Jefferson Guild

fronobulax

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46749175_1877927655609913_7264143518472339456_n.png

Pictured (left to right): Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, Skip Spence, Marty Balin, Jack Casady, and Signe Anderson in the studio circa 1965. Photographed by Michael Ochs.

From the Jefferson Airplane Facebook page. Picture is from the recording sessions that created "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off".

Note that only Jorma and Jack are still with us.

But mostly note Jorma's guitar. Maybe that's how Jack heard about Guilds :)
 

SFIV1967

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Cool picture!
Jorma Kaukonen said in an interview: "...what I was using on Surrealistic Pillow is a Guild Thunderbird."

In his book "Been So Long: My Life and Music" he talks further: "We had seen the Lovin' Spoonful at some bar in North Beach earlier, and Zal Yanovsky was playing a Guild Thunderbird. He was a great player so of course I checked out his gear. The T-Bird was one of the most different-looking guitars I had ever seen. It was a solid-body guitar with a shape like Mr. Tooth Decay, I had to have one...and I got one. This was the six-string guitar I used on 'Takes Off', as well as the Rickenbacker twelve-string...I also bought a Standal Super Imperial because Zal was playing through one...it's the gear that I used for solos on 'Somebody to Love" as well as 'White Rabbit'."

jorma.jpg


Ralf
 

sailingshoes72

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No Guild content here... but a cool photo of Jorma Kaukonen, circa 1964. Obviously, not the Rickey 12-string mentioned in his autobiography. He was probably influenced by the Beatles... like the rest of us! :biggrin-new:

47391958_1286314748173088_6268078497302839296_n.jpg
 

airplane

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Jorma and his tone and playing is the reason i got back on playing guitar and the reason i’m trying to build a thunderbird at the moment...

thank you very much for that information on the amp from the book! didn’t have time to read it yet.. that’s the missing piece of the puzzle to get the tone!
 

Nuuska

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Jorma and his tone and playing is the reason i got back on playing guitar and the reason i’m trying to build a thunderbird at the moment...

thank you very much for that information on the amp from the book! didn’t have time to read it yet.. that’s the missing piece of the puzzle to get the tone!


Not quite so !

You will need two more things after guitar and amp - his fingers - and his head . . .

Schöne Weihnachten noch :watermelon:
 

adorshki

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Bummer...

NO worries, transplant technology's come a long way in the last few years.

(BTW, Jorma's been one of my heroes, and Jack too for that matter, ever since the first time I heard "Spare Chaynge" on Baxter's at the tender age of 13.
It was my first psychedelic experience, before I'd ever dabbled with "the usual suspects".
(Veer alert):
Then a buddy introduced me to Quicksilver Messenger Service:
81Ne02liAAL._SX355_.jpg

l.jpg

From here:
http://doyouevenpsychedelic.blogspot.com/2014/08/happy-trails-john-cipollinas-guitar-rig.html

Funny thing, I never really associated Jorma with a specific guitar, he was pictured with so many different ones, but everybody knew John Cipollina was basically married to his SG.....and his rig was legendary.
(And those are two Standel bass amps underneath the Twin Reverb. A Dual Showman is driving the Wurlitzer horns.... :hypnotysed:)
Pre-dated the Dead's Wall of Sound.
Anyway if you like early Airplane y'oughta LOVE the first 2 Quicksilver albums.
If you don't know 'em already.
:friendly_wink:
 
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airplane

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Sorry @nuuska didn’t intend to sound cocky but these are obviously things money can’t buy.. but, since i just bought a rickenbacker 12 string for my 30th birthday the standel amp (i was completely unaware of) is out of my price range too :(

@adorshki i don’t really agree here! joram started with the rickenbacker, then the ric 12 and the thunderbird for the first two airplane albums, but he then pretty much stuck to the ES345 and sometimes 355. the gibson ES models are what i see when i think of jorma anyway.. i think he used a stratocaster (yikes!) on volunteers, which, if i remember correctly, can be seen on the go ride the music/west pole dvd (buy it if you don’t know it!).. and everything electric after the airplane is not to be taken seriously if you ask me, since he went back to his acoustic roots..

some quicksilver stuff is excellent too! i discovered it through the ride the music dvd too..
 

Nuuska

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@ Flugzeug

Alles guet hier - tschüsi

Schnüpferich


@ Al

Sergio Canavero never made it - so it is going to be a long wait.

Meanwhile we all can just try and do our best.




@ everybody

Jorma is finnish first name - originated from Jeremia in hebrew.
Kaukonen is finnish surname
 
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adorshki

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@adorshki i don’t really agree here! joram started with the rickenbacker, then the ric 12 and the thunderbird for the first two airplane albums, but he then pretty much stuck to the ES345 and sometimes 355. the gibson ES models are what i see when i think of jorma anyway.. i think he used a stratocaster (yikes!) on volunteers, which, if i remember correctly, can be seen on the go ride the music/west pole dvd (buy it if you don’t know it!).. and everything electric after the airplane is not to be taken seriously if you ask me, since he went back to his acoustic roots..
Right, my point exactly, he used many different guitars over time although I did most associate him with the ES's (at the time I just thought it was an E335, it was the only model I knew of).
And yep the "Stars and Stripes" Strat on Volunteers.
3e411b399dccd848cce8cccf4d8665c7.png

And let's not forget the mid '70's Hot Tuna era 60's Firebird V.
638c1af8242ad5c5c2fb194d326aeb52--hot-tuna-guitarist.jpg

He played one of those at the second loudest concert I've ever been to in my life.
(the loudest was the Jeff Beck/Stevie Ray Vaughan double header which included a jam on "Superstition".)
The Hot Tuna show had superior acoustics though.
:smile:
 

airplane

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Well yeah actually you’re right. he probably had a ton of guitars.. but my first thought is jorma is airplane and airplane is gibson ES..

now that i see that strat photo which i forgot, the strat i mean from the dvd is yet another one! it is covered in very small sparkling usa flags.

but even the ES ones.. i think he had quite a few of these. that beautiful red 345 he used over a longer period, but by the very end of the 60s he moved to various 355s. i think the black 355 (only two of those exist i think) that now belongs to keith richards once belonged to jorma!
 
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Mark WW

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Right, my point exactly, he used many different guitars over time although I did most associate him with the ES's (at the time I just thought it was an E335, it was the only model I knew of).
And yep the "Stars and Stripes" Strat on Volunteers.
3e411b399dccd848cce8cccf4d8665c7.png

And let's not forget the mid '70's Hot Tuna era 60's Firebird V.
638c1af8242ad5c5c2fb194d326aeb52--hot-tuna-guitarist.jpg

He played one of those at the second loudest concert I've ever been to in my life.
(the loudest was the Jeff Beck/Stevie Ray Vaughan double header which included a jam on "Superstition".)
The Hot Tuna show had superior acoustics though.
:smile:

If that was the loudest concert then you obviously never saw Blue Cheer live. Now That was LOUD!
 

adorshki

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If that was the loudest concert then you obviously never saw Blue Cheer live. Now That was LOUD!
I know of their reputation for having pioneered the use of 100-watt Marshall stacks turned to 11 (in fact I think Jimi got turned on to Marshalls by them****); and even have OutsideInside and New Improved on original vinyl.
Never got to see 'em live in the heydey myself, I was only 12 or 13 and my folks were quite protective about letting me journey from the suburbs of the south bay up to the big bad city where all the drugs and concerts were.
(I even missed out on seeing Yes open for Black Sabbath in '70 when they found out the driver was only a high school senior, lol!)
But I have it on trustworthy authority from somebody who was there in the day that Hot Tuna in '76 was even louder.
Saw 'em in the Del Rey theater in Santa Cruz.
It was not quite painful but ears were ringing afterward, a first time for me.
The Beck/ Vaughan show was in the Henry J Kaiser auditorium, think it was '87.
I've told the story before, don't know what the hell the sound engineers were thinking/doing but it was just mud and painful besides.
I don't think they EQ'd the room properly.
If at all?:
1424154027756

Shoulda been a no-brainer at that point in time.
An insult to the artists.
Oh yeah:
yeah he has finnish family
Right. Father's parents were Finnish.
Father worked for US State Department which is how he got exposed to exotic places like Pakistan when he was a kid.

****Actually, having just gone to look for confirmation, I guess not. But I think I read it in some Blue Cheer write-up a few years back, as they did appear on the same bill at least a couple of times in '68.
But getting back to the idea of what gear for achieving a tone, I stumbled across this fascinating little thread while searching, with some inside dope on what Roger Mayer did to Jimi's amps:
https://www.thegearpage.net/board/i...uit-did-hendrix-use-most-often.1836092/page-3
Speaking of the psychedelic era, and Hendrix appearing on the same bill with Blue Cheer, what a hell of a show this must have been:
Jimi-Hendrix-The-Soft-Machine-with-the-Electric-Flag-and-Blue-Cheer-370x532.jpg

Andy Summers was a member of Soft Machine for that tour.
Don't forget Electric Flag was Bloomfield's baby.
And they were known to have messed around with "East/West" as a "get acquainted jam" when they were forming up.
And that's their horn section on "Pride of Man" on Quicksilver's first album, courtesy of having been produced (a second time, to rescue the first job that they were unsatisfied with) by Electric Flag co-founder Nick Gravenites.
Jimi, admirer of musical excellence in all forms, must have been in ecstasy....
 
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sailingshoes72

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I saw Electric Hot Tuna in concert back in the early 70's when they had Sammy Piazza on drums and Papa John Creach on violin. Great show! Jorma had a rack of 5 or 6 electric guitars onstage with him that tour, mostly because he played in different tunings. I remember a Strat or two, a red Gibby ES semi-hollow body and maybe the Firebird V. It was the first time I had seen a multi-guitar rack onstage! They were not as common as today.

Jorma finger-picked a lot of the country blues and ragtime pieces on the electrics, probably because acoustic amplification was so limited back then. And, yes, they were loud!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65uA4JjZA0U
 

adorshki

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Jorma finger-picked a lot of the country blues and ragtime pieces on the electrics, probably because acoustic amplification was so limited back then. And, yes, they were loud!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65uA4JjZA0U

I always had the impression that "Electric" Hot Tuna And "Acoustic" Hot Tuna were intentionally different entities, even though there was material cross-over.
But it seemed far more common for electric Hot Tuna to play the traditional stuff than for acoustic Hot Tuna to cover electric stuff, which is probably understandable.
I remember heavy coverage of Phosphorescent Rat, America's Choice and Yellow Fever material at the Del Rey and at the time electric Hot Tuna was my favorite version.
I don't recall him playing any acoustic at that show, but I could be wrong.
It was the seventies and memories are blurry.
 
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