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Before I forget (easy to do at my age), I'd like to praise Justin Daish's guitar sound on Jet and Tony's Scarlet O'Hara on Saturday evening.

The Hank Marvin sound (and the endless debate about how to get this or that aspect of it) is more or less done to death here, but Justin nailed the authentic (Guild Manhattan?) sound for that song - and with a red Strat too!

JN

Hi Jim, thanks for the Vox book (it gave me a hernia) Justins sound all night was one of the best i have heard.

Sorry Jim, if you mean Joe Moretti's playing on the Scarlett O'Hara single, it was probably a blonde Guild Stratford (3 pickups) which he was pictured with back then.

Then again, it was Joe's skill mainly! And although I didn't hear it, it would have been Justin's skill last Saturday night....

Thank you, fellas!

I discovered the sound almost by fluke, using the neck and bridge pickups together via the custom wiring on my Strat. To get the slightly dead sound of the flatwound strings that were used on the record I tried muting the strings slightly and found I could get pretty close. It was quite a pleasant surprise!

Thanks again.

J

MeBHank wrote:I discovered the sound almost by fluke, using the neck and bridge pickups together via the custom wiring on my Strat. To get the slightly dead sound of the flatwound strings that were used on the record I tried muting the strings slightly and found I could get pretty close. It was quite a pleasant surprise!
J

Oh, it was always obvious that the Scarlett O'Hara sound (mystifyingly similar to the sound of the guitar solos on Tony Meehan's Song Of Mexico and Freddy & The Dreamers' I'm Telling You Now) was achieved by using the bridge and neck pickups on together.

Easy to achieve on a Jaguar, Telecaster or Jazzmaster, the sound (I always think of it as a Bert Weedon sound) is not possible on a normally-wired Strat (and certainly not on any of the four I have).

If you'd asked, Justin, I'd have willingly lent you a more authentic guitar (with flatwounds if required), but all the same, your tone was little short of miraculous given the guitar and strings you were using...

Very well done.

Regarding Joe Moretti's guitar, there are some interesting pictures taken by the
late Harry Hammond at the New Musical Express Concert in April 1963.
Standing behind Jet & Tony in a few pictures are John Baldwin on bass guitar and
Joe Moretti with a Gretsch Country Gentleman (I think)
These can be viewed at the V & A website which has a special exibitition of Harry
Hammonds 60s pop photographs.
Also of interest at the 1963 NME concert are Hank and Bruce with the White Strats
still fitted the original white scratchplates!!!

Mike

I'm sure we can all think of loads of early-to-mid 60s records that use that sound!

It's worth doing the Strat mod to get the bridge and neck pickups on together; I do it on all mine. All three together is a nice rhythm sound too.