Fender Vox Marshall The SOUND and STORY most don't know

[Music] [Music] hey this is Tim Pierce to me the primary colors in Epiphone have always been fender Vox and Marshall my friend John Tucci who is the amp Tech and norms for air guitars was kind enough to come over and share his wisdom on this the history of these three brands and what it's like when you open them up on his bench as always after talking to somebody and so knowledgeable on the subject I was surprised by how much I didn't know and delighted by how much I learned this is a player grade 1952 l5 that I bought from norms norms does not get a lot of these but when he gets something that's heavily devalued and his player grade I'm always interested in it and when I played this it was one of those decisions that I felt like I needed to buy it because if I didn't buy it I would lose it forever and it's really really that good it sounds great the wood is amazing it's it's just so much of it is not original that it was very very affordable and I'm lucky to have it on this guitar is a truglide this is a barmaid my my friend Eric in Kentucky that you just dropped on the strings here it's a very low cost improvement to tuning stability and I really like it I like it offers all the time for paid demos on YouTube I've never said yes if you see me use something it's because I like using it and I like the people who make it click the link below for the for the truglide also below is a link to the master class ripped over a thousand videos a hundred hours of content and there's a 14-day free trial so check it out if you're interested in guitar lessons so John we were just talking a second ago and you said Gibson's started making ants in the 30s into the 30s and fender in the 40s and forties and then late 50s box and then marshall marshall followed gibson ten years prior to the fender the first ones were made for Charlie Christian it was 150 model designed to go with this Charlie Christian guitar with that pickup yeah they were a single 12 about 20 watts but one-trick ponies they made the dual professional fender and that was in 46 which later became the super okay I'm fightin 46 to do a professional with the two speakers that little strip of metal down the front angled that's probably the first big amp or real amp that their people reuse them I read somewhere that Leo fender put the metal strip on because he wanted it to look more like a car wanted to have that aesthetic think of it this is back 50s things like that yeah yeah very interesting to start when you get a guy like leo who didn't play mm-hmm and basically read an RCA tube book okay on how to use a tube from RCA and make a circuit back then it was mostly the people playing in country the lap steel guys right okay no before he brought the telly outs Tulley so he was asking you like this sound like this it's a very clean and sparkly and it makes sense that it would be for a pedal steel and lap steel player right and another interesting thing there was a channel for a microphone because you know you carry one and they're gonna sing and play through it [Music] but getting back to Gibson on their first once they would have a microphone channel and a guitar channel the guitar channel would not have a volume control he had one on the guitar these are like primitive times was leo a music fan how did he end up building amplifiers and guitars well he was with Kaufman God in a way you know and they did the lap Steel's always have to remember that he was a businessman first and that influenced all the changes in the amps and the parts he used and the components for better or for worse right yeah and I mean he was a bit he went cheap sometimes yeah yeah I'm not gonna pay this for those I can buy it for this but it all led to the recipe and in your opinion what era are the best fender amps it's all preference the tweed sound that's early rock and roll they would get a tweet impetus to do and everybody to come in and plug into it so you know many tracks you heard that on I personally like the brown ones okay the brown ones were that in-between after the tweed and for the blackface yeah his ultimate thing was he was building for clean right home and lean and toned yeah and he finally hit it with this blackface then he sold the company so yeah and I know he got a it was a huge offer at the time to it right doesn't sound so huge now but it was a huge offer I was able to go down to GL and sit in his office and they told me you know quite a bit of the story but that was a couple of years ago and I guess he just couldn't he couldn't stop inventing so he started again did you open the drawers I I did you know I didn't I didn't done you would have you're right I would have plenty of good stuff around yeah I actually you and I should go down there I love those guys do you know is a really good company and they still have some of the same what looks like the same manufacturing desks and they have all this you know original kind of jigs and desks down there and stuff it's really really cool for me fenders were never dirty enough I'm a guy who really gravitates towards Fox and Marshall I try to gravitate towards Fender but the way they distort always seems a little more unfocused to me and I always have dirt in my sound so when I got my first Marshall I was 19 years old fifty-one it changed my touch my sound my sustain everything it really was life-changing for me and I kind of never looked back [Music] [Music] my first marshal was a 50 got it on a couple months after I got out of the service he was a plexi 50 with the 810 cap oh I love that Gavin yeah played it for about four months sold it and got a blonde drama lux was it just too loud and too brash no it's uh everybody had him oh really yeah I was never a person like what everybody's doing this yeah the flag comes up okay then I'm not gonna get you that I was one of those and I got everything I wanted out of the Trumbull yeah box to me like we're talking box all I think of is trebly chai me sparkly so absolutely it's beetles it's Tom Petty yeah it's that sound but for me the way it distorts is still focused and the way a marshal distorts is still focused when I hear distortion on a Fender it seems to spread out that's the only way I can describe it so I I've gravitated toward more towards Vox and Marshall it's funny because you've got this one right next to that one and that's basically the first Marshall schematic that was their template for the first Marshall I mean components of component copied everything faceplate the works the only thing I was different they bought the Transformers in England they use those because they were running on 220 right have the speakers and they didn't have it in one cabinet like the 410 basement right and that changed the sound it's fight your Marshall was a drummer right he happened to own a music store and everybody was coming in hey we need bigger amps we need this sound you know they're the ones that designed it or copied in took it from there yeah he just sold them yeah I read where the literally some of the people that we admire the most they wanted amps that distorted and so they the the players actually kind of demanded this sound now that blues breaker amps they call it the blues Rick with the 212 yeah that was made for Clapton so it would fit in the trunk of his car is that right oh they didn't take a stack because he was gigging yeah when I first moved to LA I would put a 4-12 in the front seat of my car the only way I could get it in I had this Pontiac that I bought from my mom and I'd opened the door and I'd get the so it'd be me and this giant 4/12 sitting on the front bench seat these I would never do that now but and that's the way I am now if I go to a studio and there's no carnage I need to be able to carry that thing in so I totally understand that however I love 4:12 so that's what I use at home almost a hundred percent of the time I love having a 4-12 [Music] so Vox tell me about Vox you know dick Denny was a guitar player gives it abandoned stuff he developed you know the sound based on earth tell her he's the Telecaster as his guitar to design the amp you know they hit really well in the beginning they're in the 60s every band that was coming to the States box box box and there was an interesting story that Jim Illya the guy who wrote the big book yeah told me he said he went he went over there and he talked to people that worked at the factory and he said that during the sixties these guys were going out to America the animals the Stones The Beatles and they were taking am stand there's no road cases wasn't even a amp covers his load him and send them over so they come back from his tour and they be scratched up and the girl off that whole trashed but they take him back in giving them nice new ones to go back out so they had this big garage in the back they throwing all the once in the garage you know it's thrown across throwing regrets giving them new ones finally the garage got over the full and they were building a gas station they're excavating down the street make a long story short they buried him all this landfill if you knew that may be out there with shoulders and there was he mailed probably Lennon's box and you know Keith Richards an animal everybody all they all got buried is interesting they did build an amp for Hendrix too did they really yes they did and but he went with the Marshall so bucks tried some high wattage amps they did yes yeah and they well EC 30 was 30 Watts the Beatles we need more going to the states they went to 50 then he went said 100 but they're having problems with them they were burning up they were trying to make him so fast the ac30 is basically in HD 15 times 2 these are doubled everything okay [Music] back playing all the time I change the strings every week and I change my tubes every three months even though they didn't need to and they were very cheap yeah and unbeknownst to me I was collecting rca's and Mullard x' and am Frick's and all these good tubes and then in 68 you couldn't get them anymore gotcha is there a tube maker that you buy from today that you like no oh now I just for repairs yes I'll ask somebody you know do you want JJ do you want these you wants that lot what's ever available is either gonna be Russian or Chinese gotcha okay so that's what it comes down to but when I built an amp I used Russian and Chinese I wanted to use today's products that's smart yeah so that everybody can get on the amp doesn't require anything special level playing ground exactly yeah I'm a fan of that too I like for everybody to be able to have the tools yeah you know and be able to buy what they need the the rare unattainable thing was always frustrating to me love companies like matchless because I spent a long time searching for the holy grail box and never quite found it and when matchless came along it's okay I can have that sound it's reliable I can buy it for a reasonable price and I don't have to hunt anymore because every box I would find was different yeah box kind of shot themselves in foot when they went transistors first popularity they went transistor fender went marshall stayed with tubes and just exploded yeah Marshalls have always been a sound I've craved and even in the early 80s when I started working in LA we would get jcm800 out of the box stock and use them and they that was the sound we liked it even though it's a little bright and a little could you it was harsh at times but you could actually get any sound out of it if you just work the knob somewhere in your guitar I remember in the late 80s they made a design change based on cost-cutting and they actually took some components out and there was a period where the jcm800 didn't sound as good he thought about saving money leo is the worst really when you saw a speaker change it's because the next brand that went in was cheaper and I'm gonna stop with Jensen say they don't there I can't get enough of him because they're supplying everybody and then he went to the Oxford's and then he went to the Utah's and the Transformers they have metal plates he bought transformers that every other plate was a good piece of metal they were cheaper that way rather than I have all good but and when it lend itself to the sound see so what you're saying is some of the cost-cutting moves actually made the amps sound how better the guitar players change isn't always good printed circuit boards okay with their tubes mounted in the printed circuit board that's any a company that's a problem fender did it too if you have a circuit board with all these components you have to change one it's not like changing and when it's point-to-point wiring right and you can burn the board a lot of these amps have boards that were just designed to be unclip and pull that one out put the next one in Leo made changes that worked out really well but the fascinating thing about his damps you could take five super reverbs and have the same guitar player plug into and they're all gonna be different because he used components that were like twenty percent tolerance so if a component had a value of like 100 that could be plus or minus 25 so some of you might have 125 reading there yeah there might be 75 same amp from the same production era yeah there's exact every component the same but 20% tolerance is a lot yeah if you go in 20% this way that way it makes a difference and they probably all use different components based on availability sometimes price too but in the case of Vox I heard that they just they grabbed whatever they could get at any given time to complete their run of amps basically I think they all did because yeah if Leo did that too because you'll see crossover amplifiers like the one you have here yeah it's a basement it's a black face but it's brownface parts see if that's that's why that panels like that with those knobs it's a brown face circuit in there but it was left over and part of the transition going to Planet face well I also have a drip front deluxe which I'm told is the same circuitry as the blackface but they were just switching over to silver and they were still using blackface parts it was 68 when they started making the changes so that one probably got some of the parts that were still left in the bin hope no one left we got to go to the new ones but you'll see transformers sometimes in those that are two years difference when you look at these amps over the years on the bench and fix them which company is most reliable I could guess you know I'd say vendors most reliable Marshalls second most and Bob's third more reliable yeah and yeah in that order easiest to work on okay fender laid everything out beautifully got you fox-like you tossed the spaghetti and also it's a mess who's harder the amp sometimes where the amp owner no I think the clients are okay got you I'll give them a pass on this okay it's the amp and will you get everybody you get all kinds of people yeah I mean you have a guy bringing you in Napa I want it to sound like Stevie Ray Vaughan it's like right away you say no no or how do I sound like Larry Carlton on kid charlemagne as well we're not starting with this you know yeah it's stuff like that that's but you get that stuff you know yeah which is really it's kind of neat yeah but 16 amps it's you really have to stay humble because you can be hero one day and yeah you could go home with the guy in 15 minutes later pops an old 40 year old cap and you just fixed it and you just got paid to fix it and then the thing just breaks again I'm sure everybody that's worked on an amperes yeah definitely stay humble yeah the guy goes wait a minute amp you fixed for him last month thing sounds great okay good I'm happy but you know stay right there it funny I a doctors speak that way too it's likely go yeah did coops pretty good huh they they never assume that the outcome is gonna you know be permanent you know I've heard doctors speak in the same manner you know really humble about the work they do because you never know what's what's gonna pop up next only thing they're working on you not in a no for you know you often buy another in thanks for watching if you haven't subscribed yet please hit the subscribe button and ring the bell if you are a subscriber please ring the bell it lets us let you know every time a new video is released you can also support us by clicking the link below for the online masterclass as I always say we're up to over a hundred hours of lessons and content over a thousand videos and we add more every month there's a 14-day free trial take your time take a long look we'd love to have you join us you

Channel: Tim Pierce Guitar

Views: 232,690

Keywords: tim pierce, john tucci, john tucci amp tech, norman's rare guitars, norm's rare guitars, fender amps, leo fender, marshall amps, vox amps, fender vs marshall, fender bassman, vox ac15, vox ac10, vox ac30, fender tremolux, fender dual professional, marshall jtm45, british invasion, fullerton california, gibson amps, gibson guitars, tim pierce little wing, tim pierce rick springfield, tim pierce runaway, tim pierce crowded house

Id: PnA57njxMug

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019