The Wrecking Crew's Louie Shelton and the 1969 Fender Princeton Reverb

[Music] foreign [Music] laughs [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] yeah there's nothing like that out you know I think it's a 16. well I'm not sure when the silver face when they change from the black to this yeah right yep but I know I had it it was sort of like my my second amp second half well when I first got into the session thing uh I had come straight from the club so I had a big uh super Reverb with four heavy Jensen speakers in it so as soon as I started getting a number of sessions and having to go from one to the other and drag that big amplifier because originally we didn't have the Cartage Services here now right there I think the only one that had it was how blind the drummer he had his private guy with a van that would go set him up for his next session because there's no way he could be tearing down his drum kit and then driving and setting it up again yeah but shortly after that uh sir Studio instrument rentals started out oh yeah and they became the Cartage company for all of us guys yep so since we had that we started getting more and more equipment you know we had a big case full of you know 20 guitars and and all of our equipment but uh the reason that the the little Princeton was so practical was because in those days there were we were recording with a lot of open mics in the room obviously yeah so um we had to play at a low level which meant if if you needed to crank that amp up so that you got a bit of dirt and stuff like that just a little bit of distortion it was so loud that the engineer would come out and scream at you to turn your damn amp down yeah right because it's going in the drum mics the piano mics yeah so my dear son-in-law Corey fight who was a genius he was working at Valley Arts guitars cool and uh he did this Paul Rivera mod for me on my Princeton that gave me the master volume and and a few other push and pull things for the More Travel boost and all of that so we could we could go from this claim [Music] to a very quick uh if we needed it for the next town [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] cool cool and if the next turn recall for that nice town again yeah we just go back [Music] from a little bit of you know see if it was [Music] just a little bit of fuzz on there yep so how long had you had the amp when you got it modified uh I would have had it uh probably a couple of years because uh I know when I did Diamond Girl that was an overdub so I could Crank It Up to get that bit of uh [Music] so but I was able to like I say I could crank it till I got just the amount of distortion I wanted yeah but so for low down I had to I [Music] and then for the solo I had some cheap fuzz tones yeah oh [Music] foreign oh that's so yeah it was always on there except four of them have fallen off so yeah uh and what have you got on there you go presents Master game boosts yeah that's the master yeah disaster because the master does have a gain boost if you pull it out as well to get you even more how loud would you typically have it in a session because that like I said it's not that loud right now that's talking for you it's on three and uh it would be in a room with musicians so I wouldn't have it much louder than that Yep they're just close mic it uh and most of the time they just put a 57 on there yeah it sounded brilliant yeah and that's always been your go-to Mike 57 yeah I mean it's a sound we know isn't it they got such good sounds I figured well but you know I've come in and like everybody tried 40 different mics on it and then oh well let's go back go back to that so are you very particular about the mic positioning well only that I know the further you get away from the center the less highs it has if you want that real peaky bright thing you put in the center but most of the time I'm over uh just inside the outside of the cone yep yep straight on angled yeah straight on yep yeah I mean that just works for me yeah and but I listen and if it's a tune where I do want a bit more brightness so just it's easy to to move it over closer to the center it is the amp you've used on most of the stuff oh yeah I know I did it on all the Motown all the Jackson 5. Lionel Richie uh pretty much uh everything yeah yeah pretty much everything because uh it didn't take me long to get rid of that big four speaker thing because I was having to carry carry it around to every session so I said no this this is not working smaller amps 10 cent better mic'd up anyway don't they it's 12 inch speaker is it uh this is a 10. okay and you can't get that speaker anymore either that's why this this amp I have someone that made made me a clone uh Bruce Kerr a good friend of mine in New Zealand he he copied everything in it but he couldn't get that speaker ah okay uh because I wanted an amp like this that I could take out and play in the little clubs but I didn't want to take this one around because to me it's too it's too valuable to a piece of History right there isn't it yeah it doesn't get far away from my chair whenever wherever I'm recording I mean I've got some other things you know run the basement through nice speaker cab here the camel cabinet yeah and then I have this Dumbo clone yep that I if I'm looking for that kind of sound but I would say 95 of my work I'll I'll put a mic in front of the Princeton yeah and I'm just so familiar with that sound you know just such a beautiful full sound and so versatile so so do you remember the first session you ever used it on it would have been a monkey session or a Jackson 5 or a Carpenters because I started doing all that stuff around you know pretty close the same time yeah is this the app you used on last train o'clock school yeah it is hey yeah that's one iconic intro I meant one iconic insurance and you came up with that on the Fly didn't you yeah I did and and when we got in the studio to record it they kept wanting me to turn it up louder and louder it's the one time that they they just kept saying no turn it up turn it up you know and this is before you had it modified right yeah yeah yeah so you're getting closer to the sound that you get now yeah low volume but yeah a very bright uh just a little bit of a grungy on on the top end yep but very bright a loud sound it really cuts through on the record though can you give us a bit of the intro [Music] I'm pretty sure I did it with a flat pick now that's that sound yeah foreign [Music] for about five minutes after we played that too after we recorded it is there anything you can remember that you didn't use this on I think you've mentioned one or two along the way you didn't use it on hello did you my weight in thinking you used to Rockman for that I did a Tom shirts yeah we uh just had it sitting on the desk in the control room and I plugged into that that's why we did the solo rep did you write that or is that improvised well it's just improvised it just roll the tape and play play something mind-blowing man mind blowing yeah so you'd like playing around the chords kind of thing how would you have approach that you think uh definitely uh just knowing what the chords were of course you know the story Lionel had hummed a solo he wanted the guitar to play okay and he had three other guitar players learn the solo that he hum yeah and I did the same thing I learned that solo and I came in and I and we recorded it and to me it didn't sound good as the guitar solo uh so I said just give me another track and I'll and let me play something else just so you'll have an option yep and we did that one other take and that's solo wow that it's completely different from what he hunged [Music] it's so cool Luke as you can hear that that's you I can hear that that feeling uh just the vibrato and the touch comes through that yeah that's you yeah it became part of the record you know like I say once you hear it a thousand times it's part of the record yeah yeah it was so many of those things you know and uh people don't like it when if you play it live and you play something different they don't like it play what you played on the wreck the record yeah so whenever I do low down or hello or any of those things I I go ahead and play like what I played on the record yeah you know that's what they want to hear yeah I know another solo that you didn't use this on that's because it was on a classical guitar I was playing it by Neil Diamond right yes I don't I don't remember how we decided to use the classical guitar on that um but that was shortly after I had gotten into the session saying and had started adding guitars to my Arsenal and Al Casey had a little had a guitar shop Al Casey was one of the guitar players that I probably did more sessions with than anyone else because he was always the Rhythm player and I was the lead player yeah so he had a little guitar shop down there someplace and uh so I I got a 12 string from him and and the gut string and probably a an acoustic guitar and uh I used that little gut string on a lot of stuff but a lot of the Neil Diamond stuff yeah and it was a hundred dollar guitar well I played on a million seller very valuable guitar now if it was still around it might still be yeah before the session days I could only afford one guitar at a time and so I only had one guitar when I first started doing it and then we kept adding you know every week it was another guitar because uh as a session player we had to sometimes play a 12 string or a gut string or a banjo or ukulele bazooka we had everything in our trunk yeah so how about a fix we were you ever using pedals set on your sessions as well well in the early days uh there weren't really pedal boards I think the pedals just started to come in we had the crybaby the Wawa paddle uh a distortion then there was like a chorus um and uh it's so slowly turned into this who could get the most pedals you know and look at you now like I said before like looking over there next Wednesday oh yeah and I try to narrow it down to as few as I can you know yeah to as far as carrying something around with me yeah I've kind of learned that I can get by with a a couple of game stage pedals of course uh a Reverb a tuner and maybe a delay and this is the pedal board you're using now yes it's the one I used most recently but I'm about to get rid of a couple of those because it has three gain stage pedals that only need two okay and you stack those gains like you have multiples at the same time sometimes yeah I I actually almost keep the little bit of the Tube Screamer on all the time yeah [Music] [Music] but yep it's it's clean but there's what is exciting sustained yep and I think there's a color in there too it does slightly [Music] that's more of a jazz tone [Music] [Music] just a little bit of something there that it adds but live I I used to keep it on all the time yep foreign [Music] so that's the little ones that this the Roland ce2 I've got the one that has four knobs but I like the one with the two knobs yeah [Music] so has this app been really reliable for you over the years never had any problems really do you get it re-tubed often oh well my friend uh Bruce Kerr has done a little bit of touch up on it I'm not sure what all he did if he changed any tubes or what I still have all the original tubes to it really I've been asked a couple of times what the hell were you doing in Australia at what brought you here well I've been working with some some guys from Sydney they were in a band that I was producing there in LA and they kept telling me um how much I would enjoy Australia yeah being because they knew I'd like the outdoors fishing and golfing and whatever yep and um at the time L.A was getting too big for me too much traffic and all of that and so we went down to Sydney for about five weeks and really left it yeah and of course all of the major record labels were there you know RCA Sony Emi and all of them and I went around and met the people and they said yeah we got plenty of work come on down at that time Men at Work were a big hit yep in excess Midnight Oil there was a lot of good stuff coming out in Australia so it's very tempting you know it was an adventure yeah and it's not something that most people would have whatever I don't want to say guts or whatever to pull up and and make that kind of a move but we did it and we haven't been sorry yeah we love it here yeah we love it here well this has been fun talking about the little amp that uh that did so much absolutely Mike like I said every time I come in here it catches my eye and I I realize that's a little piece of History sitting right there and the thing about it is it it just still sounds great there's no there's not another amp in this room to me that will do what they know it does yeah Louie okay thank you mate

Channel: Rick Hollis

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Id: VDsw1LEqt-0

Length: 22min 24sec (1344 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023