danlinke's Reviews

I think George's Duo Jet had Dearmond pickups (AKA dynasonics) like the Duo Jet I used to own and the Chet atkins model he played most often was one like my uncle's single cut form the 60s that has singlecoils in filtertron-sized covers that are called hi-lo-trons... the Gretsch Country Gent George played on Ed Sullivan had Filtertron mini-humbuckers, but George did not use that guitar for much apart from some touring and the Ed Sullivan appearances because it fell off the back of Mal Evans' car in the early 60s and got run over by a truck before it could be retrieved by Mal and Neil. I also don't recall George playing with a lot of trem from his AC30, and when the Beatles switched to AC50 models early in their career he could not have used any trem because AC50s don't have any features other than Volume, Treble and Bass...

I don't mean to give you a hard time, I would much rather have a double cut Duo Jet with Filtertron mini-hums than the the single-cut with Dearmond single coils that I owned for years, but if you want to talk Beatles then George's sound was very much single-coil Gretches with no effects unti after the Help album (though Goeorge did use a Gibson es345 for some live dates prior to Rubber Soul if my memory serves me)... its the Rubber Soul era where some fender and Selmer amps sneak in as well as the Gibson SG George used for Paperback Writer... the bulk of the Harrison's record tone before that time was the early Duo Jet with Dearmond pickups or the Tennessean with Hi-lo-trons through either an AC30 top boost channel (vib/trem is its own channel with no tone controls that is very midrangey and distinctive even with the effects disengaged) or more frequently through a vox AC50, at first a small box, tube rectified version through a modified ac30 extension cabinet featuring 2x12 celestion anicos and a midax treble horn and then for most of Beatlemania a large box, solid-state rectified AC50 mkII with an oversized, purpose-built 2x12 w/horn cabinet would have been used in the studio (there is photographic evidence from various album sessions at abbey road up until Paul bought a blonde Bassman and a Selmer and fender sent the Beatles some Dual Showman rigs for free)... While at the peak of Beatlemania the fab 4 went over to Vox AC100 amps with even larger 4x12 w/horn cabinets I have never seen any evidence that these were used anywhere but on the road. It looks as if the Beatles left their AC50 mkIIs in the storage locker at Abbey Road for recording once Vox provided their new AC100 backline. The AC100 is a simple volume, treble, bass arrangement too, pretty much a double-size AC50 mkII. A lot of George's most distinctive tones came from Paul's Fender Bassman or his Dual Showman. By this time the SG, a brand new sonic blue strat (painted later into the 'rocky' strat) and an Epiphone Casino were George's principle guitars when he could be talked out of playing sitar (all 3 Beatles owned Casinos, not just Lennon... Paul bought his 1st and as a result it has the small late-50s headstock instead of the oversized epi-archtop headstock most of us are familiar with... when John and George got tired of borrowing Paul's and bought their own because Paul's was kept strung lefty and the guitar needed to be restrung any time John or George wanted to record with it, they wound up with 60s models with the big headstock)

back to George's 50s Duo Jet, he lent it to Klaus Voorman of the band Manfred Mann (who George had met in Hamburgh years prior through Astrid Kirshner... or was it that Astrid met the fab 4 thru Klaus, I forget) and it wasn't returned until George was planning the "Cloud Nine" album. After a serious tune-up George's "first serious guitar" was used extensively on "Cloud Nine and is even featured in the cover photo.

Incidentally, George bought his Duo Jet from a member of the UK merchant marine after answering an ad in the local Liverpool newspaper for the Duo Jet (which was originally purchased during shore leave from Manny's music in NYC). Georgie-boy paid the sailor half the money but never returned to pay the rest after taking off on a short tour with the duo jet. Beatlemania was raging in no-time and the original owner wasn't paid until George's death, if I recall..... So there ya go. More info then you ever wanted about a George Harrisonesque sound.