Alan Sparhawk on "I Could Live In Hope"?

[tdbajus]

That's a narrow-panel something... Am I making it up or can I see diagonally mounted speakers? Looks maybe a bit bigger than a 5E3, maybe some sort of clone? Looks about as wide as a 5F4, maybe... Is that a Victoria logo I can see on the front of the cab?

That seems like it could be a 5E3- funny you think it's a bit big, because it looks a little small too me. The only thing that would make me thing it's not a 5E3 is that I don't hear that fairly distintive compression on the pick attack when Alan blasts it. That bit of compression drives me crazy, and it's why I don't play my 5E3 any more.

On the whole subject of that, has anyone ever noticed that a Princeton's output section is very, very similar to a 5E3's?

Just got a princeton clone that started out life as an attempt by me to design a double powered vibro champ with reverb. We fooled around with running an el34, a 6L6, or a KT66 to get 8-10 watts, but it just never seemed to work very well. My friend Pat Kauffman, the excellent amp tech at Main Drag music took the amp, stripped out the power section, and rebuilt it as a Princeton with some secret sauce to deepen and slow the tremolo, make the power section not sound as ratty when clobbering it.

[WonderCouncil]

Some decent shots of the tweed amp here too..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQASnN5DKBQ

Also this has put my GAS in overdrive (no pun intended) for an Epi Baritone! Sounds like a beast with what ever kind of gain he's using, or just the amp...rumbles like a champ! (also no pun intended) lol

I've really been on a kick with them lately. Been meaning to check out his other projects as well.

[jackson5]

Alan definitely has great tone - live and on record.

I think the minimal nature of the music definitely helps. He can use the thickest and most beautiful settings on his gear because he's not really playing all that much. There isn't a ton of strumming and the rest of the band isn't competing with him most of the time. You can hear every note on every string sustain and die out. You can hear every subtle bend on the neck or with the bigsby.

It's inspiring for sure.

[ryland]

I followed Low quite a bit in the late 90's (not as far back as I Can Live in Hope, thought, more like Songs for a Dead Pilot). He played a couple of Japanese Tele copies and had an old Magnatone amp in the really early days. I assume this is what he recorded the first album with. He didn't really start different guitars (at least live) until he started using a 12 string Danelectro for parts of Things we Lost in the Fire. After that, the flood gates opened up and he suddenly had much, much more gear. I saw them many, many times between 1997 and 2002, and spoke with Alan frequently about his gear at that point. Having been a huge fan of that period, I've completely lost interest in their output after Trust and haven't bought the last few albums...good memories!

[StevenO]

Saw Low last night and Alan was playing through a 50s Tweed Vibrolux and a Roland Jazz Chorus 50, which he used the vibrato on both amps, going to the amp to turn it in and off and change the setting manually, as well as using the reverb on the Roland for a couple of songs. The mini pog was nowhere to be seen as they didn't play Try To Sleep, but all the regular bunch of pedals were there. He played his refinished black Gibson Les Paul Standard with bigsby and the Epiphone Les Paul Baritone that has been poorly painted gold. The bass player was using his early 60s P bass through a Silverface Bassman into an Orange bass cab, using a Sib Mr Echo and a Sansamp Bass DI for gain and maybe even line out.

Great show!

[WonderCouncil]

StevenO, that's awesome and great info on the gear! I'd love to see them live at some point. I'm a relatively new fan of theirs. That's pretty killer he's playing an actual 50's Vibrolux! It certainly sounds luscious.

As far as the Epiphone Baritone...unless he painted it something different the satin black color is stock on them.

If and when I get one, I want the natural finish with cream binding.

[StevenO]

His baritone Epiphone just appears to be spraypainted gold. You can see where the paint has either worn away or where he didn't spray it on thick enough. I was standing about 5 feet in front of him for the entire show. It's the same black baritone he's used for awhile, just painted gold. The back of the neck has also been sanded back to the wood. It also appears as though he has a Seymour Duncan Full Shred humbucker in the bridge, though he never switched from the neck humbucker position on the baritone. The only time he switched to the bridge pickup in the set was for "When I Go Deaf", the last song of the encore set, and that was with his regular Les Paul (the Standard in this case) during the clean-acoustic part and even then he forgot to switch to it and remembered halfway through the part. He switched back to the neck pickup for the heavy part, though. He doesn't seem to be a bridge pickup user, as he prefers a dark tone (his words).

The baritone is the same one he uses here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7-5_0O-EaU

[Momofuku]

I saw them during this period and he used a tele

[tdbajus]

I saw them during this period and he used a tele

You remember what amp he was using?

I'm sort of obsessed with figuring this out. I have recorded tracks with different guitars thorough the same amp setup, and found it hard to tell which track was recorded with which guitar. Amps seem to maybe make a bit more difference- to my ear, the same person playing a tele (especially with a neck humbucker) the same way through a 5E3 Deluxe sounds pretty close to the same person playing a Les Paul through a 5E3 (aside from thing like hum, playing behind bridge/nut, amount of gain hitting the preamp).

Likewise, to my ear, the same person playing a telecaster through a 5E3 Deluxe, for instance sounds pretty different than that same person playing the same tele through a Twin.

Alan's tone now pretty much screams Fender Tweed, now- especially with the dynamic, crunchy distortion he gets. I don't mean this as a knock, at all, but I find that sound (for a Neil Young worshiping dork such as myself) not too hard to make myself.

What I don't understand is how he gets his clean tone on ICLIH to be so unbelievably MASSIVE. It sounds like the amp is just on the edge of being on the edge of distorting- more compressed than distorted. I used to have an Ampeg B15 that sounded sort of like that...

[StevenO]

It's all a matter of taste, but personally, I find his sound on ICLIH to be pretty "meh". Very sterile, to me, perhaps largely due to the era and production. But different strokes. As far as his current sound. You can get that exact sound, or close to it, by playing a cranked SHO into just about any amp. These are indeed super hard on the front end of amps, so you can get his distortion sound by playing into just about any Fender amp. Try it, crank a SHO (if you have one) into a Fender amp with the volume at zero, and slowly bring up the volume knob on the amp until you hear a good volume. You'll get that same crunchy distortion sound that he gets on recent records and live. It helps, live, that he uses small amps that are known for pretty heavy compression so that he can go from a clean sound to a distorted sound just by stepping on the SHO. The compression keeps the signal from going super quiet to super loud. Instead it's quiet clean, to a little louder distorted crunchy yet compressed sound. His tweed amps just soak up the extra volume. The cranking of the SHO into an amp makes it so that you're able to get a distorted sound out of any amp, including a Twin Reverb (something that Alan Has used in the past). The same can be done with a myriad of other colourful boost pedals, like an MXR Micro Amp.

The guy knows good sound, I must say.

[tdbajus]

It's all a matter of taste, but personally, I find his sound on ICLIH to be pretty "meh". Very sterile, to me, perhaps largely due to the era and production.

The guy knows good sound, I must say.

Funny- I would say the "Long Division" is the record that suffers from overly heavy production.

I do love Alan's current sound, but I would say you don't even need the SHO. Tweed Deluxes, Champs, and Princetons crunch it up very nicely. I built a 5E3 with a friend, and it's pretty spot on.

Don't you think his tone on ICLIH is just huge? Maybe it's because it's so high in the mix?

[pacemaker]

The baritone is the same one he uses here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7-5_0O-EaU

Thanks for that: made my night.

[StevenO]

It's all a matter of taste, but personally, I find his sound on ICLIH to be pretty "meh". Very sterile, to me, perhaps largely due to the era and production.

The guy knows good sound, I must say.

Funny- I would say the "Long Division" is the record that suffers from overly heavy production.

I do love Alan's current sound, but I would say you don't even need the SHO. Tweed Deluxes, Champs, and Princetons crunch it up very nicely. I built a 5E3 with a friend, and it's pretty spot on.

Don't you think his tone on ICLIH is just huge? Maybe it's because it's so high in the mix?

You're definitely right about Long Division. I'm not totally in love with Low's earlier stuff. I feel like they sound better, sound quality-wise, generally, with every album, as far as what I personally like to hear. It's just a matter of taste, really. I really don't tend to listen to those records anymore...

As far as the SHO, it kind of sounds like a Tweed amp, a little bit, when used as I said before. Maybe not as woody/earthy, though, if that makes sense - "tweedy". In any case, a SHO into a Tweed amp has to be sonic bliss. In other words, I clearly need another Tweed amp.

[StevenO]

The baritone is the same one he uses here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7-5_0O-EaU

Thanks for that: made my night.

It's a great performance. I ripped the audio from the video and I sometimes play it over the audio system at my work in the mornings before everyone else gets there...

[pacemaker]

What a great way to start the day!