Tuesday, June 5, 2012

'65 Vox Pathfinder, MJM London Fuzz, and Van Amps Sole Mate Jr. Demonstration



Having fun with a vintage '65 Vox Pathfinder. The signal path is as follows:
Me-Fender Wildwood Custom '52 Telecaster(love the smell of nitrocellulose in the morning), MJM London Fuzz pedal(love it, nasty) into a Van Amps Sole Mate Jr. Spring Reverb tank(wish it was heavier, think I'll glue on a heavy base because having heavy bass is good, it really drives the song).

I mostly had the tone all the way down on my Tele with the volume maxed, the Fuzz was fuzzed out and the level at 11 o'clock P.M. . The Sole Mate's Output and Dwell chicken heads were around 11 A.M. For the Pathfinder I had the volume on 3 but it only goes up to 6! lol Treble was on 5 but strangely enough the Bass was on 7! lol. The tube Trem or Vibrato or whatever you call it was off. It's a nice effect but I only wanted the sounds I chose. 

Keep one thing in mind I'm not a guitar hero I just like to have fun. So spare me the critiques about my less than perfect playing. People who don't like to have fun and abuse things probably listen to Kenny G! Ha! 

As for me i love how I was abusing this amp. Granted it was only my camera's little microphone. In person it was much thicker and and robust. All coming out of an 8 inch speaker!(not the original but a replacement Celestion from the 80's(I looked it up on Ancestry.com) "Clowns never laughed before bean stocks never grew...I banged Mrs Brady and Marsha too". 

Seriously fun amp for groovy psychedelic charged garage rock sounds. You won't get this sound out of a 7 inch single though you better cut your garage tracks on 12 inch vinyl. Seriously warm but you have to make it that way. That's the key to irritating the neighbors with less shrill. EL-84 tubes or tube in this case coming from a 7.5 watt amp have top end shrill. Fine if you're trying to start a group called the Beatles but not for obnoxious garage rock that make old ladies wet their depends. Funny though this amp was built for Vox in Californ'eye'aye by the Thomas Organ Company to cast in on Beatle mania. Little did they know but the Beatles were about to meet Bob Zimmerman(Think he shot Trayvon Martin not sure though or was it the Sheriff?)and lose all their chime. Soon after this was built(hand wired tube amp)they switched to crappy transistor amps. Trust me you're not going to wake up the dead with transistor amps...you're just going to attract mosquitoes. 

A very smelly amp but a very nice sounding one. Minus the Trem I think Dr. Z makes kind of a copy of one with a few extra things. Not sure but he does make a couple low watt EL-84 amps. This amp is probably more than likely not to be confused with re-issues made by Vox. They just don't have the musty stank this amp possesses.

No comments: