Don Rich's Tone

To me the dynamic oddities in these recordings don't sound Don is struggling a bit, to me they sound like problems with capturing the sound for recording. Dead spots in the frequency response which the mic heard. This could have been due to a number of different things - I'll bet you anything there were just area mics for the soundstage and his amp wasn't miked to its own channel and professionally mixed with the rest.

 

Don Rich was my guitar hero! Still is!

 

The first instrumental is called Chaparral.
My friend Chris Reeves has a great version on YouTube.
DR had the definitive Tele tone, IMO
I’ve been playing Teles, and country for 45 years, but I’ve never come close to getting Don’s tone

 

I remember an interview with Buck and he said they used a tweed Twin or Bassman in the studio well into the 60s. I bet that Twin Reverb in the TV vid has JBLs in it.

 

Well, they recorded at Capitol, which was a pretty modern studio at the time. I would bet they used a room mic and may have been 'mixed' or EQ'd to play well on a car radio. Motown came along a little later and they (quote) 'blew up the bass' on their records---before that, it wasn't really a prominent thing. Kessel and Bryant talked about a real trebly tone as what the country/pop producers considered a commercial sound. You can hear it starting in the mid-late 50s and allofasudden amps had presence controls, bright channels, more scooped-mid tone stacks between mid-50s tweeds and later ones, JBLs, etc.

 

When I think country tone I think Don Rich.
In the same era, the sitcoms and cartoons (get smart, road runner etc)
had that same bright tele tone.
I try to replicate it by playing as close to the bridge saddles as possible .

 

I think that would ruin it. It's bakersfield music. I don't want it to sound smoother. It sounds like honky tonk, not commercial nashville.

 

I'd guess that Don made the most of the equipment that was available at the time and in that situation.

 

at the risk of heresy, and yeah. dwight's a disciple & pete anderson updated the tone: & looks to be playin a deluxe

 

People!
This is church--Don Rich playing live on TV!
Don played a Twin with JBLs, and had a very bright sound, that's how it was.
In person, they were much louder--Don liked it on the edge of breakup.

 

I assume they were playing quietly in the TV studio.

Buckaroos were known as quite loud for their time.

Joe Maphis wrote Dim Lights Thick Smoke and Loud Loud Music after seeing the Buckaroos one night.

 

Sounds to me like certain frequencies were overloading the mic and causing some squawk and a little distortion. As mentioned above they liked to play loud so whatever they were using was placed too close or maybe not the right mic.

They were still learning about technical aspects of recording or live performances back then during this transition of big amps.

And Teles just have a way, don't they? (take an eye out if you're not careful)

 

This is live recording for TV. Even though this was recorded about 1966 with a two-camera shoot in color, you’ll notice that there is one microphone - looks like an E-V, can’t remember the model number - that was used for the parts where Buck and the Buckaroos were on stage. One.

Buck and Don (and Don and Troy in the other clip) sang into the same mic, and used the distance between each of them and the distance from the band’s amps and the drum kit for overall balance. The single mic was likely used for that purpose. TV recording at that time wasn’t as sophisticated as movies, much less today, because the TVs of the time were poor at sound reproduction. Note well that no close micing was used for either vocalist. Nor were any amp or drum mics evident in any of the Buck Owens Show clips we see today. Sure, the engineer may have separately mic’d Kay Adams when she sang near the “old well” set, but when she sang with the Buckaroos in the main set, they put her in between Don and Buck, and got the balance right by distance to the mic.

The “Chaparral” clip probably used the same mic, placed outside the camera frame. The band balance had been predetermined.

Seems primitive by today’s standards, but for an independent TV production in 1966, it worked. And the sound is pretty good when I put those videos on my home theater system.

One more thing: the cost of reshoot was very high back then, from the cost of recording media to union labor fees for the stage staff. Don made a minor flub under pressure? As long as it wasn’t a full-stop crash, it went to tape. Same with every one of those excellent, very professional musicians.

 

Read a Buck Owens interview, posthumously published in Guitar Player magazine I believe, where he stated that his records were intentionally devoid of bottom end. The idea was that on the car radios (read:AM) of the time this would sound better.
They were most assuredly playing live in the clips. Most likely using the same backline as in concert and being admonished by the tv studio engineers to "turn it down."
Also willing to bet that Don was playing a generic Tele with a sparkle finish straight in to a Twin Reverb with JBLs. He and Buck had matching ones in concert. Heck, they taught each other to play, didn't they?