Jazz tones from a jazz guitar

[oldane]

A couple of months ago I snipped and spliced a pair of Vintage Vibe HCC's into a Samick JZ 123, a semi. Now they're not like the Lollars that are wound with .38 gauge wire but they are clear as a bell and very piano-like with the center block sustain and sound good processed as well. If I get my hands on one of those Lollars, I would consider taking the Dremel to the Samick.

I have a HCC in a Warmoth solid body partscaster with mahogany body and neck. It sounds very good, clear, warm with exellent string separation - and it sustains for ever which I actually like in that guitar. But of course, it lacks the typical "acoustic" add on to the amplified tone an archtop has.

[oldane]

As far as Joe Pass, I've always heard the story of the engineer's error resulting in that sound. I also think people are very forgiving of that tone because they like the playing...I think that record sounds like nails on a chalkboard...but then again, I think Joe Pass is the poster boy for "great playing, lousy tone.

Agree. Ever so often one sees Joe Pass' playing on "Virtuose" mentioned as an example of the typical archtop sound. I think that's a shame, because it's actually not a typical archtop sound, just the sound of a plywood box. I figure that that statement may have put more than one person off archtops. That record may have many virtues, but the quality of sound from Joes Gibson 175 is not one of them (only IMHO of course).

[mongrel]

I have a HCC in a Warmoth solid body partscaster with mahogany body and neck. It sounds very good, clear, warm with exellent string separation - and it sustains for ever which I actually like in that guitar. But of course, it lacks the typical "acoustic" add on to the amplified tone an archtop has.

And I have another one in the neck position of a Peavey Reactor AX, a slab of heavy ash with a nice flat neck with rosewood board. I Dremeled out the neck pickup hole and tortoise shell pickguard that came with the guitar, and made a plate to close the bridge pickup hole. With .013 Chromes, the clarity of that one is extremely pianistic and it sustains well also. I was inspired by one of Jim Soloway's earlier models that had the same pickup neck only to give it a whirl.

[rpguitar]

Yesterday I sat and listened to "Picking with Patsy", a guitar solo by Allan Reuss with Jack Teagardens orchestra (I think in 1938 or 1939). Now, that is a typical and classic archtop sound (made with an acoustic Gibson L5)

Yes! Now this is perfect, because unless you are one of those funny types who seeks out this older music, you would possibly not be familiar with it, and you'd never consider that tone a "jazz guitar tone." Yet it is exemplary of what the first and most iconic jazz guitar (the Gibson L-5) actually sounds like acoustically. Which is how it was played exclusively until about 1939 when CC came into the picture.

The fact that all of that early stuff is on 78 RPM records is a shame, because you need some imagination to aurally infer how the guitars really sounded live - which was much richer and sweeter than on the recordings. The great thing is that you can still acquire one and find out for yourself. It's an enriching experience that will challenge you as a guitarist and reward you as a musician.

Thanks for the link. I love the old stuff.

[mr. beaumont]

A nice place o hear an acoustic archtop with modern recording technology is Julian Lage's "Gladwell," and a couple of great records featuring Bucky Pizzarelli-- "Sunday at Petes" (with sons john and martin) and a wonderful record with Scott Hamilton called "Behind the Red Door"--a tribute to Zoot Sims.

Both of those records feature Bucky's L5 recorded beautifully. That's the real deal right there!

[cjm]

Agree. Ever so often one sees Joe Pass' playing on "Virtuose" mentioned as an example of the typical archtop sound. I think that's a shame, because it's actually not a typical archtop sound, just the sound of a plywood box. I figure that that statement may have put more than one person off archtops. That record may have many virtues, but the quality of sound from Joes Gibson 175 is not one of them (only IMHO of course).

I never heard the story about that album being the result of an engineer's error before. It has the ring of truth to it, and comes as somewhat of a relief: I could never reconcile that horrible sound with Joe Pass' tastes evidenced by his other work.

But that album's existence and influence speaks to one of my main contentions: Our perception of "the jazz sound" is heavily influenced by errors introduced through poor engineering decisions and the limitations of recording and playback technology during the decades the guitar emerged as a jazz instrument.

How many times have we heard about "a smoky 1950s sound" and to be told that the way to get this is with an archtop with humbucking pickups, flat wound strings, and the tone rolled back?

But the 1950s were nearly over before you could even buy a jazz box with a humbucking pickup; flat wound strings were the exception rather than the rule, and; almost everyone's favorite example of that "smoky 1950s sound" -- Wes Montgomery (who did use flat wound strings whenever possible) -- was quite concerned that his tone was already too dark and/or muddy without rolling the tone back.

Not that it matters much to me other than as a bit of trivia -- I'm more interested in content than tone, if the tone is even marginally acceptable -- but I do think that an archtop with a bright, articulate, single coil pickup has a more interesting and exciting sound for jazz than most of what we hear today.

[Jim Soloway]

How many times have we heard about "a smoky 1950s sound" and to be told that the way to get this is with an archtop with humbucking pickups, flat wound strings, and the tone rolled back?

But the 1950s were nearly over before you could even buy a jazz box with a humbucking pickup; flat wound strings were the exception rather than the rule, and; almost everyone's favorite example of that "smoky 1950s sound" -- Wes Montgomery (who did use flat wound strings whenever possible) -- was quite concerned that his tone was already too dark and/or muddy without rolling the tone back.

I've always been convinced that the "smoky 1950's sound" was really about guitarists with single coils and ungrounded amplifiers trying to get rid of some of the hiss. Most of that noise is in the high frequencies, so they would roll off the tone control on the guitar or the treble control on the amp just to get rid of some of the noise and eventually the that tone became institutionalized.

[mambosun]

I've always been convinced that the "smoky 1950's sound" was really about guitarists with single coils and ungrounded amplifiers trying to get rid of some of the hiss. Most of that noise is in the high frequencies, so they would roll off the tone control on the guitar or the treble control on the amp just to get rid of some of the noise and eventually the that tone became institutionalized.

....Or maybe because some guitarist of that period were trying to get their guitar sounding like a piano.

[Jim Soloway]

....Or maybe because some guitarist of that period were trying to get their guitar sounding like a piano.

I've always considered pianos to be pretty bright sounding instruments with a lot of acoustic properties. To my ear that about the opposite of that dark smoky guitar sound. If they were trying to sound like another instrument, I would expect it to be a sax.

[cjm]

I've always been convinced that the "smoky 1950's sound" was really about guitarists with single coils and ungrounded amplifiers trying to get rid of some of the hiss. Most of that noise is in the high frequencies, so they would roll off the tone control on the guitar or the treble control on the amp just to get rid of some of the noise and eventually the that tone became institutionalized.

I cannot discount that explanation entirely, but I have always been struck by how different many guitarists sound to me in live performance than they do on their recordings.

As a practical matter, most of what we have heard is on recordings...can't really travel back in time to catch one of Charlie Christian's sessions...and people less than 43 years old weren't even born until after Wes Montgomery died. All that remains are the recordings.

As to getting rid of single coil hum and hiss, my house was wired in 1937. I get some noise, but it's not really apparent when my wife is out of the house and I crank it up to gig volume for shits and giggles. Most of the places I gig, or have gigged, have wiring issues...usually a high impedance to ground on the neutral, but you don't really hear the noise when playing, and I run the tone pot full treble even with single coil pickups and make any and all tonal adjustments on the amp.

In a proper recording studio, run by a major label, and under the supervision of engineers...grounding, hum, hiss, issues should have been further eliminated by the quality of studio wiring.

So, yeah, I understand what you're saying, but for now I'm sticking with my theory that it became institutionalized first as a result of emulating engineering errors and poor phonographs, and then by another generation emulating younger players influenced by the lousy recorded sound of the original jazz guitarists.

[Guercph]

I, for one, would be pretty happy if people stopped asking these questions ad nauseum. It seems there's a new post every day with the subject "What kind of guitar/amp should I get for jazz?"

I mean, it's just not that mysterious. All of the information about what the great players used or use is available on the internet, on album/CD jacket photos, and in magazines. And, big surprise! There are a few basic "recipes" or perhaps "ingredients" - mixed and matched in different combinations. Plus there are people who break those conventions and - shockingly - still sound like they're playing jazz. That alone should give inquiring minds a clue that the conventions are not rules, and that equipment is only a component of the whole picture.

Rock guitarists seem to know in painful detail what their heroes use. Even the newbies. Usually the really new and/or young players can't afford that equipment, so the question morphs into "What kind of guitar/amp can I get that sounds like so-and-so but only costs $100?" Those are painful questions, too.

So about good jazz guitar tone: Listen to jazz guitar recordings. Decide what tonal qualities you like most. Find out what those guys use. Buy something similar. But don't ask a bunch of random guitarists on the internet. We all have too many damn opinions! Form your own.

Im a new kid on the block here.. so I hate to say this, but YOU need to be more open and lighten up. ... if you've got a bur up your .... then take it somewhere else.. we're trying to have a good time.. other advice , dont read what youre not interested in and for heaven sake dont comment on it. thanks!!!

[Tom Karol]

...If they were trying to sound like another instrument, I would expect it to be a sax.

In the liner notes to an LP of Charlie Christian with the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra, Mary Osborne - I think it was her - was quoted as saying something like, "The first time I heard Charlie Christian, as I entered the club I thought I heard a saxophone somehow distorted by amplification; then I saw that it was someone (Charlie) playing an, "Electric Guitar."

[oldane]

Jazz guitar tone is often not a "dark and smokey" sound:

(also note the drummer, Stan Levy - very underrated)

Despite the boom of my PC speakers, the tones in those examples are fairly bright to my ears.

I couldn't find anything on YouTube, but Tal Farlows sound on the 1950s Verve recordings is also fairly bright, somewhat dry and definitely not dark and smokey. Jimmy Raney in the 1950s had a wonderfully singing tone on his ES150CC with lots af highs in it.

Now, when I think of it, who can I mention whose sound is really dark and smokey? Jim Hall (after he put the humbucker in his ES175). Wes on some of - but not all - his Pacific and Riverside recordings (before he switched to a TOM bridge and a Standel amp). Anyone else?

[mr. beaumont]

The tones Pat and Pat (Martino and Metheny) are using recently are quite dark (Martino's has been pretty dark for a while)

But yeah, I think the "blanket over the amp" tone is one of the biggest jazz myths...very few have actually recorded with it.

Just one of the lies the non-jazz istening contingent of guitar players sometimes perpetuates. They tell stories of the "jazz police" and according to them we all play with the tone knob rolled all the way back...

What they don't know could fill a book.

[stevedenver]

oldane great link-
i too really like that sound-hard to describe but its that middy, sweet, balanced voice, a violin like character to the guitar-something i also seem to hear in f5 mandos

so i know its geeky, but i guess those were bronze type strings in that era ???

[Anandbhat]

Oldane:
Thanks for the links.Great tracks.I was just listening to Kenny last night-All Day Long and All Night Long. Some great tracks on that CD too.

Stevedenver:
I have all three volumes of Tone Poems. Main reason I got into acoustic guitars also (More Gas) for the last couple of years. David Grisman and Tony Rice together are just out of this world! For more acoustic Jazzy stuff I love listening to Grisman and Jerry Garcia together.

[rpguitar]

?..we're trying to have a good time.. other advice , dont read what youre not interested in and for heaven sake dont comment on it. thanks!!!

I have over 200 posts and you have 2. So let's be sure that "we" are thinking of the same "we" when you say that "we" are trying to have a good time. Read my other contributions to this thread.

Apologies to the rest of you... I won't continue any back and forth on this line of discourse.

[rpguitar]

A nice place o hear an acoustic archtop with modern recording technology is Julian Lage's "Gladwell"...

I love how Julian plays his 1933 L-5 as if it was just any old guitar. And you're right; it offers a very rare opportunity to hear a world class player on a totally vintage instrument played acoustically. There are very few such examples out there. If anybody knows another one, I'd love to know about it. Lots of people playing old archtops electrically - that's not what I'm talking about.

Google Julian on Youtube and you'll find a bunch of other videos with him playing his old L-5, both on stage and in different studio settings. I love it.

[rpguitar]

When it comes to describing "good jazz guitar tone," it's easier to exclude things than it is to include them. For example, most jazz guitar fans will cringe at any player using a Fender Strat or Tele bridge pickup, no matter how good his lines are. Played clean, those settings are always brightly sharp and often harsh.

To me, it implies that jazz guitars are supposed to have some degree of warmth to them. Not "tone rolled off" warm, just some warmth.

The "tone rolled off" cliche is an ignorant one often cited by non-jazz players. It's one of the surest ways to identify one. Because anybody who's actually played a 175 or an L-5CES through a tube amp knows that it gives up the business on the neck pickup with the tone fully open. A little roll off is a matter of taste, but dramatic roll off means "I'm trying to get jazz tone and I don't quite know how."

Other than extreme brightness, I think that nearly anything goes for jazz. I used to love Pat Metheny's tone and it was my benchmark for everything I wanted to hear in an instrument. My ear has changed dramatically over the past 20 years, though, and too much warmth is lifeless to me. The guitar has to have some girth and good punch to single notes. But I prefer the dynamic range and acoustic essence of a carved top these days. My 175 is a fabulous instrument with first year PAF pickups. It does the iconic laminated electric tone in spades, and I love it too.

And I also enjoy brighter electric tones from Teles, 335s, and all manner of custom/boutique instruments like Kleins and so on. I haven't even bothered to talk about acoustic jazz tone (look at my sig)!

[=DK=]

I think Joe Pass is the poster boy for "great playing, lousy tone."

Like Kermit the Frog was for vocalism! He sang all his pitches right, but that voice, ugh, bad pun, but talk about a having frog in your throat.

[NSJ]

When I saw Martino play with his organ Trio at the Showcase, I came away thinking, "my god, surely he must know his tone absolutely BLOWS! It was frickin' darker than the inside of an event horizon!"


That, coupled with the fact that he PICKS every damn note....

There is a sadly forgotten luthier named Sam Koontz who made some of the vey best jazz boxes around. Sadly, Mr. Koontz took his own life about 30 years ago. This is what my teacher wrote about Mr. Koontz:

"I first met Sam Koontz at a music convention in Chicago. I entered a display and someone was playing a Koontz guitar. I asked if I could try it and he answered no. At that moment a man entered the room with a nametag on his lapel that read Sam Koontz. I asked him if he had built the guitar and he said yes. I asked him if I could try it and he said sure. He took the guitar away from the player and gave it to me. I played it and asked if it was for sale. He answered yes. I asked the price and he said $700.00 dollars. I took out my checkbook and paid him. That was the first of many Koontz guitars I bought. Years later Sam said the reason he liked me was that I was the only person that never tried to get him to lower his price. Sam and I just seemed to be on the wave length and we got to be very good friends.
Whenever he built a guitar he would call me and play it on the phone. He would go into long detailed explanations about the structural changes he had made and how it affected specific aspects of the instrument. Sam was an innovator and his guitars kept getting better each year. I sold many of his instruments to my students.
Bill Shultz who was working for Yamaha (he later became the CEO of Fender) asked me to go touble shoot and suggest improvements for Yamaha guitars. Yamaha was having problems with their neck joints. I suggested that Sam understood production methods from working at the Harptone factory and would be the ideal person to help with production guitar problems.
Sam was a simple man but the moment he entered the factory he became a genius. The engineers at Yamaha were in awe of him and his knowledge. I learned a great deal about guitars from Sam and at the Yamaha factory.

Two very interesting experiences were the climate control chamber and the sound proof chamber. We would put a guitar into a humidity-controlled chamber with movement sensors all over the instrument. The sensors would reveal which parts would move first as a result of the humidity or lack of humidity and then build the instrument to compensate for the movement in that particular area. This information prevented the guitars from cracking in the specific climates of each country the guitar was shipped to.

The sound proof chamber was a room that was elevated off the ground. The moment one entered it the strangest hearing sensation occurred. The room was totally devoid of any reverberation at all. It was a very strange and totally new hearing sensation.
We could test the true sustain of guitars in this chamber because it was totally insulated against any kind or reverberation. We would pluck a string and time it with a stop watch and in this way we would get real information about which bracing system and which change we made improved the instruments sustaining power.
Another important technique was to put the guitar tops in a drying room so they would shrink and glue the braces on while the top was shrunken. This technique prevented many instruments from cracking.
Sam always built his guitars so they resonated at the pitch of A flat. Sam explained to the engineers that the cubic air content of the instrument determined its resonance. The engineers disagreed and Sam took a bucket of water and poured it into a guitar. This of course reduced the air content and changed its resonance note. The engineers had egg on their face."

[rpguitar]

I'm going to guess that a lot of us are after that "bounce" sound just after the pick attack. You can almost "see" that sound.
RPGuitar gets it on his latest sound clip.
You won't get it from a Telecaster or any solid body.
It's that acoustic "dwatt" just after the pick attack.

Archtop goodness.

Yes, yes, yes! And you feel it as a player even more than a listener hears it. It's also what's missing in a brand new, virgin guitar before it's played in a bit. My Solomon was actually put together almost one year ago, and the "dwatt" (NICE term!) is now really happening. You also have to know how to attack an archtop to get it. It separates the men from the boys. Sorry, not trying to be at all boastful, just being honest. I have worked at it, having not even known that it was the thing to do until many years after first trying an acoustic archie.

Archtop goodness indeed!

[backliner]

I once had a Gibson Barney Kessel that had an absolutely terrible sound for jazz.

Until I sold it to a guy who made it sound like the quintessential jazz guitar. He then nodded, gave me the check, and walked out the door with it.

My point is that there is a wide range of guitar timbres suitable for playing jazz music on, and many of the famous players we emulate did a LOT of work on their harmony and counterpoint, with maybe a passing acknowledgement to wanting to sound "more like a horn."

I've read interviews with everybody from Barney Kessel to Howard Roberts saying they were trying to play horn-like lines. I thought they meant the notes. Later I think I discovered that certain guitars (like Charlie Christian's) had a big honking midrange sound.

Barney Kessel's tone on early albums (Easy Like, et al) had a very "woody" sound to me.

Johnny Smith had a more Hi-Fi sophisticated sound that suited his style of playing.

Pat Martino has been using solidbody electrics for a while now, with big thick strings. Jim Hall uses much lighter strings.

But I believe they all think about the music first: the notes; the musical statements they want to make.

Without some knowledge of the language of music, so that my statements will make sense in context, it won't matter what guitar and amp I use.

Yet as I have gained some experience I have come to appreciate the nuances I like in guitars I use that "agree" with me. But I get surprized occassionally by guitars that don't match my criteria for what I think must be present for a good jazz sound.

It ain't the arrow.
It's the Indian.

[mambosun]

But I believe they all think about the music first: the notes; the musical statements they want to make.

While I generally agree with what you wrote, I can't imagine any great musician not being concerned and affected by the tone rendering from their instrument when they "deliver" their music, because the tone is part of their art.
Which doesn't mean they could'nt play great music with bellow than average instrument, but tone is an important part of the interactive process of playing (great) music...

[backliner]

...Not all guitars and not all amps are suitable for all techniques or all players.

True.

A guy like Tal farlow didn't need/want much sustain (I have heard).

I can see how that could mess with your phrasing.

I have had particular notions about scale length and construction details, but in many places we play, none of the nicer nuances will even be heard.

At home, I'm more particular.