Sorry Andy I maintain what I said about much of that 'advice' being hype.
Apart from Paul Rossiter I can't name one person who helped me achieve what I was looking for in the past 25 years. All the other stuff just drained money unnecessarily I'm sorry to admit.
In 1973 I met Hank in Sheffield whilst he was performing a week's cabaret stint with John Farrar at Baileys night club and I went every night to see the show, actually spending three hours chatting with him after the final performance on the Saturday night.
The week began with the show consisting of largely Marvin & Farrar vocals with a sprinkling of instrumentals such as 'Lara's Theme' and an odd Shadow's hit. The audience were not very receptive to the vocals and night by night were demanding more instrumental input, which over the course of the week escalated until it was close to being a Shadows gig by Saturday night. When I met Hank after that last show, he was sat in his dressing room in a very sombre mood and was quite disappointed that the people would not accept the vocals as well as his guitar work. We were chatting about music in general as at that time I was lead guitarist for Dave Berry for which Big Jim Sullivan had provided lead guitar on his early hits, so with Hank being a big friend of Big Jim, we had common ground for conversation. Hank asked me "How are you managing Jim's solos"? to which I replied "Just about" and we both laughed because those solos are tricky. We touched on Chet Atkins and Hank picked up a Martin Acoustic guitar and picked some Chet classics in front of me whilst I watched with admiration. I said to him " You really ought to include some of that in the show" but he just shrugged and said "They don't want to hear me do anything other than Apache & Wonderful Land", which I had witnessed myself.
I tried to reassure him that The Shadows were still a well respected and loved group in the North and that their music was powerful and fondly remembered in these parts, which explained the audience reaction to the show. The problem is, they see Hank with his specs and the Strat (he had a white one) and immediately associate him with those hits and to be honest, they took the roof off with their performance of the Shads hits, but not so with the vocals so much. That did make him feel a little better I guess, but it is difficult for someone as iconic as Hank to be accepted doing something 'off piste'.
The band was excellent and they sounded as good as The Shads ever did to me, Hank used a Vox AC30 Bass Twin and a Watkins Shadow echo that incidentally only had two replay heads, but it sounded like Hank, almost to perfection, which reinforces what I said about the gear being adequate. There was no Meazzi or any fancy pickups or whammy bars with silly cranks in them, it was just 'what it is' and it sounded excellent. Even his Vox was used in the NORMAL channel which was an eye opener as we thought it had to be the BRILLIANT channel, but he showed me the 'set up'. That's why I eventually went back to the roots and it worked for me and I stand by it 100% and that my friend, is my final word on this as it's becoming tedious, though I will add that all of the people buying graphic equalisers would be better investing in a quality HPF and understanding how to use it.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)