Lindley Tone-Homing In on #8

[David Root]

I know a lot of you are as hung up on Running on Empty etc. as I am. In another thread discussing two of Lindley's amps which are up for sale, Lindley says that he never let HAD mess with #8 because it had an unforgettable "vocal" quality to it. I also know that we are talking lap steels not six string guitars here, but.....

I looked up some stuff on the singing voice and found that professional singers can train themselves to project a so-called "formant" or harmonic on a fundamental, by use of the larynx and pharynx muscles, and that mostly this occurs in the 2K5 to 3K frequency range. Since each individual singer's larynx, vocal chords, chest cavity, bone structure etc are different each singer's formant is different.

It is also true that the human ear is especially tuned to frequencies around 2-3K because that is where babies' cries predominate.

Just wondering A) if this makes sense to anyone and B) could this effect in #8 somehow account for some/all of the vocal tone that Lindley heard in #8, and C) has there been any analytical work done on #8, pix etc.?

Somehow I don't think it can be quite that simple, but I have noticed that effect in a couple of my amps when tweaking tone/gain structure, not to the extent of #8 but enough to recognize "that has a vocal quality". Unforunately these "sweet spots"can be elusive.

[Structo]

I can't help you with the tone questions but why would David sell his Dumbles?
Is he retired or ill?

[Funkalicousgroove]

Likes the idea of $200K vs a snakeskin box! Mr. Dave is playing acoustic shows featuring the oud and saz these days-

BTW Ben Harper bought one of them.

[dr. who]

Did Dave try the snakeskin bludo...did that have anything to do with his decision to sell the dumble?

[Funkalicousgroove]

I'd send it to him tomorrow if i knew how to get him on the phone, no luck with my sources

[bluesy]

.....I'm not a builder but have been lurking here forever; and that "vocal" thing really hits home with me. I view (hear) it as a "vowel" sound--notes have an "oooh" or an "aah" sound to them. Not all of them--just when you least expect it. Sometimes it get out of a recent Bassman RI. Sometimes I don't. You guys that build seem to have that thing going on to varying degrees in your amps. What causes this and who can mod my Bassman into
"vowelly" D?

Happy New Year!
________
P

[ER]

The whole Jackson Browne thing for me is what I consider the dumble sound (we don't need no stinking grail), I don't even care much for Stevie Ray's SSS tone when compared to Texas Flood with JB's amp. Something was lost in the move from Santa Cruz to LA.

Formants happen in normal speech not just the singing voice, it's what makes an ahhh instead of an ooooh. I'll find out some more on the electrical qualities that form these relationships tonight when I hang out with my buddy who spent a few months designing a speech application for his last chip design. It is a harmonic relationship not something simple filters will replicate but there may be some things you can do to encourage/tweak it.

In the meantime don't forgot your handy dandy Supro string-through pick-up, you can't keep "running on" without it. I think Lollar is making these now. [img:640:480]http://www.apollonmusic.com/cooder/imag ... rearpu.JPG[/img]
Kimock (who will tell you everything he does is to sound like Lindley)thinks this is the key and he has two dumbles, a two rock signature model, but more often than not slaves out a little single ended dearmond RT5 to find what he's looking for (I built one, and that 7-pin 6x4 rectifier is the closest thing to a built in compressor I've heard, easy first build and highly reccomended).

Also a biggie is the speaker you use, look at most guitar speaker response graphs, most all have different peaks and spikes right in this 2-3 kHz zone. I think you need a california speaker to go with your california amp.

Number 8 was supposed to sound like a bigger version of Mr. Dave's cranked tweed deluxe, that may be a good starting place for a tonal reference.

[David Root]

That's right, I had forgotten about that!

Talking of Jason Lollar, I was in his shop on Vachon Island several years ago when he was developing his horseshoe pickup. He played one briefly thru a '71 SF Twin, just about blew my head off. Incredible tone, and super loud!. I used to build a lot of pickups myself for a while, then I discovered amplifiers.......!

Someone also mentioned the short scale on lapsteels as having something to do with their tone, as well as the odd pickups.

ER, looking forward to hearing what your pal has to say.

[dr. who]

I'd send it to him tomorrow if i knew how to get him on the phone, no luck with my sources

I saw this on his website and thought that you may want to link him to the clips of the alligator amp you made.
Email Mr. Dave
lintfree@davidlindley.com

[David Root]

Quote by ER: Number 8 was supposed to sound like a bigger version of Mr. Dave's cranked tweed deluxe, that may be a good starting place for a tonal reference.

Thank you, for that and the 6X4 notes.

Years ago I built a tweed Harvard circuit using all 7-pin tubes, including of course the 6X4, except I used two in parallel. Still have it, still sounds great, cheapo Chinese Xicon CFs and all. I built it to prove you could build a good sounding amp that could be completely retubed with NOS RCA tubes for $30! (Please note this was the first amp I built, my wiring /soldering/layout has improved greatly since then!).

[hairyandy]

Likes the idea of $200K vs a snakeskin box! Mr. Dave is playing acoustic shows featuring the oud and saz these days-

BTW Ben Harper bought one of them.

Ben has the Lindley ODS that was covered in orangeish-brown-velvety-suede. He told me it was the one that was used on "Running On Empty", he said that's what Lindley told him. Ben also told me himself almost exactly a year ago that he was selling it: $80,000 if you want that tone! Waaaaayyyy too rich for my blood!

Andy

[ER]

Had an interesting discussion on formants etc. last night with my friend Chip, a self taught computer chip designer who is into audio stuff too.

This is kind of a long post...

We had talked about this stuff before, he made a simple programable speech generator by analyzing harmonic content of speech and formant paterns, I never thought about using the technology to look at guitar tones until Mr. Root brought it up.

We used a "fast Fourrier transform" program he wrote to create some spectographs of a couple different guitar parts and looked at the harmonic content and relative sound densities. The first was David Lindley playing slide (Dr. my eyes, live in maryland off you tube), we focused on a note where his amp was doing something special, with a fundamental of 387 Hz (do a google seach on 387 hz; "For the five transition vowels, the average vowel-onset formant frequencies were 387 Hz for F1, 1220 Hz for F2, and 2319 Hz for F3, and the average offset frequencies were 387 Hz for F1, 827 Hz for F2, and 2442 Hz for F3." from a studie on speech) there was noticable exitation of all the harmonics but especially around 2734 Hz. Also interesting was that there was almost nothing going on above 4500 Hz or so.

Next we looked at Peter Lerche's ods clip on you tube, this was a much easier clip to deal with and it showed a lot of the same patterns as the Lindley clip, doing it's thing with a fundamental just under 400Hz and noticeable exitation at 2540 and 2150Hz.. With the more isolated recording we also started seeing distinct "notches" in the response, which according to my friend is where you start seeing differences in vowel and sound distinction which he demonstrated be quickly recording FFFFF, SSSS, and SSHHHHH which all showed up as white noise with different "notches".

He's going to give me a copy of the "forward Fourier transform" program he wrote so I can mess around with this some more and record some more isolated parts to get a better idea of what is going on here.

In the meantime I've attached a paper he wrote describing the process he used to synthesize these paterns into speech for his chip design for those that would like to learn more.

David, if those 6x4's are in parrallel try pulling one out! I also went 7 pin with a 6005/6aq5 instead of 6v6 on my SE amp to get more of the "small bottle" chime thing going.

In the future I'm looking at using one of Chip's Chips as midi switching proccessor to trigger relays on OD and PAB with a TC electronics G-major in a stereo loop....

Well that's enough for now.

-ER

[59Pro]

Ben has the Lindley ODS that was covered in orangeish-brown-velvety-suede. He told me it was the one that was used on "Running On Empty", he said that's what Lindley told him.

Ben interviewed David for The Fretboard Journal and during the interview David told him that he used Dumble #2 on Running On Empty. Both Dumble's, #2 & #8, are covered with snake-skin tolex.

[Structo]

So those were actually the second and eighth amps that Dumble built?

[David Root]

Now I'm confused. I thought #2 was the orange snakeskin (orange light)and #8 the silver snakeskin (Blue Light).

So Lindley used #2 orange light on Running on Empty, OR the orange/brown suede one that Ben Harper bought, but #8 is the one with the vocal quality that Lindley liked so much. Is that correct?

And both are 50W heads, right?