Marty's Clarence specs ?

[benbd]

Not really about Clarence but when I went to see Marty Stuart few months ago, he was playing through a sliverface deluxe reverb and I asked him at what volume he was running it and he said 2.
I have a silverface deluxe reverb too and I couldn't believe that he was only at 2. I usually run mine between 3 and 5, 2 would be way too low for stage volume with my amp.
Both Marty and Kenny's tone were to die for at that show :)

[WaylonFan76]

Originally Posted by benbd

Not really about Clarence but when I went to see Marty Stuart few months ago, he was playing through a sliverface deluxe reverb and I asked him at what volume he was running it and he said 2.
I have a silverface deluxe reverb too and I couldn't believe that he was only at 2. I usually run mine between 3 and 5, 2 would be way too low for stage volume with my amp.
Both Marty and Kenny's tone were to die for at that show :)

Like I was saying before, I was sitting in the third row so I heard the tone from the amp, not the PA and it was soooo good... I noticed he was using a Radial Bigshot PB1 boost pedal. So maybe he gets his tone with low wattage amp and a boost. It looks like he uses SF Princetons on his show. That's what Kenny was using that night as well as far as I could tell.
I'm really just trying to get as close as I can to the tone I heard that night. So any pickup that's gonna put me in the ballpark is good enough for me. Clarence White's tone on Sweetheart Of The Rodeo would be cool too...

[Ramblin Ray]

The plot thickens! The Tele that Clarence played on Sweetheart (I believe) is the white Tele that Clarence sold to Bob Warford. I think it had a Strat neck, and Bob built his own bender into it. So much of Clarence's sound was his amazing right hand, sycopation, timing, and light touch. I still miss him, but it makes me happy to see young guys getting into this wonderful musician's work.

[WaylonFan76]

Yep, that's why I wrote that I'd like to get close to Clarence ( the guitar ) but I'd settle for his white one's tone on Sweethearts. It might be easier to achieve, since it was pretty much stock vs. all the mythology and mystery surrounding Clarence's ( the guitar ) mods all through the years...

[Ramblin Ray]

Yea, I wish Marty would have left it alone and not put in that E string bender and moved the Scruggs tuner from the A to E string. But I guess it's his guitar to do as he pleases. I'll be forever grateful to him ,though, for letting me play it backstage when he was working for Johnny Cash at a show in Seattle. At that point, nothing had been changed on the guitar, as far I know.

[rockycreeker]

Originally Posted by WaylonFan76

Like I was saying before, I was sitting in the third row so I heard the tone from the amp, not the PA and it was soooo good... I noticed he was using a Radial Bigshot PB1 boost pedal. So maybe he gets his tone with low wattage amp and a boost. It looks like he uses SF Princetons on his show. That's what Kenny was using that night as well as far as I could tell.
I'm really just trying to get as close as I can to the tone I heard that night. So any pickup that's gonna put me in the ballpark is good enough for me. Clarence White's tone on Sweetheart Of The Rodeo would be cool too...

I saw Marty and the Superlatives late last year in Macon, GA. One of the best shows I've seen in years. According to Marty's road manager who I talked to after the show, the Radial Bigshot is Marty's only effect other than the amp reverb from the silverfaceDeluxe reverb he was using. He brought Clarence out the edge of the stage so that I could see it better, but it never left his hands. I agree, it's one of the best Tele tones I've ever heard.

[tedro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_fyp...e_gdata_player

[djalt]

Nice to see the original bender is still working... I also appreciate Marty's down-to-earth manner and sense of humor. He fumbles the last lick and just pulls an "whoops" face. He's the first to admit he's no Clarence, just a keeper of a workman's axe that's still bending. Great to see it still being played despite it's wayhuge collector's value. If Mac Yasuda had his way he'd plunk down a million and lock it in a vault. Then no one would hear it!
Sorry, rant over. Carry on with the tone talk, fellas...
:)

[Silverface]

I'll jump in since my name has been tossed around here -

The guitar, when Fender took it apart at NAMM, reportedly had a rewound single-coil bridge and rewound Strat neck pickup. By who or when was unknown. Whether Marty has changed them since then is unknown. Whether it had those pickups in it when Marty bought it is unknown - supposedly it was missing strings and the bridge pickup didn't work according to some reports.

As far as the Velvet Hammer pickups, there's a clear difference in sound in Clarence's recordings - primarily live - starting in 1969, which is when the "boost coil" bridge pickup was installed, and what was previously a phase switch was used (half of it) to turn the extra coil, which was wired directly to the output, on and off. Those the instantaneous tone/volume canges you can hear in things like the Swedish recording of Buckaroo/Nashville West that are totally different than his 1968 live recordings.

The guitar itself, IMO, would have tremendous tone (and did) no mater what pickups were/are in it. Same thing goes for Mike Nihen's Nashville West Guitars and the "Clarence Clones" Brian Friend and I recently cobbled together from an old Fender 400 pedal steel changer and various other parts.

Part of that is the extra resonance produced by the "tone chamber" created by the false back. That rim and cover keeps the back of the guitar off the body, reducing some damping effects; and like an acoustic it allows the body to vibrate like a "top" - and even a thick solid body gains some overtones by being suspended by a back rim.

Several companies have produced "standoff" units over the years to allow bodies to vibrate - and having experimented with some of them I agree with the acoustic theory behind the idea.

So besides starting with a good ash body, the "double-wide" construction contributes to the tone. And don't get me wrong - I thought it sounded great before the Velvet Hammers were installed, even in its original configuration (it was an Esquire - check the original photos of Clarence playing just before Chris Hillman quit) - and I think the tone Marty gets is quite similar to the '68 tone Clarence got - definitely a Tele, but a REALLY good one (some of the latter VH recordings you'd think he was playing a Les Paul)

[Ramblin Ray]

Hey Silverface, when Marty let me play the guitar before the Cash show in Seattle, I distinctly remember the decal said Esquire. So do you know if Marty changed the neck later on? I remember the Esquire neck had a smaller profile.

[Silverface]

He must have changed it (again...as Clarence apparently changed it a few times). As I reall it had a Tele decal in the Fender photos.