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The last time he played the Symphony Center here, he stopped by my teacher's house first to pick up a Polytone for the gig. I guess the SC had a hard time tracking one down for him so GB decided to get one himself
Originally Posted by jzucker
Someone told me he used to use a Twin and Polyrone in stereo.
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03-02-2014 02:42 PM
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I owned one of the earlier Mesa/Boogie Express 50 heads. I haven't played the newer GB Fender Deluxe, so can't comment on that amp. The Mesa/Boogie had a exc. clean tone as do most of the 50 watt and up Mesas have.
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In the end, the best clean tone I have heard from any amp ever and IMO cannot be beaten nor ever will be, is from a Two Rock studio 35.
Any Two Rock amp has by far the warmest nicest best clean/jazz tone and although they are expensive, buy one, its the only amp you will ever need
:-)
Now I just need an endorsement :-(
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I'm just gonna pretend that you didn't say the worst amp ever made sounds great ;-) Originally Posted by jzucker
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I have an endorsement and I can refute that it's the best jazz clean tone. Originally Posted by GoergeBenson
The gries 35 is the absolute best jazz (and blues/rock) clean tone I have ever heard. The two rock is an amazing amp but the studio 35 isn't even the best clean two rock. The best is the emerald pro. But none of the two rocks have the super buttery clean tones of the fender tone stack that <gasp> even the hot rod deluxe is based on!
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what was benson thinking with this tone? (polytone)
wish he'd get back to this:
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That recording of Billies Bounce is by far the best piece of Bop Blues playing I have ever heard. His solo is sublime and so inventive. Even Wes couldn't touch that! (Did I just type that?)
I love it when he's trading with Herbie and he suddenly changes key, into some lick that I haven't worked out yet.
Go on Jz make my life easy (but bare in mind if you do, you will retard my ability to transcribe ;-). The choice is yours (go on!) lol
It's at 5:03. The bass player knows about it too, so I suspect it was rehearsed.
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I tried a Two Rock once with my archtop and actually didn't liked it... artifical souding. A guy come next and plugged a strat and I understand why people like them so much, instant John Mayer sound.
The lick sounds like a typical "blues for alice" progression.
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the part at 5:03 is a standard jazz sub of (key of F - blues) Db-7 Gb7 Gbm7 Cb7 leading into the IV chords (Bb7), not rehearsed. part of the standard repertoire. Not blues for alice chords either...
And I think wes sounds pretty 'effin good here....
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Nice solo but I think benson improved on it. You can definitely hear the lineage though. Anyway lets not get into a Wes V:s Benson thing, cause I love them both. Although I do find Wes like Django cops out a bit too early on the single line stuff (IMO)
So your saying that sub ending in the Cb7 goes in to the Bb7 in bar 5?
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I just found them to have the best 6l6 tonne, which in my opinion is the best for that fender type jazz tone. I just hunk they are mush better fender amps and I think they play on that.
Thanks for the Lick suggestion. I will look it up :-)
Never really liked Blues for Alice.
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here's the excerpt at 5:03
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Love you X
I will learn it first thing tomorrow upon waking
I know all the lines up till he starts using block chords. I also transcribed it into Bb but you know what. No matter how many solos I learnt, so little of it came out in my playing.
I suppose its because I never really broke them down into 4 or 8 bars licks. (Heck Benson even does a 12 bar one somewhere on the web).
I always find when learning licks that
1. I don't like to directly copy someone elses lick
2. when that lick finishes what are you going to do? or even still how will you lead up to that lick. It all seems so dry. Also the band your playing with might not play the song at the same tempo, or feel and your lick doesn't sound as good. How many licks in the end do you have to learn and at how many varying tempos?
Thats where jazz improvisation started to fall off the cliff for me and composition and arrangement became more fascinating. It became the improvisator that I though solo'ing was all about.
Yet all the greats seem to do it. I'm still looking at it all the wrong way I think.Last edited by GoergeBenson; 03-04-2014 at 09:47 PM.
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the idea of transcribing and learning licks isn't to perform them as-is (though it certainly served wes montgomery well). The idea is to incorporate those lines, ideas and harmony into your own thought process.
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Thanks Jz you've certainly given me something to look forward too, tomorrow. The X-700 will be removed from its case A:M.
Apparently GB started out playing Wes licks, note for note. I guess thats until he met a young Pat Martino tearing it up in New York.
Oh BTW I have started watching your videos on youtube. Very good!
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Benson never copied martino. He was wes all the way. Martino and Benson sounded very similar back in the early days but benson had more blues & r&b soul to his playing. Martino went the intellectual way and benson stayed grounded and ended up playing with a who's who of jazz. For some reason, up until his comeback, martino seemed to tour and play with a lot of guys who really weren't at the forefront of jazz (Conciousness for example). Not that he was playing with horrible players by any means but he was playing with guys like Gil Goldstein and George was playing with Herbie, McCoy, Joe Farrell, etc. Originally Posted by GoergeBenson
Anyway, don't want to open another can of worms, lord knows that hatas are out in droves lately but that's my take on it.
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Yeh sorry Jz I didn't mean that GB copied Pat in any way. I just remember George saying, he thought he was 'all that and a bag of chips' until he went to New York and saw Part Martino play.
The funny thing is, GB is my fav all time bop player but then Pat's solo on Just Friends is pure genius. So when Pat's on the money he really is an equal.
I guess Benson was just more consistent (If thats a fair comment).
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Could you please share your settings to get a Blackface Fender sound from this amp if you tried ? Originally Posted by Phil in London
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Just turn down the mids.....
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Bass and treble at noon or max ? Presence ? Sorry for sounding lazy but never had or tried a Blackface Fender and although I could try to replicate the ones in the Pod modeler, prefer to interact with experienced players. Originally Posted by Little Jay
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The bf tone is scooped, so turning down the mids will take you in that direction. I do so on my Blues Deluxe. Presence I leave around noon, treble and bass to taste. Sounds good, but of course not exactly like a bf, but pretty nice.
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Thanks Little Jay.
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Funny see this post popup today. Yesterday when I went into town I was talking to music store about looking for a small, reasonably priced, reasonable weight, tube amp for Jazz. First pointed me to Rivera Pubster then in mentioning other they said the Fender Benson. That the upgrades help the sound, but noted the pine cab also reduced the weight.
We ended up talking a lot about the Fender 68 Reissues. He said many of the guys with the $4000 boutique amp that don't want to take them to gigs are getting the 68 reissues. He said they really aren't reissues more like tweaked Fender that looks like a SF. He didn't seem to like the Vibrolux reissue said the Deluxe is the best seller of the bunch. I also saw the latest Henriksen JazzAmps with the all black cases, kins of like the old blue and black myself.
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I tried Little Jay's suggestions and I am pretty satisfied with the blackface sound I get from this amp (compared it to some recordings Jack Zucker had suggested in the past). I understand that the version III of HRDlx is improved upon the previous HRDlx and the speaker and the solid cab are further improvements. I have not spent any time testing the drive channel but when I did in the beginning, it was not disturbing as many others have written about the drive channel of previous version of the HRDlx.
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