SILVERTONES & FENDERS
It's all about the sound, you see: slice & tear, bluster & rage, Silvertone and Fender.
My main guitar for years has been a '79 Fender Telecaster with active BMG pickups (attractive at time of purchase given the band's history of minor electrical accidents) and an ebony fingerboard. I'm not sure what kind of wood they used that year, but the damn thing sure is heavy. Tony has a turquoise lefty Stratocaster with some cool (and color co-coordinated!) stickers. For me, the Tele meets the minimum requirements: namely, it plays well and is as indestructible as a guitar made of wood can be . . . but beyond that, the guitar sounds wonderful: trademark Tele slice & twang, though the combination of the wood, fingerboard, and pickups combine for a darker, throatier sound than the average Tele. When your playing days are spent with the glorious mess that is The Belgian Waffles!, the slice of the Tele sure comes in handy, and this particular guitar is capable of clean sound that is crystalline without being fragile. The Tele was the most dangerous sword in the fight.
At first, I was playing the Tele through an early silver-face Fender Twin hopped up with heavy-duty Cerwin Vega speakers. Talk about gorgeous . . . but, even though that has to be my favorite all-time amp and guitar combo sound, it also happens to be a rock & country archetype, and I wasn't ready to deal with the history.
My first guitar was a Silvertone nicknamed "the chainsaw" for the roar it produced when run through a MXR Distortion + box. It was an oddball; three-quarter scale with a Danelectro lipstick tube pickup in the neck position, but it was a solid-body with a weird shape, and I've not seen one like it since. After I destroyed the guitar, I pulled the pickup and traded it to Gabe Savedra for an Epiphone single coil pickup, a MXR chorus box, and a small Harmony practice amp. For a while, I ran my guitar and effects through the Harmony and then piggy-backed it through the Twin to get a looser, more spread-out roar. It worked well until I blew up the Harmony. Gabe, for his part, put the lipstick tube on his early '70's Epiphone electric (out of the same series that Dennis Tek played with Radio Birdman), and it really helped add juice to the guitar.
The first real amp I bought was a Silvertone Twin Twelve, one of those wonderful late '50's/early '60's amps with two twelve-inch Jensen speakers and a separate two-channel 35 watt head hard-wired to the speaker. And, the head could be stashed in the bottom of the cabinet to make for easy hauling! These Silvertone amps are, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful sounding amps ever made: when played clean at low volume, they had the sound of a (admittedly bargain-basement) Fender . . . but, turn it up, open up the valves, and it had the cry of soul, a saber-toothed high end full of over and undertones, a sound that made you think the amp was human & from Mississippi. Plus, it made the richest feedback sounds you could ever coax from an amp, and that was pretty much the core of my guitar style at the time.
Just before I got the Tele, I was playing a Silvertone guitar (my second one; a more traditional single-pickup three-quarter scale Danelectro model), through the Twin Twelve. I managed to blow up the Twin Twelve very soon thereafter, which led to the acquisition of the Twin. After a stretch of time, I managed to blow up the Twin as well, so I switched to a Silvertone Two Twelve, which was a smaller, older, dirtier combo version of the Twin Twelve. I blew that one on stage at the Czar Bar in Chicago, at a show we did with the Flying Luttenbachers. When I got home, I found a non-functional Twin Twelve head in a pawnshop, bought it for $20, pulled the transformer out of it and got my original Twin Twelve working again (it was always the transformer on the Silvertones). I managed to make that amp work for several more wonderful years, until eventually I managed to blow it again in practice after I had moved to Louisville. Unable to easily find another transformer for the Silvertone, I replaced it with a Fender Bassman head, which I play through the Silvertone cabinet or a Musicman two-twelve half-stack, as the size of the room dictates. As I write this, the Tele has fallen into disrepair, and I run a Silvertone guitar through the Bassman for shows, or a small Danelectro amp for practice.
The Silvertone amps always responded well to distortion boxes: the hot input really pushed, and the amps really roared. Though I've used Rat distortion boxes for years, I was always partial to the jagged tear of the MXR Distortion +. With either of these boxes, the Silvertones are rich, controllable feedback machines . . . I think it has something to do with the transformers, since that is what I always seemed to be blowing up, and since the amps always seemed to sound the best right before they blew: a little louder, a little crazier, a little more desperate. The Silvertone guitars, too, are ultimate feedback machines, with the lipstick tube pickups and hollow chambers in their fiberboard bodies.
Interestingly, I think that Fenders and Silvertones work best in combination with each other: the Twin Twelve amps added character to the pure Telecaster sound (as well as feedback flexibility), and the Fender amps help tighten up the sound of the slightly muddy three quarter scale Silvertone guitars. As for the rig I play now, I think the Silvertone cabinet spreads out the Bassman sound well (sonically, not spatially, since that Silvertone cabinet has a straight throw that creates a wicked sound tunnel), although the Bassman is much darker than a Twin to begin with.
In my entire musical career, I have bought three Silvertone guitars, the Tele, two Twin Twelves, the Two Twelve, the Twin, and the Bassman with the Musicman bottom. That entire mess cost me $1565. I wouldn't trade half of it for triple the price.
[Bill]
