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Does anyone know what Kenny was playing on the album "On view at the five Spot Café"
It reminds me a lot of the Grant Green tone on Green Street
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02-10-2013 11:19 PM
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Recorded in 1959 and sound is like Grant Green's so probably something with P90's.
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Once again someone posts about a great sound (and I agree that it is a great sound, to my ears) and the common denominator with most of these old sounds is distortion.
Good old distortion.
Trouble is we can't tell if it's been added by the engineer (slamming the channel input amp) or if the guitar amp was breaking up.
But man there is loads of distortion on that sound.
But it's really GOOD distortion. The type that pedals don't do.
This track sounds live so perhaps his amp was breaking up.
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I agree with philco that the amps are running pretty hot and you can't take that out of the equation
But if it was a humbucker it wouldn't have that upper mid rasp to it that I ways associate with early grant green
Btw I had never heard of the KB album until reading the Andy summer autobiography. Not bad so far
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L-7C with bar pickup.
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The guitar in the album cover is a D'Angelico.
He either had two (or more) or had one refinished.
He plays a Blonde D'Angelico on the Ronnie Scott's Video (with Barney and GG). I also saw him at the Hammermith Odeon playing the same guitar.
He loaned a guitar to Wes in 1959 to do an album.
DG
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Yes, the guitar he loaned to Wes was the L-7 It was the first album of Wes for Riverside "W.M Trio". The D'Angelico came later in the sixties.
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I agree. The neck has the D'A split blocks, not the Super 400 split blocks. There are a couple of YouTube videos with Kenny playing a blonde D'A along with Barney Kessel and Grant Green. A while back, that D'A was being sold at Mandolin Bros. for a whopping $75 large. If it's the same one, it belonged to Al Chernoff which is exactly the same guitar John D had just finished when Jimmy D'Aquisto first went to John's shop. He allowed Jimmy to play it before he delivered it and Jimmy thought it was the best sounding guitar he ever heard. That's the day Jimmy decided he wanted to work with John.
Originally Posted by daveg
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Thanks HFC, I didn't know that about Jimmy. I love little tid bits like that. They put the person into the story not just the legend. Originally Posted by hot ford coupe
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No problem. That's the kind of thing I go for myself. It's the history that brings the guitar to life and lets you know where the guitar has been and how it was used. In the case of my own D'A, I know it belonged to one Leo DiBranga from NYC but I have no information about the guy. I wouldn't be surprised if he was a wedding musician who played a heck of a lot of traditional Italian weddings and a lot of beautiful old Italian songs. When I play those old songs like O Solo Mio and Oh Marie, the guitar really sings out. Then I go nuts and have to go out and get some baked ziti or lasagna. Originally Posted by Archtop Guy
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What about？
A part of imitete tone.
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I'm wondering why I can't run any of the videos in this or other threads.?.? All I see is a big black box . . with a little red button and a play symbol inside the red button. When I click on the play button . . . nothing happens. Can someone make any suggestions to help?
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i could listen to Kenny all day long!
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When that happens, have you tried to restart your computer and then try the videos after the reboot? I had that myself where all I got was a green or white screen and no sound. Are you using Internet Explorer or another browser? Sometimes when I rebooted, it fixed itself but it doesn't seem to happen when I use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome. Another thing you can do is put your cursor on the video title and click twice. It will take you to YouTube where it should play normally. I hope this helps. Originally Posted by Patrick2
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Quote "But man there is loads of distortion on that sound.
But it's really GOOD distortion. The type that pedals don't do."
Please don't fault my hearing, but I don't hear much distortion at all there. I'm listening through headphones, so I do hear everything quite clearly. Only at the end where he plays the out-tro, but that could be the recording machinery, or the old vinyl etc.
This is the KB sound I've been hearing for many many years. Are you referring to the fleshy sound he gets while picking?
That is the KB sound I love, that not too many other players have - sets him apart, and yes it is a beautiful sound that IS hard to duplicate, especially with newer amps.
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One of the my fave tone album " Ageneration Ago Today (For Charie Christian and Benny Goodman)"
Kenny Burrell used an 1100 on his '56 D'Angelico New Yorker with Twin Reverb.
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Amazon.com: Generation Ago Today (Mlps): Kenny Burrell: Music
A Generation Ago Today by Kenny Burrell @ ARTISTdirect.com - Shop, Listen, Download
Posted #416 but " Shock Wave" freezing by new systems sorry, reported this site.Last edited by kawa; 02-12-2013 at 06:01 AM.
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Under the replyers sound quallitys.
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Thank you
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Originally Posted by Jimmy Mack
You're probably not hearing it because it's a very pleasant distortion. Not brittle or raspy. And it has a nice dynamic in as much as it changes by how hard he digs in with the pick. You can hear the start of the notes compress. It's not a sustaining thing. It's a bit of "fur" in the body of the note.
I think it's the amp because it sounds like KB is reacting to the sound.
Humans love to hear distortion and there are many flavours of it. Many engineers love the old analog consoles because of the inherent and cumulative distortion produced by all that circuitry.
There was a fad a few years ago where many digital audio engineers purchased "analogue summing" devices (me included) to run our Protools rigs through, hoping to get some of that "analog warmth" and separation in our digital mixes.
Distortion of another kind really.
It's fairly common for an engineer to add distortion to just about everything from drums to vocals......most definitely vocals, and there are many, many, many plugins of different distortion flavours.
Now it's not as if you are going to hear fuzz and overdrive on everything, it's quite subtle but it's used a lot. You would hear it, if it was taken off. It really does make most things sound better.......or "warmer". A word that's beaten to death.
Remember how all the engineers disliked digital recorders when they started appearing in studios. They were just to clean. People were missing the distortion and compression from good old tape.....saturation. Hit that tape hard and saturate it. Distortion is our friend. So now we add it in other ways.
If you want a comparison of relatively clean and distortion re Jazz guitars with flatwound strings then after listening to the KB track posted go and listen to the Tal Farlow track over on the Tal Farlow Guitar for sale thread. It's at the start of "Dutchbopper's" video. Tal's sound is much cleaner.........but even so you will hear when he plays a 2 note chord that the amp distorts quite a lot. Not as nice a distortion as KB's though. But Tal is pushing his amp hard and I would bet that he is doing it on purpose. Because that's where the magic sound is. Just where the amp is about to break up. Tal actually sounds like he's overdriving the input though. It's a nastier break up.
So some of those guys in that era were looking for that slightly saturated sound (that's probably a better word for it) possibly because Charlie Christians sound was quite saturated back in the day. Either that or those small amps they were using just couldn't handle the volume.
In any case that "saturated" sound is the holy grail for many players of that style, and KB has it on that clip.
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I think I'm starting to understand the kind of distortion you're talking about. I didn't call it a distorted sound, I called it a hot, "electric" sound. It definitely is the grail. I've tried to get that sound out of my own guitars and amps and never really succeeded. Now I know why and I'm now able to get the sound I'm looking for.
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Oh man that's a great sound.....and he's a great player!
Ok I would say yes there is some saturation going on but it is much harder to tell where it's coming from.
To be honest the whole track sounds fairly hot to me. It's an old tape recording and who knows how many times and in what manner it has been duplicated.
I can hear saturation on all the instruments.......well not so much the drums. But the vibes and the piano have that saturated tape sound and so does the guitar.
I cannot tell if his amp is saturating or if it's just an old recording but the guitar sounds like butter melting to me. I love it.
A hot electric sound is a good way to describe it but to try and duplicate it I would be looking for a small old valve amp or start to experiment with a lot of the boutique overdrive pedals that are starting to appear these days. You only need a touch (or a tad)
Trouble is that most pedals destroy your tone as soon as you plug them in.
I would still love to find an old Gibson valve amp and give it a try.
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Actually when I listen to Kenny on Five Spot it reminds me of a tweed deluxe on 5 (and there are any number of amps that sound like that.. a lot of old gibsons). I dont hear that on the early grant green stuff.
Understand that we are talking in VERY broad terms here.. I dont have the ears to tell how old the strings on the guitar are (or even "obvious" things like what type of mic is being used etc).
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