Acoustic Amps?

[DavidW]

What amps did The Beatles use when they were performing with their acoustics?

[JakeK]

They miked up their acoustics, I think.

[kiramdear]

Here's John with his J-160 plugged into his Vox. This is how I've seen him and George typically do it. Never saw them mike an instrument live or have any other amps on stage. George and John used their Gibson J-160s which have pickups at the end of the fretboard. Huge berserk audiences, ****** stadium quality PAs, audio technology in the stone age; simplicity and consistency were the keywords for Beatles' stage setup.

[DavidW]

Thanks for that Kira thats what I figured but I was under the impression that an acoustic plugged into an electric amp would give a non acoustic sound. Guess not!

[kiramdear]

Nah, pickups works fine on acoustics. Different kinds of strings will give you different tones but an acoustic is an acoustic. Not much difference between a J-160 and an ES-335 if you look at the physics.

[wolfgang]

they used their J-160s frequently as electric guitars, played over their Vox amps (i.e. Twist and shout). John used it on I feel fine, but here we had an unusual sound for the J-160 (because of the feedback intro of the song). Maybe it was direct injected (electrically) and played back via the monitor boxes, I don't know.
But they used the J-160 as their famous acoustic guitars, too. Then the guitars were miked directly (i.e. John on Can't buy me love or A hard day's night).
Wolfgang

[kiramdear]

Oh yeah, in the studio they would mike the acoustics. But not live.

[lennon211]

they used their J-160s frequently as electric guitars, played over their Vox amps (i.e. Twist and shout). John used it on I feel fine, but here we had an unusual sound for the J-160 (because of the feedback intro of the song). Maybe it was direct injected (electrically) and played back via the monitor boxes, I don't know.
But they used the J-160 as their famous acoustic guitars, too. Then the guitars were miked directly (i.e. John on Can't buy me love or A hard day's night).
Wolfgang

I may be in the minority here, but the lead on Twist and Shout sounds a great deal more like the Duo-Jet than a J-160E. It has the great Gretsch snap to it that you get from those DynaSonic pickups.

[lennon211]

Thanks for that Kira thats what I figured but I was under the impression that an acoustic plugged into an electric amp would give a non acoustic sound. Guess not!

Nope, it's just like using the neck pickup on a Casino, in the case of the J-160E

[soundmasterg]

In the studio, especially later, they would often mic the guitar acoustically, and amplify it, and combine the signals on the recording.

The feedback sound on "I Feel Fine" was a result of Paul striking a particular note on his bass, which made the top on John's J160E vibrate and induce feedback, but the rest of the song is just the J160E through the amp as any other guitar would have been. It was hard to reproduce live because of the distance between instruments and the different volume levels, but they were able to reproduce it live in some instances accurately when using the J160E, such as the BBC sessions. John also sometimes used the RIC 325 on that song live. I know I've heard it on some live recordings but I can't point to any specific ones at the moment.

greg

[wolfgang]

Matthew,
I meant the rhytm guitar part played by Lennon. And they played the solo in unison.
Greg, the electrical sound of the J-160 in Ifeel fine is special because there is a relatively (for P90s) low cut off frequency of 1 kHz (above 1kHz -12dB per octave decrease) with no resonance peak, not from the pick up, not from the speakers.
For 20 years THIS was THE electrical sound of the J-160 to me, I thought this was the only song the J-160 was used "electrically".
I was wrong. I learned from this forum, that the J-160s were (probably) more often used in the studio electrically than the 325/Hamburg and the DuoJet together.
Wolfgang