The Leslie West Sound: Les Paul Jr. and Sunn

Old thread, but always relevant! I loved Leslie West ever since my older sister's boyfriend left a copy of his first album...."Mountain", took the place of The Beatles for me, at least back then (still love The Beatles)....and I patterned my playing after him. I learned you didn't have to be fast to be great, and tone was the answer for us slow players. Anyway, in late '76 or early '77 I was in a new band. I had an Earth, nothing wrong with that, but I wanted a Marshall (hey, image matters), anyway I go to Stuyvesant Music aka "we buy guitars" on 48th Street NYC. Les lie west had just traded in a bunch of stuff. I played his Electra MPC guitar (before they made a model for him) and also his Hayman (which he used for slide, pictured on a few imports I have)....man I really wanted to own one of his guitars, but I needed an amp. So I bought a well used Marshall Major head. After I bought it I told the sales guy I really wanted one of Leslie's guitars, and he said.."who's amp do you think this is, he just traded it in", and he showed me the cabs which were stenciled with The Leslie West Band on the back. Unfortunately I could not afford all of it, so I just got his head. I bought other Marshall cabs as I could afford them. So there I was playing all over NYC in SMALL clubs with a full Marshall Major stack the next couple of years. Like I said, image mattered at the time. Today I would do it with a Blues Jr. or similar. One more quick one, during the 90's my sister asked me, "didn't you like that leslie West guy?". I said" still do". A couple of weeks later she brought me a bunch of his newer CD's all signed ....turns out my sister worked with Leslies Brother's wife (Larry, also from The Vagrants)....she told her co-worker about me and Leslie signed and sent those CD's to me. So yeah, he has a bad rep....but he was good to me!

zorglub! said:

You mean this? :hank:dude:

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Yes! That is it. If the YouTube had video of Mountain to go with the performance I might have died of a heart attack. I would REALLY like to see this performance. In any case, thanks for the link!

Leslie's the man! :hank

Al Romano demos a Leslie-style Sunn/Jr rig

part II

Dave P said:

Al Romano demos a Leslie-style Sunn/Jr rig

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Beat me to the punch! Al nails it. Some of this gear was for sale within the past couple of years.

Leslie told me his Sunn amps were the exact ones Hendrix used. He got them second hand from Sunn as an endorsement deal.

Since I have known him, he will play anything he can get for free as an endorsement artist. Most of the times I have seen him, he used 2-3 Marshall full stacks. Other Times
he has used almost everyone's tube stacks. I think he sounded best using 3 Peavey stacks, they sounded like the Sunns IMHO.

Thanks.

Qamp#
UOTE=lpnv59;1347394]

Got this off a Sunn Amp website.


At the invitation of Al Romano, a New York collector, VG was able to put a full 2000S set through the paces (outdoors of course). Using the late Felix Pappalardi's '63 Thunderbird bass, we filled the Hudson River Valley with a blast of classic licks, amp settings at the requisite 10. The instrument and bass rig have been somewhat reunited, as all the pieces came from the Mountain organization (the head from Felix and the bottoms traced back to Charles Lane Rehearsal Studios, Manhattan, where they reportedly had been sold to pay an outstanding balance).


Numerous features separate this set from a stock model, including the addition of a 120/240V switch for world travelers, a slave output with a mysterious switch allowing a number of heads to be controlled from a single set of controls, and an additional output jack. The handwritten "Sugar" relates to a post-Mountain Pappalardi bassist (Felix had switched to guitar) and the additional pilot light in the middle of the front panel was a Mountain trademark. In an interview for Guitar Player (April '72), Pappalardi refers to the head. "It was souped up some more by our Tom Lyle, but I really don't know what he did. Something to the top, I think. I'm really not into all that electronic thing. As long as I have the bark, the attack that I like, everything's fine."

Like many VG readers, the owner of this set is obviously fanatical about his gear (he also owns a mint Olympic White '65 Strat. "...just like Hendrix's early shows," Ace Frehley's flamey '59 Les Paul Standard, and numerous '60s Marshalls). But when he tried to convince me the amplifier's cabinet says "Mountain" on it, I honestly thought he was bonkers. It seemed no matter which angle we looked at it, I couldn't see it and, of course, he could! He assured me it was there, pulling out lights and illuminating the top surface from all angles. Finally, he took it outside, sprayed water on the top and it magically appeared! Pictures were taken from numerous angles, with the results ranging from blank black to a legible word. Cosmic, dude!


The grille on the head has the close-pattern material used on all the Sunn stuff until late-'69, while the bottoms are dressed in the later Fender-style cloth. It seems obvious the speaker cabinets once were in the Mountain camp, as they are numbered on the bottom in large white numbers for inventory and transport and have a small black label stamped over the numbers with references to Windfall, the band's record label.


It's wise to always be skeptical about celebrity instruments, but this would have been too much to bother with in a forgery. Through the rumor mill (a former owner), it was suggested the cabinets were recovered by Sunn before the identifications were added. After talking to Sunn's A&R man from the era and hearing stories about the factory regularly doing makeovers on equipment from their artist loaner pool, it seems possible. They wouldn't have wanted these promotional items to look ratty, as was inevitable in touring situations (particularly on heavy items).

Which brings us to a "Jimi Hendrix slept here" story that immediately sent up the red flags. Could some of the Mountain gear have been leftovers from Hendrix tours? Numerous guitars and amps have reportedly been passed on to musicians from J.H. himself and if the A&R people thought it was going to a good home, they could easily have looked the other way.

In the November '72 Guitar Player, a columnist writes, "The sound system Felix uses is the Sunn equipment he claims was designed for Jimi Hendrix."

This can be taken a number of ways, and since it is a bass rig, it would have been for Redding, not Hendrix (post-Experience bassist Billy Cox's association with Marshall ended the JHE/Sunn collaboration). Having the grille of the earlier models, but the Bass Boost switch and 6550s of the later version, place it early-to-mid '69, so it could have been one of Redding's last Sunns. By then, Hendrix was known to go over Redding's original bass tracks in the studio, so the time frame is right.
Longtime Pappalardi/Windfall employee Richie DeMartino, who was with Mountain on a daily basis, remembers Hendrix giving Pappalardi "...a whole room full of Sunns," including the head discussed here.

So how does it sound? Cranked, it does a certain style amazingly, with endless sustain but a clarity to individual notes, as on the best guitar amps. Romano ran through the complete catalog of Mountain classics (he studied with West as a teenager, see October '80 Guitar Player for a photo) and it seems obvious Felix's lyrical single-note playing would not have been the same with a modern rig. On the other hand, playing any combination of notes sent the amp into power chord heaven, but not like a Fuzztone; magical in its own way, although certainly not for everybody. The bottoms performed confidently and solidly with no rattle.

Sad in a way, very few players can consistently get away with the volume required to bring out the character of this amp's power tube distortion, making it impractical for everyday use. Since the 2000S amps were extremely expensive and used almost exclusively by professionals, they are today quite rare. As for using it for fun, how often and how long can you get away with playing really loud in your backyard? Playing it indoors would rattle the house down and in a soundproof rehearsal room, you'd go deaf! If you owned your own theater and had a really long guitar cord...another tube-powered dinosaur on its way to extinction.

Thanks to all the folks who helped this month; Noel, Mrs. R, Buck, NiteBob, Richie, Conrad, and anybody I've forgotten. All catalogs and photos courtesy of the author[/QUOTE]

Buck Munger was Sunns artist relations rep at the time and supplied many bands with Sunn gear, he could probably shine some light on this equipment history involving hendrix and Mountain. I grew up in the Pacific northwest not far from the Sunn factory, I used to go there often in the 60's-70's to apply for a job, after many applications the secretary grew tired of me filing out job apps weekly, and told me that "nobody ever quits here" and I was better off looking elsewhere......saw Beck many times, when he had the Sunn gear it was the LOUDEST he ever got, he would run them plus a Marshall head thru three Univox six packs, my hearing has never recovered.......

I had forgotten about those purple Univox tube stacks. I think I only sold one during the early '70s.

Johngonefishin said:

Buck Munger was Sunns artist relations rep at the time and supplied many bands with Sunn gear, he could probably shine some light on this equipment history involving hendrix and Mountain. I grew up in the Pacific northwest not far from the Sunn factory, I used to go there often in the 60's-70's to apply for a job, after many applications the secretary grew tired of me filing out job apps weekly, and told me that "nobody ever quits here" and I was better off looking elsewhere......saw Beck many times, when he had the Sunn gear it was the LOUDEST he ever got, he would run them plus a Marshall head thru three Univox six packs, my hearing has never recovered.......

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