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Well, here are a couple of more pics of guitars and amps I've been blessed to work with. And another picture of my ugly mug, for no real reason! Below you will find a photo of my old Aspen guitar, a six-string acoustic, a Martin copy. Back in the 1970s I had some friends who were really into classical and jazz guitar, and one of them had a music store in Cookeville, TN, called "Keith's Corner Music". He introduced me to a guy who traveled to colleges and universities, doing seminars for students and professors of guitar. This guy was a gold mine of information on the quality of guitars; he knew tone woods, and that most of the aged wood available had been used up rapidly during the mid-'60s guitar boom. The guitar stayed popular, and suddenly there was no stock of lumber aged 30 or 40 years for guitars. It turned out that lumber considerably younger worked fine, but it was many years before it was proven. Meanwhile, instrument companies scouted for good lumber. |
There were some small companies who for some combination of reasons were able to find the small quantities of good, aged tone woods that had been kept by lumbermen for various reasons. He said Martin and Gibson, etc. weren't getting good lumber in the '70s. But Aspen was one of the companies he mentioned as making a line of excellent guitars with fine woods again as early as '75 or so. Many were made with laminated wood, and although I've seen some with structural problems the owners always tell me they prefer the playability and sound to even their best vintage guitars. Anyway, in '79 Keith decided to sell out his store. We had a mutual friend, a woman from South Dakota who also went to college with us, who went to his store to buy a guitar. She didn't play (still doesn't), but had several friends who were guitarists, and wanted a really nice instrument for them to play when visiting. The idea was selfless and interesting, and he recommended this guitar, since he'd be playing it himself. Later, when she needed extra money for a truck payment, she offered the guitar to me. The workmanship is as fine as anything the "great" companies had been making for decades, and in fact I have played D-28s from the 1930s and have to say that, while this doesn't sound exactly the same, it's 95% the sound, and the only difference in sound is a nice one. The top is spruce, but the back and sides are cedar, an interesting choice for a steel-stringed acoustic- cedar is usually used as a top sounding board wood for finer classical guitars. It certainly plays better than any Martin I've ever handled, and only one Huss and Dalton I've played is any smoother in this respect (I have played some other guitars, such as some Taylors, that played even smoother, but they were TOO smooth, you know?). In fact, the Huss and Daltons in both sound and feel beat out any vintage guitars I've ever seen! Since this guitar stands up well compared to those, I'm pretty proud of my purchase all those years ago.
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This is a 1978 Fender Twin Reverb. "Silverface" Fender amps are in general a step down in every way from the Blackface amps of the mid-1960s, except for the first few years, when they were electronically the same. The speakers are especially suspect in most. As the 1970s wore on and Fender was in competition with more high-gain amps, Fender made a lot of changes, not always for the best. |
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This amp has a Master Volume, something a lot of "purists" don't like, but it does enable one to get more playing dynamics from the tubes at a lower volume, which isn't a bad thing. In any case, somehow or other this particular amp sounds great! And the speakers sound real good; speakers on silverface-era Fender amps are a crap shoot. They bought speakers from at least three different companies, one of which made (and still makes) horrible guitar amp speakers, one made speakers that might be good, bad or average, and one made good speakers. The latter, of course, were only used very occasionally. The speakers are definitely replacements, and I've modified the reverb slightly. New tubes and a thorough maintenance check turned this into an amp as good as any other I've ever had.
By the way, I picked this amp up at Nashville Used Music, Nashville, TN.