Grateful Dead Music Forum

Was dropping off my '78 SVT for some work, and this guy comes in the shop to
pick up his Vibro Champ. Upon hearing me mention Garcia's name, this
fellow Stew had a great little story:

He was in the band U.S. Cadenza on the bill w/ the Dead 7/18/67 at the
Masonic Temple in Portland, OR (now the Portland Art Museum) when his
amp died. So Garcia says "Why don't you play through mine?". Garcia's
stack: "He had two Twin Reverbs, two Double Showman- the tan ones
(blonde, '60-'63 http://www.ampwares.com/amp.asp?id=84) , and two
Standel Imperial 4x12's." Whoa... "Are those bass amps?" I ask. "No,
the Imperial was a guitar amp" "...EV SRO speakers?" "Yeah, at least
in the open-back Twins that I could see." He goes on to tell me how
his band played their opening number where his first note was a big
sustained, bent, bluesy note, and when he came in with the note he
just froze in his tracks because the rig was so! incredibly! LOUD.
Before the next song he asked Johnny Hagen (or whoever was in charge
of JG's amp at that time) "Um, you think maybe I could play through
just ONE of these amps?" LMAO

When I got home I looked up the Standel and it turns out to be a
sealed 100w solidstate powered cab! Mid-60's solidstate? Weird, wild,
WOOLY stuff.

Awesome story haha. Thats gotta be great to be able to tell that story in his shoes. And the part where he froze is hilarious lol I could picture that

Wow what a cool story...I bet the Dead in those days could bleed the ears of any late 70's CBGB crowd. Everybody I ever met who saw them back then always remarks about the sheer loudness of the thing. Great stuff...This little encounter didn't happen to happen at Old City Music in PDX by any chance? anyway, like I said WOW!

Capt Rosebuddy wrote:Wow what a cool story...I bet the Dead in those days could bleed the ears of any late 70's CBGB crowd. Everybody I ever met who saw them back then always remarks about the sheer loudness of the thing. Great stuff...This little encounter didn't happen to happen at Old City Music in PDX by any chance? anyway, like I said WOW!

No, not Old Town but I love that place. Lots of eye-candy, always something vintage or semi- that I've never seen before. Used to stop in a lot more often but I'm hardly ever downtown thesedaze. They used to have $1 salvage tubes in bins and I scored several lovely old production ax7's and at7's... RCA, GE, Sylvania, Philips, and I know I currently have at least a couple of these in each of my 3 tube guitar amps.

This was at Amp-Head music repair, he used to be out of a a basement in NE, now down on SE Foster.

Old Town...right, I have a really good friend who lives in Clackmas county, and I was visiting out there last summer. I bought my MXR Distortion there, seriously cool stuff.

I wish there was a jaw-dropping smilie.

Listening to 10/12/68 right now. Just by cranking it up on my stereo you can get a sense of just how loud they played back then. Great story!

warrenMFKNhaynes wrote:I wish there was a jaw-dropping smilie.

Feel free to use mine.

Emoto wrote:

warrenMFKNhaynes wrote:I wish there was a jaw-dropping smilie.

Feel free to use mine.

warrenMFKNhaynes wrote:

Emoto wrote:

warrenMFKNhaynes wrote:I wish there was a jaw-dropping smilie.

Feel free to use mine.

Nice.

Oh... duh. I just remembered another detail of the story that may be of interest: Stew said that the Fender amps were running on McIntosh (power?) transformers.

He didn't specify if these were inside or outside the amps and I didn't think to ask in 2-3 minutes we were rapping. I have to wonder if these were actually whole MC240 or MC275's which to the untrained eye and from certain angles might just look like one giant tranny! Never heard anything about actually putting Mac trannies in the Twins or Showmen, but I could totally imagine them trying that... wonder how much more output wattage they squeezed out if this was the case?