Vox Pop: How Dartford Powered the British Beat Boom

[s4wgb]

Very good programme.Shame not more on the Shadows with AC30/4. Hope its on in the Oxford region soon.

[geoff1711]

Whilst it was The Shads that kicked it all off, probably more people would associate AC30's with other bands, outside of this community.

Nobody can deny how The Shads influenced a whole raft of later stars, but in popularity The Beatles, Stones and Queen were probably bigger, and of course plenty of bands today, whose following have probably never even heard of The Shadows, use AC30's, so overall I thought the programme pretty balanced.

The odd thing though is that Quo stand in front of a huge backline of Marshall but the sound you hear out front is a couple of AC30's mic'd up, they're hidden round behind according to a DVD interview I have.

Geoff

[gary mac]

Hi Guys

I wish they would show this in scotland would be a great programme to see theres just something about vox that i cant get away from i have my ac15 htv1 but in the future will be looking for a 60's vox .

Geoff you are right about Quo they have white marshall head cabs with vox chassis in them now i watched a programme not that long ago on sky arts and noticed that there amps control panel was not the marshall gold colour but red lol

Regards
Gary

[hansaustria]

Whilst it was The Shads that kicked it all off, probably more people would associate AC30's with other bands, outside of this community.

Nobody can deny how The Shads influenced a whole raft of later stars, but in popularity The Beatles, Stones and Queen were probably bigger, and of course plenty of bands today, whose following have probably never even heard of The Shadows, use AC30's, so overall I thought the programme pretty balanced.

The odd thing though is that Quo stand in front of a huge backline of Marshall but the sound you hear out front is a couple of AC30's mic'd up, they're hidden round behind according to a DVD interview I have.

Geoff

Here is the link - http://www.performing-musician.com/pm/a ... trtech.htm

I think that the sound and tone - capacity of an amp influences the whole song ( sound,
composition, arrangement ) - " .... I can only use what I have and hear ! "
I also believe that certain guitarstyles and techniques certain amps assume ( Marshalls for
Metall / VOX for old stuff / crunch ............. etc. ) !

Hans

[RayL]

Reading the link it's clear that it is a combination of Marshall and AC30.

"you've got a Marshall JCM-800 and a 4 x 12, and there's also a Palmer speaker simulator that sits in the middle of that. Then you've got the AC30 head that runs to an AC30 cabinet, which is off stage buried in a box so you can keep it at a good volume, and that's how the bottom end stays in. When you turn a Strat down or a Tele down, you lose everything, but having that AC30 turned pretty much full up off stage keeps that sort of chug going, but it also keeps the clean sound underneath it."

In other words, what the audience hears is the on-stage Marshalls unless the song comes to a quiet passage, in which case the AC30 sound emerges. Back in my days as a solo I did something similar, but (not having any techs or FOH mixers), I wired the guitar for two outputs. One output went direct to an amp channel for a 'clean' rhythm sound. The other went through the effects board and foot volume pedal to another amp channel. When singing the song - pedal up. When the lead break came - push the pedal down to get a louder sound with the appropriate effect. Why not simply split the guitar signal with a Y cable? Because with the modified guitar I could use the pickups separately.

Ray


Ray

[geoff1711]

Slightly off topic, but Quo were their usual rocking excellence at Brighton last night, and support acts Kim Wilde and Roy Wood did them proud.

Final numbers were all of them doing Christmas songs, roll on next Christmas to do it all again!

Geoff