The Master...

[cockroach]

Having just said that about Les' multi tracking innovations, check this early example (with video!) from the 1930's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-xH09MIXEI



Nuthin' new under the sun folks!!!

[JimN]

I've seen the Roy Smeck video before - very impressive. It's surprising that so little is known of him nowadays, considering that he was once a guitar/banjo superstar. The Harmony guitar company was still making an electric Roy Smeck lap-steel model in the late 1960s.

Some rather more mature guitarists I used to know in Liverpool used to talk of their encounters with Roy before WW2 when he was on tour in the UK. In fact, one of them, Bob Hobbs (a great Django-syle player who later managed Rushworth's guitar department and sold those Gibson jumbos to The Beatles) was asked by Roy to go and live and work in the States as Roy's guitar accompanist. He didn't go because of family commitments.

The second half of the video, with the split-screen effect, reminds me very much of a Bert Weedon appearance in 1963 on ABC TV's "Thank Your Lucky Stars". Miming to his then-latest record Night Cry, Bert was shown in a similar quartered-screen insert, "playin" his Guild electric, and acoustic guitar, a double bass and a drumkit. I don't think he did play anything other than lead guitar on the record (it's a great record, by the way), but it was a startling visual effect!

JN

[MMStingray54]

I think I checked out where Les lived in Hollywood (just off Sunset Boulevard). In 1948
JN

Excellent info in this thread, as always v interesting, Jim. I'm very much a Les Paul fan (both the guitarist and guitars).

I have to confess I had overlooked the full stop in the above quote and then thought - Jim Nugent couldn't possibly be old enough to have been checking out Les Paul in 1948 must brush up my scan reading technique!!

See you at the Plough if you're going today, Jim.

[ecca]

Was it a Guild Starfire ?

[cockroach]

ecca

Yes it probably was a Starfire...

Bert nearly always used Hofner electrics in the '50's but by about 1960/61 or so, Bert's first Guild was a single cutaway Starfire with the DeArmond pickups and Bigsby, usually with heavy flatwound strings, used to see him on TV using this one, later he had a double cutaway model like the later Starfire also with DeArmonds & Bigsby, which I think may have been a custom signature Bert Weedon Model-he usually used Selmer and Burns amps early on with a tape echo unit (not sure of brand- small grey case, four white knobs and a row of pushbuttons on the front..

In later years he used Yamaha SA models shaped like the Gibson 335, Fender Strat and Parker guitars, with amps made by his old mate Jim Marshall

That's about all I can remember at present, no doubt JimN will read and then correct the above...

[JimN]

JN

[RayL]

From my catalogue collection, here's the leaflet from around 1960/61. Same pic as the disc illustration - Bert with Hofner guitar, Selmer Truvoice amp (probably a 'Selectone Rotary' or a 'Professional', and a 'Truvoice Echo Chamber 400'

Bert Weedon gtr amp echo.JPG (15.49 KiB) Viewed 5534 times

For his appearance on the Pipeline stage in 1999, Bert played a red Statocaster (not FR) into a small Marshall combo.

Ray