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A friend from up North drove down for the week. He was able to bring pretty much all of his gear down.

He left the Jaguar at home as I've got the Jazzmaster down here. This was all about the hollow bodies......



Hofner 4571TZ and a Gretsch 6120 Nashville. Both gorgeous.



The Hofner (quite a rarity apparently) had onboard effects - Treble Boost & Germanium Fuzz.
The Fuzz in particular was really nice, warm & growly. Overall it had a very beefy tone but with a great jangly mid-range too.
The pickups were Hofner 513's. The neck & body had perloid binding, the fret markers & headstock inlay were also MOP/Pearloid.
Very nice indeed. Sounded great unplugged but far better through an amp & the HP-1.



The Gretsch was a different kettle of fish. Its definitely got its own sound due to the HS Filtertrons.
It was the heaviest of the bunch & also the quietest when played unplugged which was a surprise.
My ES-125 was actually the loudest of them all unplugged even though it had the thinnest body.



He also brought down a bunch of pedals to play around with.
Mine were the HP-1, Empress Tremolo, D*A*M 1966 & Holy Grail, plus I'd borrowed his Tone Bender.
He also added A Shaky Jimmy, Russian Big Muff, Lafayette EchoVerb & a cute little FuzzBox with Germaniums & a weird decay!

The Lafayette was really nice, I'd not played through an analog Reverb unit before. Its totally different to my Holy Grail.
You also get that nice explosive ripple when you knock on the unit!?.....
.....listen to the start of Kingdom Of Doom by The Good, The Bad & The Queen & you'll know what I mean.

The Shaky Jimmy was nice but simple next to my stupidly varied Empress - it had the added bonus of doubling up as a Chorus pedal though.
The little FuzzBox actually packed quite a punch. Similar Fuzz-tone to the Hofner or the 1966. Pretty good for £25.

I've got quite used to having all this gear around. My girlfriends away (which helps) so the living-rooms turned into a bit of a practice space.
Its been a productive few days playing around with new tunings & stuff.

Oh, he also brought down a really shit Squire practice amp so we had one each. It did the job nicely in the end.


PS - Please excuse the lo-res mobile-phone pictures. My girlfriend took the camera with her.

Sounds like a fun time. It's always nice to be able to try out different gear outside of the confines of a shop. I had an LRE reverb unit similar to that one before. It was a pretty cool little box. But like a dumb ass, I sold it, even though I pretty much gave it away.

Justin

PorkyPrimeCut wrote:
The Lafayette was really nice, I'd not played through an analog Reverb unit before. Its totally different to my Holy Grail.
You also get that nice explosive ripple when you knock on the unit!?.....

Like a spring verb tank in a combo amp?

northern_dirt wrote:

PorkyPrimeCut wrote:
The Lafayette was really nice, I'd not played through an analog Reverb unit before. Its totally different to my Holy Grail.
You also get that nice explosive ripple when you knock on the unit!?.....

Like a spring verb tank in a combo amp?

I'm guessing thats the same noise. Its basically just the spring shaking. I've heard the noise so many times on records over the years but never realized it was made as simply as that. 

Lafayette EchoVerb - 1
EH Holy Grail - 0

Its little touches like this that remind me why people rate vintage gear so much.

Whats those units go for usually?

northern_dirt wrote: Whats those units go for usually?

I bought the one I had for $40 USD. It was really clean and worked 100%.

Justin

PorkyPrimeCut wrote: I'm guessing thats the same noise. Its basically just the spring shaking. I've heard the noise so many times on records over the years but never realized it was made as simply as that.  ??

+100000

Reverb tank crashes are awesome! I never knew they existed untill I started listening and playing surf. I wish more people did them but, they kind of make sense in surf being as it sounds rather like waves crashing or whatever. I doubt Luther Perkins did much tank kicking.

i love sharin foo wrote:

northern_dirt wrote: Whats those units go for usually?

I bought the one I had for $40 USD. It was really clean and worked 100%.

Justin

Sweet Ill take 3..

I think this Lafayette cost my friend around $200. Its pretty noisy if you turn the reverb past 6.

Its missing a footswitch. Does anyone know if these are easy to come by or if he can use a footswitch from a different kind of unit?

EDIT - It actually cost him $104.

PorkyPrimeCut wrote: I think this Lafayette cost my friend around $200. Its pretty noisy if you turn the reverb past 6.

Its missing a footswitch. Does anyone know if these are easy to come by or if he can use a footswitch from a different kind of unit?

Try PMing Kawetzmann he might know. He's got one of those on his website. They look cool!

The Hofner (quite a rarity apparently) had onboard effects - Treble Boost & Germanium Fuzz.

woah... real nice!

Ah, nothing beats a good reverb crash.....IMO the Fender reverb tank makes the best crashes. 666 is the way to go....
I should uneath mine and give that old surf sound another go.....
Although the bigger the reverb pan, the nicer the crash.

ohm-men wrote: I should uneath mine and give that old surf sound another go.....
Although the bigger the reverb pan, the nicer the crash.

i don't agree with that.. I have made the mistake of purchasing an unusually large
reverb pan on my vox AC-30.  Not my fault really, the measurements were based
on the old one that was originally in it (which had snapped during shipment)..

but to keep w/ original design of the amp itself, I had accutronics make a special replacement
to custom fit it.  Although, it's pretty big, the decay is WAY too long for me, it's almost ruins it
because it just has so much friggan noise-floor issues, since the note I played a minute ago
is still decaying! True, a bit of a hyperbolic statement, but I needed to vent a sec.  I use my holy
grail mostly, w/ a smidgeon of amp spring.  Fender, however, now THEY know how to make a spring!