Mr. Willy":3munqpga said:
Tone Merchant":3munqpga said:
I heard Joe was going to contact dave and I for a marsha. But, it never happened.
A Marsha would be right down his alley.
Joes been a friend of mine for over 5 years now. 6 amps in, I know his basic tastes and playing quite well.
Joe runs heavily in to power tube overdrive. Heavy gain preamp centric amps don't work. THe Bogner lasted a millisecond as have other high gain amps. Darker, heavy mid-range, less gain, large dynamic range and next to no preamp compression and most importantly it has to sit in a mix with a Jubilee. He's a volume control junkie and has an expressiveness in his playing that can use as much dynamic range as you can throw at him. Compression and Saturaton are the anti-Joe. So many Companies send him amps to try to replace the Jubilee, some even attempt to clone it. I'll never forget the one that electrocuted my good friend Dave Pate, Joes long time guitar tech. Mike, you should ask him about that !! It's a funny and actually pretty ironic story.
The reality is when everything else will come and go, the Jubilee is a lifer. Like that amp or not, it's his fave. The rest of the amps are mid-range 'fillers'. THe jube is on all of the time and he switches and mixes the other amps in.
Joe buys what he wants and pays for it, no endorsements (on amps anyway) and he changes his rig around a lot like many guitar players. The CA's have been on and off the rigs more times than I can remmeber in the past 5 years. Sometimes there's none, sometimes one and sometimes 2. I don't pay much attention these days. He contacts me when he needs something or to hang out if they are local. They're his amps, he can use them when and if he wants, if he doesn't thats fine, I ain't going to get upset. He will again at some point.
At the end of the day I still have never heard a guitar tone from him quite as good as the second solo in 'Stop'. An EL34 100W JB-100 in red tolex. Red amps always sounf the best. But I'm biased. With over 1.5 million views on youtube, I actually think that song is possibly his most viewed. He hasn't played it live in while, wish he would, but I think the vocals are real tough night after night. I always though that cover was a fantastic remake of an already great song and should hve been a single.
That 100W EL34 amp is featured all over the Ballad of John Henry CD and it's no suprise that I think he has the best tones of any of his albums. Like I said I'm biased.
