ampage Tube Amps / Music Electronics	For current discussions, please visit Music Electronics Forum.

ampage archive

Vintage threads from the first ten years

previous: LFOscalator This could explain things. In the ... -- 4/24/2003 10:48 PM

Re: What does the "JB" stand for?

4/25/2003 9:43 AM
Hi	Re: What does the "JB" stand for? Jeff Beck used to have a brown Les Paul, the one on the "Blow by Blow" cover. It was chocolate brown and the neck had been shaved down, but the owner who had these two things done never come back to pick the guitar up, so the music shop in Memphis that had it tried to sell it. Everybody hated the color, so nobody bought it until Jeff Beck dropped by while on tour. He liked it fine. On a later tour the bridge pickup needed some kind of work, and a music store (I don't remember where) "fixed" it. When Beck did his next sound check he hated the way it sounded. The pickups at this time had covers on them, but not before. Thinking the repair guy had put new covers on, he took them off and discovered that the pickup had been "fixed" by being replaced. This is the point where he gave up playing Les Pauls. Duncan kept asking Beck what exactly it was about that bridge pickup that he had liked so much, and after several conversations about it he came up with the "JB" humbucker. The magnets are alnico V, not ceramic. In addition, the pickups on the modified telecaster Duncan made for him are not similar at all, but rewound humbuckers from a '58 or '59 Flying V that Lonnie Mack had owned. That's the guitar on "'Cause We've Ended as Lovers". (Interestingly, most of the guitar parts on Blow by Blow were done with a strat, not the LP on the cover) And that's "the rest of the story". Hi

4/25/2003 9:43 AM

Re: What does the "JB" stand for?

Jeff Beck used to have a brown Les Paul, the one on the "Blow by Blow" cover. It was chocolate brown and the neck had been shaved down, but the owner who had these two things done never come back to pick the guitar up, so the music shop in Memphis that had it tried to sell it. Everybody hated the color, so nobody bought it until Jeff Beck dropped by while on tour. He liked it fine. On a later tour the bridge pickup needed some kind of work, and a music store (I don't remember where) "fixed" it. When Beck did his next sound check he hated the way it sounded. The pickups at this time had covers on them, but not before. Thinking the repair guy had put new covers on, he took them off and discovered that the pickup had been "fixed" by being replaced. This is the point where he gave up playing Les Pauls. Duncan kept asking Beck what exactly it was about that bridge pickup that he had liked so much, and after several conversations about it he came up with the "JB" humbucker. The magnets are alnico V, not ceramic. In addition, the pickups on the modified telecaster Duncan made for him are not similar at all, but rewound humbuckers from a '58 or '59 Flying V that Lonnie Mack had owned. That's the guitar on "'Cause We've Ended as Lovers". (Interestingly, most of the guitar parts on Blow by Blow were done with a strat, not the LP on the cover)
And that's "the rest of the story".
Hi

Replies:

Steve A. ... and that's the REST of the story, folks! -- 4/27/2003 8:31 AM