I always loved the growl Jack Casady got in his bass tone. This might be the same Versatone he used at Woodstock.
I always loved the growl Jack Casady got in his bass tone. This might be the same Versatone he used at Woodstock.
What's a "versatone"? Is that like an Ampeg fliptop?
It's one of these. Made in Van Nuys, Calif in the 1960's.
You can see Jack's Versatone on the backline at Woodstock at 0:37. It's the same amp he's playing White Rabbit through in the first post. He's had that amp for 40 years!
Huh! Reminds me of my Magnatone M15.. that was internal crossover also. But not biamped, I don't think. And definately not pan-channeled with a mixer knob.
Wow, Carol Kay used this.. I can recall those old Wrecking Crew pix now. I get it!
That singer, Diana Mangano...Yum !
It's a shame that families should be torn apart by something as simple as....wild dogs
Fuzzed bass is good stuff !
See the Rapper by the Jaggerz and Memo From Turner by Mick Jagger for more examples of how it was effectively used !
I would hit it!Originally Posted by jackassrock
The Versatone was for growl and then he ran through some Dual Showman heads. Later he used Alembic preamps and McIntosh power amps in the Hot Tuna days. The Versatone was miced and mixed in.
Jack is a smokin Bassist.
His tone here reminds me of Geddy's live tone back in the 70's.
Uff!
I'd hit it hard...
Trolls take heed...LOG OUT & FUCK OFF!!!
Fuzzed bass is very very good stuff.
Finally, something we can all agree on.
Geddy Lee said Jack Casady and Jack Bruce were his influences. Jack teaches bass seminars at the Fur Peace Ranch which I was lucky enough to attend. Learned a lot from him and he is an amazing bassist when it comes to melodic bass. He can really play some beautiful stuff and his tone is amazing. He also spent one on one time with each student and personally showed me how to get various sounds using vibrato and finger technique. Like Eddie, Jack's tone has a lot to do with his fingers and how he uses them.
Jack is a good bassist and we all want to bang the female singer. LOL!
Entwistle and Casady. Two of my favorites! I have the Jack Casady signature Epiphone and the pickup on it is amazing. It gets from a nice acoustic tone to rip your head off depending on where you have the impedance selector set. If you are playing at a high volume the bass has a lot of resonance and it's controllable. You can also get some wicked feedback if you want. The guys in my band complain if I play my Spector instead of the Casady bass they just dig all the overtones it gets.
Lot's of tasty bass on this album.
I looked at and tried out the Casady signature Epiphone a few years ago, yet I went with my blond Explorer. The bass sounded amazing, but I really had difficulty with the neck around the lower frets, as it was just too hard to play. Nitro, did you have to do any drastic steps to the guitar's set-up to make it more playable for you?
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”― Stephen Hawking
Jack set mine up. He likes the action fairly high with the neck straight. The bridge is adjustable by turning the three screws down. As long as you have a rake to the bridge to keep tension on the saddles, I don't see why you can have a lower action. Jack didn't have to do much adjusting, so I think these come from the factory set up to his specs.
I play a Spector and when I switch to the Casady it's very rehtro feeling. You also have to use a big strap with it. It's a different animal and the low impedance pickup is really hot compared to the Spector's EMG's. Name it and Jack has played it or through it and he said over his half century of playing he found low impedance pickups eliminate the need for active electronics which he said tend to color the tone. It's a weird bass because it seems alive or something. Let me tell you a Casady bass through 1000 watts and a 8x10 cab is a fucking monster and you better be on top of it or it will run away on you.
Well, about the only reason I did not purchase the Casady was the aforementioned problems I had with the lower register. Come to find out, some of the features of the Casady bass would have saved me some effort when we got around to recording. For instance, I wound up setting up two different amps (one distorted and trebly, the second a more hollow yet Motown/James Jamerson sound) in two different rooms, and recording them simultaneously through a single jack linked to both rooms, with two mics recording the atmosphere. For the mix, I faded between the two.
Now remember, I had to plow through two guitarists set at stun level and my own keyboard parts as well. This was a tedious balancing act by any means, and in live situations I wound up depending solely upon volume. The Explorer held up remarkably well, cutting through this wall of noise without a hint of feedback.
The thing is, I now wish our music wasn't so bombastic, where fluid playing could shine through. Perhaps if I'd gone ahead with that gold bass, the sound of the band would have been different. Then again, I might simply have been drowned out.
Thanks for the info and personal asides regarding Jack. All the best to you both.
Gibson has always had a problem of making thin necks, and having torn one apart I think it's the truss rod design.
But I can't imagine why: Fender truss rods and Martins are the same, just a bowed stick of 3/16" or whatever steel threaded with a nut at one end.
I restored a Thunderbird and on setting up the neck, it was for sure a bitch to get that first 7-fret area to go straight AND allow the middle to bow out so you could get it to follow the curvature of the spinning string.
I'm not saying this is the end-all fix, but sometimes in a situation like that what I do is tighten the trussrod pretty stiff till the strings can't even vibrate anymore, then just jump down on the fretboard to bow it forward, then loosen and retighten the nut.
It makes the neck move a little and stretches the truss up a little maybe, but it takes a long time to do it and not hear the "crikk-k" of wood fracturing under your fingers.
Gibson bass headstocks are really weak and need really good cases.
Jack was telling the story of being at the Monterey Pop Festival and seeing Hendrix trash his guitar. He said it really threw him because all the San Francisco musicians were into cherishing their instruments and being careful with them because they were precious. Jack said he was really good friends with Mitch Mitchell and jammed with Hendrix several times.
He also said he played a Jazz bass but went hollow body to get the resonance. The Casady bass can feed back but it's controllable. Jack told me Dean Markley Blue strings work the best on that bass and he's right. I don't know, I left it the way he set it up and I have no problems. The Dean Markley stings seems slinkier. I think with lower action you wouldn't get his percussive tone. Maybe Jack keeps the neck straight due to the Gibson neck situation. If I'm popping and slapping or playing real fast stuff, I do that on a Spector and if I want tone of the Gods, it's the Casady. That bass just has this HUGE magical tone you can't get with anything else.
All Gibsons need good cases. It's their headstock design where you have all the tension right where they mill the wood away for the truss rod nut access. Fender's are indestructable and Gibsons need to be in a case. I love SG's but shit, them things are FRAGILE!
Jack said he approached Gibson to make him another 72 Les Paul bass and all the forms and presses were sent to Epiphone in Korea. He said he didn't care if the bass was an Epiphone or a Gibson, he just wanted it built to his standards. He said the pickup was developed at Gibson USA but the bass is made in Korea which he said the Epiphone people were easier to get along with than the Gibson USA people. He said the Epis are better quality than what Gibson was making in 72 and they are a lot less money than if they had a Gibson headstock which suits him fine. He said he wasn't making a collectors item his bass is for players and most players can't afford a $3 grand bass.
Another thing I learned was the Epiphone Elite series of guitars are cheaper and better quality than the Gibson USA guitars on average. I've seen horrible fret work on very expensive Les Pauls. I think Gibson is selling the name.
I had one of those Epiphone SG basses in 1997, and boy was it a disaster. Impossible to keep in tune, with all sorts of electronics issues. At that time, there wasn't much internet access around, so you still had to purchase the required short scale strings through a guitar shop. And of course, they didn't stock them, so they needed to order them. You'd wind up buying 5 sets at a time, because they wouldn't get them unless they were part of a bulk order. Then two weeks later the strings would arrive, only to be regular scale strings shipped in error, so you'd have to start the whole miserable process all over again.
I'm not kidding. I'd have to call all the guitar shops in the area, and wind up driving North to beyond West Palm Beach (over 56 miles) or South to Miami (a more reasonable in distance but more tedious in travel 35 miles) to some obscure shop that had the damned things.
After the bass had let me down one too many times in a live setting (I'd been using our studio bass as a back-up and wound up using it all of the time) I finally smashed it to pieces in a fit of pent up frustration.
It was a neat little guitar, very ergonomically practical and sounded terrific. Getting strings for it and being able to depend upon it were another matter altogether.
Heard that story before; not sure if you've told it here previously, or he said it to me himself...no, pretty sure he said it too, and that he "didn't want something coming out that was shit with his name on it just so it could say 'Gibson' on the headstock..."
Jack's another one of the multitude of artists I met during my brief music retail gig, and he was (like probably 98% of those I met during that period) a very cool guy.
Jack is a great instructor and teacher. It was hard to believe the guy was in The Jefferson Airplane and considered a legendary bassist. He was going around the room helping people and seemed to be enjoying it. Yeah, he's pretty normal and apparently very type A. I mean the guy had perfectly pressed slacks and shined shoes. It was hard to picture him in a hippie rob, a headband, and on acid. LOL! I guess you have to grow up sometime.
One thing we did in class that was a lot of fun is we would pick one note and see how many ways we could play that one note and how many sounds we could get out of it. He said he had to be really creative in The Airplane and he said Paul Kantner loved to write these big choppy guitar parts and he had to find a way to keep those rolling. He was very fond of the rolling bass line in Somebody To Love he came up with. He also said you have to play with other musicians to learn and you can't just do it on your own locked away in a room by yourself.
Yup...
And he's right; one has to build band-chops as well as your own individual technique. You have to learn to play with people just as much as you do on your own.
Kinda similar to the old adage about bands where one live gig = 1 month's worth of rehearsals -same thing with one rehearsal vs. just hanging out on your own.
Which why, though I totally feel takin' some time off from gigging to learn Pro Tools (was gonna have to re-work the band or find another anyway; bassist moved to NY, and the singer was difficult to deal with [I know - shocker] ) was well worth it, not gigging is starting to drive me nuts.
Fortunately, once you've learned how to play with others, you can take (short) breaks or change members/bands and recover quickly. Were it not for a few informal jams and the one fly-out gig I played this year, I'd feel way (more) guilty.But I need to get back out there!!!
Last edited by jhale667; 12-10-2009 at 11:29 PM.
That's what I love about living here.....The Acid Jazz Sunday night jam where musicians are put together to jam. The rule is no rehearsed songs or any songs, just jamming off the cuff, it's fucking awesome.
There's four open jams at the various bars here weekly......if it wasn't for that, I'd go mad
E- Jesus . Playing both sides because he didnt understand the argument in the first place
Awesome. Wish there was something like that happening round here. It's great to jam with strangers. The results can be very cool, depending on the calibre of the players involved...That's what I love about living here.....The Acid Jazz Sunday night jam where musicians are put together to jam. The rule is no rehearsed songs or any songs, just jamming off the cuff, it's fucking awesome.
There's four open jams at the various bars here weekly......if it wasn't for that, I'd go mad
These fuckers can play.....on a given night you may jam with a 60 year old grandma playing wicked violin or a 20 something mandolin player. It's a fucking trip, dude.
There needs to be more of that in LA.
That sounds cool.
Closest thing to that I get here is if I go see one of my bro's cover bands, it's a given I'm getting drug up onstage to jam before the night's over - though one of my guitarist buddies always wants me to stick around til the very last song of the 4th set because - in his own words - he doesn't want "to have to follow" me....which is stupid and insecure on his part; I mean, I do OK, but it's not like I'm fucking Paul Gilbert or some shit...
Especially considering it's only a COVER GIG, fer fuck's sake! Relax dude! Fuck if I let somebody jam on my rig and they're good, just makes me want to go back up there and play better....but that's me, he's him and this is LA, I guess. Big whatever IMO, but not to him.
I mean, the dude is currently making a living teaching (which I quit doing regularly years ago) and also giving guitar lessons to one of our mutual friends who's gone on to become a rather fairly well known bassist (even been on the cover of Bass Player mag, fer cryin' out loud)- and he's intimidated by me? Guess I should appreciate the sentiment, but...
Last time we threw a jam at my last (and probably soon to be current) drummer's house was with a bassist I'd never even met or played with before - dude was GOOD, and we were just calling out random songs (from "Houses of the Holy" to something as obscure as "Hard as a Rock" by the Bulletboys...hahahha) as well as improv'ing with him on some of my tunes and riffs I've already worked up with the drummer and some of the bassist's material too...it was FUN....need to do it again, soon!
Last edited by jhale667; 12-11-2009 at 02:36 AM.
It's all flying by the seat of your pants at the Acid Jazz! It's a trip.... literally you can't play any known song and have to wing it for 15 mins.
Sounds simultaneously challenging, and fun as hell!
Wow, talk about a fall back on (and thank god for) your ear-training and sink-or-swim moment...
Jack said this is the environment him and jorma were in. He said they always had their guitars with them and impromptu jams were the norm. Imagine guys like Jack, Jorma, Jerry Garcia, Santana, Jimi Hendrix all cocked and ready to go and unrehearsed ready to fly. Jack said it was a blast.That's what I love about living here.....The Acid Jazz Sunday night jam where musicians are put together to jam. The rule is no rehearsed songs or any songs, just jamming off the cuff, it's fucking awesome.
There's four open jams at the various bars here weekly......if it wasn't for that, I'd go mad
He said in the old San Fransisco days they would wake up and go, Hell, let's play in the park and they would set up their stuff and play for the hell of it. He said 1966 was the magical summer and not 1967. He said too many people crashed the scene by then but he said 1966 was pure magic.
He also said the Jefferson Airplane was really open. If you wanted to go off and jam with others no problem as long as you made The Airplane gigs and he said often they would be playing in a band that was warming up for The Airplane. Unlike Van Halen were Eddie and Alex have a royal fit if someone goes off and does something different on the side.
Here's what I would've liked to have seen...
I would've liked to have been a fly on the wall the night Hendrix was teaching Steven Stills how to play leads...he said in an interview up until then he had NO concept of it...imagine you're blazing on acid, and Jimi Hendrix is showing you how to wail over chord changes...
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