Casady's sunburst Starfire isolated live recording TONE!!!!

mellowgerman

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Monstrous tone and some fantastic playing. "Somebody To Love" live from Winterland, 10/25/1969. Casady's second Guild Starfire bass, modified by the Alembic team, most likely running through his Versatone Panoflex amp. This was also the bass said to have been put together in a hurry when his original, more ornate Alembicized Starfire bass was stolen shortly after woodstock. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bKsCOD32Tk
 

mellowgerman

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My pleasure! I was driving in my car this morning, listening to this show, and noticed that this whole part of the mix was on the right channel and everything else was in the left. So naturally I had to take the recording, split the stereo tracks, and oust the left channel stuff. It was too exciting to keep to myself :D
Also, Somebody To Love was not necessarily the best song of the set, not by a long shot, but it was the first song they played that night and you can actually hear the bass being turned way down in the mix during the Young Girl Sunday Blues, which was the second song of the set. So I picked this song to doctor up because it had the most pronounced, out-front bass presence.
 
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mavuser

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Heavy sesh. Thanks for posting.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems Jack had 2 Alembic modded Guild Starfire basses, both of which retained the original Bisonic pickups? ...and Phil Lesh (still) has one Alembic modded Guild Starfire bass which does not have factory original Guild or Hagstrom pickups? Have to say all of them (including an Un-modded original Guild SF bass) sound pretty sweet to me!
 

mellowgerman

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Yup, as far as I know he only had two Alembicized Starfires. Both had bisonics, but I think the coils were rewound to low impedance (in at least one of the two basses). After the Starfires came the straight Alembic #1 bass. That modified sunburst Starfire is now on display in the R&R Hall of Fame. I feel like I remember reading somewhere that Jack also had an unmodified Starfire in his collection, but I'm not sure where I read it, when he got it, or if he ever used it live or on any recordings, etc. etc.
 

mavuser

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I feel like I remember reading somewhere that Jack also had an unmodified Starfire in his collection, but I'm not sure where I read it, when he got it, or if he ever used it live or on any recordings, etc. etc.

ditto. we both probably read that here. "the one he keeps at his house." i think. mgod knows all, pretty sure
 

twocorgis

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Yup, as far as I know he only had two Alembicized Starfires. Both had bisonics, but I think the coils were rewound to low impedance (in at least one of the two basses). After the Starfires came the straight Alembic #1 bass. That modified sunburst Starfire is now on display in the R&R Hall of Fame. I feel like I remember reading somewhere that Jack also had an unmodified Starfire in his collection, but I'm not sure where I read it, when he got it, or if he ever used it live or on any recordings, etc. etc.

Thanks for sharing Ingo! And thanks for sharing an actual reason to want to go to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, too.
 

twocorgis

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Great! Now I don't have to go.
icon_cool.gif
 

ric426

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I have to chuckle when I look at that bass. It was a sonic monster in JC's hands (but then I imagine any bass would be), but they didn't waste any time on cosmetics. The galvanized steel plate says it all. Definitely function over form. Gotta respect that.
I wonder if Guild is contemplating a replica model. :nevreness:

I noticed that the bridge pickup is so close to the bridge they actually overlap a bit. Don't think I've seen that before, but I haven't had much experience with vintage Starfires. With the bridge pickup flipped it must have had some serious bite. Is that pickup orientation standard on some vintage Starfires?
 
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mellowgerman

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There was always a little bit of overlap of the bridge and the bridge pickup with the 60s-70s harp style bridge.
When I had my JS-2 bass I played around with the bisonic pole orientation of both pickups and found that flipping them around gave almost an inch of difference in the position of the pole placement, so the tone was notably different, especially when blending the two pickups together. I found that I liked the original factory orientation best. The tone was just bigger to my ears. But then I've never really liked pickups super close to the bridge. I've never heard of any starfires leaving the factory with either pickup oriented toward the bridge like that, though it certainly seems possible that it could have accidentally happened. Maybe Hans would know more on the topic?
In any case, it's important to consider that the alembic superfilters make blending the pickups a whole different game, so having the bridge pickup flipped in that context would probably yield a different kind of tonal flexibility. I noticed in the photo that I used for the youtube clip, it looks like Jack had both pickups flipped toward the bridge. Then when you look at the R&R Hall of Fame photo, only the neck pickup has been flipped back to its original position.
 

mgod

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Jack's bass didn't have what became known as super-filters. Neither of them.
 

mellowgerman

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Good to know! What was the difference to the superfilters? And did Phil's big brown or Jack's alembic have them?
 

mgod

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Both did.

Jack's SFs used a relatively modified Gibson Vari-tone. Both basses were passive in their tone-shaping, but the second one had active impedance-lowering (emitter followers). Neither SF bass, nor really any other than my green 68, had rewound low-impedance pickups.
 

gilded

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Thanks Ingo, very cool to listen to this. Really helped me grasp the concept of what JC was doing. As a side note, it kept occurring to me, 'Oh, I remember That Sound from all those decades back.'

Now I know it was a SF. A modded one, but still a SF.

Thanks again, hope you are well, Harry
 

lungimsam

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Interesting that the tone gets burpy as he goes into the higher registers a couple times, unlike the original SF he used at Woodstock. No burp there at all if I remember right. Just uniform tone throughout all registers.

Also, I would think a stock SF would sound just as big and punchy, cranked like his amps were.

Perhaps he was seeking a personally preferred idea of a tone he had and maybe it wasn't a SF performance issue that led him to mod so much?
 

adorshki

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Interesting that the tone gets burpy as he goes into the higher registers a couple times, unlike the original SF he used at Woodstock. No burp there at all if I remember right. Just uniform tone throughout all registers.

Also, I would think a stock SF would sound just as big and punchy, cranked like his amps were.

Perhaps he was seeking a personally preferred idea of a tone he had and maybe it wasn't a SF performance issue that led him to mod so much?

Your comments made me wonder what his setup was for the "Live at Fillmore East" (the May '68 show, not the later '69 release) His solo on "You & Me & Pooneil" just screams...
I think May '68 is late enough that he already had his first Starfire.
Compare that to "Water Song" on Burgers a few years later, fully Alembicized by then, I think you're right about looking for a tone he had in his head.
 

lungimsam

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Would be cool to hear the Jazz bass he used earlier in his career isolated to compare tone. It's interesting that he changed brands and models of basses so much throughout his career. I wonder if he felt there was any one he would like to keep and play forever, likemake it his main career bass. Seems like he'd mod and use for a while and then move on. Sometimes artists hold fast to one model, like Jamerson and his Pbass.
 

fronobulax

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Would be cool to hear the Jazz bass he used earlier in his career isolated to compare tone. It's interesting that he changed brands and models of basses so much throughout his career. I wonder if he felt there was any one he would like to keep and play forever, likemake it his main career bass. Seems like he'd mod and use for a while and then move on. Sometimes artists hold fast to one model, like Jamerson and his Pbass.

See here, which has been posted before although it has been a few years. In the interview he discusses his various basses and sometimes says why he changed or what he was looking for at the time. From that, and other interviews, I believe Mr. Casady has a specific sound he is looking for and finds and/or modifies a bass to get it. What he is looking for seems to have varied over his career as well as for a particular situation - it is implied that he wants a different sound if he is playing live and there is a keyboard in the mix, for example. He notes that he no longer advocates having on board electronics and I am sure the improvements in signal processing gear, as well as changes in size and price influenced what he played and when. He seems to have settled in on the Jack Casady Signature model as his main electric instrument. I can't recall a "Casady" sighting in the past couple decades that had any other electric instrument.
 
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