Jimmy "Flim" Johnson

[rv_bass]

Jimmy,

Thanks for sharing the photo, and I am very envious of the five-pin connector installed on your amp, what a convenience!  I also like the more basic EQ with just bass, mid, treble, keep it simple and effective!  The more typical Walter Woods amps have a more involved EQ, which is a bit more than I need.   Great amps!

Rob

[JimmyJ]

FM, I think you're right that brother Gordon also carried one. 

These amps were possibly the first Class-D musical amps and were considered a miracle when they were made back in the 70's.  More common now but I can't tell you how many times I had to explain how a 7-lb box could be putting out 400w.  This in the day when an SVT head could weight up to 80 lbs.  HA!

A quick technical explanation, just because...  I'm not completely clear on this so could be wrong...  Walter used a "switching" power supply which took the 120v 60hz AC power and raised the frequency from 60 to somewhere around 30k.  What that does is shrink the amp's power transformer down to about the diameter of a golf ball.  It's technology that came from the aviation industry and I believe is still used on planes to make electronic gear lighter.  (Ever notice a single high pitch tone in an airplane's audio feed?  That's the "hum" of the plane's high frequency AC power.)

Walter's amps are not real hi-fi machines, I doubt the actual specs would look that good.  But they have really wide EQ and because of the Class-D aspect they feel very "fast".  That may be slew rate?  Anyway, he originally made them for acoustic bass players but they also became popular with traditional jazz guitar guys - maybe because of this quickness.

I still use mine  a lot because it's so dang handy.  Never as a recording sound source but often as a monitoring amp.

Jimmy J

[lbpesq]

Yea, class D amps are amazing little buggers.   My guitar two unit rack is an F-2B into a Carvin DCM200L.  The Carvin is a class D stereo power amp that puts out 100 watts per channel into 8 ohms, takes up one rack space, and weighs all of four pounds!  And class D is at the heart of my Quilters, too.  That old Walter Woods with the 5-pin looks sweet. 

Bill, tgo

[edwardofhuncote]

I swear, somebody (else), somewhere had a Walter Woods with a 5-pin. We talked about here one time. I seem to remember Jimmy J. caught it right off. Gimme' a minute... I got a couple rusty marbles rattling around today.

*BOING* http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=23146.msg232114#msg232114

[JimmyJ]

Wow, so we already covered this subject a few years ago!  It figures that I'd forgotten that conversation and am now repeating myself repeating myself.  Getting old is a joy!  Yeah!

Jimmy J

[lbpesq]

Wow, so we already covered this subject a few years ago!  It figures that I'd forgotten that conversation and am now repeating myself repeating myself.  Getting old is a joy!  Yeah!

Jimmy J

Beats the alternative!

Bill, tgo

[hammer]

Jimmy

At least at this point when you realize you’ve repeated yourself you “own it.”  You know the memory loss is really getting bad when that ownership takes place and within one minute you’ve repeated the story again.

[Ed Chang]

Hi!

This is my first post here, since I do not own an Alembic bass or even any bass at all. However, I AM a big fan of Jimmy Johnson's playing, in particular his work with the late, great Allan Holdsworth.

In 2017 I produced an Allan reference blog covering Holdsworth's entire discography (https://threadoflunacy.blogspot.com/), and recently this project was recently printed up in a small run (a few hundred copies) by a boutique publisher in the UK and titled "Devil Take the Hindmost, The Otherworldly Music of Allan Holdsworth". I'm currently in the process of finalizing an ebook version for distribution on Amazon's self-publishing platform in order to make this more broadly available to Allan's fans (with a print-on-demand version hopefully to follow).

Obviously, considering Jimmy's role in Allan's musical development, I mention him quite a few times in the blog/book, and use quotes from an interview he once gave to Guitar Player magazine. However, I do not have any photos of Jimmy in the book (I have photos of Allan and Gary Husband of course).

Would anybody be willing to donate any amateur photos of Jimmy on stage? I'm not in the position to pay licensing fees (I blew my budget on professional photos of Allan), but I would credit the photographer in the book and provide a comp copy (ebook).

I also see that Jimmy himself frequents this forum as well. Jimmy, if you read this, first of all, thanks for your musical contributions over the years. I have no idea how the hell you do it! Especially with Al's music - surely the closest thing to sky-diving in a musical context, haha! Secondly, please contact me if you have any questions about this book or have any photos you could volunteer yourself. I've been in contact w Steve and Gary and, like them, I will happily send you a copy of the print book. My email is quod17us@yahoo.com.

Best wishes to all and I hope this is not too obtrusive an interruption...

Ed Chang
https://threadoflunacy.blogspot.com/

[JimmyJ]

Hey Ed,

Yes, I know who you are and want to thank you for keeping the Al torch lit.  I haven't read your book yet but plan to get the e-version when it appears. 

I see that today some of my Allan related comments have been reposted into the URAH forum (I lurk) so my semi-private web presence here has been discovered.  Not surprising I suppose.  But I am in here mostly to talk about Alembic, bass playing, and music in general, with the players who hang out here.  This is a public forum and everybody is welcome (even Fender bass players  )  but I would prefer that this thread not become an Allan forum so I may not respond to folks who sign up just to ask me those kinds of questions.  This site is hosted by the company who makes the instruments I've been playing for 45 years so let's try to keep it on topic...

Anyway Ed, I'll send you and email so we can chat elsewhere.

Thanks,
Jimmy J

[Ed Chang]

Oh yeah, it's totally understandable to keep this forum (and topic) focused. Sorry about the impulse "join-n-spam" and thanks for your understanding...it does sometimes take me an extra level of self-discipline to avoid flailing about on this internets thing!

[JimmyJ]

For anybody who might want to read everything you'd ever want to know about Holdsworth, Ed has put together an amazingly comprehensive blog here:
https://threadoflunacy.blogspot.com/ 
I think Allan did to guitarists what Jaco did to us bassists; blew our minds by taking the instruments we thought we knew into totally different orbits.  I found the music they both made inspiring and I know many others did too.  Not everybody's cup of tea ... but that's music.

Thanks Ed!

Cheers,
Jimmy J

[Ed Chang]

Thanks for your support Jimmy! That really means alot to me! Rock on...

[hieronymous]

Thanks Ed and Jimmy! I gotta be careful, I just read through a few pages of that - I'm a big Soft Machine fan so read through those pages and had to stop!

[jazzyvee]

Jimmy, seems like you are getting much more relaxed with being on line outside this forum. :-)

And here is the answer in part II

[[size=78%]youtube][/size]

[JimmyJ]

Well, I'm not exactly relaxed about it.  JT's social media chief has been requesting "content" from all the band members because she feels the need to continually post new JT related material as if she's single-handedly keeping all his fans occupied.  Tough job!  So I offered up this silly vid. 

Having done very little of this kind of thing, I have to say that I find social media truly weird.  Yes I'm old, but it is odd.  Not only do people feel completely uninhibited about posting any kind of comment, and then commenting about other people's comments, but then the attention span is about 22 seconds.  Funny world!

Hope everybody is staying healthy out there,
Jimmy J