MLA News

50s vs Modern Guitar Wiring

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:16:44 GMT

The Real Difference in Tone and Control

1 Introduction

If you’ve ever adjusted your guitar’s volume or tone controls and noticed subtle changes in your sound, you’re hearing the effect of how your instrument is wired. Two of the most common wiring approaches—50s wiring and modern wiring—affect how your controls interact with your pickups.

At full volume, both wiring styles sound nearly identical. The difference becomes apparent when you begin rolling down the volume or adjusting the tone control.

2 The Core Difference

The distinction between 50s wiring and modern wiring lies in where the tone circuit connects relative to the volume control:

- 50s wiring: The tone circuit connects after the volume control.
- Modern wiring: The tone circuit connects before the volume control.

This seemingly minor difference changes how the controls interact with each other.

3 50s Wiring Characteristics

50s wiring creates a more interactive relationship between the volume and tone controls.

- Rolling down the volume retains more high-end clarity.
- Adjusting the tone can slightly affect overall output.
- The controls feel more responsive and interconnected.

This style is often preferred by players who use their volume knob to clean up an overdriven amplifier, as it helps preserve articulation and brightness.

4 Modern Wiring Characteristics

Modern wiring separates the behavior of the volume and tone controls.

- The tone knob operates independently of the volume.
- Lowering the volume tends to reduce high frequencies, resulting in a darker sound.

This happens due to the interaction between the volume control and cable capacitance, which causes treble loss as the signal level decreases.

Modern wiring is widely used because it offers predictable and consistent control behavior.

5 Side-By-Side Comparison

6 What You Here In the Practice

At full volume: Both wiring styles sound essentially the same.
Rolling down volume:

50s wiring maintains brightness and clarity.
Modern wiring becomes darker and smoother.
Adjusting tone:

50s wiring can slightly reduce output.
Modern wiring primarily changes brightness.

7 Choosing The Right Wiring

50s wiring is ideal if you frequently adjust your volume to shape gain and want to maintain clarity at lower levels.

Modern wiring is better suited for players who prefer stable, independent controls and do not rely heavily on volume adjustments during performance.

8 Optional Modification: Troubled Bleed Circuit

A treble bleed circuit can be added to modern wiring to preserve high frequencies when lowering the volume. This modification provides the independence of modern wiring while reducing treble loss.

9 Conclusion

There is no universally superior wiring method. The best choice depends on how you use your controls. Players who value dynamic interaction often prefer 50s wiring, while those who favor consistency tend to choose modern wiring.

The Sound of the Fillmore East

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:36:08 GMT

How Live Sound Bled into the Records We Know

Why is At Fillmore East Still Stuck in Our Minds?

Studio albums of the 1960s and ’70s were exercises in control. Bands tracked in isolation, producers overdubbed takes, engineers sculpted final mixes into something clean and permanent. Yet decades later, it’s not only those polished records that live on. It’s the live albums — above all At Fillmore East — that still feel electric, urgent, unforgettable.

The mystery is why. Was it only the bands, or did Fillmore’s own house sound — Bill Hanley’s horns, woofers, and racks of McIntosh amplification — leave its fingerprint on the recordings?

Hanley Sound: Building the Foundation

Bill Hanley began in Medford, Massachusetts, in the late 1950s, rigging makeshift systems for rallies, dances, and folk clubs. His philosophy was simple: music should be heard clearly and without distortion. Standard PA systems of the day were meant for speeches, not art. Hanley wanted fidelity.

He experimented constantly. Altec “Voice of the Theatre” loudspeaker cabinets were stacked higher and tuned harder than their manufacturers ever imagined. Mixing was moved offstage into the audience — so the engineer heard what the crowd heard. He believed in power, but also in clarity.

As Hanley once put it: “What’s important in a sound reinforcement console is speed. Get everything into the audio engineer’s field of vision. You’ve got to be able to touch and feel everything.” (Hanley, RE/P Interview, 1986).

By the mid-1960s, Hanley Sound was running systems for Newport, Boston clubs, and New York promoters. When Bill Graham sought a reliable sound partner for his new East Village rock palace in 1968, he called Hanley.

Woodstock: The Trial by Fire

One year later, Hanley faced the biggest challenge of his career: Woodstock. Half a million people, an open field, storms and chaos. No system had ever been asked to do this before.

Hanley built towers of Altec multicellular horns powered by racks of McIntosh amplifiers. Signal snakes hundreds of feet long carried feeds to a front-of-house tower in the audience — a radical idea at the time.

“We had done a lot of tests and had a lot of failures with JBLs on the high frequencies,” Hanley recalled. “We got into the Altec 290 compression drivers because they would stay together longer.” (RE/P Interview, 1986).

Against all odds, the system held. As Hanley later said: “The only things that didn’t fail were the sound system, the water supply, and the stage security.”

Woodstock proved that live sound could scale to unimaginable sizes — and that Hanley’s methods worked.

The Fillmore East: A Theater Becomes an Instrument

Back in New York, Graham’s Fillmore East was something different. Built in the mid-1920s as the Commodore Theatre, the building seated about 2,600. Its long, narrow auditorium and wraparound balconies weren’t designed for rock bands — but Hanley turned those quirks into strengths. It is reported that he decided on a 35000-watt 26 speaker system design.

John Kane’s biography of Hanley notes: “Hanley Sound supplied the house sound systems for both the Fillmore East and West, using primarily horn-based designs powered by McIntosh amplification.” (The Last Seat in the House, 2019).

Amalie Rothschild, house photographer, remembered: “The Fillmore East really perfected what it’s really noted for … they developed and built a superb in-house sound system … the Grateful Dead used the house sound system and not their own.”

The Fillmore wasn’t just a venue. With its plaster ceilings, balconies, and Hanley’s carefully tuned horns, it became an instrument in itself.

The Albums That Carried the Room

From those walls came some of the greatest live albums in rock:

- The Allman Brothers Band: At Fillmore East (1971)
- Jimi Hendrix: Band of Gypsys (1970)
- Grateful Dead: Live/Dead material (1969–71)

These records feel different because they are different. Producer Tom Dowd, working with engineer Aaron Baron, didn’t only capture dry mic feeds. As Baron noted, “On the album you can hear the room mix being faded into the dry mix at the beginning of some of the tracks.”

That room mix included Hanley’s Altec horns and McIntosh power amps bleeding into the microphones, embedding the Fillmore’s character into tape.

The Horns on Record

The Fillmore East system revolved around Altec 288 large-format compression drivers on sectoral horns for mids and highs, Altec 515 woofers for low frequencies, and McIntosh amplifiers for reliable power.

Hanley explained why stacking was critical: “Speakers had to be stacked high, because such stacking compresses the sound into the audience area.” (The Last Seat in the House, 2019). In modern terms, his vertical arrays provided directional control, putting the sound where the people were and minimizing spill.

That precision is why, listening to Statesboro Blues, Duane Allman’s slide doesn’t just sound like a guitar amp mic’d onstage. It sounds enormous, almost like it’s being projected through the horns themselves. The PA became part of the instrument chain.

The Room as Its Own

Walk into the Fillmore East on a concert night, and you’d have felt it. Two balconies curving around the stage, ornate plaster ceilings glowing with Joshua White’s liquid light shows, 2,600 people packed shoulder to shoulder.

“These light shows were performances in their own right … the people behind the scenes … were just as much performers as the musicians onstage,” Amalie Rothschild recalled.

And then the sound hit. Dickey Betts later said the air at the Fillmore was “alive and magical.” That wasn’t just metaphor. The Altec horns, McIntosh clarity, and reflective architecture created a feedback loop between band, room, and audience.

Producer Tom Dowd’s tapes captured it. Listen closely, and you can hear the room itself rising into the mix. The Fillmore wasn’t just hosting the music — it was playing along.

The Great Tone Chase Is On

Decades later, guitarists are still chasing the tones that came out of the Fillmore East. Duane’s slide, Dickey’s lyrical runs, Jerry Garcia’s crystalline leads — all became benchmarks. Players swap pickups, hunt vintage Marshalls, and argue over Tom Dowd’s fader moves.

But how much of that tone was the player? How much was Dowd? And how much was the Fillmore’s horns and plaster walls, bleeding into microphones?

Tone lives in fingers and wood and circuits, yes. But those records remind us it also lives in air — in the rare alignment of player, producer, sound system, and room.

Why There Have Been No More Recordings Like It Since

If albums like At Fillmore East feel singular, it’s because they were. The bands were at their peak, Tom Dowd was at the board, and Bill Hanley’s horns were tuned to a 1920s theater that just happened to love rock and roll.

After 1971, rock moved to arenas and stadiums. PA systems evolved to be neutral, designed for coverage, not character. Rooms grew too large for intimacy. Sound reinforcement became invisible — a virtue for consistency, but a loss for magic.

There has never been another Fillmore East, with Hanley’s system and Dowd’s faders capturing the room itself. That is why, half a century later, those recordings don’t just sound alive. They are alive.

Mixing Guitar Speakers: Myths, Tips & Legendary Tone Tricks

Mon, 12 May 2025 14:35:07 GMT

Mixing different guitar speakers might seem like a wild idea at first—but done right, it can completely transform your tone. It’s one of the most common questions we get, and for good reason. Combining speakers with contrasting characteristics opens the door to richer textures, wider frequency coverage, and truly personalized sound.

Whether you're chasing iconic tones or just want to breathe new life into your rig, here's how to approach speaker mixing with clarity—and without falling for the usual myths.

Match Sensitivity, Not Power

The first thing to pay attention to is sensitivity, or SPL rating. You want both speakers to be within about 2 decibels of each other in output, so neither one dominates the overall sound.

Once that's set, forget about wattage. Power ratings are simply thermal limits—they don't tell you how a speaker will sound or break up. In fact, mixing high-wattage and low-wattage speakers can be a great way to cover a wider tonal range. Bigger voice coils usually mean tighter lows and smoother highs, while smaller coils tend to add top-end sparkle and presence.

Breakup Depends on Design

Another common misconception is that lower-wattage speakers always break up earlier. Not necessarily. Breakup behavior is mostly determined by the speaker's design—things like cone stiffness and how the coil interacts with the magnet. If you want some grit without losing clarity, try pairing a speaker that breaks up early with one that stays clean. You’ll get punch and crunch without the mush.

Build from What You Love

Here’s a practical way to approach it: start with a speaker you already like. Then ask, “What’s missing?” More brightness? Tighter low end? Smoother mids? Whatever it is, choose a second speaker that adds that quality.

We’re big fans of JBL D120s and K120s, and we’ve had amazing results combining them with Celestion Greenbacks and Creambacks. Some of the best tones we’ve ever dialed in came from these combinations.

For example, while we’re big fans of JBL D120s and K120s here, we’ve also combined them with Celestion Greenbacks and Creambacks—and gotten some of the best tones on the planet. That idea came from a former roadie who told us he once saw Duane Allman using D120Fs in the top cabs and what he believed were Celestions in the bottom. And let’s be honest—we all know how great Duane sounded!

Use Frequency Charts (Optional, But Helpful)

If you want to take a more analytical approach, most speaker makers provide frequency response charts. These show where a speaker emphasizes or dips in tone. When comparing charts, be sure the dB scales are lined up correctly—they’re not always standardized across brands. Just remember, these charts are taken at 1 watt and don’t reflect the full harmonic character that comes alive at stage volume.

Don’t Be Afraid to Mix Brands

Mixing speakers from different lines—or even completely different companies—is totally fair game. Whether it’s Eminence and Celestion, WGS and Jensen, or any other combo, the key is still matching SPL levels and trusting your ears. While SPL specs may vary slightly between brands (due to different measuring methods), you can still use them as a rough guide.

Trust Your Ears

Tone is personal. What works for one player might not work for another—and that’s the beauty of it. We’ve heard amazing stories about wild speaker pairings that sound incredible together, even when they don’t make sense on paper.

So don’t be afraid to experiment. Start with what you love, listen carefully, and be open to the unexpected. Your best tone might be hiding in the mix.

For more information or suggestions on tone, please feel free to reach out to us at: Support@mlapedals.com

JBL D120: A Sonic Legacy

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 19:12:46 GMT

The JBL D120 speaker has become synonymous with the iconic sound of Southern rock

Thanks in large part to its use by legendary guitarists like Dickey Betts and Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. However, the D120's influence extends far beyond this genre, as evidenced by its use by other iconic musicians, including Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

A Brief History of the JBL D120

Introduced in the early 1960s, the JBL D120 is a 12-inch speaker known for its clear, crisp sound and exceptional handling of high-power amplifiers. Its alnico magnet provides a warm, rich tone, while its cast frame and chrome dome offer durability and efficiency. The D120's ability to produce a wide range of frequencies, from deep bass to sparkling highs, has made it a popular choice among musicians seeking a versatile speaker that can handle a variety of musical styles. Players like Dick Dale and Chet Atkins were known for using JBL speakers and the list goes on.

The D120's Impact on Southern Rock

The Allman Brothers Band, with Dickey Betts and Duane Allman at the helm, played a pivotal role in popularizing the JBL D120. Betts used the D120 in his Marshall cabinets to create a powerful, driving sound that complemented the band's blues-infused rock and roll. Allman, known for his soulful, expressive playing style, also relied on the D120 to achieve his signature tone.

The D120's popularity among Southern rock musicians is not limited to the Allman Brothers Band. It has been used by countless other artists in the genre, including Lynyrd Skynyrd, Stevie Ray, and Charlie Daniels. The speaker's ability to deliver a powerful, distinctive sound has made it a staple of Southern rock recordings and live performances

Beyond Southern Rock: The D120's Versatility

The JBL D120's influence extends far beyond Southern rock. It has been used by musicians in a wide range of genres, including blues, jazz, and country. Its versatility and ability to handle a variety of musical styles have made it a favorite among musicians seeking to achieve a classic, authentic tone. A short list of guitarists that have used JBL speakers during important phases of their careers would include, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton, Albert Lee, Albert Collins, James Burton, Jerry Garcia, Roy Nichols, Chet Atkins, Vince Gill, Mick Taylor, Keith Richards, Jesse Ed Davis, and Eric Johnson.

One notable example of the D120's versatility is its use by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Garcia, known for his unique and expressive playing style, used the D120 in to create a powerful, warm tone that complemented the band's psychedelic rock and improvisational style. The speaker's ability to deliver a wide range of frequencies allowed Garcia to explore a vast sonic palette and create unforgettable musical moments.

Beyond Southern Rock: The D120's Versatility

The JBL D120's enduring legacy is a testament to its exceptional quality and versatility. Its ability to deliver a powerful, distinctive sound has made it a favorite among musicians seeking to achieve a classic, authentic tone. The speaker's influence can be heard in countless recordings and live performances across a wide range of genres.

While newer technologies and speaker designs have emerged over the years, the JBL D120 remains a highly sought-after speaker among musicians and audio enthusiasts. Its timeless sound and iconic status continue to inspire new generations of musicians and music lovers. They remain in high demand.

On the Road with Duane Allman

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 17:51:00 GMT

Part One of an Interview with Producer and Engineer Johnny Sandlin:

Legendary Producer Johnny Sandlin talks about playing and recording with Duane Allman in this two-part interview.

This interview was recorded in the summer of 2000 and sat on the shelf for more than 23 years before being re-discovered and transcribed to share with music fans everywhere. Johnny Sandlin was such a remarkable talent and was happy to share the stories of his friend Duane Allman.

Johnny Sandlin, an Alabama Music Hall of Fame inductee and producer/engineer best known for his work with Gregg Allman, The Allman Brothers Band, Widespread Panic, Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit and Chuck Leavell, and many more was born in Decatur, Alabama, and attended Athens State University. Sandlin began his music career as a guitar player in The Impacts, a band he co-founded while attending Decatur High and went on to become the drummer of The Five Minutes, was also a member of Hour Glass alongside Duane and Gregg Allman, and recorded as a session musician in Miami, playing drums, bass, and guitar. He began producing albums with Johnny Jenkins' Ton-Ton Macoute! (1970), and went on to mix At Fillmore East (1971) and Eat a Peach (1972), and produce Brothers and Sisters (1973), and Win, Lose or Draw (1975) and a string of successful albums followed throughout the years.

Johnny passed away on September 19th 2017 and his interview 17 years prior was very enlightening and it was a joy to sit and learn from him. I hope you find it just as enjoyable as I did.

Interview:

When was the first time that you met Duane Allman and what was that experience like?

I think it was 1965 in Pensacola Florida. We were in a band called the 5 Men-its and Duane and Gregg were in the band the Allman Joys and were playing in this place called Spanish Village, and they had an inside bar dance area as well as an outside patio and, on the weekends, bands would play in both places, and so they were playing out on the patio and we were playing inside. It was just a great place to play. I was absolutely blown away with Duane when I heard them playing.

What impressed you the most?

During that time, a lot of the songs we would hear on the radio were from British bands and I really did not listen to them. But what impressed me the Allman Joys was, they would play these same songs much better than the record. Greg was a great singer and Duane’s guitar playing was the best I had ever seen. He was playing a Tele at the time and had a Vox distortion booster mounted on the guitar. Whenever he would go for a distorted lead, he would use his little finger just to flip it on. This was long before there were a lot of pedals and effects.

How would you compare his playing from that time up to the time of the Hour Glass?

Well, Paul Hornsby and I were playing more rhythm and blues with the 5 Men-its and Gregg and Duane were playing more contemporary music, so we took the best of both and combined them together. Duane’s playing never slacked off, he just kept getting better of course. And this was around the time Duane switched from the Tele to a Strat and I remember one amp that we sort of shared in common, was a 59 Fender Bassman that we found four JBL D110 speakers for. And he used that on stage for a good period of time, and it was amazing, the JBL’s seemed to make it all louder (laughing). I tell players today, the JBL speakers were a big part of Duane’s tone and you can’t get close to that without them.

What kind of gear was the band using early on with the Hour Glass?

We had an endorsement with Vox, Duane, and Gregg both used Super Beatle amps and we would blow those up every week. So they were great sounding while it lasted, but we would have to take them out to the factory to get them fixed every week. Vox would go through them quickly and get them back to us. They just wouldn't hold up very well.

What do you think turned people onto Duane Allman, was it his playing or was it his personality?

Well, I think at first it was his guitar playing, but then he had a special personality... Once people heard him play, they always wanted to meet him and learn more about him. People recognized the talent and how outstanding he really was. Here we are still talking about him today in 2000…. He was still just a kid compared to us today, and played on all these well-known records that people are still listening to today. Name me one musician today that can boast he will be remembered that way, years later….

What music was inspiring Duane at that time, what was he listening to?

We were listening mainly to Blues music like Elmore James, Muddy Waters and a lot of the music recorded on Chess Label as well as the guys on the Peacock Label I guess, Bobby Bland and that type of music. And I know once he saw Jesse Ed Davis play slide with Taj Mahal he really picked up the pace with learning to play slide and he didn’t put it down.

Duane had this fire inside him that didn’t let up when it came to life and music and I could relate to that because I was the same way. Name a job that Duane ever had outside of music up until he died… I’m the same way I have always worked with making music in one way or another. You know, he was always wanting something from an emotional part, something from the heart. He didn’t listen to music that was scripted or formulated by some big record company.

What advice would Duane give to an upcoming guitar player today if he were alive?

“Go back to the basics, go back to were it all came from, the blues…”

Duane was a well-read person and knew the history of music. He had a huge vocabulary and he learned these things by always studying and reading books. He had a huge quest for knowledge and could converse with anyone on any level. You need to listen to a wide range of music and have a good sense of music history. It’s not about just going back and listening to Duane and learning what he did, its just as important to find out were Duane learned those things from and why he loved playing them. Duane drew his energy from a

source, find that source and start from there and then you will better understand who Duane was.

Tell me about your first time hearing the Allman Brothers.

I was in touch with Duane during that time while he was putting the band together.

The first time I heard them was in Daytona and I was just blown away. He always wanted his own band and his own sound and he really got that. He had switched up to a Les Paul and some humbucking guitars, which was quite different than what I had heard him play earlier and they had switched to Marshall amps and some Fenders. His sound had started to change.

I could see where the influences were coming from and how he was blending these sounds and developing his own take on the music he wanted to play. He definitely had a sound he wanted in mind and he kept developing that. I remember having him around Macon at the studio and he would always volunteer to sit in and play on any recording we were doing. He was inspiring to have around the studio and it made the other musicians play better when he was. You didn’t want to screw up around Duane, he says (laughingly)…… He always made people play at the top of their abilities.

And since Duane’s passing, there have been great musicians in that band at different times with Warran Haynes and Dereck Trucks and of course Jack Pearson, that have all done really well. Back when Berry died, Lamar Williams really floored people when they heard how fast he stepped up and learned the songs. He was a great bass player.

In Conclusion:

Johnny Sandlin was a very generous person and spent a considerable amount of time sharing stories with me on the day of the interview in 2000. Part two of this interview will include stories about working with Jerry Reed to recording the Brothers and Sisters album and a lot more.

The Fillmore Days

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 22:38:28 GMT

An Interview with award-winning filmmaker and photographer Amalie Rothschild.

Many of her photographs feature the incredible psychedelic lightshows for which the Fillmore was renowned.

This interview was recorded in the spring of 2002 and sat on the shelf for more than 20 years before being re-discovered and transcribed to share with music fans everywhere. Amalie Rothschild is such a remarkable talent and was happy to share stories of her time at the Fillmore East. All photographs are supplied by her.

From 1968 until it closed its doors in 1971 Bill Graham’s legendary venue was her unofficial home, the place where she was witness to the Who’s premiere of Tommy, Jimi Hendrix’s New Year’s Eve concerts, John and Yoko’s unexpected encore to a Frank Zappa gig, The Grateful Dead. The Allman Brothers Band, Janis Joplin, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills and Nash (and Young) and Pink Floyd amongst others. Away from the Fillmore she photographed many world-renowned artists including Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones.

At the Fillmore East, rock music became theatre and the swirling psychedelic light shows that formed the backdrop to the musical performances defined psychedelia in visual terms. The Joshua Light Show, and later, Joe’s Lights, the pioneering light shows that deservedly received separate billing on the Fillmore East marquee, were the best in the business. As Amalie reflects, “These light shows were performances in their own right. The people behind the scenes who manipulated film, overhead and slide projectors, color organs, strobe lights and a wealth of other equipment were just as much performers as the musicians onstage.”

Interview:

Tell me about the first time you remember the Allman Brothers playing the Fillmore East.

Well, I remember the first time that they played, of course. It was fantastic. Nobody had heard of them. Nobody knew who they were. My recollection is that at any event the staff and the crew and everybody, all of us who were working there were blown away. They thought they were absolutely, you know, fantastic. And that was from the sound check in the afternoon right after they arrived.

The Allman Brothers played the Fillmore East on several occasions and recorded their biggest album there, what were those shows like and do you remember who they may have performed with?

Their first date was Friday, December 26, 1969. They were at the bottom of the bill. The second act was Appaloosa and the first act was Blood, Sweat and Tears. And they played three nights, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then their next gig was in February of 1970. That was the beginning. That was with Love and the Grateful Dead.

Is it true that’s some of the Fillmore concerts would last until 6 am the next morning?

Well, it varied because there were two shows a night at eight o'clock and 11:30 p.m. And of course the best shows were at 11:30 because that's where there was, you know, you didn't have to get the audience out for the next show so they could play until six o'clock in the morning. But the six o'clock in the morning was on the very last night, the very final show. There were many other shows, mostly with the Grateful Dead when they would play until sometimes three, four in the morning, yeah. Until the bands decided that they didn't want to keep playing until late because there was no time limit. Whereas the first, the eight o'clock show, obviously that was pretty much set because they had to be finished at least at the very latest by eleven in order to get everybody out and the next audience in for the second show.

Who was your favorite during the period of the Fillmore? Did you have one?

I didn't have one favorite. I had a bunch of favorites. I mean, how can you have, I mean, it's apples and oranges. How can you pick between the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead and, I don't know, Laura Nyro who was one of my very, very favorites, she played there a couple of times. She was one of those marvelous singer-songwriters who did not have the fame and fortune that I felt she definitely deserved. I liked a very obscure band that never went much of anywhere called SeaTrain. You may or may not know them. They were wonderful. You might look them up. They're a bunch of albums that are still available. I loved Ray Charles. How could you not love Ray Charles? But none of the heavy metal stuff, none of the bands like Led Zeppelin. I have no photographs of Led Zeppelin. I didn't photograph the groups that I didn't like. That's the one regret I have, though, that I should have photographed them, just because I should have pictures. That would be, that's a hole in my archive. I was a purist. Of the really classic bands from that era that you would say, you know, of course, the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead, sort of like a tie, shall we say.

What was it like being there and being able to capture many of the moments in history of so many great artist?

First of all, you have to realize that this was the beginning of something. We were all living through it, but nobody knew this was the beginning of something with the kind of advantage of hindsight that one has 20 or 30 years later. But we all sensed that something fabulous was happening. I think Bill Graham knew it was developing into something big but, But I don't think anybody had any idea how it was going to develop initially, commercially. And it was an age, it literally was an age of innocence. And there were no real rules. So there was no such thing as a rock photographer. There were photographers like me who started taking pictures of the musicians. And I know that I felt something extraordinary was happening because I started documenting it without any clear purpose or understanding of why I was drawn to do that. I just was. And because I was there and there were no holds barred of any kind, nobody controlled anything. It was just a chaotic, marvelous place to be with wonderful things happening. Nobody said anything. And I could take any pictures I wanted at any place at any time. And I was paying for it. I bought the film. I processed the film. It was mine. And some of them were used in the programs later on. And some of my pictures were on the walls in the offices. But there was never, nobody had any sense of ownership. There was no sense that I couldn't do this and that anybody else wanted them.

Were the bands that played the Fillmore East always good?

Obviously, there were good bands, fabulous bands, mediocre bands, and a few real clinkers. I think the Consensus was the very worst band that ever played there that was nobody understood how they even got booked was a band called, Sir Lord Baltimore. And the story of how they did get booked is in, I think, the Bill Graham bio. I mean, it was one of those deals where the management agency foisted them on the bill in exchange for being reasonable about the booking of somebody else they represented. You know, it was a new band. They wanted to get them, package deals. Still the same way today. Vanilla Fudge was another band we couldn’t stand.

How loud could the bands get?

I had troubles with Mountain at the time because they were so loud it hurt. The Allman Brothers and the Dead you could listen to, they weren't so loud. And it's important for what I'm doing, both what I've done in my book and what I hope to do with the feature film that I'm starting to make based on my book, which is that all of the real technological innovations for the presentation of rock music were invented at the Fillmore East. It was a marvelous environment because it was a real theater with a stage and a proscenium arch. The audience were in reserved seats unlike the chaotic ballroom scene on the West Coast and Bill Graham absolutely believed in giving the public their money's worth, which meant a professional show.

How advanced was the Fillmore for a music venue of that day?

In a theater, you've got certain obligations there. You have to have superb sounds. And this, the Fillmore East really perfected what it's really noted for, and this is where John Chester comes in with Lyon Hart. And they developed and built a superb in-house sound system with a multi-channel mixing board with sliders. This was at the dawn of this technology. And Bill Graham understood the importance of this and actually put up the money for his technical staff to build this stuff in-house, install it, and do it. And I have all the photographs of all of this, of the construction of the sound system and all the pieces and all the stuff. And the Fillmore East was the only venue in the entire country where the Grateful Dead used the house sound system and not their own. And that sound system was so good that it didn't, the idea was not to kill people's eardrums, but to give them a fabulous musical experience. They had originally, I think the original mixing board was eight and then they expanded it to 12 channels, which at the time was, you know, that was a lot.

What did it take to operate the Joshua Light show & Joe’s Lights?

What was fabulous about the Fillmore East and what my involvement really entailed was the technical environment. It wasn't just rock and roll. It was a real working creative theatrical environment where there were top notch technicians and creative technical type people innovating in the presentation of the music. So I mean the light show has never been surpassed in its quality and none of the computer-generated stuff that you see today even comes close even though some of it is superb. This was even better. And it was a group of the Joshua Light Show and Joe's Lights. It was a group of six

visual artists who improvised visual music as a backdrop and it wasn't just backdrop, it was in symbiosis with the bands out front. And they actually worked harder than the musicians did because for the most part they played three sets every show whereas the musicians only played one set a show. They didn't play every single show. There were some groups that didn't want a light show. But for the most part they accompanied almost everything. They were paid weekly by Bill Graham.

How innovative was Bill Graham and his staff?

The Fillmore East was a working theater. There were at least four shows every weekend, two on Friday and two on Saturday. So there was a resident house staff that was working there perfecting the systems. I mean, people had a job and there was a consistency. And every week there was one great group after the other. You take a look at the marquees and it just blows your mind. And no, we didn't, none of us knew at the time what, you know, how significant this was going to be in the future, but everybody had a visceral gut sense that this was good music and this was great stuff. And it was a heady, heady, exciting, invigorating place to be because not only were you getting off on all this music, but there was the incentive to make it better. In that sense, Graham was an enlightened manager because in the long run it really did matter to him to give the public a good show. So even if he had made all of his money, if his technical people came to him and suggested that they could do this and do that to make the show better, you know, build a better sound system, do a special production for a given group because blah, blah, blah, and I'll get into that in a second.

If his technical staff made a good case for him, he respected them and he would pony up with the dollars to let them do it. And that is a way of getting the best out of people and having people who care about what they're doing and are having fun while they're doing it too. And I mean the best example of that, which there's a whole section about it in my book if you haven't read that, was when the Who Did Tommy. And that had been sold out long in advance and I actually was the ringleader in pulling this together because I said to the tech staff, the guys, I mean my buddies, Chester Langhart, Bob Goddard and Bob C. and Joshua of the Light Show naturally because that's where it all began, was that here they're going to, the Who are going to perform Tommy for six nights in a row and we can't just have the Light Show just do their, it can't just be a normal concert. This is something special. We've got a libretto. It's an opera. We should do a special production. We've got stuff that we can do. And I convinced the guys that that was, you know, that it wasn't hard to convince them.

So they then pulled it together, made a proposal and they went to Bill Graham and the shows had been sold out for months and he put up a $5,000 budget for Tommy. And we built the new 40-foot-wide arc Light Show screen. They got some improvements to the sound system. I got a $500 budget to make special film effects for the Light Show and the Light Show got additional money that we made flying mats and for them to develop additional software in order to create a visual, you know, accompaniment to Tommy that could be repeated night after night. It all connected. There was something there that you could do to make it a real production and we did.

There was no in-house taping or anything at the Fillmore East. But the groups, I mean lots of the groups loved the light show. They sometimes, you know, have their backs to the audience watching what was going on the screen behind them. And as I said, there were a few groups who felt upstaged by the light show and didn't want a light show like Crosby, Stills and Nash. They were very vehement about that. They wanted just a black backdrop and they had a Persian carpet out on the stage and sat on stools and so forth. Joni Mitchell didn't have a light show. I mean there were others. Laura Nyro didn't have a light show. Some of the very intimate, you know, women singer-songwriters where you had a very romantic, intimate kind of a concert setting didn't have a light show where it would have been overpowering and, in some cases, inappropriate.

In Conclusion:

Amalie Rothschild was a very generous person and spent considerable time sharing stories with me on the day of the interview in 2002. Her work can be found on display at www.amalierrothschild.com .

Missing Link Audio Unveils AC/OD Pedal

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 22:43:53 GMT

PRESS RELEASE

This full-amp-stack-in-a-box pedal brings a new flavor to the Guitar Legend Tone Series of pedals, Missing Link Audio’s flagship product line.

Adding to the company’s line of premium-quality effects pedals, Missing Link Audio has unleashed the new AC/Overdrive pedal. This full-amp-stack-in-a-box pedal – the only Angus & Malcom all-in-one stompbox on the market – brings a new flavor to the Guitar Legend Tone Series of pedals, Missing Link Audio’s flagship product line.

The AC/OD layout has three knobs to control Volume, Gain and Tone. That user-friendly format is perfect for quickly getting your ideal tone, and it also offers a ton of versatility. MLA’s new AC/OD absolutely nails the Angus tone from the days of “High Voltage” to "Back in Black”. You can also easily dial inMalcom with the turn of a knob. The pedal covers a broad range of sonic terrain, from boost to hot overdrive to complete tube-like saturation. The pedal is designed to leave on all the time and is very touch responsive. You can get everything from fat rhythm tones to a perfect lead tone just by using your guitar’s volume knob and your right-hand attack.

Features

Three knobs to control Volume, Gain and Tone
Die-cast aluminum cases for gig-worthy durability
Limited lifetime warranty
True bypass on/off switch
9-volt DC input
Made in the USA

MLA Pedals AC/OD - Music & Demo by A. Barrero

Rescued By Duane Allman

Fri, 02 Dec 2022 20:24:50 GMT

An Interview with Writer and Musician John Hammond:

Legendary Blues Musician John Hammond talks about Muscle Shoals and meeting Duane Allman

Photo by Jim Marshall

By Mark Hooten 2022

This interview was recorded in the summer of 2000 and sat on the shelf for more than 22 years before being re-discovered and transcribed to share with music fans everywhere. John Hammond is such a remarkable talent and was happy to share more stories of his friend Duane Allman.

At age 80 today, he’s recorded more than 40 albums produced by some of the industry’s biggest heavyweights including Tom Waits, J. J. Cale and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. He’s shared bills with Howlin’ Wolf, Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker.

John Hammond’s legacy is one of the most unique and star-studded in all of blues. The son of one of the Vanderbilts, he grew up in New York prep schools, but in a career that spans more than 50 years, he’s headlined over Bob Dylan, featured Jimi Hendrix in one of his bands, and borrowed Michael Bloomfield’s band for gigs in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. And hanging out with Brian Jones and Eric Clapton and John Mayall and all the British counterparts was not unusual. A recording session in Muscle Shoals brought him in contact with another legendary figure that would soon develop into a close friendship and save the recording session. That friend was Duane Allman.

Interview :

When was the first time that you met Duane Allman and what was that experience like?

Well, I was recording for Atlantic in Muscle Shoals Alabama. It was being produced by Marlin Green. The band was the guys who recorded behind Pickett and Aretha and all the crew. It was Eddie Hinton, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood, Roger Hawkins, the crew. And it had been going for about three days and we had cut some stuff, but I wasn't really feeling like they understood where I was coming from, you know. I was doing some Howling Wolf tunes and Muddy tunes. And they were doing their version of the songs not really taking my side of it somehow. I don't know how to explain that. But on the third day arrived this old milk truck with Duane Allman and Barry Oakley. And they drove from Macon to be there. And because Duane wanted to meet this John Hammond guy because he had a recording of mine.

What was Duane Like as a Person and as a Guitar Player?

Well, he seemed like a really nice cat and he could really play his instrument and impressed the shit out of me. He just had his guitar when he came in. I guess they had all the amps and other stuff there he needed. He had recorded in that studio before so I guess he knew all of their stuff. He had a Les Paul and he had a coricidin bottle. And that was all it took. And he really just blew everybody's mind. Duane was very intense.

I think he wanted to meet me more than anything else. And we did all of that and became, you know friends... It was just a mutual thing. I just thought he was unbelievable. I had not ever heard anyone play slide like that.

When was the Last Time You Got to See Duane?

Well I had spent a lot of the night before he was killed with him. It was at my place in New York. And I left that morning for Newfoundland where I had a concert to play. And he went back to Macon. And that night I got a call and was told. It just blew my mind. I was numb for a week. It was just unreal.

We were going to do a recording together. We had ideas but we hadn't fully explored them yet. We were talking the night before about the recording and blues songs. He had stories out the wazoo to tell (laughing). He was interested in it seemed like, all aspects of blues and rock and roll, R&B. He was a sponge. He soaked it all up and he knew what to do with it.

I imagine he would probably be producing albums today if he had lived. He was multifaceted. He was aware of how to make records as well as how to play. He was a trove of information and ideas. He was a live wire! He was so multifaceted that I didn't see him as a conservative guy in any way. He was enthusiastic about everything, about life, about music, about traveling, family. I mean, he was just an all-around guy. He was heavy duty. He was a good friend to me, and he was a guy who I admired. So you know, whenever I think about things like that, his name just like springs to mind.

In Conclusion:

John Hammond was a very generous person and spent considerable time sharing stories with me on the day of the interview in 2000. He continues to inspire many to this day.

Duane Allman Brings a Cowboy to Town

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 19:36:47 GMT

An Interview with Writer and Musician Scott Boyer:

Legendary Blues Rock Musician Scott Boyer talks about music in the South and meeting Duane Allman….

By Mark Hooten 2022

This interview was recorded in the spring of 2000 and sat on the shelf for more than 22 years before being re-discovered and transcribed to share with music fans everywhere. Scott Boyer passed away February 13 ^th 2018, and the World lost another Legendary performer and writer. He was one of the most generous and humorous men I had the pleasure of speaking with.

Scott Boyer was a long time resident of Muscle Shoals Alabama, relocating there in 1988 after journeying through the Alabama Gulf coast, Macon, GA, much of Florida, and further back to Chenango Bridge, NY, where he was born. While attending college in Tallahassee, he and two former high school classmates from Jacksonville, David Brown, and Butch Trucks (Allman Brothers Band), formed a band called The Bitter Ind. Later developing into The 31st of February, around 1968.

Around the same time events started developing that led to the development of the Allman Brothers Band and Scott met Tommy Talton with whom he formed The Band Cowboy. With Duane Allman’s help, Cowboy signed with Capricorn Records where the band recorded four albums and history was in the making.

Interview :

Scott please tell us who the founding members of Cowboy were and how that all came together?

Okay the original band included George Clark on bass, Tom Wynn on drums, Bill Pillmore on guitar and piano, and Pete Kowalke on guitar and of course myself and Tommy Talton.

Are you still in contact with the original members?

How Did Duane Allman Get Involved with Cowboy?

One day Duane showed up at like seven in the morning. There's this pounded on the door, you know. I go up and it's Duane and he's standing out there, “I heard you got a band” he asked….I said, well yeah. He said, “well let me hear some stuff”, At 7 o'clock in the morning I asked? … But that was Duane…. So, I got the guys up and we went into the music room, and we played him some of our tunes and he went, okay. He was driving back from some gig in Daytona to Macon and he just stopped through to see us on the way. And the next thing I know Phil Walden's calling me up and Johnny Sandlin, who I had also known from a few years before, had done some work with down in Miami, called me up and said, well I want to come down and hear the band. Duane said, you guys got a great band, you know, a lot of good songs. I said, well sure, come on down. Johnny came down and we ended up going to Macon and signing the contract and doing the first album in the fall of 69, which was called Reach for the Sky.

What Was it Like Recording in Capricorn Studios in those Days?

Capricorn Studios which was a primitive place back then. The offices were on Cotton Avenue. The studio was on Broadway, and he had just started building the studio down there in 1969. The offices were nice. They had purchased a big building and had just kind of gutted the inside and they built a studio inside. They built another building inside of the bigger building. But all around where the studio was, it was falling to pieces. Wall board and fractured boards was everywhere. Yeah, it was just a mess, you know. It was an eight-track studio. Jim Hawkins was the engineer at the time, and he had pretty much built the whole studio himself. So, when something went down, you had to call Jim and he had to come in there because he was the only guy that knew that this wire ran from here to over there and that was the one you needed to splice. You know what I mean… Nobody else could fix anything except for Jim. So, we had about two weeks of intense sessions where we would sit around on broken lumber and wait for Jim to fix something or to re-solder a wire and then Johnny Sandlin would come out and go, okay, it's working get in here quick and we'd go in there and we'd play for three or four hours and something else would break and we would wait on that to be fixed (laughing)….

We had a bunch of original material. Tommy and I were at that point had more professional experience than anybody else in the band did. That went on for about a year and we did the second album. We started at Capricorn Studios and then Johnny went to Phil and talked him into giving us the money to come over here to Muscle Shoals to do the album at the Jackson Highway Studios because they had better gear and it worked, you know, a little better. And they were still putting the studio together at Capricorn. It wasn't real tenable to do a really good album there yet. So anyways, we came over here and did the second album, Five Will Get You Ten, in about two weeks.

That was when Tommy and I sort of got together and said, you know, the band that we have right now is not going to work. The musicianship is really not what it needs to be, and we actually had Chuck Lovell come in and play some keyboard parts on the second album because our keyboard player was a guitar player who had been playing piano for about a year and just didn't have the expertise that he needed. Anyways at that point we went to Phil and said, look, I think that this album is going to be it for the band. We we just don't have it. And he at that point came to Tommy and I and said, “Look, if I could get you guys to do this for me then everything would be fine, But the two of you If you will go out and do a tour to help me promote this album, then that will make me a very happy man” ….. We agreed to do that, and we went out in 1971, some point in the spring I'm thinking, with the Allman Brothers Band and did a tour across the southern part of the country up through California and ending up somewhere up in Seattle I think it was.

What Was Touring with the Allman Brothers Like?

It was pretty crazy. We weren't really using the term with the Allman Brothers, you know. They were getting pretty big by then. They were on a bus or flying or something and the six of us were in a Ford station wagon with our road manager. They got the sound check and if there was any time left for sound checking, we would get a little bit of one. But most days, you know, there was only enough time after the PA got set up for one sound check.

I'm reminded of one night in Seattle where we were going, it was a two-show night. They had like a show that started at seven and then another show that started at ten. And you know, we'd move out the seven o'clock crowd and bring in the ten o'clock crowd. And right before seven o'clock, you know, well about five o'clock, I heard one of the sound guys going, where's that little black box? You know, and they had installed a house sound system in this place which held about, I don't know, five thousand people. It's a huge dome building. And the guy went, I don't know, I've been looking for that black box all day. And the other guy went, well, PA won't work without it, it's the junction box that everything plugs into. Well, seven o'clock rolls around and about six-thirty they had gone, sent somebody from out in the woods where we were outside of Seattle into town to pick up a PA system so that we could have a PA system. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock rolled around. They still didn't have the PA system working and they opened the doors and let the ten o'clock crowd in. The seven o'clock crowd had been sitting in there for three hours waiting for music. And around ten-thirty we hit the stage. And you can sort of imagine, you know, these people were squeezed in there like sardines, you know, the people who came at seven had been sitting there for four hours. Lots of crazy times and lots of good ones also….

Tell Me About the Night Little Richard Sat in with the Allman Brothers.

What Was Duane Like as a Person and as a Musician?

Duane Inspired So Many Guitar Players that Have Chased His Sound for Years. What Do You Remember about His Stage Setup and Gear?

Well, he paid more attention to it than a lot of other guitar players did, you know. He would sit around with that fuzz face, fuzz tone thing, you know, and mess with it. He'd sit around with his guitar and mess with the tones on the guitar or the settings. With his guitars and amps I knew there were some guys that he had hired to keep them in good working order also.

He didn't own a million guitars, you know. He owned several. If he found a guitar he liked, he'd get it plus he had people giving him guitars too, after a while. But he generally had one or two that he played. It wasn't like he was trying to play a dozen different guitars. He'd have a favorite for two or three months and then he'd find something else that he liked and he'd play it for a while.

For his tone It got, what's the word I'm looking for, it got progressively more intense. When he first started using the Fuzz Face and everything, it was an extremely distorted sound that wasn't necessarily all that musical. As he got into, you know, hotter pickups and hotter customized amps, he started getting that sound without having to use that fuzz face all of the time. He still had it in line. I remember that he had enough power in the coils of the pickups and in the amps to where he could get a distortion that really sounded musical that wasn't just the fuzz by itself. He was always willing to try something different and he did.

How Did You Learn About Duane’s Passing and What Was Macon Like During this Time?

I was on my way over to Johnny Sandlin's house when the accident occurred. I didn't find out about the accident until I got to Johnny’s, and everybody was sitting around with long faces. And I asked, you know, Johnny said, well, Duane just had a motorcycle accident. The deal that went through my head was that Duane was such an alive person that I said, well, surely, he'll be all right. And I said, you know, is nothing could kill Duane, man, he's just too alive to die. And then about 15 minutes later, we got the word that he had died.

Everybody was just stunned. Like I said, everybody sort of felt the same way I did. He was one of the most alive guys you ever met. How could he possibly be dead. Plus, we were all young at that point. We were in our early 20s. Thinking about death just wasn't something anyone did.

There was a lot of people I imagine were talking about it. The air more or less was a big state of confusion in Macon, like what in the hell was going to happen around here without Duane Allman.

I went over to Gregg's house a couple of days after Duane’s accident, and Mama A was there. Gregg was back in his bedroom weeping, sobbing. His mother, Mama A, went in and said, “Gregg, you've been doing this for two days now. It's time for you to buckle up and suck it up and act like a man. Your brother's gone. He's not coming back”. She's a very strong-willed person and a great lady.

Duane Has Inspired New Generations of Players Since 1971 but What Was His Impact on Players While He Was Alive?

You know what, after Duane died, there was sort of a slide guitar void in Macon. There weren't that many slide guitar players around in 1971. Nowadays, hell, everybody's brother plays slide guitar, but back then there weren't very many people doing it. Tommy, I think to some extent, obviously had watched Duane play and gained from that an insight into how to do it. But when Tommy actually started playing slide, I think he made a concerted effort to not play like Duane. He didn't want to be compared to him.

Really was because nobody was going to play like Duane did. After 30 years, some people have discovered how to play like Duane, but back then there was certainly nobody could approach what he was doing on slide. Duane was so fucking scary as a player nobody really wanted to butt heads with him even though he was gone. The people that were good were half as good as Duane.

In Conclusion:

Scott Boyer was a very generous person and spent considerable time sharing stories with me on two separate occasions. Once the memories started flowing, he would just light up and you could hear the enthusiasm over the telephone. He shared other personal stories and asked that some not be printed but was kind enough to share them anyway. Several about Little Richard of which deserves its own separate article but also more about Duane Allman that would leave the average reader laughing hysterically….

Missing Link Audio Releases Killer Billy Gibbons ZZ Top Style Tone Machine - The Eliminator Overdrive

Wed, 11 May 2022 21:22:52 GMT

May 11, 2022 | 08:00 by Stefan Karlsson

Pedals are very much like buses at times - when you get a number of certain types appearing at around the same time. We all know that pedal / circuit creation cycles can often take a year or two to develop - so it’s typically entirely serendipitous when two relatively similar pedals appear almost simultaneously - as is the case with the very recent J Rockett El Hombre, and this MLA Eliminator Overdrive.

Both are firmly aimed at recreating Billy Gibbons’ iconic and legendary ZZ Top Tones - from the Tres Hombres album, through peak-time Eliminator and Afterburner releases and beyond - touching on the key saturated and typically Marshall infused overdriven fuzzy-drive tones.

Controls - Volume, Gain, Tone.

While both pedals are 3-Knob Overdrives, there are some significant differences in output and control parameters. For the J Rockett El Hombre, the third control ’Bite’ is pretty much a Presence / top-end control, while the Eliminator’s ’Tone’ control is far more expansive and starts you off in Fat, Thick and Chewy territory where cranking said dial produces brighter and sharper tones with a little less low-end.

Overall the Eliminator sounds slightly juicier to me and with more sizzle, and the El Hombre a touch more subtle and with a little less saturation. I have the El Hombre already - and really like it, while I’ve yet to get my hands on my Eliminator. The newer pedal sounds slightly more visceral to my ears - at least from the demos - which are entirely to my liking! I think Shane Diiorio does a particularly great job at showcasing the pedal’s capabilities - he’s very much turning out to be a sort of Muse for Missing Link Audio! And his Eliminator demo views are already at record levels for his channel!

The Volume control takes you from Unity output up to a very significant Boost - where the pedal’s High Input Impedance makes for quite superb guitar volume cleanup - where you can set your full-fat tone, and then just Ride the Volume and dynamically dial back the gain with a flick of your wrist / pinky finger!

The Gain is fairly potent here too - taking you from Sweet and Sassy through to really Gnarly extremes. At least from the demos it sounds like the Eliminator has a little more range on tap. While I can imagine the El Hombre would find favour with those seeking slightly more subtle output.

I’m a huge Billy Gibbons fan and have several and various ’Reverend’ style overdrive pedals - Expandoras and otherwise - and am very much looking forward to owning an Eliminator too - where I will then be able to share more intricate details.

The Eliminator is available right now for $189 from the Missing Link Audio Webstore . I know a lot of you ’Reverend’ fans will already have scored the El Hombre - while I feel you should really give the Eliminator a chance too.

I can’t say for sure yet - but it looks like I might just slightly prefer the more visceral / juicier output of the Eliminator - while I won’t know for sure until I get my hands on mine!

I’m planning to do a Billy Gibbons style Overdrive Roundup fairly soon - while I will likely try to have acquired at least a couple more candidates by then - including of course this Eliminator!

How many of you will be doubling down like me?

Demos

Missing Link Audio's HotLanta and Germanium Peacock Overdrives Together Give you the Perfect Coverage of Allman Brothers Fillmore East Tones

Wed, 11 May 2022 21:13:23 GMT

Apr 4, 2022 | 08:00 by Stefan Karlsson

I actually ordered my Missing Link Audio Germanium Peacock well before the HotLanta was released - and that was supposed to be my first Missing Link Audio Review - while through several quirks of fate I ended up having both land simultaneously - which turns out to have been a really good thing actually!

All of this was sparked off by Shane ’In The Blues’ Diiorio’s 2021 Pedal Highlights rundown - which featured both standard and limited Germanium Peacock varieties - where I was rather taken by the extra harmonics of the latter - particularly at relatively low levels of gain. The Germanium Diode clipping really helps deliver more character and texture without the Gain dial needing to be set particularly high. So I would say the Germanium Peacock was perfect for those lower gain settings.

In contrast, the HotLanta needs just a touch more juice to fully come alive, but that is actually overall my favourite Allman Brothers Tone Machine - and is particularly handy with the additional boost - which really functions for me as a second slightly higher gain channel if you set the controls just right!

Both of these have excellent guitar volume cleanup and fantastic character and playback dynamics / feel. They are actually just 2 of the sort of Peacock Allman Brothers Tone Machine range - which currently numbers 5 in my estimation, including the Standard, Dual Drive, and Handwired versions beside the two featured here.

I feel that the HotLanta largely replaces the Peacock Dual Drive - so the most salient varieties here are the two I own plus the Handwired edition. If you only get two though - then follow my lead for ultimate coverage.

I like what Mark Hooten has done to the HotLanta both circuit and looks-wise - and it's for sure his most appealing pedal to date.

Here follow the individual details on each pedal :

Germanium Peacock Overdrive - $190

You can feel the impact of those Germanium Diodes relatively early on the Gain dial. For me this has a slightly richer and more harmonic flavour earlier on than the HotLanta - particularly lower down the gain scale. While the HotLanta inevitable runs a little hotter, and has some extra zing to it that I really like.

There's no reason why you can't run and stack both pedals really - where I would deploy the Germanium variety for more lower-gain applications generally as it definitely has that advantage on the early gain spectrum.

Note that previous models of this pedal had a 5th 3-way Toggle Tone Control in the centre of the top row - which is pretty much the same as appears on most of these Missing Link Audio pedals - where that control is a Hi-Cut EQ - which leaves all the High End in for the middle value, cuts a little to the right, and cuts a little more to the left. Mark Hooten has come to realise that most of his customers pretty much keep the switch in the middle - which renders it somewhat surplus to requirements - so the plan is to eventually phase that out on most of these pedals - and perhaps bring in some other function at a later stage.

Controls - Level, Gain, Tone, Voice (Presence / Bite).

Note that the Control topology is fairly self-evident and self-explanatory even besides the 'Voice' knob - which is actually a Presence control which delivers a touch more bite.

Perfect settings for me here are pretty much Level, Tone and Voice all at 3 o'c, and Gain at 2 o'c.

You properly feel some of that extra Germanium-infused texture start to really bloom around then - which still renders rather lower gain than the HotLanta - but more richly textured at those lower gain levels!

HotLanta Dual Drive - $280

This is the culmination of Mark Hooten's engineering and circuit magic for that key Allman Brothers sound. I very slightly prefer the Germanium Peacock for lower gain applications, but the HotLanta for everything else - and it if came down to it - the HotLanta would be my first choice if I could only have one.

It has some extra zing in its step - and actually steps up the gain texture more rapidly, while you need to set the Gain dial just right to get the maximum benefit of the second gain stage / Boost channel.

Controls : Level, Hi-Cut : Lots / None / A Little, Gain, Tone, Voice (Presence / Bite).

The controls are pretty much identical to the Germanium Peacock - and this model still has the 3-way Hi-Cut switch in the centre - which has really proven to be surplus to requirements for most.

The Boost stage is more of a dirty Boost - meaning that this is really a dual-channel overdrive in effect, although like I mentioned, you need to set the dials just right to get the maximum benefit of those two stages.

For my preferences I have Level at around 1 o'c, Gain at circa 11:30 o'c, Tone at 2 o'c, and Presence just a touch over 3 o'c - that for me that delivers the perfect tones and textures with a noticeable step-up for the second Boost stage.

The Texture here is just as elegant as on the Germanium edition - while it's slightly different, and somewhat more refined - and there's some extra magic happening within that breakup which gives it that extra zing.

I'm for sure not the biggest authority on Allman Brothers tone authenticity - while both these pedals deliver for me exactly the kind of tones that can be heard on the below live rendition of Whipping Post. I would say therefore that the HotLanta is surely the current perfect embodiment of those Fillmore East Allman Brothers tones :

Final Thoughts

I always get asked for my particular preferences and what I recommend in each scenario. I have no doubts that these are the finest embodiment and representatives of the Allman Brothers tones in pedal format. I say get both the same as me, and even add the Handwired edition if you're a proper fan of those particular guitar heroes.

For me the HotLanta and Germanium Peacock really are the perfect pairing and have you fully covered for all applications. If you get just one - then it should be the HotLanta - while I think there is merit in having both for slightly different applications per my notes.

I'm kind of in the process of exploring the Missing Link Audio pedal range - and next stop for me is The Magician Overdrive which in Shane Diiorio's hands is the perfect classic rock voicing - for sure a little bit of Marshall in there, but some more Mark Hooten secret sauce in there too.

Mark supposedly has another new pedal launching soon - so I may target those together - depending of course on the nature and timing of the new release.

All pedals featured here are available for order on the Missing Link Audio Webstore - note that they are mostly made to order - which means a 4-6 week production schedule.

Are any of you fans of the Fillmore East Allman Brothers sound - and if so surely you have one of these already?

Missing Link Audio's New HotLanta Dual Drive Pedal is the Most Dynamic and Amp-like Allman Brothers Tone Machine yet

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 22:08:05 GMT

Stefan Karlsson

Mark Hooten’s Missing Link Audio (MLA) has carved out a unique niche for itself as the leading purveyor of the Allman Brothers’ Fillmore East Live Sound. This manifests through a broad range of Allman Brothers inspired tone machines - including Amps, Pickups and of course Effects Pedals. I actually only encountered this brand very recently courtesy of Shane ’In the Blues’ Diiorio’s Best of 2021 Roundup where he included the MLA Peacock and Germanium Peacock Overdrives in his selection. Most unbeknown to me - Missing Link Audio has actually been around for 24 years - and is probably best known for its superior line of Mason-Dixon Amps : FE 22, FE 44-Duane 1x12, and FE 45 Dickey 1x12. In any case from Shane’s demo I was spurred into acquiring the limited edition Germanium Peacock - which is currently en-route to me and imminent. Before that has had a chance to arrive though, Mark and his team have created a further evolution / enhancement of the Fillmore East Sound - in the shape of the brand new HotLanta Dual Drive.

The range of Mason-Dixon Amps inspired the MLA Peacock series of overdrives initially - which consists of the Stock Peacock Overdrive, Peacock Handwired Edition, Peacock Dual Drive and the aforementioned Germanium Peacock which I acquired.

Controls - Level, 1-2-3 : 3-Way Treble Cut-Off, Gain, Tone, Voice (Presence & Bite), On/Off Footswitch, Boost Footswitch.

So the HotLanta is in effect the latest enhanced and ultimate evolution beyond the Peacock series - with even more touch-sensitivity, dynamics, headroom and guitar volume cleanup. Mark is the master of Opamp tweakery - and has managed to bring forth exceptional transistor-like sensitivities from the Opamps he deploys.

This is for sure the ultimate manifestation of the Allman Brothers sound in pedal form - where Mark describes it as more of an all-round authentic feel and experience - beyond just being a great sounding overdrive. This is all about the dynamics of interaction between the player’s fingertips and the wonderfully nuanced output which emanates from this pedal. It is the culmination of many years of tireless research and development - and the new more vibrant livery reflects the pinnacle of what has been achieved here.

While this range is new to me, I understand that Allman Brothers aficionados worldwide have long held these as cherished secret weapons - where I guess it’s time now to extend the proliferation further into the mainstream. Mark is quick to point out that the Boost element (+5dB) is pretty much a second drive channel as it’s a textured sort of dirty boost - which indeed imparts significant flavour - hence ’Dual Drive’ versus Overdrive + Boost.

Shane Diiorio is due to deliver his own demo take in a month or so, and in the meantime we need to make do with the Dr. D introduction / overview below - which for me doesn’t quite do the pedal full justice. So I’ve included some Live Allman Brothers footage to demonstrate the kinds of tones you can expect to achieve. I’m sure Shane will do a darn fine job on his demo - while I would really like to see this pedal demo’d by Alberto Barrero and Chris Buck - I believe those two are the most suited to the task. And following on from this article I will endeavour to persuade said gentlemen to showcase the heights of what this pedal is capable of.

I’m of course waiting to receive my Germanium Peacock before I put in my order for the HotLanta - which seems pretty inevitable. The HotLanta is available for order right not on the Missing Link Audio Webstore - at $279.99. You are advised that Build to Ship Time is typically a fortnight or so.

Any Allman Brothers fans among you? And are any of you already deploying Missing Link Audio Amps, Pedals or Pickups? Don’t be shy in sharing your own insights!

Demos and References

Twiggs Lyndon & Steve Morse Discuss Duane Allmans Hotlanta Les Paul

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 17:47:38 GMT

Twiggs Lyndon Talks Gear: An Unpublished 1978 Interview

Best known as the Allman Brothers’ road manager, Twiggs Lyndon also worked for Little Richard, Percy Sledge, and the Dixie Dregs. A wizard with mechanics, he described himself as “a hydraulic, mechanical, electrical person” who specialized in fixing problems. Musicians who employed him remember him as tough, resourceful, and loyal to the core. He was especially close to Duane Allman. The band thought so much of him that they included his inset photo on the back cover of the Live at Fillmore East album when he was unable to attend the photo session. (At the time, Twiggs was in a Buffalo jail, awaiting trial for first-degree murder following a scuffle with a club manager; he was eventually acquitted.) Twiggs continued to work with the band through the mid 1970s, when Chuck Leavell was a member.

In 1976 Steve Morse, a music student at the University of Miami, and some friends recorded a self-financed album called The Great Spectacular. Naming themselves the Dixie Dregs, Morse and bandmates moved to Augusta, Georgia. “We began blitzing the record companies with demos,” Morse told me in 1978. “People said, ‘Wow, that’s a weird band,’ but nobody was willing to do anything with it because it was instrumental music.” Then, Morse continues, “around Christmas 1976, we got on a gig with Sea Level in Nashville, and freaked out Chuck Leavell and Twiggs Lyndon. So when we finished playing, I talked to Twiggs about working for us. I was feeling sort of depressed because I knew we couldn’t afford him, but he said, in short, that he’d work for nothing, or whatever we could give him. The next day Chuck and Twiggs called up Phil Walden at Capricorn Records and gave him a big pep talk about the band. Phil agreed to do a personal audition, so we played on the floor of a disco club in Macon, Georgia. He said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’ We got the contracts together and signed.” In addition to serving as Dixie Dregs’ road manager, Lyndon became a mentor to the young musicians. His photo appeared on the back cover of the Dixie Dregs’ debut album, Freefall.

I met up with the Dixie Dregs for the first time in California on June 8, 1978. During my interviews with Steve Morse and bassist Andy West, both musicians encouraged me to talk to Twiggs. Steve introduced us. I liked Twiggs instantly. In those days, Levi jean jackets only had pockets on the outside, and Twiggs showed me how he’d modified his by taking the back pocket off of a pair of Levi pants and sewing it on the inside of his jacket. When I mentioned that that’d be a useful pocket for hiding the band’s cash, Twiggs grinned, “It’s even better for a pistol.” Twiggs invited me back to his custom tour truck to talk shop. Looking at his watch, he told me, “I’ve got 25 minutes before they clear the stage.”

****

Steve Morse tells me that you put his effects board together.

Yeah. It wasn’t a master task or anything. He had a board that was sort of mocked together. Everything was falling off of it, and he wanted to add some things to it. So we had a few days off, and he drew me a diagram of where he wanted all the pedals and everything. He had to go to another city, so I stayed in Alabama and put the thing together for him. Truthfully, at the time that I built it, I did not know what it was that I was building. In other words, I just placed them where he wanted them, and he said, “A wire comes out of this hole and goes over there.” It was the most complex thing that I had ever seen.

Steve designed it.

Yeah, he designed it. He plays through two amps. He plays through an Ampeg V4, which is used for what he calls his main signal. That’s his straight guitar sound. He then uses an Acoustic head – I’m not sure of the model – for his echo sound. He has an Echoplex, and he has an Echoplex footswitch on his board, plus a volume pedal to control the volume of the echo. So he can have the volume off, cut the Echoplex on, and then be playing a line and fade in the volume of the echo sound with the volume of the main signal and still be as loud as he was playing originally. If he could use two feet at once – and he damn near can – he could cross-fade it. In other words, he could fade the main signal out because he’s got a volume pedal for the main signal. I believe that he has a volume pedal for the synthesizer. He uses Bob Easton’s 360 Slave Driver and a special pickup in addition to four pickups that he’s already put on his guitar. So that pickup drives the Slave Driver. I think the Slave Driver is a pitch-to-voltage convertor, so to speak, and it drives the Minimoog which he has up there. He was an on/off switch for that and a volume pedal for that. See, I take care of the keyboard rig and the bass rig.

Dixie Dregs, 1978: Andy West, Rod Morgenstein, and Steve Morse. Back row: Mark Parrish, Allen Sloan.

Tell me about the Andy West’s bass rig.

The bass player and the guitar player really have their head together with electronics. They know how to achieve the sound that they want. The bass player even built his entire rig, and he put it together. He said, “Twiggs, what I want to do is have a pedalboard that has all this on it, and I want to have an effects rack that has all of these effects in it.” We hired a new keyboard player at the same time that Andy was trying to build the bass rig. The keyboard player had played around in Atlanta, and none of his stuff was ready to go on the road. This is Mark [Parrish]. He had no cases, no good wires. So we had like six, eight, ten days off, and I went to work during the off period. The band was rehearsing, to teach Mark the songs, and I went to work building the keyboard rig, and Andy went to work during the off-period doing his new bass rig.

Did he use the same kind of a rig you invented for the Allman Brothers?

Uh, I hadn’t used any of those devices for the keyboard. [Pauses.] Necessity is really the mother of my inventions. If you can tell me that you want that glass [points to a glass on the table] to sit here and be able to tilt left, right, and go up but not go down, and only go sideways when it’s going down – you know what I mean? – I can make it do that. But unless there’s a need for the glass to do that, I’m not going to sit around and design a mechanism to make that glass do that. So I said to Mark, “Well, what do you want?” He said, “I want to play the organ, but I wants these pedals, the wah wah pedal and all these things hooked up. I want the organ higher than it is now.” I said, “How much higher?” So he showed me. “And I want the keyboard here, but I want it higher.” And then I just sort of figured out the best way that I could figure to make all of it sit in a relationship. He plays a stock [Hammond] B-3 and a stock [Fender] Rhodes. He has a volume pedal under the Rhodes. I won’t work for a band with a Rhodes that does not have a board underneath it with a sustain for a stage monitor. You know the sustain pedal scoots all over the place? With Chuck [Leavell] that’s one thing I did use. For Chuck, I had a piece of plywood.

It’s real simple. Anybody can do it. You just take a piece of three-quarter-inch plywood, take some of those wood-boring bits, and bore three-eighths of an inch down into it where the legs will sit. So the legs to the piano sit down in those notches. The board is slightly larger than the perimeter of the four legs. And then you go and use a plumb bob. Hold it up there where the hole is and find the exact place where the sustain rod wants to come straight down. And then mark that and then mount the sustain pedal. You have to put little spacers, but it’s already got screws, those little rubber feet. Ditch those, and just come through the bottom of the board with four quarter-inch coarse-threaded screws. Counter-sink ’em, and you bolt the sustain pedal to the board. So if anybody hits the entire affair, then the entire affair moves together, as opposed to the pedal scooting here and there. Chuck didn’t use all those gadgets and pedals and things.

But if they want to use pedals, then there’s the board to bolt them to. With Mark, he wanted to stand up and play the piano, so he also wanted it raised up. So I built him that little box, and the piano sits up on the box. The sustain pedal is bolted down inside the box, and the rod comes through the edge of it. So it elevates it, and it houses the volume pedal and the sustain pedal for the Rhodes. I use it to store the legs in, so I don’t have to put the legs in the lid to the Rhodes. It works real good, but then it’s not necessarily the right thing for anybody but Mark. There’s some ideas that’s probably in it that everybody could use, but if you want to sit down and play the B-3 at a normal height, then the box that the B3 sits on – we cut the legs off the B3 because all the space underneath the B3 when you put it in a Carlo case is wasted, right? There’s nothing under there, unless you use those bass pedals.

Anyway, the bass player can tell you best about his rig. He has a synthesizer. He has one of those 360 Slave Driver things, but he doesn’t have a keyboard. He has an Oberheim, so he didn’t have to buy the keyboard. Morse already had the Minimoog, so he just used it instead of buying an Oberheim. And if push comes to shove, we could use his Minimoog for Mark to play, if Mark’s Minimoog went out. It gives us a spare Minimoog. I guess Steve would let us borrow it [laughs].

Do you enjoy working with the Dixie Dregs?

Twiggs depicted on the Dixie Dregs’ Freefall abum.

Yeah. The guys are really great. They are much more advanced. I’m a hydraulic, mechanical, electrical person. I understand all of those things. I know a little bit about electronics, but not a great deal. See, I’m a road manager. I was a road manager when I started in this business. We fired a couple of roadies in the Allman Brothers, and by that time we had like three or four road managers, so we were short roadies. I was an electrician in the Navy, and I play a little bit of guitar, so I knew how to plug an amp in, you know. So I volunteered to be turned into a roadie. There’s a lot less mental pressure being a roadie as opposed to being a road manager, especially working with stars. You know, they’re a little rougher to handle. So I enjoyed being a roadie, but I cannot repair an amp. Steve Morse and Andy West probably have the heaviest electronics knowledge in the band. I figured out how mechanically would be best to make Andy’s rig road-worthy. I don’t know if you see how it packs up, but we call it the “Black Monster” – that box with all the devices in it.

He has a pedalboard, but the pedalboard is built into the lid of the Carlo case, you see. So when the gig’s over, we take his pedalboard, unplug that multi-pin connector from it and from the box, roll it up and store it. Then we just take the pedalboard and turn it over, and it fits upside-down on the top of the box. Then there’s a protective front that goes on. We had to have the front so that he could have access to the things, and also have the lid that we turned into the pedalboard have one side that would be vacant. In other words, you have to step over that lip to mash the pedals. But as it is, that wall was not there. So it’s real easy to pack. The entire bass rig has four cables – it has one power cable, one signal cable that sends the signal from the direct box to his amp rack. Then it has two speaker wires – one to his cabinet for his lows because he’s crossing over, and one for his cabinets for his highs. That’s four cables. Oh, there’s a fifth cable, which is the multi-pin cable, and there’s a sixth cable, which plugs in his guitar. So I guess there are six cables. But it’s the most concise and fastest rig to set up and tear down.

How much time does it take you to set up?

It really depends on whether we have stagehands or not. We played with Billy Cobham at the Roxy, and there was not a lot of room. Billy Cobham’s crew were princes – they were so helpful! They were the stars, man, we were the flunkies – you know what I mean? And it was their stage, and they moved anything that had to be moved in order to permit us to be able to play. Both of us made concessions, but they went out of their way. Anyway, we cleared the stage from the time that the Dregs stopped until the time we had all of our stuff out of the way – hidden or off the stage, whatever we had to do with it – it took about eight minutes. And when we play as an opening act for Charlie Daniels, we can clear it with stagehands in between seven and nine minutes. It’s made to come offstage in a modular fashion. We use banana plugs in the back of the amps, which have two great advantages. One, they unplug readily. And two, you can see both connections. With a dual banana plug, both wires are soldered right there on the outside. So when I take the wire and go to plug it in every night, I just look. If either one of those connections is broken, you can see it, whereas if you use a phone jack, you’ve got to unscrew the cover off. If somebody steps on one or one breaks loose, you can find the problem by simply having a flashlight and walking back there and do an outside inspection without unplugging each cabinet, unscrewing the thing off, and looking at it.

How many people do you take on the road?

We travel with a complement of eight right now. One road manager – me – and then we have three roadies, counting me, and we have two truck drivers, counting me and one of the two roadies, and then we have a sound and a light man, which is the other two roadies. That’s three people – all of that [laughs]. And then we have five musicians, and they sure do their share of playing! They’re great. We all travel on one 18-foot van-body truck with all of the equipment. Somebody should do an article on the truck, because there lot of things happening there that bands could use.

Jas Obrecht interviewing Steve Morse in Twiggs’ truck, June 8, 1978.

Like what?

It’s not the most ingenious, but the greatest one is a spare battery under the hood. When they put automobile engines in trucks – a large V8, like a GMC truck has a large Chevvy engine in it –there’s more room under the hood than you would find under the hood of the Chevrolet with the same engine. So there’s room for a spare battery box. So we bought an extra Die-Hard, put it in a box, grounded the battery right there at the block with a short ground strap. Then I got a 25-foot roll of battery cable, zero-gauge or something, as big as your finger, and manufactured a long cable. I ran the battery positive back underneath the truck and ran it up through the floor with a water-tight string relief. In the cab we have bucket seats, and I had a 60-amp household square-D breaker box – no fuses, just a breaker switch – I had that welded to the rear of the cab wall, and I ran the cable inside the box, put it to the switch. It came off the other side of the switch, through another water-tight string relief, out of the cab through the floor. I ran underneath and put one of those tabs under it that allowed me to put it on the starter solenoid where the other battery positive terminated from the original battery. Okay? That switch is off right now. But while using the lift gate, etcetera, etcetera, or leaving the lights on overnight – whatever happens – when you come out and turn the key and the truck does not start, you do not get out of the truck, you do not push the truck, you do not ask for jumper cables. All you do it reach back, flip the switch, and you have a brand-new 12-volt battery that’s not been used, and you just crank it right up. And then as you drive a few minutes, you flip it off and the alternator recharges.

I’ve got about $2,000 worth of Snap-On tools that go in a Carlo airline case, and they’re packed the last thing in the truck, so we can get them out easily. And I have a spare brand-new alternator in a watertight compartment outside the truck – it’s a big box with big locks on it. It’s got a spare alternator in there, a spare water pump, spare fuel pump, spare starter motor. It’s got a complete spare ignition system, like wires, spark plugs, points, condenser, rotor, distributor cap. I’ve got spare air filters. I’ve got a complete set of spare fan belts, spare universal joints. Just about anything that can disable the vehicle, we can stop, fix it, and go on. When it gets to running ragged, we just stop and tune it up, and then go on. I carry a strobe light to time it. We have an altimeter in the truck that we bought at an airplane service store – see, cars and trucks that are sold in Denver, for example, are timed differently. There’s like a 12-degrees advance on Chevrolet engines because there’s no air [oxygen] up there. It would be nice if they made automobile carburetors with adjustable main jets, but they don’t. So on the way home, when we get to 4,000 feet, I stop the truck and get out and reset the timing to 12 degrees. And then when we get back down to 4,000, crossing the Rockies, I reset it to 8. I carry a meter to set the points with. The truck’s got . . .

[ At this moment, one of the roadies stuck his head in the door. Twiggs asked, “Is that it?” The roadie responded, “Yeah.” Twiggs, ever the pro, instantly said, “Got to go then,” shook my hand, and departed. I never saw him again. Seventeen months later, Twiggs Lyndon, 37, perished in a skydiving accident near the town of Duanesburg, New York. ]

Epilog: Twiggs Lyndon and Duane Allman’s Sunburst Les Paul

At the time of his death, Twiggs Lyndon had Duane Allman’s famous tobacco-sunburst Les Paul on the road with him. A few months after the skydiving accident, I asked Steve Morse what had happened to the guitar. “We were up in New York at the time,” Morse explained, “and I just took responsibility of carrying it around until I was able to give it to Twiggs’ brother Skoots in Georgia. Now it’s at Twiggs’ parents’ house in Macon. I use that guitar when we record, and they’ll let me use it pretty much when I want to, but it’s with his family.”

Steve Morse described the guitar as “a Les Paul Custom with tiger stripes and a sunburst paint job. It doesn’t have a pickguard, and the neck looks like a regular Les Paul neck, a sort of dark brown. It was cracked once, but Twiggs had it fixed when we were in California. And it’s got regular humbucking-looking pickups, but the one in the lead position is so intense! It’s so powerful. Something is so right about it. That’s the main thing about the guitar. I think the reason Duane had that guitar is because it would scream so much on the lead pickup. I remember Twiggs saying that Duane used that guitar on Layla and a lot of the Fillmore East. He like to use it for songs where he’d switch from playing regular fingerstyle to slide. I’ve used the guitar for solos on every [Dixie Dregs] album, just about. You can hear it on the melody of ‘Cruise Control,’ the slide guitar parts in ‘Rock and Roll Park,’ and in ‘Twiggs Approved’ there are two short guitar solos – one is in a regular style and the other is slide, and both of those are on the Les Paul.

“That guitar of Twiggs’ has gone through a long journey,” Morse continued. “Twiggs traded a car to Gregg Allman to obtain the guitar. Twiggs had a lot of old-time cars, in really good shape, and it was one of those. It wasn’t like Gregg was just giving the guitar away. He knew that Twiggs would really take care of it. At a time when Twiggs was really broke, someone offered him $15,000 for the guitar, and he wouldn’t take it. Twiggs all along was planning on giving it to Duane’s little daughter when she turned 18, so the family is holding the guitar until then. The reason Twiggs was gonna wait until then is he didn’t think that the girl would realize what she had. And Twiggs was just that kind of person – the principle of the whole thing was more important than anything.” [In the comments at the end of this article, Twiggs' brother Skoots explains how this guitar was, in fact, presented to Duane's daughter, Galadrielle Allman. Another brother, John, provides more insight into its history.]

Thanks to Steve Morse, Andy West, and the Lyndon family for their contributions to this article. And thanks to Jon Sievert for the use of his Twiggs Lyndon photos.

Remembering Twiggs Lyndon with Author Ron Cosentino

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 14:31:53 GMT

Remembering Twiggs Lyndon with Author Ron Cosentino
Interview Q & A

Question:

Music seems to have always been a part of your life, can you tell me about some of your earliest memories of music world for you?

My first recollection of music burning an imprint into my memory happened when I was 6 years old. My mother had a brown paper bag, a large grocery bag filled with items I don’t recall. It was sitting on a chair in her bedroom next to her dresser. While my mom and siblings would be in the living room watching TV around the corner from her bedroom, I would slip away into my mom’s bedroom, pick up her cigarette lighter, light it, put the flame to the bag, light it, watch a moment then blow it out. Fascinated by the flame, momentarily hypnotized by it I would do this periodically. One morning same scenario, I went through my routine again while the radio was on in my mother’s bedroom. The song on the radio I was listening to was, “Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at super time.” Can’t forget it! On this particular morning I failed to blow the flame out quickly on the bag. When I realized it was getting away from me I tried to blow it out. The flame raced across my mother’s dresser onto the window frame in her bedroom. The song still playing away in the background. Now I had to alert my mother. She was horrified to see what was happening. She called the fire department. I ran across the hall to the neighbor’s apartment slid under a bed in the spare bedroom staying there till the evening. My mother knew I was there under the bed. After the fire department arrived putting out the fire. I was embarrassed. Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at super time. My first music experience. Then came “The Beatles” on Ed Sullivan show in February 1964. I was 11 years old.

Question:

You where the bus driver for The Dixie Dregs in the early days. Tell me how you came to be working for the band and what was that experience like?

April 1979, my wife and I were guests of The Dixie Dregs at a show they were performing at Emory University in Decatur, Georgia. I was friends with Twiggs Lyndon, formerly of the Allman Brothers Band at that time. That’s how I came to be friends with “The Dixie Dregs.” Twiggs was working with them prior to that time. The previous week I had resigned from my job as commissary manager for the Mellow Mushroom” restaurants in Atlanta, Ga. During a Dixie Dregs tour, the equipment truck “Black Hearted Women” was in an accident, splitting open, releasing all the equipment in the truck onto the gully the truck wrecked into. The Dixie Dregs Band Members tried to tour while taking turns as the bus driver. It was too much to ask of themselves to play and drive. The road is a tough place to live. Not all glamour! Exhausted with a tour impending the next day after that show I was attending at Emory University. Jeff Burkhart, the lighting manager for The Dixie Dregs sought me out in the crowd from the Sound-booth made eye contact with me motioning me to come to the sound stage. I went to see what it was Jeff wanted. That’s when he asked me if I was employed. I stated I had just resigned from my job the week before. Jeff asked me to drive The Dixie Dregs on the road. I said, “If Shirley says it’s all good, I’ll do it. My wife Shirley knew what it would mean to me agreeing to see me do it. The next morning at 7 AM I was at the Dregs house, waking up Twiggs Lyndon, letting him know what was happening. Twiggs at that time was helping “The Allman Brothers Band” reform. I would be taking his place as the Dixie Dregs tour driver. That was my first tour on the road that April day of 1979.

Question:

You are also friends with another important figure in music history, Twiggs Lyndon. How did you meet Twiggs and how did his friendship inspire you?

Before I moved to Atlanta, Georgia from Western Pennsylvania, I was well aware of the music of The Allman Brothers Band and their growing legacy. Consequently, I was keenly aware of the legendary Twiggs Lyndon. From a far I admired Twiggs loyalty to The Allman Brothers Band. His devotion and involvement in the Bands success are paramount to the historical accomplishments of The Allman Brothers Band. While the Allman Brothers Band were in hiatus (disbanded), Twiggs was living at the Dixie Dregs house in Decatur, Georgia while working with them on tour. Gregg Allman was in flux with his musical career. Gregg Allman unsure of his future agreed to perform a show at the historical “Great Southeast Music Hall in Broadview plaza, a former movie theater in Buckhead, Atlanta. Many great concerts were performed at this venue. It was a big night and a prelude of things to come for Gregg. Gregg Allman lacking in confidence, yes that sounds odd though it was his state of mind at the time. Many of Gregg’s friends and admirers attended this performance. The Night Hawks didn’t need Gregg Allman to fill this small venue nor did they need his talent on stage to pull of one of their many powerful performances. This was a look see to know if this union would, could work for all involved. The night was filled with drama, and who’s who in attendance. Phil Walden, president of Capricorn records attended this show coming in from Macon, Georgia to help Gregg Allman with his confidence and support. I think Phil was there with business on his mind as well. Also, in attendance was Twiggs Lyndon and me. Twiggs was asked by management of the music hall to stand watch at the entrance leading into the musicians lounge, they were short- handed that night. I had just come from a conversation with Phil Walden in the music hall to the outer chamber or half-moon rotunda towards the doorway into the musician’s lounge when I saw Twiggs sitting by the door on a bar stool, highchair. I walked up to him introducing myself, shook his hand, immediately we were friends. It happened like that. I asked Twiggs countless questions about the Allman Brothers Band all through the evening. When the show was over, and it was time to leave, Twiggs stayed behind to meet and talk with Gregg Allman, Phil Walden, and all the musicians including Muddy Waters who was the opening act. As I was walking out, I said to Twiggs, “I have more questions?” Twiggs said, “call me, I’m in the book.” A coupleweeks later I called him and a reciprocal friendship evolved. You have written a book about Twiggs Lyndon and shared some of his memories of working with Little Richard and The Allman Brother Band. Tell us more about the book. I knew I had relevant information/stories and substance about my friendship with Twiggs Lyndon. Also, the sequence of events in my life that led me to move to Atlanta allowing me to eventually meet Twiggs becoming friends. I decided to tell them all in one story/book. While researching dates and facts to insure this was a legitimate account of music history, I noticed fans of the Dixie Dregs were interested in who Twiggs Lyndon the man was beyond his renowned legacy. I was someone off the radar who became intimate with stories Twiggs would tell me and most importantly who he was; to interact with being a confidant and a close friend. Twiggs Lyndon trusted me! Little Richard gave Twiggs his start and introduction to the music industry as he learned the craft of being a “Road Manager” for an elite act such as the comeback tour of Little Richard in 1964. Some of the personal stories Twiggs told me of ABB Band members and his time in jail/mental institution in New York state for stabbing a promoter in Buffalo, New York in April of 1970. I wrote of how Twiggs acquired Duane Allman’s 1959 Les Paul guitar from Gregg Allman and one of my favorite stories of Dickey Bett’s song “Pony Boy.” A true story about an alcoholic uncle of Dickey Betts and his uncle’s horse “Pony Boy.” How to avoid a DUI! Many other profound stories as well including the concert at Watkins Glen in upstate, New York July 28th, 1973. I attended.

Question:

There are several surprising things about events surrounding Twiggs time with The Allman Brothers Band that most people don’t realize. Can you tell us more about these?

One story stands out. How Twiggs was given his freedom being released from the mental institution in the state of New York a result of Twiggs stabbing a corrupt promotor in Buffalo, New York. After a retrial, it was determined Twiggs was temporarily insane at the time of the stabbing of this promoter in New York. Twiggs was moved from a jail cell to the confines of a mental institution. During Twiggs incarceration at the mental institute he met a man who had been in this institution for 30 years for the crime of not speaking. Don’t know what it was that caused this trauma in this man’s life causing him to clam up. I don’t think knew how it was either. Day after day the patients would gather in a social area very much like they did in the movie “One flew over the Coocoos nest.” Twiggs would engage the mute in conversation though Twiggs was the only one doing the talking. This went on day after day for a period of time. Knowing Twiggs, the way I did, it wasn’t improbable to me that Twiggs of all people would get this muted guy out of his shell. The man began to talk again. The staff and those in charge was impressed Twiggs could do what no other professional could accomplish in 30 years. Get this man to talk! They proclaimed Twiggs was not insane and neither was the other guy. Releasing them both back into society. Twiggs had the ability to reach inside someone, touching their soul, the muted man talked. By Christmas of 1972 Twiggs was back in Macon, Ga. Resuming his roll with The Allman Brothers Band, cementing his place in Rock and Roll history.

Question:

I see from the pictures that you have had the opportunity to play one of the most iconic guitars in history. Duane Allman’s Hotlanta guitar. What was that experience like?

Well I wasn’t exactly playing it as much as I was posing with it strapped on me. This was Twiggs Lyndon’s idea, he wanted me for posterity to have a photo of myself holding this precious instrument. It was August 1979 at the Dixie Dregs house were Twiggs resided with all their equipment and Jeff Burkhart his roommate. My sister Lillian and I came over to have a meal with Twiggs and for Lil to meet Twiggs for the first time. Jeff was out on tour with the Dixie Dregs, it was just the three of us. To coincide with Lillian meeting Twiggs. He wanted to make this awesome barbecue Sauce for us. A recipe he and Charlie Daniels had persuaded a barbecue master in Alabama to give them. Twiggs wanted to show it off for me and Lil. During that visit, Lil wanted to take pictures of me and Twiggs in his office. Twiggs decided to take a couple of photos of me with Duane Allman’s 1959 Les Paul. After Lil took the picture of me and Twiggs, he took the two photos of me with the Guitar strapped on. Instructing me what chord he wanted my fingers on. I took one of a promo plaque of The Grateful Dead & The Allman Brothers Band from the two-day concert in Washington, D.C. June of 1973 with my sister Lillian next to the plaque. Sadly, three months later Twiggs passed away in a parachute accident that was suspicious in Duanesburg, New York while touring with The Dixie Dregs. I expounded on this in my book “Remembering Twiggs Lyndon.” We enjoyed the barbeque that August day in 1979. Honored to have had my friendship with the Legendary Twiggs Miller Lyndon, Jr. Forever Young!

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