hit parader article

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Thank you again Stuart!

Article from Hit Parader magazine:
Jimi uses six Marshall cabinets with four twelveinch speakers in each one and two onehundred watt Marshall amplifiers coupled together with split lead wires. He's also got eight spare Marshall amplifiers which travel with us wherever we go. On the road, I also carry ten guitars for Jimi. There's six Fender Stratocasters, two Gibsons and two others which he chooses from his large collection. It's necessary because equipment is always breaking down or stolen. He had a brand new white Fender that he loved, but it was stolen on the West Coast.
Of course, he has lots of other stuff like fuzz boxes and wah wah pedals. His favorite fuzz box is made by Arbiter in England and the wah wah pedal is made by Vox. They run through both amplifiers and when he presses on one of those it acts like a preamp and boosts the power tremendously. That's how he gets really high feedback
Jimi is the master of feedback. He plays both his amplifiers full up at volume ten and he turns down on his guitar. When he wants feedback, he turns the guitar up and presses down on the wah wah pedal and the fuzz.
I have a cord coming from the amplifier into the fuzz box, another cord from the fuzz box into the wah wah and a cord from the wah wah into the guitar. If he suddenly stops playing, I have to figure out which cord went, or which amp, or fuzz or wah wah. It gets rather complicated.
There are many problems. I have to change speakers after every show. Jimi destroys at least two whenever he plays. I have sixteen spare speakers. When he smashes them, I put in the spares and send the broken ones back to New York to get reconed.

Then there's the wah wah pedal. Most people just touch it with their foot. Jimi jumps on it with his full weight so I carry about three extra wah wah pedals and ten extra fuzz boxes. I've also got machine heads, pickups and every spare part that could go wrong with a guitar. If Jimi ever puts gasoline on a guitar and sets it on fire then I throw the guitar away if it's not repairable. He ruins a lot of tremolo bars too. He bends the strings with the bars and they get bent way past the distortion level. That starts the feedback. He doesn't have to touch a string if he bends that bar. The pickups in the guitar amplify all the strings bending. That's how he gets that terrifying roar. At the same time he plays the bottom strings and gets really high feedback. Sometimes he rips it right off the guitar so I carry a lot of them. Very often his guitar has to be stripped right down and built up again.
He couldn't get all those sounds if he played at a normal volume. I think I've gone deaf from standing near the cabinets and I'm going home to Scotland for two weeks to see if my hearing comes back to normal.
I have to arrive at least four hours before every show to set things up. I have to hire a truck for each show to put all the equipment in and keep all the spare parts handy. I've probably got the best tools and repair facilities any road manager ever had. It's taken me years to get everything together and just now I've got everything I need. It's taken years to get a system down too.

Straight after a concert I get to the airport and park all the equipment, get four hours sleep if possible, get the first plane out, hire a truck at the next town, pick up the equipment, take it to the concert, set it up, test everything out, make repairs if necessary. It gets a bit hairy.
I can never leave the group. I must be present at all times, even at recording sessions in case something goes wrong. Recording sessions go much more smoothly. In the studio, I set them up just like in concert. Everything is turned full up.

I used to carry a P.A. system but it got to be too much to handle so we hired P. A.'s for each gig. We use Altec stuff for the P. A.'s and I carry our own Shure mikes.
Many times I'll get to a concert and the equipment hasn't arrived yet but it all works out. We've never missed a concert. We've been late a few times, but we never cancelled out.
Then there's Mitch the drummer. I use two twohundred watt Sunn amplifiers for him and four Sunn speaker cabinets
For Noel I use two brand new Sunn twohundred watters and seven Sunn cabinets. Sunn has the best bass sound I've ever heard. Noel uses Altec fifteen inch speakers and they carry very well. The cabinet is constructed to take heavy music and tough wear on the road.

For me, tube amplifiers are the best. When transistor equipment breaks downs I have to test a bunch of circuits or send it back to the factory. I can repair tube equipment quickly.
Jimi's equipment has the most breakdowns. The biggest problem is strings breaking. I'm always ready with a new fully stringed guitar. We've done many shows though where there were no breakdowns at all. I never have trouble with Noel's equipment but Mitch breaks alot of bass drum pedals. He very seldom breaks the drum skins. He really knows how to play drums, where the sticks should land so he won't break through.
Jimi also burns up a lot of tubes because of the great volume. When a tube burns out, the volume starts to drop. If he's into something and his volume drops, he gets extremely annoyed. " Fix it," he yells.
He curses me out sometimes and I work faster than fast to repair the breakdown. After the show though, Jimi always apologizes for getting angry and we sit and talk about the trouble and figure out a way to fix it so it won't happen again. Many times I've threatened to quit him but he's so nice I stay. I wish I had time to experiment, but when we're doing a show every night, it's a hassle just to ship the equipment around.

There are many outside problems too. Like a recent concert we played at Woolsey Hall in New Haven. The whole place was wired for D.C. and anpIifiers are A.C. We had to find power a mile away on the Yale campus and the only wires that long were very thin. We need two heavy wires that can take twenty amps, one for Jimi and one for Mitch and Noel. But these thin wires couldn't take the power so as soon as they began to play all the fuses blew. All the equipment went, so we had to set up new equipment and run two heavier wires. Then, the hall was so huge that there was too much echo and the microphones couldn't be heard.
One night he burned out four amplifiers. You see his amplifiers are turned full up and pushing what they're supposed to, but then all the speakers are pushing plus the fuzz and the wah wah, so there's often more power than the amplifiers can take.
We've ordered some new Marshall equipment for Jimi. I've told them what goes wrong, and they're building new stuff to compensate plus he wants a lot more treble.
Jimi hired me on my reputation. I'd been workng in England for five years before with groups like the Nice, the Koobas - a group I did the Beatle tour with, the Alan Bown. I just picked up the experience by working with equipment.
When the group breaks up, Mitch, Noel and myself have plans to go into management and record production. I must say, it has all been quite an experience.

- eric & jim