Fwd: Re: NZC: Ginger Baker: "Cream will never reunite"

["Oner Ozaylak" <oner.ozaylak@xxxxxxxxx>]

john wrote:

..."
The thing about the old Marshall's were you had to play them turned
all the way up "dimed' before you got the desired distortion and
sustain. Back then they did not have the overdrive pedals or
attenuators we have today which lets a player overdrive the preamp to
get the same desired tone at much lower volume so they always had the
amps at max volume..........It is no wonder many of 60's/70's rockers
have hearing problems..."

just to add some technical details;

many (if not all) amps did not have a master (output) volume then.
they are commonly called non-master volume amps. the only volume is at
the input. therefore as John pointed out you have to crank them up to
get an overdriven / sustained sound. but these amps have one
advantage. because of lack of output volume attenuation when it's
cranked output tubes (valves) begin to be overdriven thus produce a
sweet, natural sustained sound without sacrificing the tone of guitar
as opposed to many contemporary amps which produces a fuzzy /
distorted sound shadowing the tone.

thanks to this dynamic feature non-master volume amps also have the
advantage of controlling the overdrive / loudness from guitar's volume
pot. some high volume / less overdrive favouring players are jimmy
page, jimi hendrix, david gilmour and eric clapton. all of them
engaged distortion / fuzz pedals during solos also but most of the
time they relied on amps' output tubes.

certainly this is a subjective point. some people like it some not. i do.

oner