Hypothetical Casady amp mimicimg

Happy Face

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Lazy boy shd research.

But I wonder when I look at later JA vids where the stage is crowded with Versatones, Fender Showman amps and Fender and/or Sunn speaker cabs. Was Jack only playing through the V-tones? Maybe in one photo i saw with like six V-tones on stage.

But other times, it looks like there is only a single Versatone.

Nowadays you'd figure the V-tone was getting miked. But back then?

Back then, was Jack's signal split between a Versatone as the "tweeter" so to speak with the Showmen used for the lower frequency heft?

Im wondering if one could try something like using a splitter with a signal run through a high pass filter into a Versatone and the other side as is it through a lpf into a Showman?
 
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mellowgerman

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I honestly have never noticed a photo or video where multiple Versatones were present. Granted, I'm usually looking for and staring at the bass itself. Would love to see a photo with the Versatone wall!
In any case, Casady has explained on a few occasions that the Versatone was mic'd and he had a volume pedal that would control how much of it was blended into the overall live signal, with the purpose of bringing in that awesome drive tone. So I'm thinking it was probably the same bass signal running to both the Versatone and the Showman amps.
Introducing a crossover or hpf/lpf into the signal path might make it easier to get close to a Casady tone, just in the sense that it adds an extra level of tweakability.
I love Casady's overdriven tone, but for my own purposes I like my tone to be clean. I've been running a 35 year old Yamaha PB-1 preamp (amazing and I highly recommend this preamp!) with my Alembic SF-2 superfilter in the effects loop, into my Stewart PA-1000 power amp. I do however have an Alembic F-2B stereo tube preamp clone that came to me in semi-working condition. Built with top-quality components, it just needs a few tweaks to get it to proper function. Once that's in order, I'm looking forward to trying a stereo signal from my Starfire into the superfilter (each pickup running into its own side of the stereo superfilter unit) into the stereo tube preamp, into the poweramp... which I think is similar to what you are suggesting -- barring that I will be running stereo preamps into a single power amp, as opposed to a signal sent into two completely separate amps. Anyway, I will report back once that incarnation of the rig is up and running, though I have my doubts that I will prefer it to my Yamaha setup which gives me a classic Fender tone-stack sound with extra flexibility coming from the parametric mid and Q control
 

Happy Face

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Looking forward to hearing reports on your sonic experiments!

I don't have that photo on my work PC. Maybe it on my home PC. Perhaps it was posted to the JA Facebook group? It was black & white of an outdoor stage.
 

Happy Face

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Nope. The photo I recall had a bunch of them. Most are like this one though.
 

mgod

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Jack used to own 4. Nowadays it’s 2. It’s possible, though unlikely, that you saw an image of all of them on stage. But again not too likely.
 

Happy Face

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Strangely enough, I can conjure it up in my mind. And why would I imagine such a thing?

Sadly, I don't think I ever hit a saved button. Or maybe it was one of those pix with rights protection on it.

Hope one of us unearths it at some point.
 

Minnesota Flats

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"I remember things that did not happen."

Yeah, me too: like the time Jack let his little sister borrow his Versatone for high school band practice...

 

adorshki

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Strangely enough, I can conjure it up in my mind. And why would I imagine such a thing?

Sadly, I don't think I ever hit a saved button. Or maybe it was one of those pix with rights protection on it.

Hope one of us unearths it at some point.

"I believe you".
:smile:
I know the feeling, especially when it's something that has a deep personal connection for you, in spite of what I now realize is the very real phenomenon of memory changing, and even "fabricated memory".
"Important" stuff stays pretty accurate in terms of the image itself although the remembered context of where it was seen might change, for example.
If it was on the 'net, might be forever on some sight that's defunct, or perhaps if in a book that you remember as an internet photo, now.
But I believe you, even went and did a little digging myself, but no luck.
So far.
:smile:
"I remember things that did not happen."

Yeah, me too: like the time Jack let his little sister borrow his Versatone for high school band practice...


Masterful.
Even lent her his glasses.
:smile:
:glee:
 
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SFIV1967

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"The second key component in the Casady sound was the Versatone Pan-O-Flex, a 35-watt tube amplifier with a unique design. Designed by G. Robert Hall, the amp has two channels, one for bass and one for treble, and the two outputs are mixed into a single 12-inch speaker. “We were recording at Sunset in late ’67,” recalls Casady, “and Carol Kaye was using that [amp] in an adjacent studio. [Producer] Al Schmitt’s brother, Richie, who was the second engineer on a lot of our sessions, told me about the amp. He said, ‘Listen, there’s this little amp that’s got a 12-inch speaker in it, and it sounds gorgeous.’ Of course, Carol was using it at low volume, with a Fender bass and a pick and a whole different approach than I had; I was using my fingers and a hollowbody bass. But I found out that when I cranked that amp up, I could get grit and sustain out of it — really nice, smooth, full harmonic sustain.

"The combination of the modified bass and the unusual amp came together on the fourth Airplane album, Crown of Creation, released in September 1968. On that LP, as Dan Schwartz wrote in a sidebar to the Jackson/Jisi Bass Player interview, in 1993, “Jack is a dominating force. The Guild-overdriving-the-Versatone sound is omnipresent.” Onstage, Casady miked the Versatone and controlled it with a volume pedal, using it like an effect."

Source: https://bassmagazine.com/artists/jack-casady-a-career-retrospective-appreciation


"The Versatone was a little 35watt amplifier and it was made by Robert Hall who lived in the valley. I visited him and talked to him about them and I ended buying about four of them and using them later on. I used them in a lot of different ways. I discovered if you turned it up to around 1 o'clock, it would start to overdrive and distort. With a solid body it was just kinda like a buzz saw you know but with the hollow body it would rack up and produce the overtones in a perfect fashion I used later on in the Jefferson Airplane sessions. If you listen to Bless This Pointed Little Head, the live sound that's Versatone sound mixed in. I would take that on stage and mic it separately and then use a foot pedal and I'd bleed that in to the sound in the hallway. And I would bleed that in to my regular big sound on stage and that was what we called the sustain like in The Crown Of Creation. So basically I was using the amp as an effects pedal."

Source: http://www.flyguitars.com/interviews/jackCasadyAmp.php


Ralf
 
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mgod

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I remember things that did not happen.

A friend of mine wrote and directed one of the final X-Files episodes about just that. It was called “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat”.
 

mgod

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"The combination of the modified bass and the unusual amp came together on the fourth Airplane album, Crown of Creation, released in September 1968. On that LP, as Dan Schwartz wrote in a sidebar to the Jackson/Jisi Bass Player interview, in 1993, “Jack is a dominating force. The Guild-overdriving-the-Versatone sound is omnipresent.” Onstage, Casady miked the Versatone and controlled it with a volume pedal, using it like an effect."
[/QUOTE]

I did, in fact, say that.
 
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