TWANG  BANG BOOM AND  ZOOM by GEOFF G. CHEW

THE  KIT 

This is not meant to be a definitive guide to the kit that was available to us in the 50’s and 60’s rather a recollection of the equipment I knew and aspired to.

The year was 1957 when I watched the flickering black and white images of Elvis Presley performing “All Shook Up” on our TV set, an experience that left an indelible impression on me, both visually and musically.

Shortly afterwards I saw an advert in Exchange & Mart extolling the benefits of owning a ‘Tommy Steele’ guitar and so it was in the fullness of time ( it seemed like an age ) the afore-mentioned guitar fell into my eager hands.

What a disappointment! It was half the expected size and, horror of horrors, manufactured from plastic and virtually impossible to tune. If this was not bad enough worse was to follow.

Unknown to me, after I retired to bed, my dad had decided to try his hand at playing the instrument and, giving up in frustration – as I had, had leant the guitar against the sofa and in front of the storage heater.

In the morning I found to my dismay that the heat had warped the neck to the extent that the strings now stood proud of the fingerboard by about an inch, rendering the guitar unplayable. Even the Tommy Steele motif had slid out of place!

Fortunately, on hearing my tale of woe our next door neighbour presented me with a banjo, admittedly without a resonator and only four of its five strings intact, but at least it gave me an opportunity to learn the rudiments of “Peter Gunn” on it.

This continued until I finally saved enough money from birthdays and Christmases to purchase my first electric guitar in late 1959. This was a £12 Zenith from R.S.Kitchen in Leeds, with a Hofner pick-up attached to the base of its fingerboard. The jack lead was hard-wired and was only 6inch, which meant there was no way I could escape from the amplifier.

Through financial necessity the amplifier was home-made, courtesy of the school boffin – one George Herbert Christopher Peters by name- who, between swatting for his exams, had his head firmly wedged between the pages of Practical Wireless magazine. On completion he informed me that the amp was based on a push-pull Baxendall circuit – a fact I long suspected!

The need to house the wizardry in a cabinet was answered by gutting one of my dad’s old radio sets and screwing in a new 10” speaker, which seemed huge at the time, topped off by a smart new brass handle and the transformation was complete- not exactly magnificent, but at least my attempts at instrumental solos on the likes of The Ramrods “Riders in the Sky” and “The Packabeats”Gypsy Beat” could now be heard above the rhythm accompaniment supplied by my eager colleagues.

Before long I felt the need for an amplifier with a more visual appeal, increased volume and a tremelo unit. This took the form of a Watkins Westminster in blue and beige and was quickly followed by a more efficient guitar. Limited financially, but desperate for a solid model, I bought a Hofner V3 with Bigsby tremelo arm.

As my band, “The Senators” grew in stature and the occasional gigs became more frequent, my savings increased accordingly. This enabled me at last to fulfil my dream of owning a salmon pink Fender Stratocaster “a la Hank Marvin” plus the obligatory VOX AC 30 amplifier.

Later, as the musical styles changed and ‘The Shadows’ lost their appeal, my salmon pink Strat’ was superseded by versions in white and then pale blue, before I eventually opted for a cherry red Gibson ES 335.

GUITARS:

The early skiffle-style Spanish guitars, with their plywood bodies, tail-piece and steel strings hovering over a substandard action, produced a thin sound totally at odds with the vibrant music they claimed to represent. The only alternatives were the more expensive cello-style arch-topped guitars with spotted ‘f’ sound holes. Owners quickly added pick-ups, prompting manufacturers to incorporate either one or two pick-ups with integral volume and tone controls to their range of guitars. These included Hofner, Levin, and US firms Gibson, Gretch, Guild and Epiphone.

More expensive than these were the semi-acoustic electric guitars which even out-priced their counterpart solids. Most popular were the Gibson ES 330 and the 335 (345 and 355 stereo models). They also provided a host of jazz-based models too numerous to mention. Gretch touted their Tennessean, Country Gent, Anniversary (mint green) and their flagship White Falcon. Guild, promoted their Starfire model.

The alternative on offer to the less affluent was the Hofner range starting from £11 with the Congress, Senator, President, Committee and their 335 look-alike “Verithin”.

For the wealthy, strictly purist acoustic guitarist could invest in the likes of Martin, Taylor, Ovation and the later Yamaha and Takemini . Harmony listed some semi-acoustic models such as the Meteor, Rocket and the Silvertone. Kay, National and Dobro were also held in high regards by those who preferred to go un-plugged.

Solid bodied guitars grew in popularity, enabling cheaper variants from £22 and upwards to become available, bearing names such as Futurama, Colourama, Framus, Fenton Weill, Vox (pre Phantom models), Rosetti and Echo.

Needless to say everyone aspired to the more expensive Burns Black Bison and Sonic models, but above all others they desired the US Fender Stratocaster – price 164 guineas or its stable mates the Telecaster the Jaguar and the Jazzmaster. Rickenbacker produced a range of solids and semi-acoustics to set pulses racing  

Fender’s main US rival, Gibson, produced solid bodied guitars such as the S.G, Junior, Standard and the Special. Its Les Paul range, priced in excess of £200,offered the Studio, Standard, and the Custom models complete with their Humbucker with two of three pick-up variations.

I owned a three pick-up model but it failed to produce the Hank Marvin sound I craved for so it went back. In retrospect not one of my best transactions! Other contemporary models with more unusual design features were produced by firms such as Danelectro and Travis Bean.

With the advance of technology a demand for new sounds increased and before long the guitars were augmented by an assortment of gadgets. The basic Echo and Reverb units were joined by Treble-Boost, Fuzz boxes, Wah-Wah and Overdrive pedals. 

BASS GUITARS:

The precursor of the electric bass was obviously the cumbersome Double Bass, followed for economic reasons by the tea-chest bass when Skiffle became popular. With the advent of the electric guitar and amplifiers a louder bass sound became necessary, hence the birth of the electric bass guitar.

Leo Fender was at the forefront of its inception, designing the Precision Bass – a single pick-up instrument with one volume and one tone control. He also produced a bass version of the Telecaster, both soon followed by the Jazz bass. This model featured an off-set body shape which improved the balance when hanging from a shoulder strap, plus a neck that narrowed more significantly toward the head. Another concept involved its two pick-ups, two volume controls and one master tone control which gave it a more versatile to all range than its predecessors. A less popular Fender model was the Duosonic Music Master 6 string bass.

Gibson’s offering was the EB2 and Epiphone Rivoli semi-acoustic bass guitars along with Rickenbacker’s very expensive solid bodied stereo-wired bass. All the above were well out of the price range of most aspiring young bass players, who opted instead for the more modestly priced Vox and Futurama solid bass guitars. The better Burns Nu-Sonic was also to prove popular. Hofner had a unique design in the shape of their ‘violin-bass’, as used by Paul McCartney. Unfortunately these designs needed larger amplifiers and speakers to handle the depth of sound; however with the ground-breaking transistor amplifiers with their improved treble the balance was soon redressed.

AMPLIFIERS:

How to maximize the sound of our guitars depended on the degree of amplification, the more powerful the better!

The earliest models came via Selmer-Truvoice with their valve amps. The basic Little Giant, retailing at £14 led to the larger treble and bass 50watt heads with separate cabinets to hold the  Goliath 18” speaker. Watkins offered a range of less powerful but nevertheless exotic models, whilst Bird was one of the first companies to supply large amps with built in reverberation units.

Rated higher than these, were products made by Jenning Musical Industries. The Vox AC30 twin range of valve amplifiers were much sought after, followed later by the Beatles endorsed 50/100 watt solid State transistor amplifier heads. Seeking a slice of this lucrative market Fender soon began importing their own amplifiers, also valve-based based but unlike their UK rivals these emitted a ‘cleaner’ sound.

The majority of the amplifiers I have mentioned generated an output of between 30 to 100 watts. By the mid-sixties Marshall, Sound City, Park, Matt (later to become Orange) and WEM) formerly Watkins) were producing powerful 100 watt models and became brand leaders.

MICROPHONES:

In the late 50’s and early 60’s vocalists often plugged their mics into one of the guitarists amplifiers, sometimes enhanced with the echo effect engaged. The early mics were often the Grampian moving coil variety which tended to sound very ‘trebly’, but these were soon superseded by the Reslo ribbon-type mics, closely followed by Shure, Beyer, Telefunken, Calvec and Sennheiser.

ECHO UNITS:

The earliest ‘echo chambers’ were the Selmer-Truvoice upright model and the more flexible Watkins Copycat, both which employed a replaceable endless tape-loop, later to be eclipsed by the sophisticated Dynachord Echolette, Shaller and the Vox Cliff Richard Reverb echo units. Top of the range were the disc styled Baby Binson and the larger Echorett II models.

DRUMS:

The first basic kits catering for the ‘modern’ sound came from manufacturers such as Gigster, Broadway, Olympic, John Grey Autocrat along with the British brand leader Premier. Premier didn’t have the prestige of the more expensive US makes like Ludwig, Slingerland, Gretsch, Ledi and Rogers, the innovative stainless steel shells of the (French) Asba kits. German manufactures produced Trixon and Sonor.

Early cymbals were made of purely turned brass-coloured tin-and sounded like it. Other makes were the Zyn and the even better Super Zyn, but if you wanted the best then the Turkish hand-finished Zildjan or the Swiss Paiste cymbals.

KEYBOARDS:

After the purely guitar-based groups came the piano combo’s – logistically a very difficult instrument to transport, so the only alternative was to look for venues that had a piano, but these were few and far between, but this opened up an opportunity for the portable electronic organs and keyboards such as the Vox Continental, Italian Farfisa, the Bird Duplex and Wurlitzer organs, plus the Hohner Pianette and the ‘classic’ Fender Rhodes piano.

If you wanted an organ and could cope with the size, weight and transportation the Hammond, with its separate speaker cabinet was the one to have. The cabinet house a Lesley Rotary speaker giving it that unique sound. For the less well-off you could have a Hofner Bandmaster harmonica!

Transportation of all this kit invariably meant relying on parents or friends with vehicles and on many occasions public transport, but many bands resorted to hire-purchase to obtain a van such as a Commer, Bedford or Ford Thames 15cwt.Many of which can be seen throughout this book.

I well remember an experience with my own band ‘The Senators’ when we had to resort to the bus. The venue was Burley Miniature Rifle and Social Club and this entailed us and our equipment hiding behind a wall next to the bus stop. One of the guys held his hand out for the oncoming bus to stop and when it stopped the rest of the band with all the equipment piled onto the bus, much to the annoyance of the conductor and driver. Without such tactics the bus would otherwise have swept by in total disdain! 

Geoff Chew (b1945-) Lead guitar, bass guitar and drums, was born and lived in Otley and attended Ilkley Grammar School and later Harrogate Art College culminating at Becketts Park Training College, before taking up a position in the teaching profession.

Geoff was only sixteen when he formed ‘The Senators’ and was already a gifted guitarist who later became a prolific bass guitarist and drummer. Following his time with ‘The Senators’, he was with ‘The Ladykillers’, ‘Tarantulas’ and ‘Moldy Warp’.  In the meantime during his professional show business life Geoff became a teacher at Seacroft Middle School as Head of Art and Music and introducing ‘POP’ music into the curriculum.

Later he would be a member of ‘Hi-Fly’, ‘Broughton Blues Band’ and ‘Brass Tacks’. In 1991 ‘Moldy Warp’ after a long hibernation re-emerged sporting a nucleus of original members, including Geoff.  Geoff is a well respected music teacher with his ‘Rock Music School’. For over twenty years he has taught lead and bass Guitar plus drums to over 500 pupils aged between seven and seventy hoping to pass on his fifty years of experience giving them the opportunity to have as much ‘fun’ and enjoyment as he has had performing music.

Whilst the overused phrase A to Z comes to mind, it is fair to say, in this case, it does refer to Geoff Chew as one of the few whose music ability and knowledge is A to Z.  Geoff now lives in Burley in Wharfedale in retirement with his wife Linda.