also a completely different design with a hardtail bridge and Fidelitron pickups that are quite different from a standard Telecaster. Our heavier alder Squier Cabronita sounded completely different, with more midrange and low end. In this respect weight and the density of wood act much like a fixed tone filter. Is this a surprise?

Tone The stock Tex-Mex Fender pickups in the Roadworn Telecaster aren’t bad – especially the 7.68K bridge. It’s bright, but not shrill or thin sounding by any means. Perfectly usable. The 6.02K neck pickup is pretty unremarkable, but a lot of Telecaster neck pickups are pretty unremarkable. We chose to install a set of Slider’s ‘52 Nocaster pickups from Melbourne, Australia measur-ing 7.14K/neck and 7.73K/bridge.

Slider (Rod McQueen) winds the Nocaster ’52 set and a post ’55 staggered bridge pole set. The ‘52 Nocaster pickups are dazzling in the Roadworn Tele. We can’t imagine anything better. Listen to Slider’s brief description of his philosophy on winding pickups…

It is the irregularities in tension and overlaps that a good handwound pickup has within its coil that I believe produce the warmth of tone and individuality that is most sought after. I enhance this scatterwinding characteristic by recreating the

inconsistency of the 1950s wire by varying the ten-sion throughout the many thousands of windings. This gentle pulling and releasing gives back some of the diameter variations through stretching and relaxing the super-fine copper wire. Combine this

with my ‘twine ball’ winding pattern, similar to the effect you had when a kite string is wound up on a keeper, and you get that great interplay of electrical eddy currents within the coil. It’s this internal complexity that gives warmth, power and removes any sterile or ice-pick sounds sometimes associated with single coils, and especially Strats and Teles.

Understanding the magnetic effects generating the flux pool in which the strings move and ensuring consistency with mag-netic power and polarity are also key to an authentic, power-ful and well-voiced pickup. If a pickup is built with randomly

charged magnets or worse – with Ferris pole slugs that only act as magnets when a cheap ceramic bar magnet is slapped on their base, you can get a pickup that has unbalanced or over and under-voiced strings. It’s like building a car with parts from different suppli-ers but stipulating that all

the panels are light blue. Put it together and see how well the blues match. I fully build my pickups with dead or uncharged Alnico – it’s only when everything is in place that I individu-ally hand charge the poles with rare earth neo-dymium boride polarizing magnets. This pulls the uncharged AlNiCo into its magnetic orientation as a permanent magnet. Because they are done as a set, I get great power matching across the strings as well as between pickups within a set. This gives great individual string voicing and clarity as well as ensuring neck, middle and bridge pickups are well balanced.

Telecasters built with an ash body and maple neck and finger-board can be tricky to dial in with the right set of pickups. The very nature of the Telecaster bridge plate and bridge pickup design creates a very bright, microphonic tone, and this is good. What other guitar sounds like a Telecaster? But the vari-able nature of wood can definitely present mysterious incon-sistencies in the sound of otherwise ‘identical’ guitars. Andy Elliott told us that he once built a Tele with the best materials money could buy and when it was finished he ultimately burned it because it just didn’t work as a musical instrument. Every guitar is a little different, and that’s what makes them so fascinating, but an ash and maple Tele can be a little unfor-giving…. We had a hunch that Slider’s ‘52 Nocaster set would work well with the Roadworn Tele because of the number of turns on the coils, the output as indicated by the resistance readings, and the deeper tone of the pickups. The bridge isn’t what we would call ‘warm’, but it does possess a very sweet treble character combined with excellent mids and robust low end on the E and A strings. The harmonic overtones produced in Slider’s pickups are also very clear and vibrant. The bridge sounds balanced, yet very much a classic Telecaster bridge pickup. The neck pickup produces the almost-hollowbody woody tone we love so much in a Telecaster. It’s not a sound

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 2014 1919

that works very well with heavy distortion – the bridge pickup excels for that, but the com-bined tone of both pickups

is great for rhythms and the neck alone is mesmerizing in its clarity and depth. It really can sound like a big hollowbody through the right amp. For now we will leave the original plastic coated wire in the pickup harness intact, as well as the ceramic disc cap, simply because we don’t feel an urgent need to change them. Perhaps one rainy day…

davesguitar.com

You’ll recall that Jim Campilongo mentioned that part of his sound can be attributed to the top loading bridge on his ‘59 Telecaster. You don’t see many original top loaders, and Fender doesn’t use them often in contempo-rary Telecasters, but we felt compelled to acquire

and compare a top loader to the standard string-through-body bridge plate. The top loading bridge plates we have found allow you to go either way, and we found them on eBay for as little as $9, along with the $99 Glendale and a Callaham for $140 that

includes a set of vintage brass saddles. We didn’t bother with the cheap $9 version, but we did acquire a Glendale and Callaham since both are considered to be state of the art, made from cold-rolled steel. We have experimented with Callaham Strat and Tele

bridge plates and saddles extensively over the years, and they do impart a difference. The strings just seem to produce a more vibrant and complex tone – that’s the best way we can describe it, and we believe that the hardness of the steel plays a big role in affecting the sound and enhancing string vibration. We will remind you again that when Delta Moon’s Mark Johnson

was plagued with squealing feedback from the bridge pickup of his Custom Shop Thinline Tele, the cure turned out to be a Callaham bridge plate.

After A/B tests of both top loading bridge plates we easily pre-ferred the Callaham. We installed the Glendale first, and im-mediately noticed that the unwound G, B and E strings seemed to lack focus, sustain and volume compared to the string-thru mounting. We continued to play the Tele with the Glendale bridge plate for a few days before switching to the Callaham. The Callaham bridge plate is clearly thicker and heavier, with a matte nickel finish on the plate and buffed sides, while the Glendale is chrome. Frankly, the Glendale appears flimsy by comparison, and when we installed the Callaham top loader we immediately heard the difference. All the strings seemed to acquire richer and more audible harmonic overtones. Com-pared to the string thru mounting and the Glendale top loader, the Tele now sounded more complex, airy and spatial. Sustain was enhanced. Single notes on the plain strings also sounded more silky and vocal – less direct and in-your-face, yet still bright and trebly like a great Telecaster. These changes are subtle yet very clear, and over the past few days the tone of the top loader has become addictive. It’s staying. Who knew?

When it comes to ‘brass’ bridge saddles, ‘brass’ recipes can vary when used to make saddles. Brass is an alloy made primar-ily of copper and zinc, and

basic modern brass is 67% copper and 33% zinc, with lead and arsenic often added. You could spend a lot of time picking through different sets of brass saddles, and they do sound dif-ferent. If you like a sharper, stinging tone, steel is worth trying, too. The Roadworn Tele is shipped from the factory with steel saddles. If you like them, by all means keep them. They create a slightly more penetrating and intense attack over the softer tone of brass saddles, and it’s a cool sound if it’s your sound… We chose to go with the set of Callaham vintage brass saddles because we are very familiar with them and they do allow ac-curate intonation on all 6 strings. If you are strapped for cash, we recommend the brass Tele saddles from Stew-Mac.

Our acquisition of the ‘74 Princeton Reverb and Roadworn Tele ranks as one of the very best gambles we have ever made in the Quest for tone during the past 14 years. Need we say more? Quest forth…

Sliderspickups.comCallahamguitars.com

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TQ

Top LoaderTop Loader

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TONEQUEST REPORT V.15 N.6 April 2014 20

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EDITORIAL BOARD

The ToneQuest Report™ (ISSN 1525-3392) is published monthly by Mountainview Publishing LLC, P.O. Box 717 Decatur, GA. 30031-0717, 1-877-MAX-TONE, email: tonequest1@aol.com. Periodicals Postage Paid at Decatur, GA and At Additional Mailing Offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to:TheToneQuest Report™, PO Box 717, Decatur, GA. 30031-0717.The annual subscription fee for The ToneQuest Report™ is $89 per year for 10 issues. International subscrib-ers please add US $40. Please remit payment in U.S. funds only. VISA, MasterCard and American Express accepted. The ToneQuest Report™ is published solely for the benefit of its subscribers. Copyright © 2013 by Mountainview Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this newsletter may be reproduced in any form or incorporated into any information retrieval system without the written permission of the copyright holder. Please forward all subscription requests, comments, questions and other inquiries to the above address or contact the publisher at tonequest1@aol.com. Opinions expressed in The ToneQuest Report™ are not necessarily those of this publication.Mention of specific products, services or technical advice does not constitute an endorsement. Readers are advised to exercise extreme caution in handling electronic devices and musical instruments.

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