MORE stuff I recorded with the Hall & Collins

[dakwah]

thanks Dave

yes I did suspect the amp is too loud for home use so will investigate a small Vox either the mini or even the AC4 (but again mat be too loud to get those harmonics in a poorly insulated conservatory (neighbours and family). Am I correct in thinking that solid state amps are less fussy in terms of maintaining tone at low volume than valve ones?

thanks once again Dave for all your professional time and help


Stan

[dave robinson]

Hi Stan, you can turn down the Vox AC-4 to ridiculously low levels as there's a power switch allowing 4 watts / 1 watt or 1/4 watt.
The Vox Mini can also be used very quiet, my missus loves it.

I would ask you to check out the new mixes of Wonderful Land and Apache that were done this morning with the assistance of Charlie Hall and the sound is amazing. I hear things that aren't right as does Charlie, but he knows how to put them right and he did. I have replaced the old tracks at the head of this thread with the latest mixes. I would be interested to hear what some of you guys think.

[dakwah]

Hi Dave absolutely excellent

for me it's a combination of the tone and the Halls and Collins which give it such great depth and clarity almost an after taste of reverb. So vintage sounding. It would be hard pressed to better these. To me sounds equally as good with the AC4 and mini 3.

In fact I use these as a reference point to twiddle my controls,

thanks once again

Stan

[bridev]

Well to my ears the tweaks have worked from what I remember from first hearing. The repeats on the muted parts on W/L are spot on, likewise with Apache. You have also captured the "growl" on the E string at the end.
Once again well played and thanks for posting. (I'm not really green with envy )

Cheers
Brian

[tolo]

As good as I have heard to a young Hank on here (Frightened City is excellent - lots of bark and attitude) - well done Dave - and well done Charlie for delivering the goods to a whole new level.

Tony

[dave robinson]

I too thank Charlie for his expertise in this field, I can play the tunes fair enough and get them down on hard drive, but I knew something wasn't right and Charlie sorted it out on the phone whilst we were mixing this morning. It's all in the tone of the guitar and I was hearing a great sound but it wasn't Hank's recorded sound, it was the 'live' Vox/Strat/Meazzi sound which Charlie identified and helped me turn into the recorded sound that I have sought for years. I've saved the settings on the recorder, I don't know if it will ever transmit to the stage, as much as I would like it to, there's a lot of frequency tweaks involved. In total today we have been in contact for about three hours on the phone, but it was time well spent, Charlie had a ball listening to different mixes as we did them and I sent them to him to evaluate with his scope, about four or five mixes on each track. I hope all of this helps others to reach their own goal.

[David Martin]

Can you give us a steer on those tweaks, Dave? Appreciate that not everyone will have the right kit to reproduce them, but it would be instructive to know...

The re-recorded tracks are excellent...

[dave robinson]

Only Apache was a re-recording of the ones Charlie helped me with, the other one Wonderful Land was my original effort that we felt would benefit from some EQ. I set up a five band parametric EQ on the guitar track in Logic on the MacBook Pro (Windows based software will have something similar) having recorded a satisfactory sounding part through the Vox AC-4, which most would have accepted as That Sound anyway, until comparing with the original record. I had the 1960 recording running along side mine on a separate track , in order to make quick comparisons. I could hear a slight difference in tone and couldn't find the spot on the EQ to match it, which is where Charlie shone. After experimenting with several mixes altering various EQ parameters along the way, we settled for the one you hear on my sound file. A picture of the tweaks can be seen below. Bear in mind that we tried the same formula for Wonderful Land and it was nowhere near and had to be re jigged for that tune.

In case it isn't clear the frequencies left to right are
1700hz + 7db Q=4. 1200hz -16db Q=2.90 730hz +13db Q=2.90 5000 +1.5db Q=.74. 10000 -6.5. Q= 3

[dave robinson]

Something I forgot to mention is that I did a currency check for 1960 and the Hall & Collins at £599 is cheaper than what a Watkins Copicat was back then - today's £599 was worth £29.80 in 1961, that's £29/16 shillings.
A Copicat was £39/18shillings (38 guineas) . Food for thought ?

[David Martin]

Indeed...

Many thanks for the - quite radical - tweaks...

My H&C arrived two hours ago - a work of genius.