Conversations with Ken....

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Plexified
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Conversations with Ken....

Post by Plexified »

Hey Amp Garage,
Its been a long time since our Garage talk discussion has revolved around what we have learned from Ken himself. Countless conversations have taken place and we have all learned from speaking with Trainwreck in the lair and on the phone when the urge to dial up the elusive master.
So chime in and tell us what you learned from Ken and lets get the cobwebs off!
I'll be a trooper and just share my time. I Was a shredder back then in the 80's and Malmsteen was my guy , I loved EVH and Holdsworth and Ken was a few blocks away from my Grandma in Colonia New Jersey. My Dad , Charles was a Nuclear Sub guy and Ken was a Navy Electrical Engineer guy at those times. Both motorcycle guys , Ken a BSA man and my dad a Triumph Bonneville guy and they never rode together, yet blocks apart. My uncle Ed involved in the schools and he would always be talking about the kids and the need for gear and I remember him telling me about a guy down the road that helped them out with huge participation towards live gear and stuff. I never knew anything about that unitl later.
Later in life I had a gig at the Kramer guitar factory building guitars. My boss, Paul Deceasar was the artist endorsement liason was building the guitars for the stars , let alone EVH.
It turns out as I got wise to what was going on , Paul was shopping the Asbury Park Press and Star Ledger , Two local newspapers looking for Marshalls for EVH. He was also a good friend of Ken and was bringing the amps to Ken to walk through and tune up . Paul brought the many versions of EVH guitars to Trainwreck during the design process and they both loved the interaction. During these times Ken would give Paul back a Marshall with 6v6 tubes and a wink and a hot tune and a good hundred amps made their way back to EVH. At this time Ken was the first person aside from Paul building the EVH guitars to play Eds guitars! Before tours and recordings and such. It was no big deal for either as they did it constantly.
I write this because their is a huge lineage between the start of Kens amp career and the days where he began to experience the chronic fatigue syndrome. Our friend Thomas Miller, the Bass player from Symphony X shared a very serious relationship regarding the illness (both had the illness) and Tom , Ken and I very much spearheaded organic measures to combat the illness. And Tom and Ken made great strides. Probably bypassing the doctors and keeping him around for as long as possible .
I think its paramount to get these conversations out there as much as we can , because Ken spoke to thousands of musicians and reached a lot of people. My uncle Ed raved about how Kenny helped the kids and when they went on their ways he helped with PA gear and any way he could. He used to have the kids participate in testing and blind music audition tests to see what was the best tuned option for gear and their friends. Ken was reparing stuff while people waited, and some artists were performing that night. It was amazing times visiting Trainwreck. He had a repair while you wait reputation. And not just a get it back in the game thing, but he was a guy who used the crunch to challenge him, and he never let anyone down. If you needed it to happen it happened.
Most do not know aside from his first class Naval electrical engineering training , which was the best in the business education(best in the world) , he went on to working for a local transformer company. Here he had not only the major connections in the field but he was involved in the extreme of the field. He furthered the Knowledge to the extreme here. Most of his transformer designs were not clones. He had specific designs. And to be clear , his design specs were a starting point. When he ordered his iron it was specific. Not give me the spec. It was a now that you have my baseline , here is what I want. SO if you have Trainwreck spec , you are not getting it. He specified what he wanted. Sorry to tell you. M19 grain oriented laminate spec was not what you had TW get. It was probably way off , like M17 NGOSS . Wire too. Spec says one thing , it was done that way for a reason. He called for what he wanted, the spec on the sheet was a call reference to work from , NOT THE SPEC>
Ken had special tools like an ESR meter he built to measure his electrolytics and he had jigs to set up his caps on the osciliscope to find the pos or neg. He orientanted his wire. He placed spec parts by measuring them for effect.
He blatantly stated he tried to teach his close friends and techs to build his amps and resigned to the fact that he could not sell them . So JM is a blashomy that he never approved in advance , plus the artist demos are terrible to justify it.
I can go on for a long while , but this is about a collective , of great assistance Ken offered to all of us . His contributions to helping us far eclipses his own contributions into getting great tone into the hands of greatness. Please write on.....
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Plexified
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Re: Conversations with Ken....

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Photo courtesy or Darko Milosevic stock , Kens handwriting on photo of EVH 1984 Proto build by Paul Deceasare before even Ed played it. In Kens basement.
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Plexified
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Re: Conversations with Ken....

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I'm going to keep on posting so , please add your experiences...

Here you can see an experimental Basswood body shaped by John Cavallo , that has a handcrafted rosewood spacer below a 1959 Seymour Duncan standard 1959. Obvious maple neck and such. Opening 1984 tour axe . Ken tuned Paul Deceasares 1971 50w small box Marshall with #2 groove tubes , German at the time with a matching A cab with 25s on ten all day long and Ed used to beg to buy it. Paul was the Plexi dealer. It was surreal. We also had Norman Brown , a splitting image of Hendrix on hand. And Jeff Wylant. Wylant got picked up at the factory to audition for Ozzy. He got the gig. Another Silverton Music employee that Ken tuned the amps for. Dave Sabo and Scotty Hill from Skid Row, Dave Pulinski , Bob Spec from Zenon and Kieth Scott from Bryan Adams , Hiroshi Yagi , Miami Sound Macnine , Eric Brazillian of the Hooters, BB and the Stingers , Ken Dubman the Marshall Bluesbreaker contest winner and my favorite blues player along with Bernie Brautweiler fro the stingers. Meat...
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Plexified
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Re: Conversations with Ken....

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With Ken Dubmans Guitar Player victory he played a Tele and a Les Paul and they both ripped. Know that Ken set up a Marshall big box 50 with Groove tube El34s running Super Lead Specs into a load into a 1976 Marshall 100 with 6550's slaved. He had the amp set up for weeks playing shows in the Birch Hill and the Playpen and one night it got too hot and the output tubes on the 100 watter just glowed super hot and flashed and sucked in the vacuum tube. Backup ! But man that was cool looking from behind , cherry red , purple , swoosh and suck , I saved those tubes , because they were molten glass remains. FInd that. Never So cool....
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Re: Conversations with Ken....

Post by pompeiisneaks »

Thanks so much for sharing this history! It's super cool to know about the origins of all this madness :) ( or at least this new wave of amp builders, post Leo Fender, Jim Marshall and Dick Denney)

~Phil
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Plexified
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Re: Conversations with Ken....

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When Ed was coming to the Kramer factory it was funny , because they sent out for a carton of Marlboro Red and a case of Wild Turkey 100. That was a churning time where the Kramer vault( a huge pile of cases upon cases of guitars stacked) would be broken out. Of all things at the time a Laney Half stack was fired up and the real Frankenstein took the operating table. The Ripley in basswood was the main player bout then and it was a maple neck Bartolini hexagon pickup deal where they rigged up the stereo or the beginings of wet dry with a Mesa combo courtesy of Ed Heller , the quality control master gentleman and they did the first wet rig. He used the Eventide harmonizer and a clear 10 second delay with the +/- chorus that led to his late sounds . It had the L/R detune that was famous. It was the Ripley. Took a single string left or right , was insane to hear for the first time.
Crazy to never hear much about the Marshalls. I knew the endorsement thing was taking stage as no shortage of Marshalls existed. It was the beginning of endorsement testing for sure.
Ken was designing really pretty clean sounds at the same time from what I can remember. He always had a Vox 2X12 that sounded so pretty and he insisted that his tools stay constant. It was that Vox with a bottom board with an open top and a 20 foot lamp chord cable or a 20' vaccum chord cable to add what he said was character. The Marshall cab was in and out , but he really insisted on that V4 with Celestions. It had the insulation taken out and I remember the difference . With the insulation it was tighter and bigger bottom , but without it it was like a 3-D midrange blurr that took place. I have the same cab and set up and its strange. Its a midrange blurr that takes place at pant leg distance and 'emmits' from the cab. I will post a breakdown of the cab and pics of the construction. Its a cab with a 2x6 inch billet x brace inside a total dovetail seal. Its a massive cab and sounds un matched.
I guess the best take away here is that he had the best of open back and closed back that he tuned with. He also had a stock Tele and a stock LP and that was his own ears. Both had Lindy Fralin wound pickups. Mostly a burnished wound nickel wrap strings too. All with a George L chord.
That stuff is important , He used that chord the same polarity as he did the wire he used to design. So polarity was critical to him.
I'll break here.
Bob S
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Re: Conversations with Ken....

Post by Bob S »

Thanks so much for sharing. There's some new (to me) info there.
Asides from the genius, it's the caring / giving nature of Ken that is evident in the recollections of those who were lucky enough to know him.
Why Aye Man
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