VAUGHN SKOW's blog

The WGS Reaper vs Celestion G12H30

Hi lovely readers, this blog will pretty much be a "video blog".  I’ve had folks on the WGS forum asking for a good ol Vaughn shootout between the WGS Reaper (standard 30 watt, 75Hz) and the similarly voiced Celestion G12H30 Anniversary.  I’m not gonna give away the results, just watch this video (it’s the short version):

Want the whole Vaughn demo experience?  Well then, check out the long version:

Can’t get enough?  Well, check out my earlier blog, where I do a shootout between the WGS Reaper 55Hz and the English made Celestion G12H30 Heritage (55Hz):

https://wgs4.com/high-gain-britt-voiced-speaker-shoot-out

There ya go!  See ya next time.

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My outside blog recommendation this week is from VintageAmp.com.  It’s a super cool bit of Marshall Amp info!

http://vintageamps.com/category/vintage-marshall/

Paper or plastic? The Great Kapton vs. Paper Voice-coil Former Question!

First a little catch-up lesson:  What exactly IS a "former" in a speaker anyway?  It’s the tube that the voice-coil is wound around, that’s what.  And, like old Rodney Dangerfield, it just doesn’t get any respect.  In fact, most exploded-views of speakers don’t even LIST the former, giving the impression that the voice-coil is magically wound on nothing other than thin air! 

Until about 1970, all speaker voice coils were wound on paper tubes.  Paper has a nasty habit of burning up when it gets hot.  The voice-coil is the part of the speaker that the output of the amplifier is directly fed to, and they get hot when driven hard.  As amps began to get drastically more powerful, folks started to look for another material to wind the voice-coil on; one that could take a lot more heat.  About that same time, DuPont developed a new polymer material, dubbed "Kapton", which remains stable up to about 725 degrees Fahrenheit.  Kaptonquickly became the new de-facto material for voice-coil formers (plus a lot of other stuff from I.C. boards to spacecraft parts).  On paper (get the pun) Kapton beats paper hands-down in all possible ways.  It can be made thinner and stronger, it can take way more heat and mechanical stress, and has excellent dielectric properties.  So, why would anyone offer a speaker like the WGS Black & Blue, with an old-fashioned vintage style paper former?  Well...

Some folks would argue that the composition of the former does not affect the tone of the speaker.  I personally feel there IS a noticeable tonal difference between the modern formers made of Kapton and the vintage style formers made of paper.  The old paper former speakers, like the Celestion Blue and the Vintage American Made Jensens have a more open, airy top end.  I’m not really the ultimate expert in this subject, but I know who is.

A while back I was talking with WGS production manager Dean Birdsong.  Dean mentioned that he had just done some extensive studio listening tests comparing how the exact same speaker sounded with a Kapton Former vs. a vintage paper former.  The speakers he had just compared were the WGS Black & Blue, and the WGS Blackhawk, which is essentially the exact same speaker except that it has a Kapton former, rather than the paper former of the Black & Blue.  If I remember right, Dean’s exact words were: “Dang if you can’t hear the difference, the paper sounds brighter, and the Kapton sounds warmer.”  Dean’s the man when it comes to speakers, he wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it.

So, there you have it.  Why on earth would you want to choose the 15-watt Black & Blue over the 50-watt Blackhawk?  Maybe because of that extra bit of effortless top-end shimmer! Just use wisely, it IS a 15-watt speaker.

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My outside blog recommendation this week is from “how stuff works”.  It’s a nice piece on speaker voice-coils, but notice that it does not mention what the voice-coil is wound on!  http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/speaker5.htm

The Peavey T-15 Guitar, aka the “Mississippi Mustang”

Those of you who know me, or are regular readers of this blog know that nearly all of my guitars and amps came to me by way of a pawn shop, junk shop, dumpster, garage sale, craigslist, ebay, and so on and so forth.  I feel as though, just as rescue dogs make the best pets, rescue guitars make the best friends!  The Peavey T-15 that is the topic of this blog is typical: I found her sitting, unloved, in a dark corner of a pawnshop.

A little history: like anyone who began their musical career in the late 70’s to early 80’s, I was an early Peavey user.  My high school band’s first PA was an XR-600B built into that ultra cool roadcase and it fed a pair of FH-1 folded bass bins and huge SP-1 radial horns.  Our system sounded better than almost any other local band! (Not that the Shure Vocal Masters were any real competition). Our Bass player played a T-40 bass and I played a T-60 guitar.  Perry still calls the T-40 his sole instrument, but my T-60 is long gone.  I haven’t played one in many years, but I remember it as playing really good, sounding great, and weighing a ton.  It’s that last factor that led to my eventually getting rid of it. 

So, when I saw the little T-15 I was instantly smitten; she has the same quality sound and feel as the T-60, but man-oh-man is she nice and light, and she plays like butter.  Folks who are familiar with me also know that I name the guitars that I am especially fond of, so in that tradition, I present Katie with a couple of her girl friends.

Katie is a petite little cutie with a great and varied personality.  Tonally, she covers a surprisingly vast amount of ground.  I could tell you all about her, but instead, check out this video (and the pics):  See ya all next week!

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Happy 4th of July From WGS

On this day more than ever we become thoughtful about two things:

1. What a unique and truly great country the United States of America is.

2. What exactly America stands for.

America was, and is, a grand experiment; one based on the premise that the government should work for and answer to the people, not the other way around.  The premise, of course, was very sound ... that is, as long as the people remained "good".  Just as a Monarchical government can be either good or bad, based on the core "goodness" of the Monarch; so can the American system ... based on the overall "goodness" of the American people.

So, this 4th of July, I encourage all of you to positively participate in this great democratic system.  And when you vote, or otherwise participate, do the right thing.  Don’t cast your vote, or form political biases based on personal gain, but rather on the good of the people as a whole.  When we do this, we will be honoring those who founded this great Nation by emulating their actions.

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Not All Speaker Designs Are Good - The Styrofoam Speaker!

Innovation.  Good?  Bad?  Shucks, it can be either one, but mix a little "innovation" with a really stupid speaker design and what do ya get?  The Styrofoam speaker!  I am a vintage Fender amp guy through and through, but I gotta tell ya, the CBS nut-jobs made some downright appalling speaker decisions in the late 60’s/early 70’s.  The absolute worst of the worst: The Fender Bantam Bass Amp.  All I can say is that the designers of the Bantam bass amp musta been wasted outta their minds when they choose the Yamaha Styrofoam driver for the Bantam bass amp ... hey it WAS designed during the "summer of Love".

I love the wicki blurb on this amp: "The Fender Bantam Bass was a bass amplifiermade by Fender. It was introduced in 1969. This silverfacedamp used an asymmetrical trapezoidal Yamaha speaker using a white styrofoamcone, and so the speakers blew very easily. As a result, the amp was not a commercial success".  Wow, like, man ... puff, puff, who woulda thought that folks wanted speakers that actually worked.  Bummer, man.  Oh, Leo, what they did to your company!

Okay, so what’s the only thing worse than an all-tube Fender Bantam Bass amp with a trapezoidal Styrofoam speaker?  A solid-state Yamaha amp with FOUR (!) of those God-awful things!  I’m gonna end with this, non-photoshoped pic of an actual Yamaha amp, the dreaded TA-120 ... like an accident on the freeway, as terrible as it may be, you just can’t help gawking at it!

Bye for now, my "outside" site recommendation this week is ggjaguar’s Bantam Bass page!  Checkout  http://www.ggjaguar.com/bantbass.htm- I love his description of the speaker "Yamaha trapezoidal weirdo model"!

Oh, and rest assured, WGS has no styrofoam models in the works.

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Vaughn Skow & WGS: 100 Blogs and Going Strong!

Dear fellow WGS guitar tone-heads, today I feel like throwing a party, for today we celebrate a milestone together.  This mark’s the 100th weekly installment of this blog.  If you’re one of those math geniuses, you will no-doubt figure out that this is a blog every week for about two years.   I’ve written to you in times of plenty and in times of famine; from far-flung regions, and from my own bed while nursing the flu; we have reveled together as my new daughter, Callie, came into the world, and we mourned together when my old doggie pal, Rosie, left.  I’ve even given about a dozen of you free speakers and a few more free WGS t-shirts.  I think it’s fair to say that we are friends, and for that I thank you.  What’s more, I LIKE you.  I say it over and over again, but it’s true: WGS folks are just plain good people.  I think it’s a case of goodness attracting goodness, because the folks who actually design and make WGS speakers are truly a special lot.

Next week, I’ll be back, with some great blogs that I already have "in the pipeline", like:

Scientific study reveals: Guitars really DO make you more attractive.

The Vox Pathvinder 15R: Pure Vox, stupid price!

Plus, more speaker upgrade video’s and the ongoing saga of what happens when you buy crappy products made in a foreign country by "slave" laborers who couldn’t care less about their product.

Bye for now, my "outside" site recommendation this week My own FaceBook page!

Checkout  http://www.facebook.com/vaughnskow  - Let’s be friends!

HEY!  I just noticed somthing ... there are actually two guitar amps in the above pic, both of which have been featured on this blog ... cane anyone name them both?  (One is a bit obscure)

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Danelectro Corned Beef, it’s NOT What’s For Supper! You Too Can Sound Like a Rockabilly Legend!

Hold the presses!  I just hit a little pawnshop gem that is so cool I just had to feature it here.  Probably every guitar player on planet earth has at least played through a Danelectro pedal, most of us own a few; the darn little critters are sooo cute, and dirt cheap, too.  Sure long-term reliability on these inexpensive pedals might preclude mounting them to your board before leaving on a world-tour; but for the more common around town gig, studio overdub, or bonus room jam, they often fit the bill quite nicely.

Most Dano pedals sell new for twenty to fifty bucks, like I said dirt cheap.  Ya all know, however, that I’m a pawn-shop junkie, and whenever I can buy a pedal for ten bucks or less, I pick it up just to take it home & play with it.  Hey, call it cheap entertainment.  That’s how a Dano Corned Beef "reverb" came into my possession.  I took it home and instantly realized that it was not in fact a reverb, but rather a bucket-brigade sounding delay with a fixed delay time of around 90ms, and a but-load of regeneration.  The two controls are for amount of effect and hi-cut, which helps it to sound a lot like an old tape based delay.  It can’t do actual reverb, as its name implies, but man can it do that Brian Setzer rockabilly thing.  Hit the engage switch and it’s instant Jerry Nalor/Gene Vincent!  Shot, this thing ait a reverb at all, it’s a time machine set to 1957!

Here is a quick video I had my buddy Brad do for me.  See ya all next week!

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Bye for now, my "outside" site recommendation this week:  Rockabilly Legends Checkout  http://www.rockabillylegends.com/Home/Bio

Buy American made products from an American Company

Hi Fellow lovers of Made-in-the USA WGS speakers!  To any of you OCD types who may have noticed that I missed my usual posting day earlier this week, I apologize.  Last week started with an emergency trip to the doc for our wee one, and then it pretty much went downhill from there.  By now you all know that I’m a Glass-is-half-full type of guy; well, I’m feeling as though my glass is half empty as I write this.  What’s got me feeling this way?  Well, I won’t get into EVERYTHING here on this blog, but I will mention one thing that I think all lovers of American companies and American goods can relate to:  Foreign made products that don’t work and absolutely terrible customer "service" at the hands of the companies who pedal these products.

At this point I’ve got to warn you:  this is just a teaser for the full blog, which will be written and posted in a couple of days.  Ya see I’m going to give the companies involved every chance to do the right thing before I start telling the truth, the whole truth, and nuttin but the truth.  At this point, the final truth has yet to be written.

Teaser#1:  Some time back I bought an electrical appliance from a very "American" retailer (or at least that is the image they portray).  A modern high-tech golly gee wiz gadget that came in a real slick box bestowing all its virtues:  Energy efficient, attractive, and with an unparallel warranty.  After just a few uses the little thing started smoking ... not good.  I brought it back, they told me it had been 31 days since I purchased it.  After 30 days I would need to deal with the manufacturer.  Nowhere on the box was a manufacturer listed, only the company it was "made for", which coincidentally is based right here in Nashville, TN.  So I called the corporate office, who again told me I would need to deal directly with the manufacturer.  Here’s where it gets totally insane.  I was given a telephone number and email to the plant ... in CHINA!  Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.  Yes indeed, they wanted me to take it up with a Chinese manufacturer who probably makes everything from video games to tampons.  Since my Chinese is a little rusty, I didn’t attempt a phone call, but I did email a couple of times.  Anybody think I got a reply?  Didn’t think so.

Teaser #2: You’ll have to wait for it :-)

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Bye for now, my "outside" blog recommendation this week:  BUY AMERICAN

Checkout

http://buyamericanchallenge.wordpress.com/tag/buy-american-blog/

Guitar Players Love Their Pedals

I came upon this awesome, crazy, strangely awe-inspiring yet utterly terrifying pic on facebook a few months back, and have been waiting to use it in a blog ever since!  Isn’t it amazing how history cycles? 

1. 1940’s - 1950’s: At the dawn of electric instruments in the 1940’s players simply plugged their instrument (probably a Hawaiian guitar, now commonly known as a lap steel) into an amp and that was it.  By the 1950’s higher end amps included "effects", we could step on buttons labeled "reverb" and "tremolo".  The stage was set for the next big thing.

2. 1960’s: Pedals are introduced!  The earliest pedals were various crude forms of overdrive, followed by the variable filter pedal (wah-wah), and short delay effects (phase-shifters and flangers).

3. The 1970’s: pedal mania ensued.  This is the initial emergence of the "pedal board".  The well hung (pedal wise) guitar player now sported a muff-pie, a wah pedal, a phase 90, and an MXR flanger.

4. The 1980’s: Big racks are getting all the attention!  In 1985, a guitar player who wanted to be taken seriously had to have a rack big enough to warrant a professional cartage company carting the refrigerator-sized behemoth around.  This is the erea in which I cut my record-producer/engineer teeth; I also look at this as the low-point in modern pop-music production.  What exactly does a guitar that’s been fed into 20-something sound mangling devices sound like when it finally emerges out the other end?  The short answer is: crap.

5. The 1990’s: The rage against the (sound mangling) machine begins.  Guitarists begin seeking out vintage guitars and amps and, guess what?  They simply plug them into each other with a cable!  Wow, it’s back to the future!  1950’s technology is now the latest "new" thing! 

6. The 2000’s:  Pedal love has returned.  We are now repeating cycle #2!

Okay folks, here is the real question:  Have we all forgotten the lesson of the 1980’s?  It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it; will this be the case for us guitarists?  Will the next big thing be a golly-gee-wiz box that takes our guitar’s output, turns it into a stream of ones and zeros, and then shifts and/or corrects it’s pitch, phase-shifts it, flanges it, EQ’s all the natural tone out of it, delays it, reverberates it, reproduces a digital sample of a guitar, excites it, morphs it with an entirely different instrument and finally spits it out?  Holy cow I hope not!  But wait; didn’t I just describe the typical digital floor “guitar multi-processor”?  Crap, it’s too late.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, though.  If we keep with this progression, the next big thing will be a guitar, an amp, and a cable. 

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Bye for now, my "outside" blog recommendation this week “Hot Bottles”, a blog about tube-based guitar amplifiers, and analog guitar effects  check it out:

http://hotbottles.wordpress.com/

WGS RECOGNIZES THOSE WHO GAVE IT ALL SO THAT WE MAY REMAIN FREE

On this Memorial Day, all of here at WGS acknowledge those who gave their lives in the service of this awesomely free society.  The debt we owe them can only be repaid by each and every one of us living up to the ideals and standards that America stands for.