GPOTD 11.18.15
- Thread starter Kerouac
- Start date
Virtual Pariah
Kick Henry Jackassowski
Nope.
Kerouac
weird musical dildo
Not high-end, but they were some of the first new electric instruments that British musicians could afford and they had a lot of players, especially on bass. They were the largest guitar manufacturer in Europe during the 60's, so stateside they were sorta of oddities.
Coralkong
Alien
This is absolutely correct.
Back in the early '60's, Fenders and Gibsons were really tough to get a hold of across the pond. (Not that the British rockers didn't WANT those instruments, they just weren't readily available and were extremely expensive when they WERE available.)
With the British Invasion, the market in Europe really opened up, and THAT'S when most of the "Rock and Rollers" started having more options on bass, and most of those early acts switched brands....
These were never very good instruments, it was all they had access to.
vintage clubber
You gunky!
Kerouac
weird musical dildo
They were definitely good enough to be used professionally and quite a few artists from that decade still remember them fondly.
Coralkong
Alien
They were used professionally, sure.
I was reading this John Entwistle interview (well, snippets of it) where he was talking about his gear. I'll try to dig it up.....it was a very interesting read. (The whole My Generation thing, went through 3 Rick basses, because he couldn't get STRINGS for it, they were only available on a new Rick bass.)
I'll try to dig it up.
EDIT: It was a Dano bass, not a Rick.
I can't find the exact article (yet), but this one is pretty cool.
Danelectro Long Horn model 4423 bass
Ca. 6 August 1965, Danelectro Long Horn model 4423 bass, with twin lipstick-style pickups and rosewood fretboard.Photo: London Features Intl.
- Bronze sunburst, two lipstick tube Alnico pickups with two concentric knobs; bolt-on necks with Brazilian rosewood fingerboards, masonite/poplar frame bodies; 24 frets, “Coke Bottle” peghead.
- On the recording of My Generation:
“I bought this Danelectro bass and it had these tiny, thin wirewound strings on. They were so thin, they sounded just like a piano, an unbelievably clear sound. The only thing was that you couldn’t buy these strings. When we recorded ‘My Generation,’ I ended up with three of these Danelectros just for the strings. The last one I had, the string busted before we actually got into the studio to re-record it, so I did it on a Fender Jazz in the end with tape-wound La Bella strings.”
“I played that solo on a Jazz bass with tapewound strings through a Marshall 50 watt and 4x12. Interestingly, the bass solos on the earlier takes were much more complicated, and played on a Danelectro which had a much more piano-like sound. It was a medium scale bass with a two-octave neck. The trouble was that the strings were so thin that I kept breaking them. We’d record during the day and, to finance the sessions, we were playing gigs nearly every night, and inevitably I’d break a string. None of the music shops had any replacement strings and no string manufacturers made replacement strings thin enough for Dano basses then, so I had to go down to Marshall’s and buy a new Dano for £60. I ended up with three new Danelectros, all with busted strings! In the end I busted my last string at the third attempt and there weren’t any more in the country. I thought, ‘Fuck it’, and went and bought myself a Fender Jazz bass and a set of La Bella strings, and played the solo with that. But it was a different sound and a simplified, slowed-down version of the solos on previous takes.”
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