How Small Amps Got Big - Ask Zac 102

well hello friends and welcome to
1:17
another Ask Zac today we're going to
1:19
talk about how small amps became big
1:23
how
1:24
everyone went from wanting twin reverbs
1:27
and Marshall stacks to wanting you know
1:29
Princeton's and deluxe and champs and
1:32
little
1:33
20 watt Marshalls and and that uh that
1:36
ilk
1:36
so uh yeah we're going to talk about how
1:38
that happened and it all started because
1:40
i was having a phone conversation with a
1:42
uh
1:43
a great player that I've interviewed in
1:45
the past uh Gordon Kennedy so I'll talk
1:47
about that and uh
1:49
yeah and we'll have some fun
1:51
so while you're thinking about it go
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How did small amps become big
3:03
all right so small amps
3:05
uh how did they become big
3:08
uh so this all started with uh
3:11
i was talking to Gordon Kennedy Gordon
3:14
Kennedy of course he's probably most
3:16
famous for co-writing the tune changed
3:18
the world that was of course a big hit
3:20
for Clapton and you know Grammy win and
3:22
etc he's a great songwriter great guitar
3:25
player great producer
3:27
he's uh you know he's
3:29
worked with a peter Frampton and Ricky
3:31
Skaggs and you know both in recording
3:33
and producing and touring with them and
3:35
and such and all sorts of other acts
3:38
and so i was actually talking to him
3:40
about speakers uh because I've you know
3:43
had ongoing I've just had fun with this
3:46
Stapleton Princeton amp this is a you
3:48
know new amp you know made by fender and
3:50
I'm just kind of experimenting with
3:52
tubes and
3:53
and speakers and such and uh just just
3:55
so you know I've continued to experiment
3:57
right now it has a celestian elnika blue
4:00
in it
4:01
but we were talking about speakers and
4:04
talking about amps
4:06
and
4:07
Gordon is also the son
4:09
of a
4:11
session guitar player record producer
4:14
head of a record label so his dad jerry
4:16
Kennedy
4:17
was ahead of mercury records and helmed
4:20
the careers of of like roger miller and
4:22
jerry lee Lewis and played on played
4:24
guitar on pretty woman and stuff like
4:26
that so yeah so Gordon comes from a a
4:28
great uh you know musical lineage
4:31
and he was talking about of course
4:33
Gordon has seen concerts you know you
4:36
know
4:36
you know through through the 50s and 60s
4:39
and 70s and 80s he's gone to all sorts
4:41
of shows
Why you had to have big amps
4:43
and as we were talking about speakers we
4:44
were talking about how the fact that in
4:46
the past
4:47
you know pa systems were woefully
4:50
adequate
4:51
and so that's why you had to have the
4:53
big amplifiers and he was
4:56
talking about how he was getting rid of
4:58
all of his bigger amps even things like
5:00
he had a brown vibralux that he got rid
5:02
of because he's mainly using his tweed
5:05
deluxe and like a blackface Princeton
5:07
and some other smaller amps those are
5:09
things he's using a lot
The early days of amplification
5:11
so from that conversation i thought
5:14
wow a lot of people don't think about
5:16
the why of you know of how you know
5:19
small lamps kind of became the thing
5:22
and so let's just you know go back you
5:25
know in the old way back machine back to
5:26
the the early days back in the 40s and
5:29
50s and amplification was of course
5:31
you know just in its infancy
5:34
and you know you had uh you know
5:36
limitations by you know the tubes that
5:38
were available at that point you had
5:40
limitations by the speakers that were
5:42
made at that point
5:44
and also there wasn't a lot of like
5:46
heavy tone shaping going on it was just
5:49
about trying to get the guitar louder
5:52
one of the greatest limitations was the
5:54
speakers that were available at that
5:56
point so
5:58
let's take fender for example because
6:00
they're something we're all familiar
6:02
with probably
6:03
and
6:04
the speakers that they used were mainly
6:07
alnico magnet speakers that were made by
6:09
jensen you know in the 1950s so that's
6:11
where you get like the p10r
6:14
you know which was a speaker that could
6:15
only handle about 10 watts maybe a
6:17
little bit more
6:19
now one of the limitations for fender
6:21
making more powerful amps
6:23
was actually the speakers that were
6:25
available and the cost of them
6:28
so
Fender P10R
6:29
if you look if you're able to look back
6:31
at old fender amps like if you look at
6:34
old listings and things like that you
6:35
will find it quite rare especially on
6:38
the p10r to find ones that haven't been
6:41
blown
6:42
like perhaps if it's in a small amp
6:43
perhaps if it's in a Harvard or
6:45
something like that but like many of the
6:48
p10rs that were in basements
6:51
band masters you know the 310 band
6:53
master and things like that they were
6:54
they were just blown and that was
6:56
because
6:57
the technology just wasn't there yet and
7:00
also fender was trying to get away with
7:02
using the uh
7:04
the least expensive you know speaker
7:05
they could use
7:06
but there was a huge limitation to that
Vox
7:09
so let's let's move over to vox
7:11
uh you know in England which really
7:13
starts getting going around 5758
7:16
and
7:18
you know the amp that uh you know dick
7:20
Denney you know designed was the you
7:23
know the ac-10 and ac-15
7:26
and
7:27
you know they had the ef-86 power tube
7:29
and they had the celestion blue speaker
7:33
and that was one of the first speakers
7:34
that was designed specifically for
7:38
guitar use
7:40
uh
7:41
so so with that again you have these
7:45
small amps and just an aside
7:48
on those old amps like the vox the early
7:50
voxes and the tweed fenders the controls
7:53
are on the top
7:55
and the way you would read them is from
7:57
behind the amp
7:59
and that's because
8:02
that's the way they designed to be they
8:04
designed the amps to be in front of you
8:06
because the guitar amp was what was
8:08
going to carry
8:09
you know your guitar sound you know in
8:12
this day and age we're so used to
8:14
everything being mic'd up we don't think
8:16
about the fact that most of these old
8:18
amps were designed
8:21
to go in front of the the player and to
8:24
to
8:25
to be the only amplification that was
8:27
available for that instrument it wasn't
8:29
going through a pa
8:31
so
Importance of Amps
8:32
yeah you have this whole emphasis on
8:35
the amp is going to carry my guitar
8:37
sound to whatever audience I'm going to
8:39
play
8:42
so again you have the limitations of
8:44
speakers and such
Ceramic Amps
8:46
and but it but everything kind of keeps
8:48
moving forward in the in the early 60s
8:50
you have the switch over
8:52
to uh ceramic being used more which was
8:56
heavier but also was cheaper because of
8:59
you know the cold war and things going
9:00
on
9:01
so amps start start getting bigger they
Multiple Speakers
9:05
start getting more powerful and the only
9:07
way they're able to do that is by using
9:08
multiple speakers
9:11
so you have and again this has to do
9:14
with
9:16
the places that guitar players were
9:18
playing were getting bigger
9:20
so you have like in England you have the
9:23
shadows playing with cliff Richard and
9:26
they're using ac-15s
9:29
well
9:30
they can't hear themselves over the
9:32
crowd
9:33
sound like a familiar thing this is this
9:35
is kind of an ongoing thing that happens
9:36
all throughout the 60s
9:39
so
9:40
they have to create the ac30 which is
9:42
basically a double ac 15 with two
9:44
speakers
9:46
and
9:47
and it kind of the development keeps
AC30s
9:49
going on like that and then after of
9:50
course you know cliff Richard in the in
9:52
the shadows then you get up to the
9:54
beetles
9:55
and they're even by the time they come
9:58
over to the us they're not even using
10:00
ac30s anymore except maybe to record
10:02
some when the when the beetles come to
10:05
the us they're already using the ac50
10:08
and it's a head and cab
10:10
and it's all because why
10:13
pa systems are not adequate the pa
10:16
system is only carrying the vocals so if
10:19
you look at any old footage of the
10:21
beetles
10:22
or
10:23
practically anyone performing in the
10:24
1960s
10:26
you will see microphones that are being
10:28
used for the voice
10:30
but there are no microphones on anything
10:33
else most of the time
10:35
uh so
Audiences Screaming
10:37
as audiences get bigger
10:40
and louder and they're screaming more
10:43
you know which is kind of the thing i
10:45
mean i guess that kind of goes all the
10:46
way back to like frank Sinatra people
10:48
were screaming for him and of course
10:50
they screamed for Elvis and they
10:51
screamed for
10:52
cliff Richard and the beetles and on and
10:54
on
10:55
you know the amplifiers had to get
10:57
louder and louder and louder
11:00
also
11:01
at the same time you know just a brief
11:04
you know rabbit trail on this drums were
11:07
doing the same thing
11:08
so
11:09
drum kits
11:11
were smaller
11:13
so if you look at bands playing in the
11:15
50s and 60s they have what's called like
11:17
a jazz kid a cocktail kid or something
11:20
like that so you have a much smaller
11:22
bass drum
11:23
and you have you know much less symbols
11:26
you don't have as many toms and things
11:28
like that so think about Ringo Starr
11:30
think about you know watching um you
11:33
know watching Elvis
11:35
uh you know watching his drummer play
11:37
and the little kid that he has
11:39
well also with drums the same thing is
11:41
happening you know they're they're
11:43
starting to be a push
11:44
because the drums aren't being amplified
11:46
either through the pa they're not being
11:48
miked up
11:49
so drums are getting bigger and bigger
11:52
bass drums are getting bigger more toms
11:54
the toms are getting bigger again it's
11:57
all about creating more volume
11:59
because
12:01
the pa systems are not able to do that
12:03
and no one's micking up individual
12:05
instruments
12:06
so this goes on throughout the 60s you
The 70s
12:09
know you even see like Hendrix and
12:11
others uh you know most of the time
12:14
again there's not a mic you know
12:17
anywhere except for the vocal
12:20
by the time you get into the 70s there
12:23
starts to be more of a push you have
12:25
bands like the grateful dead and others
12:27
that are pushing for better pa systems
12:29
and a clearer sound
12:33
so then you start you start seeing you
12:35
start to see the beginning of amps being
12:38
mic'd up
12:40
drums being mic'd up sometimes it's just
12:43
an overhead mic for the drums you know
12:45
and maybe you know there's a mic on the
12:48
bass drum or the snare or something like
12:49
that but it's the beginning so that
12:52
starts moving forward and this is when
12:54
you start getting these fun tales that
12:57
have been told a million times and it's
12:59
always insert famous guitar player here
13:02
but it's always the same story
13:04
i saw so and so
13:07
and they had these stack of amplifiers
13:10
but none of them were actually on they
13:12
were all on standby just so the lights
13:14
would be on and backstage they had a
13:17
blank
13:19
insert small amp here
13:21
that was mic'd up and that was the sound
13:23
you were actually hearing
13:26
okay
13:27
so that's kind of the beginning of that
13:29
thing and it kind of goes into the 80s
13:32
and again there's still bands playing
13:34
through Marshall stacks and things like
13:36
that and hair bands and you know all
13:39
sorts of different bands that are that
13:40
are doing that but you're starting to
Mics
13:42
see
13:44
that
13:45
amps are now really being miked up so i
13:48
mean if you see you know any footage by
13:50
the time you get to the 80s
13:52
you know
13:53
bands are you know the the drums are
13:55
mic'd up the the amps are mic'd up you
13:57
know at least they're getting a di off
13:59
the base or something
14:01
so that starts to become the norm
14:03
well you know you so what you see is you
14:05
start to see
14:06
you know the move back to smaller
14:08
amplification where you see less full
14:11
stacks
14:12
you see it's more you know half stacks
14:15
twins and things like that
Amps were not taken seriously
14:18
um
14:19
you know as a guitar player
14:22
that you know started
14:24
you know really
14:26
getting you know serious about guitar
14:28
playing by the mid 80s
14:30
you know i can tell you that you know
14:32
just from my own experience
14:34
that the emphasis was was very much on
14:37
at least 100 watt amp
14:40
to the point of little amps were not
14:42
taken seriously at all
14:46
so
14:47
you know during all this time that we're
14:49
talking about with where you know amps
14:51
weren't really uh you know miked up that
14:53
much
14:54
a Princeton a deluxe even a vibralux a
14:57
lot of these amps were not taken
14:59
seriously as a serious guitar amp unless
15:02
it was like i guess you know Roy
15:04
Buchanan would be one of the
15:06
one of the uh the few that uh but he was
15:09
mic'd up when he played bigger places
15:11
and of course when he was playing clubs
15:12
he would turn the amp around and turn it
15:14
up to 10.
Brown Deluxe
15:16
but even in the 1980s small fender amps
15:20
were not taken seriously at all a
15:22
Princeton
15:23
that was a practice amp and it was you
15:26
know so if you found a used blackface
15:28
Princeton
15:29
maybe 200 bucks okay if you found a used
15:32
blackface deluxe again like 250 or
15:34
something like that
15:37
i had a brown deluxe so it was a 61 or
15:40
62 it still had the the leather handle
15:43
on it
15:44
and i i got it
15:46
from one of the guys
15:48
he was an elder at the church that i was
15:50
going to at the time it was an assembly
15:52
of god church and he sold me a brown
15:56
deluxe for 50 bucks
15:59
and i had it and i liked it but the
16:01
problem was is i was using it to play
16:03
with the jazz band that i was in at high
16:06
school you know there was the high
16:07
school jazz band
16:08
and
16:09
when it got loud enough to be heard over
16:12
a huge you know horn section and drums
16:15
and bass and and you know keyboards it
16:17
was distorted which was fine for some
16:20
soloing but it wasn't fine for when i
16:21
was comping cords on like a swing tune
16:24
so i ended up deciding to get rid of the
16:26
amp as cool as it sounded you know it
16:28
was just
16:30
it just wouldn't it wouldn't cut it for
16:32
me
16:33
so i remember taking that amp around
16:36
corpus Christi Texas and none of the
16:38
shops even wanted the amp at all they
16:40
wouldn't even take it on a trade-in
16:42
again this is around this is around 1991
16:46
92 around there
16:48
and it was just not taken seriously
16:50
because it wasn't a serious amp i mean
16:52
it was like nobody wanted it
16:54
and uh it was it was hilarious and it
16:57
was the same thing with like deluxe
16:58
reverbs again you know still they're not
17:01
they just weren't worth a bunch of money
Nashville
17:04
so then moving on
17:05
uh you know of course i moved to
17:07
Nashville in the early 90s and when i
17:10
showed up in town
17:13
the attitude was you had to have two
17:15
amps you had to be going in stereo and
17:17
you and it had to be two big amps
17:19
so when i say big amps it had to be like
17:22
two ac 30s two matchless amps two twin
17:25
reverbs
17:26
i mean that was the thing and if you
17:27
didn't have those
17:29
you know you weren't taken seriously you
17:31
know playing live or even in the studio
17:34
you were expected unless you were going
17:36
to do some weird lap steel part or
17:38
something like that you were expected to
17:40
have these big you know have two big
17:42
amps and it was just the attitude and
17:44
deluxe reverbs were not cool
17:47
unless you know maybe you were just
17:49
recording and it was just some little
17:50
clean part that you were doing on a demo
17:52
session or something like that
17:54
but uh
17:55
yeah they were uh
17:57
it was not really accepted but then
18:02
the big the big change that happened in
18:03
Nashville was things they had these
18:05
in-ear monitors that became you know
18:08
that started you know entering the world
18:10
and all of a sudden people wanted clean
18:12
stages okay so all of a sudden they they
18:16
wanted a stage that had you know had set
18:20
pieces and things like that and they
18:22
didn't want to have
18:23
amps out there you know they wanted a
18:25
clean stage and also more and more sound
18:28
men wanted to have more control over the
18:30
sound
18:32
so that
18:33
basically when they pulled the fader
18:34
back they didn't want to hear anything
18:36
at all
18:37
so
18:39
you know things started going direct now
18:41
things have been going direct in
18:42
Nashville all through the 80s but they
18:44
started going direct also live and you
18:46
started having this push toward amps
18:49
being you know put back stage
18:52
behind drum risers and things like that
Amp Evolution
18:55
so that's kind of where the evolution of
18:58
this happened where
19:00
amps got bigger and bigger
19:02
because they weren't going through the
19:03
pa
19:04
by the 80s they start going through the
19:06
pa
19:07
and by the 90s with the advent of you
19:10
know of course much better pa systems
19:12
and you start to have the advent of
19:14
in-ear monitors and such
19:16
you get to the point where
19:19
why am i why am i using a big amp i mean
19:22
what is what is it doing for me now yes
19:25
i will
19:26
acquiesce that
19:27
you know there's a sound to a 100 watt
19:30
plexi and a 50 watt plexi doesn't sound
19:33
the same and yes there's a sound to an
19:34
ac30 versus an ac 15. there's a
19:37
difference when you start having a quad
19:39
of power tubes and the different
19:41
transformers and things like that yes
19:42
there is a different sound a twin sounds
19:45
very different than a pro reverb
Big Amps
19:48
but
19:49
it got to the point where
19:52
why do i need to be carrying around a
19:55
big loud amp
19:58
i can carry around a 20 watt or less amp
20:02
and be very fine and be plenty loud
20:05
because it's going to be miked up
20:07
and half over half the time now we're
20:10
using in-ear monitors
20:11
so
20:13
why do i need to be carrying around a
20:15
big loud amp what is it going to do for
20:17
me
20:18
it becomes where it's just a rarefied
20:22
actual need and needs a strong word
20:24
there
20:25
but you have to be a really big act and
20:28
mainly
20:29
a guitarist
20:30
uh you know guitar player singer you
20:33
know like a brad paisley a john Mayer a
20:35
Clapton or something like that
20:37
to uh to need you know bigger amps you
20:41
know frankly i saw Clapton this last
20:43
year and he was amazing by the way and i
20:46
was i was kind of worried because he's
20:48
like 75 years old but he sang great
20:50
played great he played the same guitar
20:53
the whole night you know he had one like
20:55
kind of dark blue Clapton strat
20:58
and he had
21:01
he did play you know of course his
21:02
signature model martin acoustic for an
21:04
acoustic segment but then the guitar
21:07
never you know left the stage there was
21:09
no you know guitar techs coming out and
21:11
doing changes all the time
21:13
uh it was it was actually really
21:15
beautiful just to see that but amp wise
21:18
he had a a 310 band master
21:23
so i believe this is one what I've been
21:25
told is that this is an amp that fender
21:27
made for him and then dumble
21:29
you know modified it you know hot rodded
21:32
it or whatever but still you're talking
21:33
about a 30 35 watt amp
21:36
and there's a second one on stage just
21:38
as a backup
21:40
and he's playing you know i saw him at
21:42
the arena here in Nashville at
21:43
Bridgestone
21:45
it's like it's mic'd up and it's you
21:47
know
21:48
it was great
21:49
you know and the opening act was jimmy
21:51
Vaughan and jimmy Vaughn was playing
21:53
through like a 410 basement
21:55
and it was miked up and it sounded
21:57
glorious so
21:59
yeah so the the
22:01
the switch you know was was made and uh
22:04
all of a sudden it was like why why do
22:06
we need big amps i don't need to be
22:08
destroying my hearing you know already
22:11
you know we need to be protecting our
22:12
hearing anyway and it's like why
22:14
why do i need to be carrying like some
22:16
gigantic amp that's
22:19
just going to be detrimental to me it's
22:21
like i might as well carry a smaller amp
22:23
you know a deluxe a Princeton you know
22:26
an ac-15 something like that
22:29
and
22:29
mic it up and be able to enjoy the sound
22:32
of it and be able to be near it without
22:34
worrying about that I'm you know
22:36
killing myself or killing the audience
22:39
so yeah so that that's kind of how
Going Direct
22:42
how that happened and uh you know
22:45
i think it's a a fine thing uh now the
22:48
whole
22:49
uh
22:50
going direct thing that's uh that's a
22:52
whole other thing and I'm gonna have an
22:53
episode about that because I'm being
22:55
forced
22:56
basically being forced to go direct on a
22:58
on a gig coming up I'm gonna be
23:00
playing a show in in Vegas with uh with
23:03
my buddy Paul bogart and
23:05
and
23:06
it's a fly date and the amp rental thing
23:08
has been really uh hinky so I'm gonna
23:11
end up going direct I'll do a whole
23:13
episode after after i do that but uh
23:16
yeah
23:17
so embrace the small amps enjoy them uh
23:21
because they're they're a lot of fun and
23:22
it's really nice to have
23:24
amps that get a great sound at a lower
23:27
volume that you can actually turn them
23:29
up some instead of having some big amp
23:30
that you have on too
What I Used
23:32
all right i want to briefly uh talk
23:34
about what i played just at the intro
23:37
and uh mainly because of the you know
23:39
the the sound i used so
23:42
of course you know using my my 57
23:45
esquire and this is the the Stapleton
23:47
Princeton I'm
23:48
the
23:49
the tremolo is not on
23:52
and I've got my pedal board down below
23:55
and
23:56
basically I'm using a touch of
23:57
compression and I'm using two delays to
24:01
kind of
24:02
really fill things out
24:04
and uh and make me uh you know play a
24:07
little less and then of course also as
24:09
you know capo and way up on the on the
24:11
seventh fret
24:12
so uh
24:14
so this is kind of the sound
24:21
[Music]
24:26
so you get that uh the kind of you know
24:29
delays kind of cascading bouncing off
24:31
each other I'm using an align six echo
24:33
pro
24:34
and this is the delay it's doing
24:38
[Music]
24:40
turn that off and then i was using also
24:42
a boss dm3 that i that i love and i have
24:45
it turned up with the repeat rate you
24:47
know so it's got its longest delay time
24:49
and then it's got its um
24:51
repeats are maxed out
24:53
so and on this one it does not oscillate
24:56
so this is what you get on this
24:58
[Music]
25:03
and it's just nice to uh
25:06
to have that to kind of fill things out
25:08
to where you feel like you don't have to
25:10
play
25:11
a million things and you can play
25:13
something kind of simple and maybe do a
25:15
little bit of run
25:16
a run or two you know
25:20
or
25:24
and
25:25
yeah it just kind of fill things out and
25:28
makes you you know feel like you don't
25:30
need to play a million notes to uh to
25:32
make it sound good so yeah so that was
25:35
that all right guys well thank you so
25:37
much for uh for watching today and we'll
25:39
see you next time bye