Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: David Houck on June 10, 2006, 10:23:18 PM
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This is nice! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5c3H6LpLZI&search=weather%20report)
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Jaco (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTCLn4laVaI&search=weather%20report)
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Teen Town (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzqsdl9UO9E&search=weather%20report)
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Ohhhh yeeeaaahhh!
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Ok, do my eyes (or ears) deceive me, or is Zawinul's synth keyboard in the Black Market video reversed (that is, pitch from high to low going left to right, instead of the usual way)?
Rick
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Rick,
Your eyes do not deceive you the keyboard is inverted. According to interviews he did it for the challenge and exercising his mind.
Keith
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Incredible! Thanks Keith.
Rick
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Just awesome! The maestro himself at work. This is what turned me on to playing fretless from the beginning.
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I'm at work and can't check the link but is this Weather report back in the actual Black Market days? I SAW them on the black Market tour in Boston with Jaco on bass. It was a religious experience!
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Something else I always loved about Jaco was how incredibly growly his live sound was. I always noticed a sharp contrast between his studio sound and his live sound. I'm just amazed at the sounds he could coax out of an early 60's Jazz Bass with minimal effects and an Acoustic 360 amp.
Rami
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Finally had the time to sit through
Black Market and Scarlet Woman and this stuff live was and is just phenominal. Does anybody here know how Ican get my hands on more of this? Rami, I had bought a used Jazz fretless w/Bartolini 9W-4's(my favorite p/up) a couple of months ago from a Gtr. Ctr. I tried it out through an Ampeg combo amp which had a 15 speaker in it. The bass has that type of growl to it which is what sold me on it. So when I played it through my rig(Aguilar pre, Crown amp, Ampeg 8x10)that growly punch was'nt there. It still sounded great but I realised that 15's are key to that tone and that's what those 360 cabs had. Yes, what an awesome tone!
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I'm old enough to have played though 360s, but am I old enough I'm losing memory: Weren't the 360s folded-horn 18's??
Amazing to consider his Weather Report stage rig, the pair of 360s, stereo thru the original blue-faced MXR rack delay. And yet the ultimate case of the sound is in your fingers.
I always go back to 'Byrdland' from Weather Report's '8:15' live album. The first time I heard the head of the tune he was playing in those thumb-side harmonics, it was like an aural UFO sighting: I heard it, but couldn't tell you what it was!
J o e y
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Joey, I was 17 when I worked in a little
mom & pop store. We had a 360 in there and the manager of the store told me it was a folded 15 inside the cab. That's where I got my info. but if it is not correct I was misinformed. 18's or 15's, his tone was killer and that jazz I bought sounded so close through that little combo I just had to get it. You older guys are truly lucky. You all got to see some amazing musicians in their beginnings and follow them through their careers, evolving, experimenting, getting better at their craft and getting it to a point that the music just flowed over you like a flood. Dig it man!
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The 360 was a preamp. It would drive one or two 361 18 W style folded horns. The 361's had integrated power amps.
In my younger years I used two of the follow on 370 heads and 301 bottoms. Great low end but every gig was a workout.
Keith
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What about the short-range sound out of those folded horns? I seem to remember you couldn't hear much if you were standing too close in front, and they sounded much louder at the back of the room.
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They hit their full strength 20 (6.5 meters) or so feet in front of the cabinet. Their design was to allow a long enough signal path for the low frequency waves to fully develop at a shorter distance than a front loaded speaker. It's been a long time so I don't remember all of the physics. I do recall they were supposed to be more efficient at reproducing low frequencies.
I never had any problem hearing. I also used two single 15 JBL's driven by a Yamaha head to handle the higher end and add some brightness.
Keith
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My second real amp was the 370/301 combo, and sometimes I use one or two Carvin 18s in folded horn cabinets. 18s in folded horns make getting Jaco's tone relatively easy. That honky punch with strange stifled ambience is what you get when you stand close and/or close-mic it, using mostly bridge pickup and plucking hard near the bridge. Playing through them (big, old folded horns) can be inspirational. Front loaded speaker cabinets can't recreate it. If you've never played through one, it is something worth checking out, imho..
John
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As for the reversed keyboard, back in the day the Rhodes Chroma Polaris was advertised to have that as a factory preset, as JZ used. I have one of those sitting in the basement right now (it does duty making the rumble for my midi bass pedals), and in the years my little brother owned it (he bought it new) he says he could never get his to do it.
John (the collector/accumulator of old stuff)
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Adriaan, it all went past you!! The rest of the band was just getting broiled but you couldn't hear yourself. You NEVER needed a direct box in any reasonably sized room, and if the room even thought it had a standing wave in it somewhere, you'd sure as hell find it with those rigs.
I'll never forget I made a biamp rig one time using a Peavey folded 18 (the size of Coke machine, like they all were). I'm not much good at hearing 'fast' amps or speakers, etc. But you could sure hear this: Hit a note, hear the top pass NOW then the bottom would fill in kinda like a bathtub filling up behind it!
Like Keith said, you really needed some front-loaded cabinets in tandem to get a little articulation.
But remember, this is back in the days when a 300 watt amp was a rare and wondrous thing. The idea was that the higher efficiency of the W-bins was needed, as you were down on horsepower to start with. This is a world where a Shure head and a couple of Voic-of-the-Theatres was the living end for a high-tech PA, and a Dual Showman was too much amp for most gigs.
One of my childhood heroes (Russell Fontana, bassist with Louisiana's Boogie Kings) got a new rig in the early 80's: The then-new IVP preamp, CS800 power, biamped into JBL Cabarets, 118 with a 210 on top. He brought it back for a refund!
He had NEVER heard himself that well, had NEVER been able to drown out the guitar players at will. Could NOT dig it. Went back to his 360s.
When you talk about what fellas my age have seen, never underestimate the seismic shift in instruments and amps.
J o e y
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Joey hit the nail on the head. The low end sound waves are so long that they just pass right by you and the guy 15 ft out, (and 30, 45,...) gets hammered with bass. Those folded horn cabs exagerated that.
When Hartke came out with their 4x10 cabs I fell in love with 'em. Now I won't run a rig with out at least 2 tens. I still like the 15 & 18 front loaded cabs, but use them in conjunction with the tens.
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But Olie, is it what we're used to, or is there something in the 15/18s that's not in 10s?
I'm running my Metro (2-10s + horn) atop an Eden D115XLT (single 15 with horn). Over and over, the Edenites said THE ticket was to use a 210XLT or XST or a 410XLT/XST aa an extension cab for the Metro. I wore both out at the store before getting the 15, and for the life of me, the 210 and 410 just sounded like more of the same. I put the 115 under it and BOOM, I was home.
I realize there's mucho physics involved here. And I would not want to go back to only 15s. But together, this stack just floats my boat, albeit with the horn in the 15 bin turned off.
J o e y
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I agree Joey, I used my Metro atop an AMpeg 1-18 cab and got a monster sound. Then started having trouble with the Metro so it's now in my practice room. My main rig is an SWR 750 2x10 w horm amd 1x15 w horn. And it smokes. My SWR is pre Fender too.
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Joey & Olie,
I still have my 15 JBL's and think they are the best sounding of all my speakers. I will couple them with a 2X10 w/horn and it is really sweet. For the K140's I think it relates to their design of emphasizing the upper mid's. Plus they have pretty decent mechanical response time when compared to a larger speaker. It all makes for a tighter sound. This all came up when I was discussing possible replacement speakers with JBL engineering a few months back.
Keith
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Geez, K Series JBLs . . . all these kids don't know what they missed!
Well, Keith, NEXT time you talk to these Harmon-era JBL technogeeks, PUH-LEEZE get them to reissue the Cabaret bins!! FABulous little cabinets that were way ahead of their time.
J o e y
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Dave, thanks again for sharing more INCREDIBLE footage of PRIME vintage fusion.
Uh... I don't wanna push my luck... but...
seein' on howz ya've given us prime footage of 2 out of the big 3...
Could'ja possibly post any similar MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA footage (1st and/or second incarnations)! I'd sure love to see it, and I'm sure I'm not alone!
Thanks again, what a treat!!!
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Mahavishnu Orchestra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8KdgzhjRD8&search=MAHAVISHNU%20ORCHESTRA%20)
Just to be clear, the only things I'm actually sharing are links.
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Adam; you can purchase the Weather Report DVD here (http://www.audiophileimports.com/cgi-bin/ai/cart.cgi/id=1878.user-11206su.dsl.mindspring.com&command=listitems&pos=0&type=search?search=weather+report+young+and+fine+live).
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Thanks Dave!
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$54.99! Evena at current exchange rates that's alot for a DVD. Anyone want to send me one as a gift? ;-)
Graeme
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$54.99! Even at current exchange rates that's alot for a DVD. Anyone want to send me one as a gift? ;-)
Graeme
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I paid that price because I couldn't find any other option to see this performance, and it IS a great show. But the production quality is moderate, and the DVD producer set chapter marks every ten minutes, regardless of whether it was in the middle of a song or if the chapter had two or more songs in it. I had to make a conversion chart and keep it inside the case to be able to navigate to particular songs.
On the other hand, it's also a dual format DVD (PAL and NTSC).
Mike
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Mike,
The dual format will allow you to take it with you on your next world tour. LOL.
Keith
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This has been a subject of speculation over at yahoo groups (http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/weather-report/message/1135?l=1) (one assumes the DVD is 9/29/78 Offenbach De. - the 7/8/76 Montreux DVD is about an hour and a half long):
Weather Report Forecast: Tomorrow [box set] (3-CD, 1-DVD set)
(Columbia/Legacy, Aug. 29, 2006)
The box set includes previously unissued tracks. The DVD is an unreleased
concert filmed in Germany, running more than two hours and featuring the
late Jaco Pastorius.
Also mentioned back in Feb '06 over at binkie.net/zawinul (http://www.binkie.net/zawinul/) .
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Getting back to Jaco's growly tone....
I was reminded of that tone when I found my first ever Alembic; my '98 fretless Walnut Excel 4. It has that incredible growl regardless of what I plug it into. It was wearing the original Alembic strings. I can't say enough how much I love that Bass. My current rig is my Eden Metro sitting on top of a D410XLT cabinet. I'm considering hooking it to a D115XLT or even a D118XL for that massive boom.
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Rami
I'm running my METRO on top of a D115XLT. You'll love the difference over the 410 (and the 115s can be had cheap!). I looked hard at the D118XLT but couldn't find enough difference to justify the added weight and size (wasn't a huge difference $$-wise.).
For me the extra 10s just sounded like more of the same: The 115 just added that old-school thump beneath the 210/horn definition.
J o e y
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Thanks Joey,
I may get a D115XLT for the METRO and perhaps a D118XL to go with the D410XLT for a real killer stack. EDEN makes some pretty impressive heads to drive it. I guess it's just a question of how much I'm willing to spend.
Rami
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Dave, thanx4the Mahavishnu link!!!
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I agree on the desireability of 15's. I still haul out my old JBL 15 for special occasions. There's nothing quite like it.
Rick Blair
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A single 15 always farted out on me while my 4x10 provided more punch,thump and overall output. So for asingle sub in my set up I would use an 18 but until we get a bigger truck(this will sound a bit ridiculous)I will continue to use my SVT cab. It just fits better in the truck. I sure would love to bi amp though.