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I have been fascinated with the figure the guitars are playing on I Know There's an Answer from the first time I heard it.  Recently I was attempting to transcribe what the second, higher guitar is playing but it's not quite as audible and doesn't play its line in between takes like the lower one.  Is it possible to get them isolated or is that too hard?

If anybody feels that they have properly transcribed that part, I'd be interested to consult it.  I would post my tentative transcription as well, if anybody would be interested in seeing it, though it is in notation rather than tab.

I wouldn't mind starting a discussion on the genius of the guitar arrangements on Pet Sounds, either, if anybody feels like discussing that.

Can't help you with this, but the biggest compliment I can pay to the guitars on Pet Sounds is this: There are guitars on Pet Sounds? The whole thing is out of this world. It's all just outer space sounds to me.

BW has noted that Friends was the first album in which the musicians didn't make any mistakes. I always wondered what the 'mistakes' are on the back tracks of Pet Sounds.

Right, the guitars are used, like no BB album before or after, in a truly orchestral manner.  There is very, very little strumming.  Most of it is 12-strings playing up high, or doing interesting single-line stuff.  Perhaps I should do a track-by-track run-down.

Maybe "mistakes" as in, one of the Wrecking Crew played something differently than Brian envisioned, and Brian said, "no, keep it! I like that". I know I've heard at least one instance of that on SoTs, and I think this must have happened at some point during the PS sessions.

I'm sure that is the case as well, but being that BW could still identify PS as having 'mistakes' leads me to believe there are audible things there that he didn't want or doesn't like. Assuming everything else was great with the take and it had the right feel, he probably accepted little things that were not perfect. No way we could know what they are I suppose. I mean, you can tell there are vocal things that are not quite 100% (like some of the backing vocals on 'Wouldn't It Be Nice'), chatter that wasn't mixed out, and engineering problems (clipping/distortion on 'Here Today') ... but I wonder about performance mistakes in the tracks. not to derail the thread!

Certainly would be of interest to most here I'd say.

I'm not saying this is true for all the tracks, obviously, but in a few cases there really is a "strumming" guitar playing the traditional role of an archtop acoustic in a jazz band, but it got buried in the mix, especially in mono. In some cases it's all but inaudible but is still there.

It's a similar thing that happened on many, many big band jazz recordings and performances - the acoustic archtop strumming got buried unless the rhythm section got featured on a chorus, or unless it was Count Basie's band where the absolute master of that style Freddie Green played within the arrangements so well that you could hear his part - somehow - despite the rest of the band. How many 30's/40's/50's big band recordings are there where you can actually hear that rhythm guitar? Yet almost every dance band had one.

There is that one BW example I mentioned on Donny L's question about percussion on the title track, where in one of the breakdowns of that song you can hear a very faint acoustic guitar strumming away, in typical jazz band fashion. That guitar was playing almost the whole time, but it's all but lost in the band.  In the final mix you can feel those parts more that actually hear them.

OK, so here it goes.  If a mod thinks a separate thread is appropriate feel free to make one.


Pet Sounds Guitars.

1.  Wouldn't It Be Nice

There are four guitars on WIBN.  Although we've yet to definitively identify the exact nature of the guitars used in the intro and bridge, it is safe to say they are some kind of electric 12-strings.  These guitars play two interlocking, single-note figures, and are key to the whole arrangement.

There is, unusually for the album, a strummed guitar.  I've always thought it was some kind of jazz box acoustic.  It is there more for texture than any sort of chordal definition.  It is probably the closest thing to how a guitar would traditionally be used for such a song.

The fourth guitar is a Danelectro 6-string bass, which alternates between doubling the basses at the octave, and doubling them at pitch during the bridge.  It is a great demonstration of two different uses for the instrument within the same song, acting more like a guitar during the verses, and adding great heft to the bassline in the bridge.

2.  You Still Believe in Me

As far as I can tell, there are two 12-strings here also, playing very much in the same register as the WIBN intro guitars.  They play a figure during the verses that mirrors the group vocals in the "choruses" and the tag.  In many ways, it's sort of a model for the whole idea of guitars for the album.  They play melodies that interact with the lead vocal, very much like a violin line interacting with the vocal in, say, an operatic excerpt.

3.  That's Not Me

Here we have the main guitar acting very much as a bassline, and in fact the overdubbed basses do for the most part double the guitar line.  Carl's guitar, probably a Strat or his Jaguar is kind of dialed in to a surfy kind of sound, with the treble and reverb.  But again, no strumming, no chords.  It's an active line that provides a harmonic structure with movement.

The overdubbed 12-strings simply add a melodic answer to the vocal.

4.  Don't Talk

Here's the template again, the two 12-strings playing melodic lines to complement the vocal.  Not much else to say.

5.  IWFTD

This is a more typical use of guitar.  Likely Carl on Rickenbacker, the guitar strums.  However, there is something about the timbre of it that led Carol Kaye and the Liner Notes people to conclude there is a ukulele on the track, which there isn't,  So even the pretty normal strummed guitar kind of thing is slightly off.

6.  LGAFA

Very contrasting guitars on this.  A strummed acoustic guitar, which is quite rare indeed on Pet Sounds, adds chordal support.  And then at the end, the slide guitar adds the Hawaiian feel.

7.  Sloop John B

The quintessential guitar arrangement.  Also tricky to figure out all the elements.

Obviously, we have, on the basic track, the two electric 12s playing their figures, and then Billy Strange famously overdubbed a third 12-string part.  These high arpeggios lend a shimmer to the arrangement, while the somewhat twangy lower 12-string plays a strangely nautical figure.

The confusion comes though the presence of Al Casey in the credits.  The guitarists present were Jerry Cole, Billy Strange, and Al Casey.  Presumably Jerry and Billy played the 12-strings.  I had wanted to think that Casey played a Dano bass, because the bass line is so massive and fat, I figured there were three basses.  But then Al Casey put out an album in which he covers Sloop John, and recounts that he played acoustic guitar on the session.  If you listen closely to the session, you can hear the very faint echos of a piano pounding the chords, and if you just listen hard enough, there might just be an acoustic guitar mixed in there.  It's a very Spectorian thing, where the instruments are not really audible but "there."

I'd like to hear alternate theories about this.

8. GOK

Another puzzler for me.  Carl is on 12-string, probably Rickenbacker, and he's sharply strumming the chords in the second and third verses.  But it's very well blended into the keyboard sound, so they become like one thing, a sum of their parts.

The question for me has always been whether there is a Danelectro bass on this, or possibly a second Fender Bass.  Both Carol and Ray Pohlman are on the AFM, but I have yet to definitively hear the presence of two separate electric basses.  But the song is another example of a conventional guitar use transformed by the production into something more special.

9.  IKTAA

As Mentioned above, this is back to the template of two 12s playing high.  I would love to know how Brian and the guitarists put this together.  It's a tricky arpeggio with some dissonances with the underlying chords.  It is also interesting to note that the line was altered between the first takes and the last, when Brian was still experimenting with the arrangement.  This is one where you wish tape was rolling the whole time they were fooling around with the arrangement.  It's such a great use of guitars.  I expect that it was possible only because of the abilities and sensibilities of Kessel and Glen Campbell.  I'm not sure if it's something a non-guitar player would stumble upon.

10.  Here Today

Another very sort of conventional use of guitars, strumming away during the choruses.  It's an acoustic 12 and an electric 12 just strumming full on chords, and relatively high in the mix.  Perhaps the least interesting guitar track of the whole album.

11.  IJWMFTT

Originally, Glen Campbell was playing banjo on this, before Brian asked him to switch to a "Jazz Box."  The Jazz Box strums along pretty conventionally.  The other guitar is an electric 12 string played by Barney Kessel.  It's a little tough to pick out exactly what it's doing, but at times it is adding strange dissonances.  In particular, during the "each time things start to happen again" section, it harps on a particularly dissonant note  Very subtle guitar arrangement there.

12.  The basic track features a standard electric 6-string, sounds like it could be a telecaster, playing the surfy repeated D/Eb figure.  And then the doubled lead guitar is on there too, of course, with the tremolo/leslie effect.  And as Craig mentioned, there's the very, very soft acoustic guitar accents during the "bongo" section.  This guitar is actually not there the whole time, it was inserted just in those spots, as the UM tapes prove.

13.  Caroline No

Two electric 12s again.  One of these plays rich jazz chords, the other serves almost as a cello, adding low counterpoint to the vocal in single-note lines.



That's a very simple, off the top of my head run down.  Discuss.

I hear more strumming on various tracks, as mentioned before: That acoustic part isn't listed on the PS title track (#12).

I even hear a faintly strummed acoustic part blending in on IKTAA, but I'm conceding that it may be my ears hearing one of the keyboard parts that way. Or not...short of having the full tapes it's tough to be sure.

Also PS title track is definitely a Leslie, not an amp tremolo: On the sessions you can hear the speaker rotating and rumbling around the cabinet before the track starts, 100% Leslie on that lead overdub.

Question: How many tracks did Tommy Tedesco play on the album?

I ask that because Tommy himself said he did a lot of archtop rhythm on this kind of date, and in researching Barney Kessel he also picked up a lot of dates on rock/pop sessions playing just archtop rhythm guitar, i.e. "easy money".

It's very interesting that Barney Kessel played so many of the 12-string electric parts - that was not what he was usually called to do.

And Glen Campbell couldn't read standard notation too far beyond chord charts, yet he and Barney (who was among the best readers in LA) worked out that complex 12-string duet on IKTAA and played it together. Interesting. It begs the question again - did Brian or the guitarists come up with those figures?

I corrected to add the acoustic part on PS the track.  For some reason I always assumed amp tremolo on PS until the leslie discussion came up earlier, and then it was like, duh.  It is very noisy before the track starts, indeed.

As far as I know, Tommy was just on the one.

I have always been fascinated by the Kessel/Campbell pairing on the album too.  They show up a lot together.  Must have been quite the pair.  On IKTAA, I think Barney's probably playing the more active lower line and Glen the upper line.  But who knows?  The lower line is really interesting.  It's pretty guitaristic, but still not necessarily something the hand just falls into playing.  It would definitely have taken some thought.

The credits don't really add up to their being strummed guitar on IKTAA.  There is the banjo of course, overdubbed.

great work man!

- Sloop -- I think worth mentioning is that we have a confirmed guitar model on this one (Billy Strange playing the Fender Electric XII), one of the only instances where we can say fairly certainly what the model is. Since it was one of the early tracks, there is a possibility that he used it on other tracks on the album as well. My best guess for the other electric 12-strings would be Gibson ES-335-12 or the similar Epiphone model, unless Carl was playing, in which case it would most likely be the Ric (as you noted).

No guess on the acoustic in there. I suppose I always kind of assumed there was one in there, but I can't hear it.

Don't think there is anything more than a Fender bass on this one. Notice the lack of low-end on the last chorus. If a string bass were present, I feel like we would hear a lot more deepness. Don't hear a Dano in there.

- GOK -- My theory on the basses here is that there is a string bass doubling the Fender bass.  Don't hear a baritone in here either.

- Here Today -- Not that you mentioned in either way, but I think the bass (played high like a baritone) is a Fender bass, not a Dano. Danos sound thin/weedy/phasey.

- Caroline -- I hear the Dano 6-str. bass in there ... no ?

One of these days I'm going to have to get around to trying to put together something on all of the keyboards used through the '60s-'70s. I know I've mentioned this before, but it's a real challenge!

re: subtle acoustic strumming -- I think it's almost impossible to tell for sure, because the way they would be used is like some kind of soft percussion.

Apart from the Fender Electric XII which I believe became the standard, go-to electric 12 for the studio players, I've most often seen them pictured with a Danelectro 12-string, like the "Bellzouki" Tommy is pictured with in one well-known photo. For tuning and intonation reasons alone, there is no doubt in my mind why the Fender XII was so popular. I don't recall Glen or Barney or really any of the WC pictured playing a Gibson or Epiphone 12-string electric in the 60's, although Glen had a thing with Mosrite and I believe he played on of their 12-strings later on in the 60's.

And if anecdotal evidence adds up to an educated guess, all of these guitarists who had Danelectro models from the Bellzouki to the Baritone had them modified in some ways for better intonation, playability, stability, etc. I believe very few if any of them were the models which came directly off the rack by the time we heard them on these recordings, because Danelectros were notorious for silly features like that block-of-wood bridge which I've heard certain WC members replaced with a metal piece.

Actually, I'd love to compile a list of modifications to these guitars and basses, because consider this one fact:

Is there any audible hum or buzzing from these instruments during the sessions? Cram all those guitars and basses into a control room, onto a studio floor, etc...do we hear any of the usual hum and buzz from those single-coil pickups? I don't recall any session mentioning this common issue. Amazing.

Or just good modifications to prevent it...Too bad Red Rhodes isn't around to ask, apparently he did a majority of this kind of work in LA for guitarists.

Yeah, it is truly amazing how quiet it was considering all those amps and single-coils.  Ridiculous, really.

I think the Mosrite might have been more popular than we think.  Glen definitely used one, and that photo I posted a few days ago showed Billy Strange playing what looked to be a Mosrite 12.  It would be interesting to know.  I wish I had the money to compare the sound of some different 12 strings.  The Bellzoukis are all over ebay at the moment.

Hmm, yeh I forgot about the Dano 12s and the Mosrite. I guess the Gibson 335-12 was pretty high-end, and these guys probably just used 12 strings for 'teenage' dates, so the Danos would make more sense. So strange that there are so few photos around!

Well, there's definitely String Bass on every Pet Sounds track except for That's Not Me.  Usually just doubling the Fender.  Lyle's on the Sheets and you can hear him prominently between takes on both Sloop John and GOK.  Berghoffer is on IJWMFTT.  There's no question about that.  I do wonder about second electric basses on GOK, IWFTD, and Sloop in particular.  I agree that Here Today is a Fender.  I suspect IJWMFTT is too.  Caroline No definitely sounds like a dano, though it's overdubbed.  That's Not me might also be two danos or a Fender and a Dano.

I've thrown together a hasty recording of IKTAA's guitar parts.

http://www.reverbnation.com/aeijtzsche/song/15914457-iktaa (http://www.reverbnation.com/aeijtzsche/song/15914457-iktaa)

Go there and click on IKTAA.

I included a bassline to give a harmonic reference.  Forgive my use of a POD to USB garage band recording, the latency of everything makes it sound out of sync.

What do you think?

Also, please forgive me that I don't have an electric 12-string and had to use a 6.

The funny thing is that Glen became sort of known for 12-string guitar, he had that album called "The Astounding 12 String Guitar Of Glen Campbell" as one of his very early solo releases 63-64, I think it became a bit of a calling card for him. If a producer needed a 12-string player, and you had an album in front of you with that title, you'd call that guy, right? :)

What I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to know for sure, 100% sure with proof, is who played 12-string acoustic lead on Burl Ives' "Holly Jolly Christmas". It's mixed in 60's stereo, and you can isolate the part with a balance knob...and that part is incredible, just amazing, one of my favorites ever. If it were recorded in LA, Glen would be my guess, if in Nashville, I have no idea.

If anyone would have a Gibson it would have been Barney Kessel, since he not only had an endorsement with them but also they had his signature model guitar in the stores, he could have requested any model from them. Yet for non-jazz electric parts, he almost always used a Telecaster, for Baritone parts or tic-tac he used a Danelectro (even though Gibson made one too), and for 12-string I think he may have gone with Fender or Danelectro.

That sounds pretty darned close to the original voicings! Nice stuff!

It strikes me how the louder part is pulling from the same guitar-centic well of exercises and chord arpeggios that Slash would later use to create the famous Sweet Child O' Mine intro hook, and I say that being 100% serious.

It is interesting how little photography of 12-string electrics have turned up.  I mean, there's never enough 60s studio photography for me, but we do have some great photos of Barney with his Tele, Pitman with his Dano, Tedesco with his stuff.  There is the one photo of Tedesco with the Bellzouki, I suppose.  We do know that Jan Berry called for that specific guitar on TAAACSCBRATA, so that could be a clue.  Then there's the photos of the Mosrites I mentioned.  Would somebody have a look at that photo in the wrecking crew thread and see if you agree Billy's playing a Mosrite?

But I've never seen a studio photo of a WC guitarist playing a Fender XII.

the part sounds close to me. the sound itself ... as you noted, not so much! what exactly is latency?

I saw the mid-60's Fender hardshell bass case at Billy's feet first! That guitar, though...I can't tell, can't even venture a guess (pun). If the headstock is any indication it could be a Mosrite, I just can't tell.

The Fender XII info is anecdotal/circumstantial. Two of the most famous 12-stringers not named George Harrison: I know Jimmy Page used one on studio sessions and later on his own Led Zep tracks (not the more famous Gibson doubleneck), I know McGuinn had and used the Fender occasionally in the studio despite being known for the Rick 12, and I've heard the Fenders were simply more reliable 12-string electric guitars although a bit more expensive. As far as photo evidence, there is none I can think of - it's all interview and anecdotal stuff.

what is the string bass doing in 'Sloop'? doubling the Fender? I can't hear it like I can on the others.

lotsa people used them. Tim Buckley, Velvet Underground, Dave Davies. The Fender XII doesn't have the traditional 'classic' 12 string sound. It sounds more swirly, almost organ/harpsichord like. To me, it sounds like 'pet sounds', but I don't know if that's just because of the 'light'/direct way in which the guitars were recorded, as opposed to the 'jingle jangle' thing everyone else was doing.

It's an annoying delay that can happen when recording digitally. What you are playing and hearing in real time can get out of sync with the signal you're hearing from the digital, all that A/D conversion crap that gets in the way of creating music, you know... ;D It can get worse as your processor works harder and starts slowing down.

oh ok, I've never recorded digitally (only transferred final mixes to digital), so I have never experienced it.

I wouldn't usually record so digitally but I wanted to get the example up quickly to have something more to talk about tonight.

As for Sloop, yes, it's just a straight up double of Carol the whole time. 

Here's the photo:

(http://images.yuku.com/image/jpeg/38d266e1670f8198f5880d1def45f114af5f7884.jpg)

Billy's headstock looks really Mosrite-y to me.

I might just have to put some of these student loans I've got toward an electric 12-string.  If you're from the government and reading this, I'm just joking...  Heh heh...

Too bad all the amp mics are obscured in the photo. 

Was going to make this a separate post a few weeks ago, didn't do it, figured this would be a better place to ask:

Where did the notion that so many guitars were recorded "direct" into the board for Pet Sounds originate?

I ask because a more common practice would be to have the musicians in the booth but the amps placed elsewhere. Not only common, I'd say, but standard practice up to and including today when re-amping is not done.

So when I hear some of those PS electric guitar parts, I hear spacious reverb too. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but at the studios PS was recorded there was most often a single chamber where you could send a signal from the board into the chamber then back again to blend. So if you had multiple guitars, were they sub-mixing them into one signal to send to the chambers for the effect, or was the reverb coming from their amps instead, which could have been anywhere from a hallway to a closet to isolated behind some baffles or gobos on the floor? And, of course, all the photos of the standard setups of the 60's where the players sat right in front of their amps perched on a chair or something.

I'm just wondering why it's not as common to assume they were playing through amps on PS as it seems to be to assume they were going direct into the board.

It's a Mosrite for sure (or at least a Mosrite neck). I don't think it's a 12-string though.

Look at the one behind Tommy: You can see just enough to pick out the kind of Cannon plug that would go into the EV666. It has that little cone-shaped black rubber piece just before the cable goes into the plug. If I didn't have one I never would have spotted that on any of the photos.

To my ear it usually sounds like chamber reverb to me.  Additionally, to my ear it usually sounds direct.  The only thing we know for sure was direct in terms of direct evidence is WIBN.  Hal had to have the headphones and nobody else in the studio could hear the guitars.

I've just taken that sound as the prime example and compared it to other sessions.  There's some where it could go either way.  Sometimes you have to listen for what happens when the talkback is hit.  

I think the majority of the 12-string electrics were recorded direct.  Maybe Brian just liked the sound of them at the time?  It is interesting that that has been assumed, but to me it's just because the other ones sound like WIBN.

(http://www.prosoundweb.com/images/uploads/4_Mics.jpg)

The army green one is the 666 with that odd plug...and this is a stock web photo to show the example, not my own EV collection.  :) Sad to report my own similar cable for the EV666 might need some troubleshooting and repair. Probably a loose solder.

I think some of them are direct and some are amp. I believe most everything was sent to the chamber, and some was printed to the multi-track during recording as well. The notion probably comes from seeing photos of Carl playing in the booth, interviews and the clean sound maybe.

The boards were maybe 12 input? They probably used some of the portable Ampex (or later, Shure) mic mixers or homebrew stuff for extra channels going into the board. I know a lot of studios did this. In fact, Bob Ohlsson from Motown has mentioned on some message boards that someone he worked for told him that Britz recorded lots of Beach Boys vocals through the Ampex MX35 mixer, not the UA console. And that they sometimes sent the mic directly into a limiter (Fairchild?), bypassing the mic preamp. Not that it matters too much when any line input going into the board is sent through the mic preamps anyway !

This photo shows a 664, 666, RE-15 and RE-20 (in order). The 666 shows up all over the place in the '60s photos, but the RE-15 didn't come out until '67, and the RE-20 maybe '69? The RE-20 is actually the next generation of mics in the 666 lineage.  664 was a lower-end budget mic ... they don't sound very good in my opinion (at least, I've never met one I liked!)

I love the RE-15.  I have one and use it all the time.  I have a cord for the 666 but haven't got around to getting myself one yet.

I think part of the difficulty in determining when they're going direct is that they'd still send the mic input from an amp to the chamber, as Donny said, so you rarely hear JUST amp reverb, which I feel like we could easily pick out.  Sometimes you can just hear that no speaker cone is vibrating.  Very interesting, though.

I'm the same way on the 664, I've had chances to buy them but never did because they don't have much of a presence or character, where the 666 is amazing on a guitar amp (IMO). The 664 is what they used to use in school assemblies and to announce lineups in little league baseball games! I do have an EV630 which came from that kind of scene, too, I bought it on a little table stand like a school principal would use to make morning announcements... ;D

Didn't movie and TV prop houses use certain model EV mics to make ray guns and alien weapons for sci-films of the 50's and 60's? I heard that somewhere.

I have a perfectly working 666 mic but a dodgy semi-working cord, where you have the cord but not the mic. It seems we're on opposite sides of the equation here.  ;D

That's a good point about the guitars in a Big Band or jazz ensemble.  Always there, seldom heard unless they have a short solo or as part of a featured section.  I always wondered if they got bored or felt under-used and under-appreciated, as in "why am I even here?" And yes, that's a great way to describe it - feel rather than  hear it in the arrangement - makes you wonder how you would hear the song if the guitar weren't there. 

Every 664 I've ever had sounded tinny and weird. But some people have used them to good effect, so maybe I got duds.

The 666 and RE-15 prices have gone kind of nutty compared to the other dynamic mics of the era, so I've kind of avoided them so far. I've got an arsenal of these kinds of mics, and my favorites are the EV 631a and Shure SM53, both fairly obscure. And of course the 545. The SM53 is kind of like Shure's version of the RE15, and about 1/3 of the cost.

I just wanted to say again, the demo of those two guitar parts is really close to the original if not spot-on, and very cool, I'd suggest any guitarists or fans in general give it a listen. If I could get a copy of the transcription I'd definitely like to give it a spin on my 12-string.

Great reading here chaps.

aeijtzsche - in your quest to recreate the WIBN guitar tone, have you tried DI-ing a guitar into one of those Universal Audio Solo/610 preamps that are available these days?

I'm too poor to do that.  I own neither an electric 12 or a 610.  I wouldn't be surprised if the direct guitars avoided the 610 board, at least going in.  They needed the inputs, I'm sure, so they probably put the direct boxes into a smaller mixer, patched those into the chamber, and took the return in to the board.  But I certainly could be wrong there.


(http://s8.postimage.org/iqv37k66d/Screen_shot_2013_01_21_at_11_22_17_AM.png)

Thank you! I'll be giving it a try soon.

Re: The 610 and reissues of it...for economics and practical considerations, any tube preamp would come close enough to the sound and vibe for purposes like this, in fact some tube preamps which sell new for under 100 dollars (US) can be surprisingly good sound-wise.

Question: I've heard reports both ways, I want to clarify something. Were any of the studios where these various 12-string parts on Pet Sounds were recorded using any form of a limiting amplifier like the LA-2A, or any other types of outboard limiting or compression as the guitars were recorded either direct or through an external amp?

McGuinn's 12-string was run through at least two and perhaps even three outboard compressors to get the "Tambourine Man" jangle, in '65...if I wanted to take a stab at doing a soundalike demo for any of the PS 12-string electric guitar tracks, and I have an opto-compressor, should I use it?

That should of course only read "8va" not "15ma".  Whoops.

As for the compressor, supposedly Gold Star wasn't really using anything like that for anything other than mastering until quite late, but who really knows?  They might have gotten some limiting across the buss, but I doubt they got anything on just the guitar inputs.

I've done it, but it doesn't sound close at all to me. The mic preamp in a channel of Scully 280 (tape machine) is the closest I've come so far

example here on the intro: http://magichero.bandcamp.com/

2nd closest is a Shure M67, which is also featured in this recording (the 12-string outro & playing throughout the song), which is a cheap little mic mixer you can pick up on eBay for a few bucks.

The UA 610 sounds great, but not right for this kind of direct sound. It gets into the territory for vocals and drums though.

seriously doubt any compressors were used on the guitars, only final mix (where it is fairly heavy in places -- you can hear a little pumping on some tracks on the original mixes from the Steve Hoffman masters). I think the compressors were UA 176 (precurser/tube version of the 1176).

You three are the A-team here, you really are.

Add to this list Pete Townshend, who despite being associated with Rickenbacker for years actually used a Fender Electric XII for the "Tommy" sessions.  He's pictured in the latest Guitar World magazine playing one, in a more recent photo - It's a vintage Fender too, perhaps even the same one he used in '69 for Tommy but I have no idea.

I'll say it again, the Fender Electric XII is one of the bigger "sleeper" guitars of all time. It didn't have the cache or the hipness associated with the Rickenbacker, it didn't have the quirkiness or pawn shop low-cost coolness of the Danelectro, but I guarantee a lot more classic electric 12-string parts were recorded with a Fender than people might assume. And I'll also say again, it is an easier electric 12 to manage and tune than a Rickenbacker...not to say I wouldn't want a Rickenbacker, but I think the Fender is a more player-friendly guitar that stays in tune.

And more durable, too...note that the Gibson-Epiphone style 12-string electrics favored by Carl were/are prone to neck and headstock cracks and damage, as Carl's indeed were and if you're not Carl Wilson, playing a guitar that has a greater chance of somehow cracking and needing serious repair isn't much of an option...

A few questions, opinions & observations...presented in CAPS for ease of reading, not b/c I'm yelling.  :)

1. Wouldn't It Be Nice
There is, unusually for the album, a strummed guitar. I've always thought it was some kind of jazz box acoustic. It is there more for texture than any sort of chordal definition. It is probably the closest thing to how a guitar would traditionally be used for such a song.  
DO YOU GUYS THINK THE ACOUSTIC 6-STRING IS A "REGULAR"  DREADNAUGHT, OR THE MUCH LARGER "BOX" GUITAR, OR A SEMI-ELECTRIC ARCHTOP?  ALSO, I ONCE READ SOMEWHERE - I THINK THE GRANATA BOOK - THAT THE INTRO GUITAR IS IN SLACK-KEY TUNING.  ANY THOUGHTS?  I MEAN, IT DOESN'T SOUND VERY HAWAIIAN TO ME.

3. That's Not Me
Here we have the main guitar acting very much as a bassline, and in fact the overdubbed basses do for the most part double the guitar line. Carl's guitar, probably a Strat or his Jaguar is kind of dialed in to a surfy kind of sound, with the treble and reverb. But again, no strumming, no chords. It's an active line that provides a harmonic structure with movement.
DO YOU THINK THERE'S A SLIGHT BIT OF LESLIE ON THE MAIN GUITAR?
The overdubbed 12-strings simply add a melodic answer to the vocal.  OR A LITTLE LESLIE ON THE 12-STRING?  

4. Don't Talk
Here's the template again, the two 12-strings playing melodic lines to complement the vocal. Not much else to say.
LESLIE ON ONE OF THE 12 STRINGS, AND TREMELO ON THE OTHER?

5. IWFTD
This is a more typical use of guitar. Likely Carl on Rickenbacker, the guitar strums. However, there is something about the timbre of it that led Carol Kaye and the Liner Notes people to conclude there is a ukulele on the track, which there isn't, So even the pretty normal strummed guitar kind of thing is slightly off.  
I'M PRETTY CONVINCED IT'S CARL ON THE 12-STRING AND RAY POHLMAN ON DANO BASS, BUT THE FACT THAT THE BOYS PLAYED A ROAD GIG IN ANOTHER STATE THE NIGHT BEFORE, AND ANOTHER ONE THE NIGHT FOLLOWING THIS AFTERNOON SESSION, CAUSES ME TO PAUSE.  THE FACT THAT BOTH GIGS WERE IN OREGON DOES MAKE IT POSSIBLE, THOUGH, FOR CARL, AND THE OTHER GUYS, TO HAVE FLOWN HOME TO L.A. BETWEEN SHOWS.  AGAIN, LESIE OR MAYBE TREMELO ON THE 12?

6. LGAFA
Very contrasting guitars on this. A strummed acoustic guitar, which is quite rare indeed on Pet Sounds, adds chordal support. And then at the end, the slide guitar adds the Hawaiian feel.  CAROL THOUGHT THERE WERE TWO ACOUSTICS, BUT I'M PRETTY SURE THERE'S JUST ONE.  6-STRING, RIGHT?

7. Sloop John B
The quintessential guitar arrangement. Also tricky to figure out all the elements.
Obviously, we have, on the basic track, the two electric 12s playing their figures, and then Billy Strange famously overdubbed a third 12-string part. These high arpeggios lend a shimmer to the arrangement, while the somewhat twangy lower 12-string plays a strangely nautical figure.
The confusion comes though the presence of Al Casey in the credits. The guitarists present were Jerry Cole, Billy Strange, and Al Casey. Presumably Jerry and Billy played the 12-strings. I had wanted to think that Casey played a Dano bass, because the bass line is so massive and fat, I figured there were three basses. But then Al Casey put out an album in which he covers Sloop John, and recounts that he played acoustic guitar on the session. If you listen closely to the session, you can hear the very faint echos of a piano pounding the chords, and if you just listen hard enough, there might just be an acoustic guitar mixed in there. It's a very Spectorian thing, where the instruments are not really audible but "there."
I'd like to hear alternate theories about this.  

ARE WE SURE THE ELECTRICS ON THE BASIC TRACK ARE 12-STRINGS?  AROUND 2001 OR SO I DID A VERY LONG STUDY OF THE SESSION TAPE (AS HEARD ON UNSURPASSED MASTERS), AND CONCLUDED THAT THE TWO INTERLOCKING ELECTRIC GUITARS HEARD ON THE BASIC TRACK (BILLY STRANGE & JERRY COLE) WERE BOTH 6-STRINGS, AND THE RHYTHM GUITAR (AL CASEY) WAS ELECTRIC...AND IT BLENDS IN WITH THE PIANO HEARD WAY IN THE BACKGROUND TO CREATE THE "PIANO/GUITAR" SOUND BRIAN HOLDS UP AS ONE OF PHIL SPECTOR'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS.  I DON'T HEAR AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR ON HERE.  THE MASSIVE BASS GUITAR SOUND IS JUST CAROL KAYE PLAYING WITH HER HARD PICK, GETTING THAT GREAT CLICKY TREBLE TONE ALONG WITH THE LOW MIDRANGE BASS TONE, DOUBLED BY LYLE ON UPRIGHT.

8. GOK
Another puzzler for me. Carl is on 12-string, probably Rickenbacker, and he's sharply strumming the chords in the second and third verses. But it's very well blended into the keyboard sound, so they become like one thing, a sum of their parts.  
AGAIN, THE "PIANO/GUITAR".  

The question for me has always been whether there is a Danelectro bass on this, or possibly a second Fender Bass. Both Carol and Ray Pohlman are on the AFM, but I have yet to definitively hear the presence of two separate electric basses. But the song is another example of a conventional guitar use transformed by the production into something more special.    
SIMILAR TO THE "KISS ME BABY" SESSION...BOTH CAROL AND RAY ARE ON THAT SESSION, AND THE AFM SHEET ACTUALLY SPECIFIES THAT THEY BOTH PLAYED BASS, BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE ONE INSTRUMENT WITH A LOT OF GREAT (LOW MID OR BASS) TONE.  ON "GOK" THOUGH, I HEAR MORE TREBLE IN THERE.  AND, THERE'S THE UPRIGHT TOO, WHICH ISN'T ON "KMB".

9. IKTAA
As Mentioned above, this is back to the template of two 12s playing high. I would love to know how Brian and the guitarists put this together. It's a tricky arpeggio with some dissonances with the underlying chords. It is also interesting to note that the line was altered between the first takes and the last, when Brian was still experimenting with the arrangement. This is one where you wish tape was rolling the whole time they were fooling around with the arrangement. It's such a great use of guitars. I expect that it was possible only because of the abilities and sensibilities of Kessel and Glen Campbell. I'm not sure if it's something a non-guitar player would stumble upon.  
AGREED.

10. Here Today
Another very sort of conventional use of guitars, strumming away during the choruses. It's an acoustic 12 and an electric 12 just strumming full on chords, and relatively high in the mix. Perhaps the least interesting guitar track of the whole album.  
ARE WE SURE BOTH GUITARS ARE 12-STRING (AS OPPOSED TO ONE OR BOTH BEING 6-STRINGS WITH LOTS OF ECHO)?  ON THE OTHER HAND, I USED TO JUST THINK THAT THE LOUD ELECTRIC RHYTHM GUITAR ON "WORMS" WAS A 6-STRING BATHED IN ECHO, UNTIL I HEARD THE FULL SESSION TAPE LAST YEAR (I REMEMBER GETTING UP AT 5:00AM TO STUDY THAT ONE FOR HOURS, TAKE AFTER TAKE...IMAGINE THE SURREALNESS OF THAT!), THEN I REALIZED IT IS IN FACT A 12-STRING BATHE IN ECHO.

11. IJWMFTT
Originally, Glen Campbell was playing banjo on this, before Brian asked him to switch to a "Jazz Box." The Jazz Box strums along pretty conventionally. The other guitar is an electric 12 string played by Barney Kessel. It's a little tough to pick out exactly what it's doing, but at times it is adding strange dissonances. In particular, during the "each time things start to happen again" section, it harps on a particularly dissonant note Very subtle guitar arrangement there.
AGREED.

12. PET SOUNDS
The basic track features a standard electric 6-string, sounds like it could be a telecaster, playing the surfy repeated D/Eb figure. And then the doubled lead guitar is on there too, of course, with the tremolo/leslie effect. And as Craig mentioned, there's the very, very soft acoustic guitar accents during the "bongo" section. This guitar is actually not there the whole time, it was inserted just in those spots, as the UM tapes prove.  
AGAIN, IS THE ACOUSTIC 6-STRING A "REGULAR"  DREADNAUGHT, OR THE MUCH LARGER "BOX" GUITAR, OR A SEMI-ELECTRIC ARCHTOP?  

13. CAROLINE NO
Two electric 12s again. One of these plays rich jazz chords, the other serves almost as a cello, adding low counterpoint to the vocal in single-note lines.  
I DON'T THINK THERE'S AN UPRIGHT BASS ON THIS ONE...LYLE PLAYED UKE ON THE BASIC TRACK (INTERLOCKING WITH THE HARPSICHORD) WHILE CAROL PLAYED FENDER BASS AND OVERDUBBED THE DANO 6-STRING (SHE'S ONE OF A HANDFUL OF PLAYERS PAID FOR OVERTIME ON THE SESSION).  

14.  TROMBONE DIXIE, ANYONE?  BARNEY, JERRY, AND BILLY...AT LEAST TWO 12-STRINGS, AND MAYBE A 6-STRING ELECTRIC?

Would the acoustic archtop be a semi-electric that was either unplugged or turned down very low, or were there actual fullbore, non-electric acoustic archtops?  If so, were they of the "f-hole" variety?  Very interesting.

While we're at it, what's everyone's opinion on these:

1.  SALT LAKE CITY:  Is the intro two 6-string basses (one a Dano played by Carol, the other a Fender VI played by the self-described owner of the first Fender VI on the L.A. session scene, Jerry Cole)?  That's what I wrote in my beachboysarchives.com essay, but would like to hear the opinion of others.  On the session tape, Brian refers to Carol's instrument as a "guitar" rather than a bass, so I think it very likely. 

2.  CALIFORNIA GIRLS:  Two 12-strings (Carl and Jerry) in the intro?  Again, that's what I wrote, but a Wolf Marshall guitar transcription book claims one is a 6-string.  Opinions please?

3.  THE LITTLE GIRL I ONCE KNEW:  There's no less than three electrics on the intro...to me, it sounds like a 12- and a 6- on the first round, joined by a second 12- on the second round.  Thoughts?

Oh, and one more, maybe for the other Craig...:)....on "Shelter", is it two 6-string electrics combining in places to sound like a 12-, or is there actually a 12- overdubbed on there?

I do want to eventually tackle some of the other questions too, but this one I think I can answer with some confidence:

Based on all the evidence, including photos I've seen, film, interviews, and even some personal conversations with some players from the time, I'm going to say the evidence points to the rhythm tracks being played on a non-electric, full bodied archtop guitar, the kind with the F-holes.

These were designed and used as big band or orchestra model guitars, designed to project a specific way and within a certain frequency range to fit in and also be heard in a large group setting. We'd rarely see anything like a standard round-hole dreadnaught acoustic model on a bandstand, and it still remains somewhat of a standard for that sound and use.

I know guys like Kessel and Tedesco, coming from the jazz world, would use these same non-electric archtops, whether they were Gibsons, Strombergs, D'Angelico, etc (all the standard names from the 30's and 40's) to play rhythm parts on 60's pop/rock sessions. Kessel played a specific Gibson non-electric model which according to Don Peake was also used into the 70's when Peake played sessions for Ray Charles.

Unless it was a country or folk-themed session, or something requiring fingerpicking, I don't believe I've seen as many photos of the WC session guitarists who played the rhythm chair using a Martin or Gibson (or other) dreadnaught model...the photos of them using it are probably sessions where that sound was requested for the song or where that style lent itself to that sound.

I hear the "archtop" sound on Pet Sounds, for example. It projects a certain way and doesn't have the full-bodied bass response that a dreadnaught would have. Those acoustic archtops project within a certain frequency range, and again that goes back to the big band days where they filled the sonic gap between the bass, drums, and piano. Dreadnaughts could have done it, but they didn't sit as well, I'd imagine, within that context.

Big disclaimer: I'm going on assumptions and circumstantial evidence - apart from Kessel, Peake, and Tedesco who have said they used such a guitar on specific sessions - the rest I'll call a "semi-educated guess" until stronger evidence is found.

As far as pickups and electric-acoustic F-hole guitars, a lot of guys may have put a DeArmond pickup or something on the acoustic archtop, but for that big-band style of chord playing I think they would have preferred 100% acoustic archtops for that purpose. And they had access to electrified Gibson jazz boxes and whatnot anyway, in their arsenals.

The great unknown is where the customizations were done, and almost all of these guys would customize and change their guitars pretty regularly. So the guitar Kessel had in 64 may have been modded into something else by 67, it's hard to tell.

My ears are hearing a standard 12-string electric, and it sounds like it's pretty heavily compressed for that McGuinn vibe - very clean and present sound. And later in the track, it sounds like they have another 12-string electric in there, and they panned them hard left and right. Of course there are other parts too, including a 6-string electric (or several) adding to the texture.

I have a working 664, 644 and the associated cords.  The 664 has occasionally seen use.  The TV station I work at has local bands come in once a week, and our sound guy will sometimes scour the building for vintage mics depending on the need.

Before I get fact-checked on some of the guitar info  ;D , I will also point to the most frustrating thing about trying to pin some of this stuff down: The contradictions. Or what look like contradictions to previous statements.

Example: 1993, Tedesco talking about the Beach Boys sessions said he'd use the Telecaster for electric work (that can be proven) and for acoustic he said "a little round Martin". I've seen him say, and seen photos of him doing so, that he used an archtop jazz box for acoustic rhythm work. The answer may be "both" depending on the session.

Example 2: Jerry Cole, 1993, also mentions the Telecaster for electric work and a (Martin acoustic) D-35. In the same sentence he mentions sitar and ud, saying he'd pull out "whatever Brian wanted". The sitar wasn't in Brian's working lexicon at least up to 1966, was it? So there is a cloudy reference which almost adds a question mark to the D-35.

Same interview piece, Kessel says "I distinctly remember being in the engineering booth with Glen Campbell", which is the scenario described in the research in this thread, yet the article itself says he used a Guild acoustic 12-string on earlier sessions. No specifics, nothing beyond that. One bit of info doesn't fit with the other in context.

I just wanted to point those out because the nature of trying to get to the bottom of these various factoids is full of contradictions and non sequiturs like the Guild 12-string bit.

All great stuff, guys.  I'm inclined to agree with Guitarfool Craig that when we're talking about acoustic guitars, for this period at least, we're talking about these, what Tommy and Tye/Irv are playing.  I can't tell what Pitman is playing:

(http://www.scottymoore.net/images/HerbEllisGtr/79712933.jpg)

Now to respond to the other Craig, my responses in color:



1. Wouldn't It Be Nice
There is, unusually for the album, a strummed guitar. I've always thought it was some kind of jazz box acoustic. It is there more for texture than any sort of chordal definition. It is probably the closest thing to how a guitar would traditionally be used for such a song.  
DO YOU GUYS THINK THE ACOUSTIC 6-STRING IS A "REGULAR"  DREADNAUGHT, OR THE MUCH LARGER "BOX" GUITAR, OR A SEMI-ELECTRIC ARCHTOP?  ALSO, I ONCE READ SOMEWHERE - I THINK THE GRANATA BOOK - THAT THE INTRO GUITAR IS IN SLACK-KEY TUNING.  ANY THOUGHTS?  I MEAN, IT DOESN'T SOUND VERY HAWAIIAN TO ME.

See above about the acoustic.  The intro has been subject to so much debate that all kinds of weird things have been put forward.  There is the question of why it does sound kind of out of tune at times, which could lead to the slack-key assumption.  I still think it's just a couple of regular 12-strings, possibly played a little higher than they were set up for, which sounds strange in the context of these very professional musicians, but that's the only thing I can think of


3. That's Not Me
Here we have the main guitar acting very much as a bassline, and in fact the overdubbed basses do for the most part double the guitar line. Carl's guitar, probably a Strat or his Jaguar is kind of dialed in to a surfy kind of sound, with the treble and reverb. But again, no strumming, no chords. It's an active line that provides a harmonic structure with movement.
DO YOU THINK THERE'S A SLIGHT BIT OF LESLIE ON THE MAIN GUITAR?
The overdubbed 12-strings simply add a melodic answer to the vocal.  OR A LITTLE LESLIE ON THE 12-STRING?  

I don't think there's Leslie on anything.  However, I've recently come to the conclusion that there may be two guitars playing in unison.  Maybe Carl and Al both played guitar?  I think the UM overdub tracks prove there's no leslie on the overdubbed 12-string, it's just a nice clean, chimey tone

4. Don't Talk
Here's the template again, the two 12-strings playing melodic lines to complement the vocal. Not much else to say.
LESLIE ON ONE OF THE 12 STRINGS, AND TREMELO ON THE OTHER?

I don't hear leslie here, either.  I think one guitar is just playing "manual" tremolo by fast "mandolin" style picking.  But we're at a major disadvantage because of the relative lack of session tape.

5. IWFTD
This is a more typical use of guitar. Likely Carl on Rickenbacker, the guitar strums. However, there is something about the timbre of it that led Carol Kaye and the Liner Notes people to conclude there is a ukulele on the track, which there isn't, So even the pretty normal strummed guitar kind of thing is slightly off.  
I'M PRETTY CONVINCED IT'S CARL ON THE 12-STRING AND RAY POHLMAN ON DANO BASS, BUT THE FACT THAT THE BOYS PLAYED A ROAD GIG IN ANOTHER STATE THE NIGHT BEFORE, AND ANOTHER ONE THE NIGHT FOLLOWING THIS AFTERNOON SESSION, CAUSES ME TO PAUSE.  THE FACT THAT BOTH GIGS WERE IN OREGON DOES MAKE IT POSSIBLE, THOUGH, FOR CARL, AND THE OTHER GUYS, TO HAVE FLOWN HOME TO L.A. BETWEEN SHOWS.  AGAIN, LESIE OR MAYBE TREMELO ON THE 12?

The guitar does sound a little affected, but it's hard to tell.

6. LGAFA
Very contrasting guitars on this. A strummed acoustic guitar, which is quite rare indeed on Pet Sounds, adds chordal support. And then at the end, the slide guitar adds the Hawaiian feel.  CAROL THOUGHT THERE WERE TWO ACOUSTICS, BUT I'M PRETTY SURE THERE'S JUST ONE.  6-STRING, RIGHT?

I think there's no question it's just one, 6-string acoustic

7. Sloop John B
The quintessential guitar arrangement. Also tricky to figure out all the elements.
Obviously, we have, on the basic track, the two electric 12s playing their figures, and then Billy Strange famously overdubbed a third 12-string part. These high arpeggios lend a shimmer to the arrangement, while the somewhat twangy lower 12-string plays a strangely nautical figure.
The confusion comes though the presence of Al Casey in the credits. The guitarists present were Jerry Cole, Billy Strange, and Al Casey. Presumably Jerry and Billy played the 12-strings. I had wanted to think that Casey played a Dano bass, because the bass line is so massive and fat, I figured there were three basses. But then Al Casey put out an album in which he covers Sloop John, and recounts that he played acoustic guitar on the session. If you listen closely to the session, you can hear the very faint echos of a piano pounding the chords, and if you just listen hard enough, there might just be an acoustic guitar mixed in there. It's a very Spectorian thing, where the instruments are not really audible but "there."
I'd like to hear alternate theories about this.  

ARE WE SURE THE ELECTRICS ON THE BASIC TRACK ARE 12-STRINGS?  AROUND 2001 OR SO I DID A VERY LONG STUDY OF THE SESSION TAPE (AS HEARD ON UNSURPASSED MASTERS), AND CONCLUDED THAT THE TWO INTERLOCKING ELECTRIC GUITARS HEARD ON THE BASIC TRACK (BILLY STRANGE & JERRY COLE) WERE BOTH 6-STRINGS, AND THE RHYTHM GUITAR (AL CASEY) WAS ELECTRIC...AND IT BLENDS IN WITH THE PIANO HEARD WAY IN THE BACKGROUND TO CREATE THE "PIANO/GUITAR" SOUND BRIAN HOLDS UP AS ONE OF PHIL SPECTOR'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS.  I DON'T HEAR AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR ON HERE.  THE MASSIVE BASS GUITAR SOUND IS JUST CAROL KAYE PLAYING WITH HER HARD PICK, GETTING THAT GREAT CLICKY TREBLE TONE ALONG WITH THE LOW MIDRANGE BASS TONE, DOUBLED BY LYLE ON UPRIGHT.

The session tapes seem to reveal that there are 12-strings on the basic track.  This is again where listening to the noodling between takes has helped me.  I don't hear acoustic guitar either, but that's what Casey says he played, FWIW.  I mean, I don't really hear the rhythm guitar at all, and you can barely hear the piano.  It has made me wonder if they weren't even miked up by the end of it.  I think part of what makes the bass sound so big is that Carol and Lyle seem to have been recorded to different tracks of tape, so the stereo mixes can spread the bass line.  The effect is really different than other straight doubles they did, though.  Maybe they just used a different mic on Lyle or something, who knows?

8. GOK
Another puzzler for me. Carl is on 12-string, probably Rickenbacker, and he's sharply strumming the chords in the second and third verses. But it's very well blended into the keyboard sound, so they become like one thing, a sum of their parts.  
AGAIN, THE "PIANO/GUITAR".  

The question for me has always been whether there is a Danelectro bass on this, or possibly a second Fender Bass. Both Carol and Ray Pohlman are on the AFM, but I have yet to definitively hear the presence of two separate electric basses. But the song is another example of a conventional guitar use transformed by the production into something more special.    
SIMILAR TO THE "KISS ME BABY" SESSION...BOTH CAROL AND RAY ARE ON THAT SESSION, AND THE AFM SHEET ACTUALLY SPECIFIES THAT THEY BOTH PLAYED BASS, BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE ONE INSTRUMENT WITH A LOT OF GREAT (LOW MID OR BASS) TONE.  ON "GOK" THOUGH, I HEAR MORE TREBLE IN THERE.  AND, THERE'S THE UPRIGHT TOO, WHICH ISN'T ON "KMB".

But can you point to a moment during the track or even the session where you can actually hear two electric basses?  That is what throws me off.


10. Here Today
Another very sort of conventional use of guitars, strumming away during the choruses. It's an acoustic 12 and an electric 12 just strumming full on chords, and relatively high in the mix. Perhaps the least interesting guitar track of the whole album.  
ARE WE SURE BOTH GUITARS ARE 12-STRING (AS OPPOSED TO ONE OR BOTH BEING 6-STRINGS WITH LOTS OF ECHO)?  ON THE OTHER HAND, I USED TO JUST THINK THAT THE LOUD ELECTRIC RHYTHM GUITAR ON "WORMS" WAS A 6-STRING BATHED IN ECHO, UNTIL I HEARD THE FULL SESSION TAPE LAST YEAR (I REMEMBER GETTING UP AT 5:00AM TO STUDY THAT ONE FOR HOURS, TAKE AFTER TAKE...IMAGINE THE SURREALNESS OF THAT!), THEN I REALIZED IT IS IN FACT A 12-STRING BATHE IN ECHO.

When in doubt, I just sort of assume that they are 12-strings, simply because there's so little electric 12 string on Pet Sounds.  Brian was nothing if not partial to his little fads, and 12-strings seems to be one at this time.  But there's no noodling that really confirms 12-string, so I wouldn't want to say anything definitively, I guess.

 

13. CAROLINE NO
Two electric 12s again. One of these plays rich jazz chords, the other serves almost as a cello, adding low counterpoint to the vocal in single-note lines.  
I DON'T THINK THERE'S AN UPRIGHT BASS ON THIS ONE...LYLE PLAYED UKE ON THE BASIC TRACK (INTERLOCKING WITH THE HARPSICHORD) WHILE CAROL PLAYED FENDER BASS AND OVERDUBBED THE DANO 6-STRING (SHE'S ONE OF A HANDFUL OF PLAYERS PAID FOR OVERTIME ON THE SESSION).  

There is indeed upright bass--it's the only bass instrument on the basic track.  Even if the timbre doesn't give it away, a Fender Bass doesn't allow for the smooth portamenti that the bass plays--you need a fretless instrument for that.  Additionally, I don't think there's a uke.  The harpsichord is using the buff stop, or "lute" stop which sounds a little ukey, but since Lyle is playing bass on the basic track there really couldn't be uke.

14.  TROMBONE DIXIE, ANYONE?  BARNEY, JERRY, AND BILLY...AT LEAST TWO 12-STRINGS, AND MAYBE A 6-STRING ELECTRIC?

That would be my best guess.

1.  SALT LAKE CITY:  Is the intro two 6-string basses (one a Dano played by Carol, the other a Fender VI played by the self-described owner of the first Fender VI on the L.A. session scene, Jerry Cole)?  That's what I wrote in my beachboysarchives.com essay, but would like to hear the opinion of others.  On the session tape, Brian refers to Carol's instrument as a "guitar" rather than a bass, so I think it very likely. 

Makes sense to me.  This is going to have to remain conjecture.  I don't remember hearing any open Bs or Es from Carol, which is about the only way to confirm it being a 6-string.

2.  CALIFORNIA GIRLS:  Two 12-strings (Carl and Jerry) in the intro?  Again, that's what I wrote, but a Wolf Marshall guitar transcription book claims one is a 6-string.  Opinions please?

Two 12s in my opinion.

3.  THE LITTLE GIRL I ONCE KNEW:  There's no less than three electrics on the intro...to me, it sounds like a 12- and a 6- on the first round, joined by a second 12- on the second round.  Thoughts?

I haven't really dug into that session recently.

I just wanted to say that you guys are awesome, keep up the good work!

Re: possible Leslie on some tracks -- I think maybe when some people think they're hearing leslie, it could possibly be the effect of more than one reverb send on the same track (i.e., reverb was printed on the guitar track [or from the amp], then reverb was also applied to the same signal at some later point during submixing or bouncing). This can create an effect that is similar to a leslie speaker (I think the phenomenon is called the Doppler effect). That said, a Leslie on slow setting is can be very subtle on a guitar.

Since many of these guitars were recorded direct, my theory is that there is no Leslie in most cases unless it's a pronounced effect ... Not sure how many Leslie speakers most studios had, but they were not the kind of thing that guitar players carried around. Since you do hear organ through Leslie on a lot of these tracks, it would be safe to assume if there is a Leslie's organ on a session, then there is probably not a Leslie'd guitar as well, unless it was an overdub. Just a practical theory.

For what it's worth, Carol Kaye once told me she never saw a Bass VI in the studio and it was always the Danelectro. That made sense to me because the Bass VI was a very expensive instrument compared to the Dano.

'Sloop' has a 12-string on there for sure, I'd say. It sounds so much like the Fender Electric XII. I have actually recorded a bit of an experiment with my Fender XII (a '65 model) recorded direct, and I will try to upload the results today if anyone wants to hear.

I really don't hear Dano on 'God Only Knows'.

I hear string bass for sure on 'Caroline, No'. And Dano for sure. Those are both very distinct in my opinion. Though I suppose you could record the Fender bass to sound more like a string bass.

I think some of these questions are impossible to answer ... two 6-string guitars deep in a mix vs. one 12? Can one tell by listening? We'd really have to listen to clues on the session tapes I suppose. You'd have to listen through the entire session tapes (not just highlights), taking notes and really listening critically. A few sets of educated ears would be needed.
 
All of my opinions are based on the final mono mixes, which are the ones I think give the most accurate assessment, as the re-mixes have extra (sometimes digital) reverb (and other unknown things, compressors, and computer processing, etc.) that cause confusion for me. I have never listened to the unsurpassed masters stuff, maybe I should ?

Yeah, man. Any heavy Beach Boys fan should.

I think Carol is playing a Fender bass. Danos sound kind of thin & weedy, and the intro sounds punchy & warm. I think Brian just called it a 'guitar' offhandedly.

I have a few from CDRs, but I don't download music, so I never wanted to shell out the dollars. I might have some stashed away but not a full collection to study. the original mono mixes can tell you a lot more than people think they can !

I think Brian offhandedly calling it a guitar off-hand is just as likely as him calling it a guitar because it was.  I really have no idea here.  But I have to disagree with the blanket statement about Danos sounding thin.  They certainly can, but they don't have to.  At the end of the day, they're 30" scale bass guitars with two extra strings, and played with a hard pick and a little palm muting makes it almost indistinguishable from, say, my 30" scale Fender Mustang Bass.


When it comes to picking things out, there's no substitute.  Noodling between takes it what has alerted me to many fine details, like that there's a dano on WIBN.  I agree that you can get almost everything from a mono mix, but sometimes there's a surprise.

I've finally recorded some examples of the Fender XII recorded direct. This set was done last night through a Scully 280 mic preamp into an Ampex 440 mono deck, on NOS Scotch tape. I transferred to 1/4" tape directly to digital with no further enhancements:

https://soundcloud.com/donnylang

I didn't really play the parts exactly correct (just kind of winged it!), but you will be able to hear the sound. I think Josh has asked me to try to replicate the 'Wouldn't it Be Nice' intro on the XII to see if maybe that was the sound used on the record. There is obviously a 2nd guitar (or something else?) part being played over it on the record, but I think this sounds close ... I will let you guys decide.

I also had a a work-in-progress copy of a song I'm working on that has prominent timbales on this reel, so I transferred a copy of it to show an example of what they sound like in this 'beach boys'-type context as well for those who are interested (reference the 'Wrecking Crew' thread). Incidentally, this track was recorded to the Ampex AG-300 8-track from Sunset Sound that I have discussed on this board in the past. The mono reference mix was done to the 440 deck.

Thanks.  Both of those are really interesting.  The timbales definitely evoke the PLMW sound.  And then the 12-string is right on--particularly the California Girls intro stuff, that's truly THE sound of it.  Interesting.  I wish I had a bunch of 12-strings to see how much is the Fender and how much is the 12-string in general.  Very good!

I've owned & played lots of 12-strings, but the '60s Fender is the only one to really get close like that in my opinion. I think it's a '60s vs. modern thing partially. Ditto the Scully 280 preamp. The UA 610 doesn't sound as 'right', even though it's probably closer on paper.

The 'CA Girls' and 'WIBN' parts were played on the pickup setting that gives a strange, out-of-phase thing, which is I think is unique to the original Fender XII, which had split pickups (like your Mustang bass). I think it's the bass section on the neck pickup and the treble section of the bridge pickup, out of phase, but not sure if that's correct or not. I rolled down the tone on the 'WIBN' part because that's how the record sounds to me.

re: Dano -- maybe we'll have to agree to disagree, but I've never been able to get the body or mass of sound out of a Dano compared to a Fender bass (30" or 34" scale). I usually use a regular bass with the mids boosted and lows cut off for the 'baritone' sound because of it. But I've only played the reissue Danos, not the originals.

EDIT: Oh, one other thing about Danos. So, the Fender Bass sound would be flatwound strings. I think Danos were shipped from the factory with roundwounds & usually used that way, which helped to give them that twangy brightness.

Those Fender XII recordings are totally awesome.

What did you use for the reverb?  (and aside from that, we're just hearing the 'dry' sound of the guitar through the pre and tape machine?)

It's a Biamp spring unit. It has a built-in limiter (for the reverb signal only), which minimizes the typical 'boing'-type artifacts that can come with spring reverbs. It also has a 4-band EQ, so you can adjust the reverb. I think Biamp were trying to make a spring that sounded like a plate, but you can also roll off the highs and boost some of the low-mids to give it a chamber-type flavor. One day when I have a permanent studio setup, I hope to build a real chamber in there. To any spring haters, consider that Mark L. used that fancy AKG spring reverb for the Pet Sounds stereo mix!

The signal chain was: Fender XII > direct box (whirlwind) > Scully 280 channel mic preamp > mixing board (Teac 5, w/ the Biamp reverb in the echo send/return, and a little EQ) > Ampex 440 mono. The 1/4" tape was then played from the 440 output to a CD burner. What you're hearing is an mp3 dub of the CD (raw transfer).

Just wanted to clarify the Danelectro baritone/bass comments: I do own and play one, I either tune it A to A or B to B as it is set up with the baritone string set. Depending on how you play it, how you palm mute it and attack it with the pick hard or soft, towards the middle versus near the bridge, etc., and how you have it set on the volume and tone settings plus the amp you use (or direct), it can sound pretty close to the style of picked bass sounds Brian favored in 65-66. Or, it could sound totally like the tic-tac sound it was known for since the 50's. And, if you play it like a baritone and use guitar chord voicings, it has its own special character.

They do come with roundwound strings, standard, whether it's the baritone set or the E to E bass set.

So I'd say it's all in the ears of the person hearing it, but depending on how the player is playing it, the sound could sound very close to that famous picked bass tone that's all over Pet Sounds.

One of the keys to the Danelectro sound in general is the lipstick tube pickups, which were single coil and sounded quirky especially next to the factory Fenders of the day (and today). They are actually versatile in that you can make a Danelectro baritone sound like a Fender bass if you play it a certain way and set the tone and other variables a certain way.

The bass breaks on "Here Today", would we agree that is primarily a Fender? If so, we could get my Danelectro baritone to sound the same way, with the pick and the outboard effects applied. Most ears wouldn't know the difference. Which is where a thicker arrangement like those on Pet Sounds can be tricky to make a positive ID from just the final mono mixes.

I agree 100%, the most educational and informative things to hear are when the players are noodling between takes on the session tapes, when available. You hear exactly what they're doing and often can spot what instruments they're playing. That is the only way I heard the "missing 16th note" just at the end of the WIBN intro that even the stage bands more often missed.

What is this missing 16th note?  On the lower guitar you mean?  Maybe I've missed it all these years too?

Two more quick points:

Jerry Cole claims he owned the first Fender Bass VI.

California Girls: Wolf Marshall is one of the best if not the best at his trade, I have nothing but respect for him and his work. He was also a protege of Howard Roberts, he's heard all the stories and more firsthand, and I believe he even owns the original heavily customized "black guitar" which Howard used on hundreds of sessions. He's awesome, I got a lot of great info and tips from him.

But on California Girls, isn't that the session tape where we hear Carl messing up on 12-string take after take, to the point where Brian starts poking fun at him for all the "bloopers" coming from the booth? That alone would say it was at least Carl on 12-string, I'd need to listen again to confirm the other player...but definitely Carl, and it would probably be on his Rickenbacker 12. Again, that's from memory, so please correct revise if necessary.

But it's definitely a 12 string, I think Wolf may have been mistaken.

(PS Wolf Marshall was the first I can think of to reveal and demonstrate that Lennon's unusual acoustic sound on songs like Across The Universe was because Lennon strung that J-160E with flatwounds for at least that time period. That nailed it.  :)  )

And to be fair, was Wolf working from the mono masters when transcribing that?  That would be impossible for anybody to get right.  The only reason I can comfortably say it's (at least) two 12-strings is from constant listening to the complete session tape.  And even then it takes very hardcore listening, trying to make clear what is intentionally made unclear in the mix by reverb.

Picture the phrase, it's all swing 8th notes for three bars. Then in the 4th bar, it's 4 eighth notes on beats 1 and 2, then beat 3 is two 16ths on the same note C followed by an 8th, then two 8th notes to lead into the next section.

It gets buried in the mix, totally obscured. You hear it when it's being rehearsed between takes.

The notes of that last bar, last two beats are  CC D E C, the first two C's are the missing 16ths. Played on the G string, 17th fret, third finger the way I worked it out to sound most authentic.

These sound dead on to me, especially CG.

I know this is totally off-topic, but have any of you guys given this much thought to the guitar set-ups used on Younger Than Yesterday? That album has some of the best sounding guitar work of any studio-era recording that I've heard and I'd love to hear this kind of insightful discussion about it.

Well, that's what I thought too, just wanted to confirm it.  Carl DOES play the main 12-string (Brian has said it was the Ric), and I just needed confirmation that the second guitar in the intro riff was also a 12 (it was Jerry Cole, and Howard Roberts played 6-string rhythm...wonder if Wolf knows that?).  :)

I've got to go back and listen to some of these sessions again.  Whew.

And one of these days, the rest of the photos from this session, be it WIBN or IJWMFTT, will turn up:

(http://static.tumblr.com/sqtfagl/pdJm3guup/tbb_brian_in_studio_1966.jpg)

If you provide me with said photos, and they include shots of musicians on the floor I will paypal several hundred dollars to you, and I say that in all seriousness.

In that photo above, does it look to anybody else like that Sennheiser 421 is on an Leslie cabinet?  That would make WIBN or IJWMFTT unlikely...  Perhaps it's a GV session?

Click here for a larger version:  http://static.tumblr.com/sqtfagl/pdJm3guup/tbb_brian_in_studio_1966.jpg (http://static.tumblr.com/sqtfagl/pdJm3guup/tbb_brian_in_studio_1966.jpg)

Did you hear the missing 16th note on WIBN?

Maybe Wolf got his CG info from Howard Roberts, Roberts might have said he played 6-string on the session, Wolf put 2 and 2 together assuming Howard played the intro, and it came up 4, only it wasn't four. (That's from a movie somewhere...)

If he had the session tape he obviously wouldn't have written that, Carl and his 12-string bloopers are on take after take.  :)

EDIT: The film quote is William Holden from Stalag 17, just for the record... ;D

That's a good catch; it does look like one. Strange choice though ... I would never have guessed. Might possibly be some variant of a Sony condenser? The only thing puzzling me is that they were usually that weird light green color, this one looks like it's darker, like a grey/silver.

Thank you ... sorry, can't help with the Byrds stuff !

The 'CA Girls' session was in April, right? I always thought maybe Carl used that prototype Fender XII he was playing on stage around that time, but if BW specifically remembers a Ric, I think his memory is usually pretty good with that stuff.

Not on the final take, but in the noodling, occasionally, yes.    Jerry fucks around with it so much...  God, I've listened to this session so much.  It's almost like a weird nightmare.  But I love it none the less.  I'm not convinced...   ;D

If that is Gold Star, I got the impression from either a Stan Ross or Larry Levine interview that they didn't use to many exotic mics besides what the standards would have been...I don't know why but I got the impression that Gold Star wouldn't use a Sennheiser for mic'ing the rotary horn of a Leslie, but instead would use a Shure or EV dynamic instead.

Of course, if the photo does indeed show that to be a 421, there's all the proof we need. I seriously can't tell, the detail is so grainy.

Oh, it's in there. Just like that old pasta sauce commercial used to say, "it's in there". I can't hear the song without hearing that note at this point, I've also listened to that session many times over, an obsession. :-D

How many other pictures are there of that session? I know there's at least one more of Brian wearing that outfit standing in front of a reel-to-reel tape machine or something.

(http://www.geocities.ws/beatlebomb85/pmbw36.jpg)

That is Gold Star.

It's Gold Star alright, which definitely did have a Sennheiser 421 by then.  See, for instance:

(http://cache4.asset-cache.net/gc/74158834-music-producer-phil-spector-with-lala-brooks-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=X7WJLa88Cweo9HktRLaNXtVh0YJu%2bIsfPgZRtJ85wqCdoLrLoWv7%2bX2SdCCUoSS2)

If you go to even the first YouTube WIBN stereo backing track that comes up, the "missing" double note is there, seriously. Like those paintings you squint to see the hidden image, just tune into it a different way and you'll hear it, guaranteed.

This is supposedly from Gold Star, also:

(http://cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/73907803-photo-of-jessie-hill-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=GkZZ8bf5zL1ZiijUmxa7QXnQQZFpkNnV5QLT8MVrgomgRkMZkAMaJ%2bLQzTapeg04fEJtphYDWyOPtPF4HTKy%2fw%3d%3d)

If they had the 421 there in '66, the photo does seem to show one on that Leslie cab, so I'll agree that's sure what it looks like in the photo.

How long would Brian have really worn those glasses for? There is an interview where he says they were fake, or just for fun. He wears them in shots from a vocal session too, do we know when/what that date was for? Is there any possibility those are from the same day or something? Just knowing Brian and all...

If I remember the glasses are seen during various Pet Sounds studio photos, I don't remember seeing him with them on too much after that, if at all.

So this is beat three of the last intro measure in the higher guitar?  So: Drum Hit on the one, two, then right on three is what we're talking about?  Or more accurately, the "e" of three.  As in, "Three-e-and-a Four-e-and-a"?

These are the only other photos I can think of where he's wearing them. (Could be totally wrong though)
(http://www.coutant.org/petsound/ll.jpg)

Yes. three-e-and-four-and in notes is CC D E C

That's why I assumed the session was either WIBN or IJWMFTT, but since the Pet Sounds era GV session was also at Gold Star, I guess it has to be that.  I had thought Brian might be dressed up for a Valentine's Day date after the session (or before) but I suppose the GV session was only two days after, so it could have been a delayed date.

(http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/5254120/Brian+Wilson+pet+sounds+era.jpg)

(http://www.geocities.ws/beatlebomb85/pmbw36.jpg)

Proving it's Gold Star, if there was any doubt.

Beat ya too it. ;D

No doubt it was Gold Star, you can tell by those huge monitors against the back wall!

How about the "new" photo of Brian, looks to be same session, glasses, mic stand on the left of the photo, he's peering into what could be a piano or something...the way it looks.

I think the only reason Carl used the Fender XII onstage was b/c his first Ric was stolen...he got a new one in early '65.

Yeah, great photo.  Undoubtedly the same session, and definitely new to me.  Find something a little more wide-angle and you might just find your bank account expanded.

So do people think it's reasonable that these photos are from the 2/16/66 GV tracking session?

Could Brian have been dressed up specifically for the photos? As in they were promo shots?

Seems unlikely that they'd rent the studio time, throw up a bunch of mics, and hire Steve Douglas if it was only a promo.  But Brian might have known there'd be photographers.  That never stopped him from not dressing up before, though.

If the date lines up, if GV was the only tune with a definite Leslie besides the Leslie'd guitar on Pet Sounds (title track), and you'll also notice Douglas is there (of course) and what looks like a flute case is sitting on top the piano...there was flute on those earlier GV takes, correct?

I think it lines up.

Yeah that's a good point, the verses of the final track (with the flute) come from that first PS session.

I'm a little disappointed that it seems to be a GV session because I've prayed every night to every deity there is to see a photo from the WIBN or IJWMFTT sessions.

I thought I had to towel off some salt spray from the Pacific after listening to that track! Cool sounds: Those timbales are nailing a certain vibe, I'm realizing these may have been another "secret weapon" for a lot of sessions of that time. The vibe is all there.

I was surprised to find anything new from what looks to be a series of photos taken that day, if we're in agreement, that day in Feb '66 which seems to be the PS-GV session. So there is hope that these few shots came from perhaps an even larger series of photos, we'll just have to detective-work this series and see if anything else is out there.

Thanks, yeh I think so too. It was kind of a revelation when I got 'em. Also, California life influences the sound.

That other recording is great by the way, have you put out an album or anything? I honestly enjoyed it purely on its own merit.

It'll be on a new album coming out later this year (Magic Hero vs. Rock People) ... of course, it's in a rough state right now and will be refined!

Previous records here: http://trounrecords.bigcartel.com/

(PS - thanks)

Let's talk about reverb.

I'm very interested in how they routed things.  Now, we know that the consoles had three echo sends, which would generally just follow the three main output busses, unless they patched things differently.

Now, without seeing a diagram (I do have a diagram of a Putnam console from Universal in Chicago, or maybe it was from United B...I'll have to find it) one would presume that the console had three "echo returns."  But also presumably, there would only be one mic in a chamber, and thus only one output from the chamber.  IN other words, if they sent all three echo sends to the same chamber, either the reverb would be returned to only one buss, or they could "mult" the return on a patchbay and send three identical signals back to the three busses.

This seems pretty redundant though when they were just mixing in mono. 

So, some possibilities.

1.  They'd use different chambers, EMT plates, or spring boxes.  This would make total sense.

2.  They'd only return the chamber, etc, to one buss.


This is where it would be interesting to hear isolated multitracks.  You might be able to hear some things from session tape too.  The closest I've gotten to hearing isolated multis is from the Little Girl I Once Knew session, when the middle track is omitted and the other two tracks are hard-panned.  So we have an isolated rhythm track and the isolated horns.

So if you have isolated tracks, you could hear if the reverb includes ALL the instruments, or just the instruments assigned to that track.  Do you get what I'm saying?

However, I suspect that they often did use three separate "echo" devices.  Or two, because the horns on, say, LGIOK sound pretty dry on the session tape.  This would also make sense because when they used tape slap, that would be applied to selected instruments only.

However, I can think of some interesting things you can get by playing with the balance or OOPSing the Caroline, No session tape.  In that case, it does very much sound like one track of the tape is totally dry, but it's reverb return went to another track.

What do you guys think?

So I went back and listened to that LGIOK tape, and the horns do have a fair bit of reverb on them, but there's definitely nothing else coming through, it's all horns with some leaking in that mic, but really not much.

What's interesting is that guitars are leaking into the horn mic, meaning that they were amped.

Ah, here we go, the Motherlode.

The Console at United B.

http://www.benmook.com/tech/documents/Schematics%202/Schematics%202/PutnamConsole.pdf (http://www.benmook.com/tech/documents/Schematics%202/Schematics%202/PutnamConsole.pdf)

Now we're talking ... this is one of my favorite things to think about ...

I feel that this is a very complex topic, and we will be asking more questions and getting very few answers!

Looking at this might help:

http://www.uaudio.com/blog/100-percent-ua-610-console/

* There were no echo returns on the individual channels? I always assumed so, but it doesn't really make practical sense when you look at similar boards. I think the echo returns are the trims on the top (or some of them? can't tell). What is the indication that there are 3 returns? 3-buss board?

* When you're talking about session tapes, are you referring to the SOT stuff? Are we 100% certain that these are 'raw' transfers, and no echo was added during this 'mix'/transfer?

* Referring to the PS Sessions box, I think all bets are off with regard to that giving us insight into the reverb situation.

* 3 sends makes sense. I don't know if they had a plate or not. I do know that some smaller studios had homebrew spring units as well. Spring gets a bad rap but I believe it can sound very close to plate and chamber if well designed.

* Tape echo was obviously used in conjunction with chamber in some cases, so there are two busses in use right there. Keep in mind you don't neccesarily need a send/return, you can just go out from the preamp (or even smaller submixer) to the chamber, then return it through any open channel. This can be done during tracking, bouncing, mixdown or any combination (all 3 if they wished!). You can do things like sending a track (or group) to the chamber, then bringing that signal back into a tape deck for delay, and simultaneously sending the original dry signal to the chamber as well. I believe this may have been done in places -- it would create a big reverb 'splash'. Mixed in subtley, maybe even this 'leslie' effect.

My conclusion: The possibilities are endless! We would be left to guess based on listening. I would even bet that there was not even a 'standard' for this stuff, since Brian was pioneering some of these methods.

Didn't some of those studios (like Western and Capitol, not sure about Gold Star or Sunset) have more than one echo chamber?  They'd almost have to, if they were doing multiple sessions at the same time in different rooms.

ok, looking through it --

Echo (send) levels on all 12 channels, three individual echo output (busses?), two returns (modifiable to 3).

Not related to reverb, but relevant: In an old issue of 'Mix' Magazine from 1996, Mark Linnett mentioned that 176 limiters were patched to the output of the board and the signal went through the circutry even if bypassed. I'm going from memory, so I'll have to dig it out to confirm.

Absolutely.  And supposedly studios would have phone lines dedicated to their chambers so other studios could rent them from afar if they were all booked up.

Speaking of 12-strings, do we think the intro on "Don't Hurt My Little Sister" is Fender XII or Rickenbacker?  It was recorded June 22, 1964, ang the "Hard Days Night" movie didn't premier in the UK until July and the US until August, and that's reportedly where Carl got his hard on for a Rick.  Yet he's clearly playing a 12- on "DHMLS", right?

I think Fender.

or sent through the tracking room monitors

Ric ... Fender XII did not exist until '65; Carl's was an an early prototype (I think he got it in March or April). The earliest production models have late '65 neck date stamps.

* There were no echo returns on the individual channels? I always assumed so, but it doesn't really make practical sense when you look at similar boards. I think the echo returns are the trims on the top (or some of them? can't tell). What is the indication that there are 3 returns? 3-buss board?

I suspect the 610 consoles in Western were slightly more sophisticated than this one, but no, there were not individual returns, as you read in that .pdf file.

* When you're talking about session tapes, are you referring to the SOT stuff? Are we 100% certain that these are 'raw' transfers, and no echo was added during this 'mix'/transfer?

I'm pretty sure they're dry transfers.  I guess we can't know for sure, but there are enough totally dry tracks on the UM that ended up reverbed on the final mix that I suspect they weren't adding reverb.  You never know, though.

* Referring to the PS Sessions box, I think all bets are off with regard to that giving us insight into the reverb situation.

Oh yeah, Mark slathered everything with reverb for that.

* 3 sends makes sense. I don't know if they had a plate or not. I do know that some smaller studios had homebrew spring units as well. Spring gets a bad rap but I believe it can sound very close to plate and chamber if well designed.

Mark has said that Western had at least one plate and a spring unit, and I think he even mentioned hearing that Chuck said he often used plate and people just assumed it was chamber.  That's like, three levels of hearsay, though.

* Tape echo was obviously used in conjunction with chamber in some cases, so there are two busses in use right there. Keep in mind you don't neccesarily need a send/return, you can just go out from the preamp (or even smaller submixer) to the chamber, then return it through any open channel. This can be done during tracking, bouncing, mixdown or any combination (all 3 if they wished!). You can do things like sending a track (or group) to the chamber, then bringing that signal back into a tape deck for delay, and simultaneously sending the original dry signal to the chamber as well. I believe this may have been done in places -- it would create a big reverb 'splash'. Mixed in subtley, maybe even this 'leslie' effect.

Considering how limited the inputs were, I doubt they used input channels for returns much, but you're right, there are other options.  But on a session like WIBN or GOK, when there's more mics than console inputs, so they're already using summing mixers or going straight in, they'd have to rely on the returns, I think.

Good point.

I think I meant individual 'sends' (like an 'echo control' knob) ... looks like they did have these, according to the sheet.

Ah, yes indeed.

This thread is so fascinating 8)

This also brings up something that has interested (and bugged) me for some time:

* Where / how was Pet Sounds mixed ?!?

It seems so very odd, given all of the info we have about this album (box sets, etc), that we cannot answer this question !

The final mono mix, to me, is the ONLY Pet Sounds. Everything else is great for study, but not the real deal.

We don't know the process from studio to studio. We don't know what was done during mixdown. You mentioned hearing some reverb on the basic tracks, but we also know that some reverb was missing (hence Mark adding reverb here and there).

Ok, so did they bring the 4-track tapes to Columbia, then mix them dry to the 8-track, or add echo, etc during the bounce? This is kind of what I was getting at with the mono mix being really the only definitive reference. Because there is always a possibility that something was added or changed during bounces/mix. For instance, some of the sections are spliced in from earlier work tapes. There's that weird version of 'WIBN' that ended up on a bunch of compilations that has different vocals.

For the 8-track songs, we can assume that they were mixed at Columbia. So any echo that was added during mixdown was done with Columbia's facilities.

I have several theories but no concrete evidence/info. There are the stories people tell about Brian mixing PS in one day, etc ... those have to be false. 'Caroline', 'Sloop' and probably 'WIBN' and 'GOK' were mixed prior to the rest of the album.

I have also speculated about the '2 db fades' being an indicator of tracks mixed at Columbia. Which means some of the 4-track songs were recorded at Columbia.

My theory right now is that the most of the album was mixed at Columbia, minus 'Caroline', 'Sloop' and a few others.

Also, I'm not so sure how much of the album was actually recorded on a Scully 280, as has often been reported. I think Gold Star had a 4-track, but I don't think Western had one (I will have to do some more research to try and pin down what they were using at this time). All of the Columbia (8-track sessions) were done on an Ampex 300/PR-10 deck that was made by Columbia. Don't know what the mix decks were at all. I think Gold Star was still using the Ampex 300 deck (shown in that photo w/ Brian in glasses earlier in the thread).

Sooooo ...

on the SOT tracks, is the reverb mostly complete? Some of that stuff on 'American Band' sounds pretty dry (Mike's vocals on 'Here Today' for instance).

No, on the SOT "release", Mike's "Here Today" isolated lead is as drenched in the slapback echo as it is in the final mix.

Maybe I'm thinking of something else from that show, or the show used a different 'mix'. I remember something sounded really off with his vocals on that American Band doc on 'Here Today' ... maybe they only used a single track instead of both? I can't seem to find it anywhere, and I think I lost my old VHS !

I just found a SOT link for 'IJWMFTT', and the vocals are totally dry there, except for tape echo (which comes in around 2:05), which means that's one example where the reverb would have been added at mixdown, unless the echo return for the vocals was printed to a separate track (possible, anyone know if this was done at all?). So, here's one example of a track where the echo on the vocal on the original mix was from Columbia's facilities. This also means the vocal echo on the stereo mix was a modern re-creation.

In my opinion, while there's definitely slapback on the multi, I still think reverb-wise it's drier than on the final mix.

WIBN's lead vocals are also dry as a bone (and one can be totally isolated too, whee!).

We need to start some sort of repository for a lot of this information, don't we.

It's so funny, isn't it, that all of these weird little technical questions we have could be answered in just a few minutes sitting beside Chuck and Brian at a session.  Just like any history, I guess.    What did spoken Latin sound like in the age of Augustus?  I agonize over this, but 5 minutes with Vergil would answer everything.  Oh well.

Carl had an early Rickenbacker 12-string, I say early because the first ones ever/anywhere came out in early '64, with George Harrison receiving his in Feb '64 as a gift from Rickenbacker chief John Hall. That guitar was the second one ever made, and the one heard and seen the most...like Carl's various Ricks, the early ones had more pointed body shapes, the later ones were rounded off.

Remember Rickenbacker at this time made an all-out push for the implied Beatles endorsement, starting with the party they threw in NYC around the Sullivan appearance. So you had the top American band, in California no less, also home of Rickenbacker, would it be assuming too much to think someone at Rickenbacker if not Hall himself at least got in touch with Carl if not directly "sold" him on the idea of this brand new, revolutionary electric 12-string?

It's easy to not realize there was no electric 12-string before 1964, considering how ubiquitous they became and still are. I think Rickenbacker went on a marketing blitz so guys like George and Carl would be seen playing them on network television, and it worked like a charm.

That's assuming Carl just didn't go to Wallich's or wherever, see the new Rickenbacker 12-string hanging on the wall, and buy it.

The Little Sister track...weird sound, very weird. It doesn't sound like the normal, stereotypical Rickenbacker 12-string. It doesn't sizzle, it doesn't jangle, it doesn't ring that crazy way, or do much, it just kind of sits there. Is that in fact a Rickenbacker on the track?

Tell me if I'm wrong on this: As Brian was recording the lead vocals (SOT), you can hear that they pitched down the tape, vari-speed, which I can only guess was done for his vocal range, so he could hit something with a certain voice without cracking or going into the head voice, or whatever.

Did anyone notice that on the series of vocal attempts, or am I dreaming that? While he's tracking the lead, the pitch of the track has been lowered.

The same point I raised a few pages ago: Just because a photo shows the guitarists in the booth doesn't mean they were going direct, it has to be equally assumed they could have been running into a mic-ed amp placed elsewhere.

And related to the reverb-chamber-send/return topics, Brian at least always had some kind of a slap echo or chamber echo on his bass, Danelectro tic-tac bass, and usually guitar depending on the part. Very, very few of Brian's mid 60's guitar and bass tracks are "dry", and these effects we can sometimes hear on the session tapes being applied during the tracking session and printed to tape, so they're not added after the fact during mixdown.

They only had so many sends and returns available to use, and at the most I'd say one echo chamber to use on any given session, unless Brian had blocked out the entire United-Western complex so he could tap into whatever other chambers the studio had. Gold Star, I believe, had one chamber...correct if I'm wrong.

And you wouldn't send a guitar or picked bass signal to the same place as, say, a drum track or keyboard, you'd have sonic mush instead of a nice effect.

So how did they do it?  :)

Not to split hairs or derail the thread, but I think the Danelectro Bellzouki 12-string predates the Ric ('61 I think) !

We do ... I'm afraid this is it for now! the thing is, these threads are really eye-opening to me with regard to the sheer amount of info we DON'T know. The same questions come up, we all guess, then the thread dies! I should really get my ears glued to the SOT and spend some time taking notes.

Also, the SOT stuff is not definitive because whoever was 'mixing' (ouch) this stuff seemed like they were just pulling up faders randomly. Could be a whole unused track (for reverb or doubles or something) that's not even pulled up.

The Bellzouki wasn't technically considered a guitar necessarily because of the body shape and the origin of the instrument, like the Coral Sitar it was one of Vinny Bell's oddball namesake ideas that Danelectro actually put into production where the others like Fender/Gibson wouldn't touch. Bell wanted an electric Bouzouki, and ran with the idea of making it 12 strings rather than 8, or whatever the traditional bouzouki had.

There are handfuls of bizarre Danelectro models like the Mandolin-guitar thing which was basically a guitar with something like 40 frets to "simulate" a mandolin...crazy stuff like that.

If it looked like a guitar or was made to be a guitar, I'd agree the Bellzouki was first.  :)

oh i see ... didn't consider it that way !

I think sometimes they sent groups to the same tape deck for slap, or the same chamber/whatever, just varying the volumes.

Other times, I think they just applied the tape echo to the bass/baritone or individual instruments, yeh. But this would have to go through the board. They also had a limited number of decks to be used for slap. And everything had to be mic'd up ... smaller homebrew/portable mixers would not likely have any echo sends or returns, they would be straight-up mic preamp-mixers. It's not really feasible that they would have set up a tape deck just for one player's instrument ... that would be much more easily accomplished routed through the board.

Are you saying maybe the players had like an Echo-plex or something plugged into their amp? That's a possibility I'd not yet thought of. You and Josh would know more than I if these dudes were the type to carry around something like that. I guess I just assumed not.

It's actually funny to consider Vinny Bell could have fallen ass-backwards into making the first electric 12-string by accident while trying to make that Bouzouki. If Danelectro had laid Bell's idea into one of their standard electric body shapes, and added a reinforced neck, back in '61, they'd win the race and I doubt the Rickenbacker 12 would have been as legendary as it is now because the impetus to design and produce something "new" wouldn't have been the same.

I wasn't thinking of that necessarily but more wondering as we listen to certain session tapes how they send and returned all of those individual instruments...I couldn't even come up with an educated guess on that. I agree with what you said about also having only so many tape decks available for the slap echo: It makes it more of a mystery how they did things when we hear a handful of separate string instruments having slapback on the tracking dates, and them adjusting the delay times and whatnot to fit each part, so it would seem. It's beyond what I could even offer as a wild guess how this was done for Brian;s sessions, or perhaps I;m making it bigger than it really was.

Not many players had access to personal tape echo devices like that. The first and most famous was an amp built personally for Scotty Moore to tour with so he'd have the Sun Records tape slap at live appearances, and that was a very expensive amp built by a guy named Ray Butts, who built those for other big names as word spread in the 50's what he had come up with.

I've heard - and I have not fact-checked this - that one of the early bands to successfully use the Echoplex live was the guy from "The Blues Magoos" who had one on stage to nail the "We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet" studio delay when he played live. I can't think of anyone before that who would have any call to use one live on stage before that, yet after the Sun Records guys, so maybe that's correct after all.

For guitarists in 1966 it was rare to have much beyond a Maestro or comparable early fuzz box, there really wasn't anything available in the way of external effects controlled by the player, and that Butts tape delay amp and the early Echoplex may have been too noisy and clanky for studio use in '66.

(slaps forehead...)  LES PAUL!

I often leave him out because he was from outer space, you have to consider everyone else and then Les Paul turns out to have done the same thing in 1947 or something. He had tape echo devices all over the 50's and 60's, including for his live shows and TV appearances, but most of that was his own home-brew creations so it's different than a production model.

I agree that the guitar players wouldn't have been carrying around outboard equipment.

I also agree that these were studios with limited resources.  Western and Gold Star were wildly successful, yes, but they still lacked the big dollars that the record label studios had.  You look at the mic situation at Gold Star or Western vs. Capitol. 

I bet Gold Star's mic locker in 1965 looked something like this:

Electro Voice 666 x 15
Sennheiser 421 x 1
Neumann U67 x 2
Neuman U47 x 1
RCA 77 x 3
RCA 44 x 5
Shure 55 x 2

Western seemed to favor the Shure 545s over the 666s, but that's based on a handful of photos.

But Capitol would have had Neumanns, Telefunken, AKG... all the Austrian stuff.

Anyway, Western and Gold Star couldn't afford a lot of frills, just really high quality, great sounding equipment.  So, no, they wouldn't have had 12 tape machines around to add tape slap to every input signal, even if they could.

I really suspect they just used one or maybe two.  There's not a whole lot of adjustment you can make with those things anyway, in terms of adjusting the distance between the heads.

So let's take the WIBN session.  Let's suppose the board looked something like this:

Input:
1.  Kick drum - U67 or RCA 44 (according to Levine these are what he used for Spector.
2.  Drum overhead - U67 (per Levine), some tube LDC (per our Sonny and Cher session footage), or even a 666 (per other photos.)
3.  Glockenspiel/percussion overhead - possibly a 47, per photo evidence, but I've also seen 666s.
4. Timpani overhead
5.  String Bass - Shure 55, per at least 3 photos from different sessions
6.  Dano Bass - 666 on the amp
7. Fender Bass - 666 on the amp
8.  Jazz Box acoustic guitar - 666 on it
9.  Piano - Sennheiser
10. Tack Piano
11. Horns - RCA 44
12. Accordions
13. 12-string electrics, ganged up, direct.

Already, you see there's more sources than inputs.  So there would have to be more submixing with an ampex summing mixer or something.

Brian tended to group instruments in similar ways.  On WIBN the busses would look something like this:

Buss:
1.  Horns
2. Keyboards, Basses, drums, percussion, acoustic guitar (I think)
3.  Accordions, 12-strings

Oh, it's so late, I'm going to have to continue this in the morning.

yeh I think it was much simpler ...

the tape slap was basically what it was -- whatever the tape deck gave you. they didn't set the delay time beyond whether it was 15 ips (shorter delay) or 7.5 ips (longer). basically was dependent on the distance between the record and play head on the deck.

I think they just sent a group of instruments to it, and adjusted how much volume each element would get. If they had it cranked on one instrument, you'd hear it, if they had it pulled back for another, you'd hear it as a more subtle reverb in the mix.  I think they also overdubbed specific instruments (like Dano) along with things like the horn overdubs, to use a send for the Dano delay that way, etc.

This is the sort of thread I come here for.

aeijtzsche, fantastic work on the IKTAA guitars.

Yes, the complete MIDI files for Pet Sounds would be welcome here

It's pretty remarkable to think that the period in which Brian was using the WC consistently spanned, what, three measly years of his life? For him to recall any minute details from that period, like what 12 string Carl was playing on the CG intro, is almost unfathomable.

And I do wonder if, should the right interviewer be involved, he might be finessed into answering more techy questions.  I don't think any of the Beach Boys really have much of an interest in that stuff, but in the right context, I wouldn't be surprised if there's info in Brian's head that would be useful.

So, an interviewer could get him talking about production, and sneak in a little question about reverb. Or something.  But it strange.  Brian's band literally has the composer and arranger of the work there, and they still get stuff wrong.  Whether this is because they aren't concerned about playing exactly what's on the record (which is fine) or because they can't quite figure it out, it's like, why don't you just ask Brian?  I still think the ideal interview situation for Brian would be, first having a musician interview him, and have both the interviewer and Brian at keyboards, ideally in Western 3 or something.  And just play stuff for him.  Anyway.

This is where Mark's presence would be helpful, because he's actually worked in some of these studios and could tell us how many chambers Western has.  Presumably they're still there?

Because continuing where I left off:

Buss:
1.  Horns
2. Keyboards, Basses, drums, percussion, acoustic guitar (I think)
3.  Accordions, 12-strings

I don't think there's any slap on WIBN, but let's say there was.  You send buss 1 to an EMT plate, buss 2 to the tape machine set up for slap and then on to a chamber (or vice-versa), and then buss three to some other reverb device?

But it would also be possible to send 1 and 2 to the same chamber and have the reverb return come back for both sends onto one return...

Clean multis would be so helpful here.

While I can think of about 10 different ways they might have set it up (and likely changed from session to session, etc.), I would guess:

They probably had a 'standard' or default setup with one send going to the main chamber, another ready for a tape machine for slap*, and a third setup for whatever plate (do we know it was an EMT?) or spring unit, etc.

If they wanted to receive a delayed signal from the chamber, they could simply patch an output from the chamber into the slap deck. Vice versa for sending a delayed signal to the chamber. They could use this in combination with the standard chamber return.

There are more possibilities. They could bring a return from the slap deck to a channel that has a chamber return on it. You could get a delay of whatever dry signal was going to the channel + a delay of only the echo of whatever other tracks were being fed to the chamber.

* Keep in mind, there was not likely a 'dedicated' slap machine. During tracking, they probably used the same mono deck that was used for mixdown. They could also use one track of the stereo mix deck (or both) for 3 channels of separate slap during tracking if they wanted.
They would also be able to use the stereo deck for slap during mono mixdown (or vice versa for stereo mixes).

Let's talk about the use of un-miked instruments.

Pianos, in particular, during the 65-67 period, often seem to be mostly off-mic or very low in the mix if there is a mic from it going into the board.

Sloop John B, for instance, as we've discussed, has that pounding piano that is all but inaudible, particularly in the final mix.  But there are other instances.

WIBN has the two pianos, the tack piano and probably the baby grand.  Neither of these seem to be "coming from anywhere."  The tack piano seems a little more defined during the "you know it seems the more..." section, when you can hear the tacks hitting the bass strings in the bass line, much like in Here Today.

So here's the question, if there is one:  Do you think that some of these pianos are truly un-miked?  Or is the fader on them just way down? 

There is a photo from a Spector session, which you can find on Getty Images, that shows Jimmy Bond and Ray Pohlman over in their little bass corner.  Jimmy's bass clearly has a Shure 55 on it, but Pohlman's amp seems to be un-miked.

Obviously, there are plenty of anecdotes about Spector not miking things.  The famous one about Billy Strange's Zippity-Doo-Dah guitar ending up being pulled all the way down, for instance.  This kind of thing could be another important piece of understanding how Spector rubbed off on Brian.

Any thoughts?

I also have a new theory about the bass situation on GOK.  This whole time I've been assuming that, if there is a third bass in there, it would be Carol, and it would have the usual tone that Brian requested.  But what if Brian instead had Carol dial in a tone very similar to the string bass?  Way back on the tone knob, etc.  That could explain why I haven't been able to pick out the third bass--I had been looking int he wrong place.

I feel that if Spector did it, it's likely Brian did it too. I mean, they were the same musicians, same studios, engineers, etc ... so these wouldn't be a big secret at the time. I think some things were not miked up. Since leakage was part of the wall, I guess you could say Spector was a master of 'felt rather than heard', and BW used it a bit.

And just think, now an engineer would record a piano with 18 mics. 

Obviously you're joking (what is the standard these days for mics on a piano anyway?) but i've been thinking about this lately. Especially with regards to drums--this obsession with micing every piece. it just seems absurd and unnecessary (i guess unless you're doing something like death metal). And doesn't it make mixing a bit of a nightmare? Does any instrument ever get recorded in mono anymore as standard practice? I imagine even something like a trumpet, it's standard practice to have a close (ish) mic and then a room one. I feel like it's all somehow a reflection of the general culture, though i'm not sure yet how to articulate that. More is more. More is better. Total control over everything. Bells & whistles. Distractions. Overdoing it.  

I'm not sure what normal people are doing, but I think 2 mics is still fairly standard, maybe a third in the middle or the back of an upright or something. I would assume that most do not even use real pianos.

The drum thing is pretty nuts. Some people literally put 15 mics on the drums (not joking), though I think the standard is 6-10, which is still outrageous. I feel like you're asking for trouble that way. But whatever works for you I guess.

The funny thing is you're still ultimately getting to a final mix ... you can figure it out earlier or later.

I just think it's part of the switch from the producer 'on the floor' to the 'mixer/DJ/computer programmer' being the focal point.

I think the "standard" drum set up is as follows:

Kick drum gets 3 mics, one on the pedal side of the head, one inside the drum, and one outside the front head.

Snare and toms get top and bottom.

Mic on the hi-hat, and on each cymbal.

Then you have two overheads, maybe a mono overhead also, and if you're in a nice room like Western 2, you have a mic about 10-15 feet back from the drum set at about head height.  Then you put a mic in each corner of the room.

So assuming two toms and one crash and one ride, that would be 20 mics.  I have seen this done.

I'll bet it sounds gross ...

another switch from the days of old. I think drums were originally perceived as simply part of the 'rhythm section', the in the mid-late '60s as 'one instrument' and on to a group of smaller instruments, then on to a group of 'tones' and audio flavors to mess with later on, with no 'instrument' in sight !

Wow, i've never heard of three mics on the kick, that's insane. Also, micing each cymbal is so overkill. In my opinion cymbals don't need to be miced at all. This over-micing drums leads to an overly present/bright drum sound that i don't think sits well in the mix. I guess i understand why the approach is used, considering how much the emphasis has shifted to "the beat" in popular music over the last few decades. I just really dislike that sound. I am of the belief that a drum kit doesn't even sound particularly good in person, and it's only in the production that it becomes a nice, usable sound. Seriously, listening to a drum kit a few feet in front of me with the naked ear sounds kind of shitty, even if it's a great quality kit played by a great drummer. 

Question for anyone who does their own recording: If you only have two mics/inputs for drums, how do you do it? Omni overhead and a dynamic on the kick?

What was the standard for micing drums on a Spector/Brian date? 

Also, getting back to un-miced instruments, i used to think the piano in DYLW was not miced but i've recently changed my mind to thinking that it sounds like it was just purposely mixed very low. This has always fascinated and kind of confused me. I'm not really sure what Brian was going for here.

Omni overhead (like an EV 635a) and something like an EV RE-XX on the kick is a good sound. Or if you have a good room that's kind of live, you can use a condenser right behind the drummer's head and get the entire kit (kick and all) pretty good.

Josh can tell you better than I how they did it in on the classic sessions. I think it was 3 or 4 mics usually.

There are numerous photographs of drums from numerous studios, and they pretty much agree.  The standard set up was two mics, one overhead and one kick.

See, e.g.:

(http://www.tommytedesco.com/images/tommyt1.jpg)  Sony C-37a overhead and U67 on kick.

You see a lot of small D condensers overhead, like this:

(http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/73906803-photo-of-hal-blaine-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=GkZZ8bf5zL1ZiijUmxa7QaGosmNqDeIHNDhCHoH8gaJe44hHGSmrGmHVer686pHeaexZJ49D8qoGSwOyOMc84A%3D%3D)

Here you see what appears to be an RE-15 as the overhead.
 (http://www.davidaxelrodmusic.com/src/images/130915.jpg)

I've seen photos of the 666 as an overhead too.

(http://www.wreckingcrewfilm.com/media/wreckingcrew.halblaine2.jpg)

Here's another mic overhead.
 (http://media.bonnint.net/seattle/7/777/77756.jpg)

I could literally find dozens more that show one overhead, of varying types.

I've never recorded in a nice enough room to do it that way--it simply has to be a good sounding room.

it's a 635a (I knew it was a good sound!)

Sure enough.  I knew it wasn't actually an RE-15, but the easiest way to get people to correct you is to put forth the wrong information.

That does sound pretty crazy...surely this induces all sorts of phase-cancellation issues?

--

Cool pictures of drum mics at old Wrecking Crew sessions - looks like they had the overhead very close in to the kit compared to what we might expect today with pairs of overheads...?

Regarding Brian getting technical, I've seen a couple of interviews where he is at a mixing desk (the Endless Harmony one and one with George Martin come to mind) where he goes into more detail than he usually does, I sometimes think his surroundings are key, he usually goes into more detail about the musical side of things when there is a piano handy, so if he is able to mess about with a mixer during interviews, I'm wondering if that helps him to explain technical aspects without having to go through strenuous examples or something.

I might add that in the recently unearthed film from the GV tracking session, there are two "overheads" on Hal.  That's at Western.  I've been trying to identify what mics they are with no success.  I'd also like to ID the mic on Lyle's bass.  I wonder if how many mics went over the drums depended a little bit on how many instruments were playing and thus how scare input channels were. 


Yes, that's true, because the mic isn't really an "overhead" as such.  Now-a-days, overheads are there for cymbals and a little bit of overall kit.  Especially for Brian's stuff, there's really very little cymbals involved, and they would have wanted it as close to the snare and toms as possible to get focus, but back just far enough to pick up the cymbals if they were used.  Different functions.

Those drum mics on 'GV' look very strange. My first guess was some kind of AKG dynamics, but I can't find any that look like these. No guess as to Lyle's mic either (can't really see it).

I've seen photos where they have 3-4 mics on the kit but not sure what sessions, maybe a little later. Personally, I think the fewer you can get a good sound with, the better.

Think I may have sussed out the basses on "GOK"...I was listening to the stereo mix in my car this morning (from the "Summer Love Songs" comp), and noticed how the bass starts heavy (in the intro), then for the first half of the first verse becomes "lighter".  In that first half-verse, I can distinctly hear the string bass and what I assume is the Dano (with a bit of tic-tac applied), playing the same line.  Then, in the second half of the first verse, the bass sound gets "heavy" again, as if the Fender joined in.  Things stay pretty much the same through the rest of the songs, until the tag, where it gets "light" again for the first round, then "heavy" again for the rest of the tag & fade. 

Switching to "Kiss Me Baby", I noticed that for most of the song, there's a slight "warble" in the bass tone (not the attack, just the decay), as if two electric basses were playing, but there is a line or two ("then I wondered", etc.) where there seems to be just one electric bass.  Maybe one drops out there, and on the parts where both play, maybe somethnig was done to diminish the attack on one or both electric basses (for instance, if they were played with a thumb instead of a pick), so the variance is only heard in the decay.

The string bass is tacet for the entire first verse.  I think the lightness and heaviness is possibly due to the electric bass player, be it a dano or fender, descending from a different register of the neck and down to the lower strings.

I've started to formulate a hypothesis which sounds crazy, but who knows?

I'm wondering if they somehow split the string bass signal, or miked it twice or something.  On the multitracks, the string bass has its own track.  There's nothing else on it.  Even with a giant session with a live string quartet, one instrument still got its own track.  If you listen to that lone track, which you can do by using audio tricks, you can hear a lot of woodiness, fingerboard, string noise, etc. 

Then, if you listen to the other track that has bass on it, there's the high electric bass plus this sound that is very much akin to the more usual string bass sound Brian used--lighter in the mix, less woody, more bassy.  But it still sounds like String Bass.  Maybe they miked the string bass twice or multed it, or something, and Brian asked Chuck to put the woodier sound on its own track because it was out of the ordinary and he wasn't sure how much he'd end up wanting?

If there are only two basses, that would free up, presumably, Carol to play guitar, if Carl was not actually there, which we're not sure about.  The fact is, somebody had to play guitar, and if Carl couldn't make it in, it'd have to be Carol, really, according to the AFM lineup.

Oh, to know.

Kiss me, Baby is definitely two Fender Basses, is my opinion.  Ray might have been playing with his thumb, as Carol says he was wont to do at times.

This will most likely sound stupid, but...  
Why not simply ask Carol if she remembers what she played on the song. Whichever instrument she claims to be playing, will be a lie

Oh, she's been asked many times, claiming Fender Bass.

Is GOK 3 or 4-track?

My take on it:

If there is a Danelectro in there (Pohlman?), I think it's not doing 'bass' work, maybe some guitar-ish stuff buried in the mix. The strong mid/hi bass sound is the Fender (I think Carol).

It's positively bizarre that the string bass has it's own track. It's astoundingly quiet on the take. I think this means it's an overdub. And I think it's nearly unfathomable (though possible, particularly in light of the experimental nature of Brian's approach) that a string bass would be overdubbed to it's own track, unless ...

*There was something wrong with the original take*

My guess is that they recorded the live group take, including the string bass (left a track open as usual), then realized that they didn't get the string bass loud (or deep) enough. So they had Lyle overdub another take.

Which means we may actually have four basses on there!

Is GOK 3 or 4-track?

4 track, but the live track was cut to three track and the fourth was a reference mono mix.

My take on it:

If there is a Danelectro in there (Pohlman?), I think it's not doing 'bass' work, maybe some guitar-ish stuff buried in the mix. The strong mid/hi bass sound is the Fender (I think Carol).

There's no such stuff buried in the mix.  I agree that the higher electric bass is probably a fender rather than a dano, but if there is a second electric bass, it's playing the bass line.

It's positively bizarre that the string bass has it's own track. It's astoundingly quiet on the take. I think this means it's an overdub. And I think it's nearly unfathomable (though possible, particularly in light of the experimental nature of Brian's approach) that a string bass would be overdubbed to it's own track, unless ...

*There was something wrong with the original take*

My guess is that they recorded the live group take, including the string bass (left a track open as usual), then realized that they didn't get the string bass loud (or deep) enough. So they had Lyle overdub another take.

Which means we may actually have four basses on there!

That's interesting, however I'm pretty sure that bass is present during the whole rehearsal tape and the actual takes.  They would not overdub onto bad takes, that's a huge waste of money.  I'd have to play around with the session tape to be sure.  That would explain why you can hear string bass on two tracks and they sound totally different.  A very novel theory.  Time to hit the tape.

You're considering Dano an 'electric bass', right? I mean, they used it more like a baritone or guitar-oriented sound in 'Dance Dance Dance'. It could be doing something like a muted, guitar-chord thing?

Right, the bass would be present during the rehearsal. But perhaps it didn't have the deep effect Brian was looking for. Like, it was a great take, everything was good, they called it and used it. Then after folks were setting up to go home, during a playback, Brian decided he wanted more bass (or a different texture of bass) in the track.

The end result would be subtle. But Brian was all about subtlety.

In my opinion, after reviewing the tapes, I don't think there's a string bass overdub.  I mean, it's impossible to tell these things without hearing absolutely raw multitracks, but, while it is quiet on the bass track there's all kinds of totally dry room sound on the other instruments that you can hear on the track.  It doesn't sound like headphone bleed, it sounds like instruments playing in a room.  Plus, it does sound like that same bass is there throughout the session, and as I said, they wouldn't have brought the guy in to overdub the session, he'd only do that master take.

I still think there's something weird going on, though.  What would be great, not on the string bass issue, but on the overall bass issue, would be to know for sure whether Carl was there or not.

Come back to the board, Mark!

It sounds to me like an overdub with the track playing over speakers, what do you think? I just can't imagine it could be so isolated in that small space.

Anyway, my theory goes like this:

* Full session is recorded. Lyle plays bass. Live mix sounds good. Perfect take completed.

* BW decides during playback that he wants more string bass, or a deeper character. Lyle overdubs the part (same session), maybe the track is played through the monitors not too loud.

It's hard to fathom why this would be on it's own track?!? Also doesn't seem like we would hear so much of the string bass in the other tracks, but so little of the other instruments on the string bass track.

BUT

since the bleed is dry, and reverb is (likely?) on the multis, then it can't be an overdub.

So, why isolate the string bass ?!?

It doesn't really sound that isolated to me.  I mean, it is pretty isolated, but with a Shure 55 or something on the bass behind a big fat gobo, it should sound that way.

But the ultimate question really is this one:

"Also doesn't seem like we would hear so much of the string bass in the other tracks, but so little of the other instruments on the string bass track."

And indeed, why give the thing it's own track when it was such a large session?

Here's another thing to throw out there.  In both the Pet Sounds box set credits, and in Badman's book, The basic track is indicated as being recorded on March 8--but the 9th apparently has some record of an overdub.  Both sources say that the strings were overdubbed, and Badman lists the string quintet as the musicians present.  But you can tell as clear as day from the session tape that the string players were live at the session. 

So perhaps there WAS an overdub.  Really weird.

Anybody have the documentation for this?  I don't seem to.

Yes, and it would sound this way as well if it were playing on the studio speakers instead of phones.

The problem with that is it is totally dry on the playback. But the basic track is essentially just a 2-track spread. Assuming the echo and delay is printed to the tracks? Sounds like it is, but we're listening to the 5.1 isolates ... was GOK on the SOT set?

Yeh seriously, on what was probably the largest (?) live session for Pet Sounds, you use only 2 tracks of a 4-track and the third one for one of three basses? Really doesn't make sense!

Is there any possibility that this session tape is a bounce from another tape?

It would be the first time I had ever heard of such a thing, and there's certainly no tape record of it.  It would be an aberration for them to bounce down a three-track session tape to two tracks, they always, to my memory, bounced those down to mono.  See Sloop or Pet Sounds, for instance.

GOK is indeed on the SOT set, and I've listened to the whole damn session more times than I care to think about.  I remember after getting the Pet Sounds set, I would listen to each session over and over again with a notebook.  I would loop small sections and just let these two-second clips run over and over again.  Oh, the countless hours.  And yet here we are still puzzling over specifics.  There's definitely a point of diminishing returns.

yeh, that's what I thought.

so the echo and delay are present on the SOT tracks, sounding similar to the 5.1 tracks and the mono final?

hmm ... head scratcher ... what was the overdub then?

personally, I would love to hear a complete set of these 4th track reference mixes.

Are we stupid idiots ?!?

Maybe no one really knows this stuff, and no one has ever seemed to think that it matters much.

I think I've trained my ears to hear things I wouldn't have known a few years ago. A lot of it comes from trying to copy elements of these records.

So the slight tic-tac I hear on the first verse (it kind of blends with the clip-clop percussion, but it's distinct enough to hear)...would that not be on the Dano bass?

I hear it as regular Fender Bass, but it's almost impossible to know for sure just by listening. And I feel like if there were two basses (Fender and Dano) doubling up here, it would lose some of that quality of 'presence' that is so prominent.

Josh?

The problem with knowing for sure is that Ray has it so heavily palm-muted that it takes most of the natural character out of the instrument.  To me, up higher it sounds very choked indeed, which is what would happen playing a Fender up beyond the 12th fret with heavy palm muting.  If it were a Dano, with its two extra strings, you wouldn't be playing as high on the neck, which in turn would sound slightly less choked.

Wow, what a great thread this is (was)!  It took a long time to read but well worth it.

Thanks guys!

Uh, yeah, like over a year, apparently! :)

Josh, regarding GOK you wrote: <<Here's another thing to throw out there.  In both the Pet Sounds box set credits, and in Badman's book, The basic track is indicated as being recorded on March 8--but the 9th apparently has some record of an overdub.  Both sources say that the strings were overdubbed, and Badman lists the string quintet as the musicians present.  But you can tell as clear as day from the session tape that the string players were live at the session.>> 

The date in the Pet Sounds box set credits reads "March 10", and a notation says the session started at midnight. It does not say anything about more strings being overdubbed on that song, at least not in the main credits section.

Badman has the basic track happening on the 8th with the strings, and additional strings being overdubbed on the 9th. But Badman's wrong. Sadly, one of many examples!

Since this thread is alive again, I'd like to add for posterity that I figured out through some correspondence with Bones Howe that Hal's overheads are Sennheiser 405s.

We were actually talking about Mamas & Papas sessions ... cool thing there is his setup seems to have always been the same, and he has a great memory.

You can count me as one of those interested!  :)

‍

Reviving this thread to get the guitar experts' opinions on a few of the PS guitar parts...namely:

I'M WAITING FOR THE DAY
Sounds mostly like one electric 12-string, with echo/leakage picked up on the track opposite in the stereo mix - but at one point on the SOT session tape, it's heard noodling between-takes, and sounds more like a 6-string to me...

LET'S GO AWAY FOR AWHILE
The strummed acoustic sounds like a 6-string to me, but since Carol Kaye heard it as two acoustics when interviewed for the box set booklet, I'm wondering if anyone else hears it that way (meaning, as a 12-string, since there were only two guitar players on the session, and the other one was playing the part mentioned directly below)...
And the electric bottleneck part sounds like a 12-string on the between-take parts of the SOT session tape...does anyone else hear it that way?

I JUST WASN'T MADE FOR THESE TIMES
Is Glen's acoustic (the box he switches to after Brian has him give up the banjo from the earlier takes) a 6- or a 12-string? On the SOT session tape between-take strumming, it sounds to me like a 12, but maybe that's just the echo chamber effect?...

If someone can definitvely answer these four questions...why, then we'd have world peace!  :)

The "rehearsal" track sounds like a six-string for some reason. After that it sounds like a 12-string electric. Before take 11, it hits a few chords which are heard over the talkback and it sounds like a 12-string.

Where or on what take is the noodling you mentioned heard?

On take 11, just before Brian says "wait a minute, Al I think you forgot..." the pre-chorus guitar figures are definitely a 12-string electric. To my ears at least.  :)

Around take 5, Brian asks Glen "what are you playing?", Glen strums the chords, Brian says just play a few notes there, someone says the pitch is flat, then they check the tuning, and that guitar I'm 99% sure is a 12-string acoustic.

Which would explain tuning/intonation issues as well.  ;)

I hear one archtop acoustic 6-string strumming the jazz chords, and if it lines up that had to be Barney Kessel playing that part. And if sessions he played at this same time are any indication, it could have been this 30's Gibson L-5 archtop that Barney often used to play rhythm on sessions, as shown in this photo from a session in early 1966:

(http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n295/guitarfool2002/Blog%20Post%201/barneykesseltest.jpg)

Tommy Tedesco also favored a similar archtop acoustic style guitar when he did rhythm tracks as well.

I hear the slide also as a 12-string electric, from Al Casey. But it's tough to tell on the actual master take...I'd lean toward 12-string electric, though.

Question: Where on SOT are these LGA sessions? I only have them on the box set.

In between the rehearsal and Take 1...and, I think, it's a 6-string on Take 1 itself...the SOT presentation then jumps from Take 1 to Take 9...then I agree, it's a 12-string after that, all the way.

Oops...I actually meant "Leggo My Ego" on that one...

Thanks! Any chance that's an archtop 12-string? Did they make such things then? It doesn't sound "loud" enough to be a "normal" flatop, dreadnaught, big hole in the middle kinda acoustic...

I've read in The Wrecking Crew book that Brian called one of the guitar players (was it Glen Campbell?) up for a session, called one of the biggest music shops in LA (which was not open) to bring him a Fender twelve string and a big Fender amp. At the end of the session, Brian told him that he could keep all the gear and bring it to his house...

Nice!!

I'm thinking that lack of boominess could have been due to how they had the guitar mic'ed, and how they had Glen positioned in front of the mic. The thing with Pet Sounds sessions that is cool is you hear them in the booth telling various players to move in closer or back off from the mic, basically adjusting levels and balances without touching a fader...truly a lost art! So if Glen's guitar was too loud, they could move the mic farther away or have him turn a bit to the side and there was the balance. Really cool old-school recording and production.

There were archtop acoustic 12-strings but they were *very* uncommon, and still are to this day as far as I know, unless it's a boutique/fantasy kind of custom build. Even a very small handful of Martins that they made were arched tops, but still had the O-shaped soundhole rather than the F-holes of most archtops. The design itself wouldn't be as practical to have 12-strings on a standard archtop design.

This also gets into the purpose behind these designs, which was much more on a design for a purpose mindset at least up to the 50's. The archtop acoustics were most often used by big band and orchestra rhythm players, guys like Freddie Green with Basie who would hit the 4-chord-per-bar rhythm with the rhythm section rather than play leads. The lead players starting with Charlie Christian were amplified starting in the late 30's, almost like a separate instrument and purpose. Those archtops had a certain response and frequency range that is pretty unique, as heard on a few PS tracks featuring one.

The flattop "folk" acoustic 12-strings had a different sound and purpose than those archtops, I'd say up to the 50's the guitar itself was still considered a bit of a novelty except in some folk and blues circles. Then when folk became "pop", and snowballed into folk-rock, the game changed. But the 12-string acoustics depending on the model could have a boomy and loud sound as they were built to play unamplified on stage, and had to project a certain way that the big-band archtops did not. But if they were mic'ed and recorded a certain way, as simple as positioning the mic a specific way, the "boom" could be replaced by the percussive string sound and vice versa.

It's kind of a throwback to see the session guys in the 60's playing rock/pop dates with those old 30's style archtops, I think the jazz-centric guys all had them from the days of using an archtop for a rhythm gig, but even in the 60's the archtop acoustics were all but fading out from regular use because everything popular was electric, including jazz guitar. The jazz rhythm players would rarely if ever do a big band job with a folk-style acoustic, so it fits in to have Tedesco, Kessel, Bob Bain, etc showing up with a 30's Gibson for "rhythm dates" even though they were even then a bit old-fashioned as everyday guitars. But they recorded great!

Yeah - that was Billy Strange on the "Sloop John B." overdub.

That was Billy Strange, one of the classic studio tales of the 60's. Billy tells the whole thing in the PS Sessions booklet, but basically Brian called Billy on a Sunday when he was off and had visitation with his kids, and asked him to come to the studio to see if he could add something to the track which was Sloop John B. Billy didn't have access to his guitars, so Brian called the owner of Wallichs Music City, Glen Wallichs, at home, they opened up the store, and someone delivered a brand new Fender Twin amp and Electric XII guitar to Western. Billy played the part, which amounted to not much more than one section of music, Brian gave him 500 cash and told him "don't forget your guitar and amp", and gave him the Fenders.

Thanks, guitarfool2000...one more PS guitar-related thing: to me, the acoustic rhythm guitar on "Let's Go Away For Awhile" sounds too "bright" to be an f-hole archtop - especially when you compare it to the obvious archtop acoustic sound on "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and the instrumental "Pet Sounds". I realize the archtop was Barney's go-to acoustic, but I'm sure he could've pulled out a round-hole dreadnaught if required, right?

Overlapping posts!  ;D

He would have had one available for sure, but from what I was told Barney would usually use that Gibson archtop for rhythm dates, in fact when he was doing "pop" sessions in the 60's I also heard he considered those chord-rhythm sessions an easy-money gig. Tommy Tedesco can be seen playing what looks like a Stromberg or D'Angelico archtop in his photo from the PS sessions booklet, I think he used them too for these specific dates even though he had a full arsenal of acoustics and other guitars available.

I'm just guessing but from a lot of the photos and other "evidence", it seems like the old-school guys still preferred the archtops for straight ahead chord-rhythm sessions, unless it was specifically for a country or folk sound...I think there was still a definite separation between styles and genres for which instruments to use on which dates, and what makes it confusing is that the exact time in the 60's we're discussing is when all the lines were in the process of blurring together.

I think a lot of the sound and frequency response came from how it was mic'ed and also the guitar itself, even the type of strings they had on certain guitars could affect the sound drastically when it was mic'ed up. For Pet Sounds, I'd have to lean toward the probability that if Barney (or Tommy) was playing an acoustic rhythm part, it would have been the archtop unless another sound was specifically requested.

What about FGHNFB and RTSGJO?

OK, I just listened again, and I think you're right...f-hole archtop acoustic n the rhythm part of "LGAFA".

Enjoying following this discussion.  Been once again rediscovering the layers of PS and have been working on a solo acoustic version of Caroline No.  Those chord shapes and plucking specific groups of strings is quite a challenge.

As for identifying which instruments are being played at a given point on any of the PS tracks, I have a hard time distinguishing except where it is obvious..and those moments seem to be few on this album.  I think part of the reason this album is endlessly listenable is because the brain doesn't tire of hearing the melody as there are so many nuances and layers of sound that continue to challenge the careful  listener.

Good luck with that. You reminded me of the beautiful acoustic guitar version Carl performed at Syracuse University, May 11 1971.

Yes, that one's neat - IIRC, the only other instrumentation on that live version is a bass (probably Bruce) and a flute (probably Joel Peskin).

"Don't forget your guitar and amp"? Both instrument and amp today will go for up to $US10000 combined. Man, I wish I was Billy Strange! Also, it is easy to forget the method of production used by Brian for making this album which is counter to how albums have been made since. Those hours of rehearsal time were used to balance the sound of the many musicians in the studios mainly, with the added bonus that during these rehearsals some unintended 'mistakes' became part of the arrangement of the song. Many session tracks on Pet Sounds allude to this.

I had a few online exchanges with Billy Strange about 8-10 years ago, when he would sometimes field questions via his website and email/messages. I should have asked him more about working with Brian at this time, but instead I asked a few things about his early-50's work with Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant, since Billy was playing rhythm guitar for them at that time. I figured his stories with Brian were already told via the PS booklet and other interviews, and with Billy's career overall he did so many classic sessions, where do you start? So I went with a more obscure topic, and he answered! Very cool.

Another aspect of Brian's work with these players especially in '66 when it seems he had fully learned the game as it were involved his generosity toward the musicians he had hired for these dates. They were not "easy" dates, not like the norm, and they involved usually a roomful of musicians having to read and develop some intricate arrangements that were sometimes happening on the fly.

This one aspect may separate Brian's methods from Spector's, whom Brian in many ways modeled his working methods as a producer from watching Spector work as early as 1963. Spector seemed to thrive on pushing the musicians into exhaustion and frustration, doing take after take and basically tiring them out, physically and mentally, to the point where I think Spector thought it captured a certain "edge" in the performances that you can actually hear in some of his classic productions. There is an edgy feel to some of those tracks, the Wall Of Sound did have an aggressive quality even though a lot of the material was teenage love songs or related topics.

I think with Pet Sounds, Brian may have pushed the musicians but you get a sweeter quality to those instrumental performances. They weren't aggressive as Spector, but that also complimented the lyrical subject matter in the songs perfectly. You might not have the full quality of any given sweet or reflective song on Pet Sounds with more aggression added to the playing.

So Brian had a habit of working up to the last minute of the allotted time for a session to get the take. And if he did not get it, he'd have no problem going into overtime, which for the union musicians meant getting above their scale payment rate as soon as the clock ticked beyond the scheduled end time for the session.

But Brian went one step further, and he borrowed this practice from some of the old-school artists and producers...he would often deliberately go overtime to give the musicians a bonus payment for their efforts on his music. If the session was 2-to-5, and he had the right take on tape at 4:45, he would deliberately have them run a few more to take them into overtime payment, which could be having a take run to 5:05, and give them the extra hour overtime in their check. The musicians loved this, and it also garnered a loyalty of sorts so when they got a call to do a Brian Wilson session over other less generous producers, Brian would get the guys he wanted to play as first-call. And unlike what some thought of Spector's methods, to the point where some very famous names simply refused to take dates for Spector sessions, Brian had a pretty loyal group available to book to play his dates. That's not saying Spector did not perhaps do the same things at various times, but the working methods were slightly different in how they got the results on the final take, and you can hear the differences, as subtle as they are.

And you can hear numerous times on the session tapes one of the musicians saying they were about to go into overtime during the recording process. That's just one thing Brian did for the musicians, above the norm, similar to thanking Billy Strange for taking time out from his Sunday off with his kids to make a trip to the studio to play a session by giving him that equipment and the extra cash bonus for his work.