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Post by starbuck on Apr 25, 2008 15:21:31 GMT -5
any of you kinkheads know anything about what kind of guitars ray and dave used? i'm a beatlenerd of sorts...and could speak to the rickenbackers and gretsches and hofners and the like, but what were the davies' axes? what produced the grunginess of "i need you" and "all day and all of the night" and the like? razorbladed voxes? what?
tia!
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Post by Iñakink on Apr 25, 2008 15:31:58 GMT -5
Starbuck, check this link from the official Dave Davies site: www.davedavies.com/guitars/index.htmThere are two long articles and a brief description of some of Dave's most important guitars and sometimes where he used them.
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Post by Smiley on Apr 25, 2008 22:43:24 GMT -5
Kudos I-man!
Enjoy Starbuck!
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Post by HollyH on Apr 26, 2008 14:09:39 GMT -5
If you're in the market for a used Dave Davies guitar, Starbuck, they do turn up on eBay from time to time...
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Post by tourist on May 6, 2008 8:11:53 GMT -5
I like the sound of the guitar that Dave used in the late 70's. The one he played at Kristmas Koncert at the Rainbow Theatre.
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Post by kinkfrank49 on May 28, 2008 17:03:28 GMT -5
I was a teen when the Kinks were on US TV numerous times in '64 and '65 doing Shindig, Hootenanny and other shows. I was also a guitarist and don't recall Ray's rigs, but most of the time on those shows the band was lip-syncing, and on the full-shred rockers like 'Got Me' and 'All Day and All of the Night' Dave had a Gibson Flying V guitar. The Explorer and V were different versions of the same rig and the V was introduced earlier, it was Lonnie Mack's guitar. On the tunes that didn't use the razored amps the guitar he used looked like a Gibson L5. These shows usually ran tapes done in England of the band doing their singles and the guitars were more or less props, but I recall them being on with every tune through 'See My Friends'. I wanted to buy a Flying V because I thought it gave them the sound till I heard it was because of the amp. I wonder if there are YouTubes of those old shows...
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Post by complicatedlife on May 28, 2008 23:50:40 GMT -5
Welcome Mr 49 - here's one of my fave vids from Shindig - a live performance of "Milk Cow Blues", complete with Dave's Flying V, the Shindig Dancers, and the closing credits - check out the acts that performed on this one show!
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Post by kinkfrank49 on May 29, 2008 17:53:51 GMT -5
Thanks, Comp. I had some time and decided to research this a bit. The 'Milk Cow' is live (though some fool edited a verse), and smokes. Ray in all of the tunes where he plays has what looks like stock Fender Telecaster. On one 'All Day and All Night' Dave has a Gibson ES 345, on most of the others, the Flying V; though what I recalled as an L5 is on one of the lip syncs and looks from the trapeze bridge and single cutaway to be a Gibson ES-5. Classic rigs for a classic group. There are MANY videos somewhere on tape of them playing A and B-sides of their early tunes, it would be great if more found their way to the web.
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Post by kinkfrank49 on Jun 16, 2008 23:53:38 GMT -5
I don't know if it has come up elsewhere on the board before this, so I thought I'd post it under guitars, since it concerns the old rumors about the early solos. I have some old research that I use for rock music articles and reviews including back issues of 'Rolling Stone' and was in it yesterday, and saw yet another mention by a knowledgable critic back at the time of Kronikles that Jimmy Page played the solos on the early Kinks hit songs. Wrong. I have read Page claim to have played the one on You Really Got Me. I also have heard, and it has been confirmed over and over, that though he played on the sessions for the first album, he didn't play any of the solos on such tunes as Got Me, Louie Louie, All Day and All of the Night, I Need You, and Never Met a Girl Like You Before. The book Kink and about fifty interviews with Ray confirm this. I always thought Dave lost some of the credit due him as one of the great guitar innovators taken away by irresponsible reporting and untrue claims.
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Post by phobia on Jun 17, 2008 2:56:25 GMT -5
Found this on a thread at the Dave site: more on Dave's guitars...from Transformation Of A Rock and Roll Survivor - May 11 2002 - Music Web Express 3000 www.mwe3.com/archive/feat-davies.htmRobert Silverstein: RS Dave Davies: DD RS: Another guitar question: Are you a big collector? DD: I used to be a collector. And having many wives you tend to lose alot of guitars on the way (laughter). I’ve got guitars that I keep that I don’t take out at all because when I’m on the road I go out very basically with me Fenders, a couple of Mesa Boogie’s, one guitar pedal and that’s it. RS: Do you want to mention some of your favorite guitars from over the years? DD: Obviously, I always have a special feeling for my Harmony Meteor—my first electric guitar which I recorded "You Really Got Me" with. I’d like to try and get hold of one, one day just as a bit of a sentimental thing. The one with the cutaway. I’ve still got a Tele and a Strat, early ‘50s, which I keep privately that I wouldn’t dare take on the road. An old Martin, D-20 is it? I’m so terrible with model names. Yeah I’ve got a few guitars I keep, that I’ve kept. (so this looks like the Harmony Meteor is no longer in Dave's mitts!)
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Post by phobia on Jun 17, 2008 3:05:40 GMT -5
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Post by phobia on Jun 17, 2008 3:35:11 GMT -5
Dave's Flying Vee The story gets told with a few variations.... "The story behind it was, I used to play a Guild custom built guitar and the airline lost it on our first American tour in '64 or '65. In those days I used to only carry one guitar around and I had to get a replacement quick. I went into a store and they didn't have anything I liked. I saw this dusty old guitar case and I said 'What have you got in there?' he said 'Oh, that's just some silly old guitar.' He got it out and I bought it for about $60." Early on Davies used a Harmony Meteor electric 'because it was the only guitar I could afford - and it was semi-acoustic, which is why I used to get really good feedback from it'. After the hits started rolling in, however, he could be seen wielding and enviable array of exotic instruments, from a Gretsch to a Guild to a significantly pose-worthy Gibson Flying V. 'I loved that Guild, and I took it to America in 1965 to do Shindig in the days when you travelled with a suitcase in one hand and a guitar case in the other,' Davies explains. 'We got off the plane and my suitcase came off, but no guitar - someone had stolen it. Grenville, our manager at the time, jumped in a cab with me and we went to this thrift store that had a bunch of guitars. I saw this triangular case and said. "What's that?" He said, "You don't want that, it's just some old crap ..." I opened it up and saw the Flying V - I was stunned. I said, "How much?" the guy said, "$200." "Fine!" To be honest I never really liked the feel - but it looked so good you got used to it ...' The prototype Flying Vs were mahogany and deemed a bit too heavy and a bit too costly to compete with the Strat. So the first models to leave Gibson’s original factory in Kalamazoo, Michigan, during 1958 were made of the lighter and more readily available korina wood. Their sales didn’t break the sound barrier. According to Larry Meiners’ thoroughly enjoyable Flying “V”: The Illustrated History of This Modernistic Guitar, less than 100 were ordered by dealers in ’58 and ’59. It would take another decade-and-a-half before the Flying V would have the last amplified laugh, but early sales were so slack that in 1960 the model was struck from Gibson’s catalog. Dave Davies of the Kinks tells a story about buying an original-production V from a Los Angeles guitar shop in 1964 at the fire-sale price of $60. The V’s suggested retail at the time was $247.50. Today a ’58 or ’59 V fetches between $120,000 and $145,000. Nonetheless, the Flying V began carving its place in history almost immediately thanks to two players. Bluesman Albert King named his brand new 1958 V “Lucy,” a sleeker-shaped little sister to B.B. King’s “Lucille.” With that guitar Albert perfected a highly original strain of blues powered by primal funk that would influence Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and countless others thanks to classic songs like “Born Under a Bad Sign” and “Crosscut Saw.” Albert King's "Lucy" Lonnie Mack’s V, which he called “Seven,” was practically a mail-order bride. He put money down at Cincinnati, Ohio’s Glenn Hughes Music after eyeballing the model in the Gibson catalog. While many players scoffed at its cut, Mack marveled at the arrow-like shape—a figure that literally aimed toward the future—and admired the pair of humbuckers on the V’s face. Check out this page! www.flying-v.ch/f_5859/f_5859.htm[/img] When his arrived, Mack was told it was the seventh off the production line. Almost immediately Mack modified “Seven” with a Bigsby vibrato arm. Mounting the vibrato required setting a metal bar between the guitar’s Cadillac-like fins and transformed “Seven” into the most recognizable Flying V on the planet. A half-century later, the guitar has survived two fractures and is still Mack’s beloved main axe. Its most recent appearance was on 2007’s Stevie Ray Vaughan retrospective Solos, Sessions and Encores, where Mack uses “Seven” to spar with his acolyte on a live, roasting-hot “Oreo Cookie Blues,” recorded in 1986 at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre. Albert King also appears on that disc’s opening track, wielding his V as he trades solos with Vaughan and B.B. King on the Elmore James classic “The Sky is Crying.” Real interesting site! dennischandler.com/Dennis___Cool_Tools.html
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Post by phobia on Jun 17, 2008 3:39:46 GMT -5
When his arrived, Mack was told it was the seventh off the production line. Almost immediately Mack modified “Seven” with a Bigsby vibrato arm. Mounting the vibrato required setting a metal bar between the guitar’s Cadillac-like fins and transformed “Seven” into the most recognizable Flying V on the planet. A half-century later, the guitar has survived two fractures and is still Mack’s beloved main axe. Its most recent appearance was on 2007’s Stevie Ray Vaughan retrospective Solos, Sessions and Encores, where Mack uses “Seven” to spar with his acolyte on a live, roasting-hot “Oreo Cookie Blues,” recorded in 1986 at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre. Albert King also appears on that disc’s opening track, wielding his V as he trades solos with Vaughan and B.B. King on the Elmore James classic “The Sky is Crying.”
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Post by complicatedlife on Jun 17, 2008 11:52:22 GMT -5
I think the store Dave found the Flying V in was Manny's Music on West 45th Street in Manhattan.
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Post by franklima on Jun 17, 2008 15:25:41 GMT -5
I think you're right
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