Guitar Archeology » Jimi Hendrix

More Sunn Amplifiers and HOUSTON FEARLESS. By Buck Munger

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:01:45 +0000

HOUSTON FEARLESS

I was now living the Large life. Handling talent, hanging with popstars and having my phone calls returned. My associations with Hendrix and the Who generated a multitude of opportunities to roll the musical dice and I knew I’d never get a better place at the table. With producers like Dave Hassinger (Stones), Terry Melc…her (Byrds) and Charlie Greene (Springfield) in and out of the Sunn office I had a variety of role models: Hassinger, the engineer, Doris Day’s golden son Terry and Charlie Greene, king of the street. Charlie was still basking in the glow of the Iron Butterfly, which had ushered in a whole new bag and generated so many sales that the RIAA had to create a new album award, called a “Platinum” record. Labels were throwing money at Charlie for acts and he was scrambling to find talent to fill the demand. The current LA Sunn demo band was a strong four-piece of nice young kids. Lead guitar, bass, drums and screaming Hammond B-3. (Vanilla Fudge meets the Grateful Dead). Bob Wall, the guitarist, sang lead and wrote most of the material, Harley Baker the organist was the volume hog, wild man, Joel Krasomil was Entwistle-steady and the band’s glue and the drummer Bill Combest played hard and looked exactly like Paul McCartney. Another set of Sinatra-lawyer management contracts and I was back in business. I shopped them to Charlie Greene who got them an album deal with Imperial. I would produce the album for Charlie’s York-Pala Productions in exchange for publishing. For the single we would cover a UK hit, “Race With The Devil.” I changed the named of the band to Houston Fearless, which came from a movie camera tripod manufacturer in west LA located right across the street from the Warehouse 9. Every night when I left the club with the Stillwaters, and drove past the sign, I thought what a great name for a band. Sunn had big plans for Houston Fearless. I reached out to the Hammond organ and Slingerland drum companies, pitched them my program and got them to agree to an endorsement deal with advertising, and tour support. A free organ and three sets of drums, and more importantly, two national advertising campaigns.

Jimi Hendrix and Sunn Amplifiers Part 6. By, Buck Munger

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 02:57:03 +0000

I was having trouble keeping all the Sunn artists happy. The relationship with the Jimi Hendrix Experience was up and down. Noel Redding loved his Sunn gear and rarely missed a chance to talk it up in the music press. Jimi however was up and down. Giving Sunn one of the biggest engineering tips in its history, he informe…d them that the Coliseum PA head, at 120 watts RMS was a better guitar amplifier than the 100S at 60 watts RMS. There was a lot of confusion about power ratings about this time because the English marketed their amplifiers using Peak Power ratings whereas American manufacturers used RMS Power ratings. So, a British amp that was rated at 200 watts might actually be less powerful than an American amp at 60 watts. The 60 watt Sunn amps had a peak power of 250 watts. Unfortunately, most players couldn’t get their heads around this problem and approached it by simply opening it up all the way to see how loud it was. Sunn took Jimi seriously and introduced a 1000S guitar amp and a 2000S bass amp, both essentially revamped Coliseum power heads. The Sunn engineers also tried to outsmart Jimi with a little internal tweaking. As noted, Jimi turned the volume all the way up to ten to play. When the engineers did this at the factory it was like fingernails across a very loud blackboard. They heard the thing audio engineers loathe most; noise. How could Hendrix stand all that distortion? They solved the problem by adjusting the volume knob to read 10 when the amp was only really at 8, which, is about where the distortion started. To the engineers this was brilliant. Jimi could twist that knob wide-open to 10 and the unit would deliver a cleaner, more acceptable sound. I was there when Jimi got his new 1000S set-up. It took him about 30 seconds to figure out what was happening. Cleaner was not what Jimi was looking for. Note to the factory: “distortion” is no longer a bad word. This incident was reported extensively in Guitar Player magazine and reprinted in the liner notes of The Essential Jimi Hendrix. As it says in the liner notes: “Soon thereafter, Jimi went back to Marshalls”. And Spinal Tap turned it up to eleven.

Jimi Hendrix Sunn Cabs !

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:23:15 +0000

Jimi Hendrix Sunn Cabs

The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Sunn Amplifiers, Part :5 By Buck Munger

admin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:59:05 +0000

Buck Munger finally relaxed when he had the signed Jimi Hendrix contracts in hand. They were hefty, drawn up by Sunn’s new Hollywood attorney, Averill Pasarow, Frank Sinatra and Sonny Burke’s lawyer, and another turn-on from my partner Peter Burke. Within a week of the contracts landing in Oregon, my world changed completely. I was

Jimi with Sunns

moving out of the broom closet on Santa Monica Blvd and into a suite in the Sunset/Vine Tower. Sunn was opening a high profile office for me, complete with a new secretary, promotional assistant and equipment manager. A rehearsal and storage space would be rented blocks away. My corner office on the fourth floor had a new JBL sound system and overlooked the most famous intersection in Hollywood, Sunset & Vine. Blocks from RCA, Columbia and Capitol Records and across the street from Wallach’s Music City, the all night music store where you could buy records or musical instruments around the clock, and where Hollywood studio musicians had bought emergency strings, sticks and drum heads in the middle of the night for years. Pretty amazing, One year ago Peter and I were in this building knocking on doors, and now I had keys. And Peter was going on the payroll. For the all-important secretary-receptionist I hired Sheila Bernson from a film production company that had an office in the dubbing studio on Santa Monica. Sheila had a strong resume having started at ABC Television when she was 17 years old. Now, in her 20’s, she knew everybody in Hollywood and looked smashing in a miniskirt. The icing on the package was The Room At The Top, a fine dining restaurant and bar located in the penthouse, and, they offer room service in the building. Let the party begin.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Sunn Amplifiers, Part :3 “You’ll never hear surf music again.” By Buck Munger

admin — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:02:14 +0000

Buck Munger thinks Sunn’s greatest contribution to music technology was their bass amplifier. Jimi was evaluating a guitar amplifier with high frequency horns in the speaker cabinets. Ever see those in a guitar amplifier before or since? Norm Sundholm was a bass player. I think Conrad, his brother the high-fidelity nut, might have… had some input on the guitar units. Standing next to Jimi I had forgotten all about Jimi’s cabinets having horns. He sounded like the same three people he did at Monterey. The combination of the bass and guitar stacks sounded good. Really, good. Noel’s JBL-D 140s filled the hall with a thumping bottom. Jimi played his guitar like it was covered in mirrors, and he was reflecting a beam of light at his speaker cabinets, but it wasn’t light, it was sound. I could hardly wait to hear “Wild Thing”. I thought the sound-check went swell, but Jimi, apparently, not so much. By showtime, the roadies had opened the backs of the Sunn cabinets and disconnected the horns. For the show Jimi would fly with four JBL D-130s. Gerry Stickles, Jimi’s road manager, assured me everything was going fine and our endorsement deal was surely going to happen. Gerry was the first British Road Manager I dealt with and he was an impressive individual. In those days there was a distinct rank difference between Road Managers and Equipment Managers. Visible in their uniforms, the Road managers were the Officer corps dressed in leather and snakeskin jackets and the Equipment Managers, were the enlisted peons dressed in tee shirts. Gerry huddled with Noel and Jimi and reported they were very happy with the power output and we were good to go for the show. I ran to the pay phone and called Tualatin to report our progress. They were a little distressed to hear Jimi would be doing the test flight without full speaker power. I waved Jimi over to the phone so he could explain about the horns, “This is the president of the company, Jimi, “ and handed him the phone. I backed up out of hearing range to give him privacy. I’m not sure what transpired, but I believe this is the first time Jimi was ever heard to say, “You’ll never hear surf music again.”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Sunn Amplifiers, Part :2 By Buck Munger

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:23:55 +0000

Jimi With Sunn Amps

Buck Munger was told the gear would be air-freighted in and trucked to the venue, the afternoon of the performance. Like it happened every day. Since it was my first time, I didn’t know enough to be paranoid. I had faith, but I was a little concerned. When we talked gear Jimi was surprised to hear the top line guitar amplifier Sun…n made had a 15-inch JBL speaker in the bottom of the cabinet and a JBL high-frequency horn in the top. We didn’t have time to custom build cabinets with 12-inch speakers, but we agreed to replace them down the line. He’d have to play this first gig with the standard guitar cabinets. I didn’t know that much about playing feedback but I knew it would be weirder with a horn and Jimi wasn’t even going to see the gear until hours before the gig. All he seemed to be concerned about was, would they be loud enough? In the weeks since Jimi’s gig in Monterey and the meteoric rise in interest, the gaggle of hipsters trailing Jimi had grown to include several other amplifier companies, and if Jimi’s sound sucked that night I’m sure somebody would be there with the promise of gear for the next show. Like a military operation, the Sunn amplifiers arrived, as promised at three in the afternoon. Quickly stripped of the cardboard shipping boxes and wheeled inside and onto the stage. Power to the wall, speaker cabinet to the head. Guitar jack in. Jimi was using a Y cord to two power units driving two speaker cabinets each. Noel had the same in the bass model 200S. His cabinets had two JBL-D-140s each. He’s driving eight of those puppies to the party. We have about four hours till showtime, the hall is empty, Jimi and Noel have the place to themselves and new toys to play with. I position myself on stage fairly close to Jimi, so I can hear what he hears. (Time-out for a reality check.) I’d been in bands for almost ten years by then, played with all kinds of guitar players and I never, ever saw one of them turn his amp up past four, or maybe-with a loud crowd, five. Jimi walked straight to both tops and cranked them both wide-open. We would start on ten and control the volume from the guitar. Wonk!!! The first string strike echoed through the building like an artillery shell.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Sunn Amplifiers, Part :1 By Buck Munger

admin — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:28:58 +0000

Jimi Soundcheck

Buck Munger was ready for my meeting with Jimi and his manager, Chas Chandler. Because of the reaction to his Monterey appearance, I was fully expecting a prima donna attitude, and was actually surprised at how easily the whole deal went. I met Chas and Jimi in the big corner booth of the coffee shop, and before the waitress got b…ack with our coffee, Chandler stabbed his finger at Jimi’s itinerary on the table, “Can you have us amplifiers by this date here?” Absolutely. Delivery seemed to be Chandler’s prime concern. There were no questions about conditions of an agreement or other managerial concerns. Jimi was quiet but smiling and friendly. Knowing he had opened for the Walker Brothers in the UK, I told him, as a musician, my agent was Judy Maus, sister of John Maus, WB founder. Jimi laughed and said the first time he ever torched a guitar was opening for the Walker Brothers, and that he’d burned his hand, badly. He liked the Walker Brothers and the connection warmed our conversation. I used another piece of information Pete gave me. “Say Jimi,” “I understand you were in the 101st Airborne?” “Oh, ya” he smiled brightening. ”Marines,” I said. We spent the next few minutes on the inevitable exchange of Duty Station highlights and shortcomings. After a few minutes it became obvious we had a rapport and the beginnings of some kind of a deal. The next step was Jimi’s evaluation. The meeting ended with smiles and handshakes all around. The big scramble was on. Jimi ordered two 100S tops and four bottoms for himself and two 200s tops and four bottoms for bassist Noel Redding, along with a complete Coliseum PA system. Now I would find out if Sunn was up for the challenge. The guys in the Tualatin factory seemed pumped over the phone. My seven-page hand-written Monterey memo urging Sunn to pull out the stops and jump on this guy with both feet had been well received. The break room in the factory had a stack of British music fan magazines that had been talking about Jimi Hendrix for months and people from the Portland music scene had been in Monterey too. In the days and weeks after, the word on the music industry’s lips was “Hendrix”. I had committed to provide the equipment and Jimi would be there with his guitar cord hanging out, waiting.

Buck Munger

JG Guitar Made in Italy There’s a picture of Jimi Hendrix Playing one

admin — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:04:07 +0000

Check out this vintage JG guitar italian made hollow body. This guitar has the Wow factor. In person and playing this is a beauty! Don’t know much about them not a lot of info out there but the ones I have found are prized. I am sure this will go to a nice collection.