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I was listening to a little bit of PM's very early playing with Gary Burton, Mick Goodrick, Steve Swallow, Bob Moses. He was using an electric 12 string at that point and it dawned on me that his electric guitar tone- once he started his career as a leader- seems likely to be related to that. By using the delays, he basically made his ES-175 sort of sound like the 12 string. I hadn't thought of him chasing that sonority through electronics before this evening. Anybody else hear that or am I just totally projecting?
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05-09-2021 09:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Cunamara
It is like they create that sympathetic resonance/overtone reverberation effect of the instruments with many resonant open strings.
PS
Steve Swallow is fantastic there
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You could be right! Interesting.
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There are only 3 reasons for playing a 12-string electric.
A) You want to play music like your heroes the Beatles and the Byrds
B) You're trying to build up muscles in your fretting hand for when you play a real guitar
C) It was on closeout at GC and was all you can afford
Ahem. Just kidding there...
Could be, but seems to me he's going for kind of a hybrid tone--northern California (70's-era Garcia) merged with Jim Hall. That would be easier to get through effects and knobs than 12 strings.
Johnny Winter used to play a Fender 12-string back in the day. TBH I don't think that suits either of these players, but they knew how to get what they wanted to get out of it.
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You might be on the right track regarding Pat's 175 tone. I'm actually glad he shelved the 12 string and obviously continued to woodshed. He was like 20 years old here? If so, I'm rather surprised.
Always great to hear Gary Burton.
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Pat definitely still used the 12 string on certain tunes during the early PMG days.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I think you could be right. The chime and shimmer of a good twelve string is an awfully arresting tone. When I bought my first chorus/delay pedal the dealer dismissively called it "a twelve string in a box." PM always insisted it was delays, not chorus, and I accept that b/c it's true. But the idea of turning six strings into something in that ballpark was out there and remains beguiling to this day.
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Originally Posted by Jonah
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I just remembered that I also saw Steve Swallow using some of the first Boogie amp heads to give him a distinctive sound. Later I think he switched to Walter Woods ,which is what I saw Tal Farlow use in London,England at a concert.They were hand made solid state bass amps some of the pros liked.
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Originally Posted by steve burchfield
Its a static chorus effect ....
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AFAIR PM got turned on to the 12-string by Mick Goodrick - makes sense when you have 2 guitars in the group PLUS vibes. Different sonic textures are an important issue when it comes to creating an identifiable sound. Soon after this gig he probably ditched the awful Coronado and got a better guitar, a Guild
Starfire 12. During an early (his first ?) recording session in Oslo's Talent Studios the legendary tone engineer Jan Erik Kongshaus plugged the guitar into a then very new, very expensive and rare Lexicon Super Prime Time delay unit, dialed in a subtle modulation into the diffuse repeats and that was that. Subsequently PM used TWO of these units and spread his sound around with two 4x10" Acoustic amps . Whether he actually/initially tried to mimic the sound of an electric 12-string or just wanted to create a special+ vibrant space around his sound is subject to debate and speculation - fact is that pretty much all through the later 70's and 80's he very often had a separate electric 12-string (Ibanez Artist AR-112) on stage with him, sometimes suspended on a stand for a quick access.
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Then there's Pat ... Martino's 12 string playing.
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Originally Posted by gitman
FWIW I saw him twice in the 80's and don't remember a 12-string electric. I think he played some stuff (intro to San Lorenzo) on acoustic before switching to electric. I don't recall it being a 12-string acoustic, but I could be mistaken.
One thing about those funky 12-string electrics--they sure stand out! I remember seeing Neil Finn play one during his touring with Fleetwood Mac.
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I tried to ask him this the other day on a zoom thing he did with Sirius, but they didn't call on my question. He was on for maybe 75 minutes or so, but they didn't really get through many of the questions. Bummer beacuse I've never heard him speak to this concept at all.
I tried.
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