The Steel Guitar Forum

Hey fellow Weissenborn players! Have any of you ever tried to successfully replicate Lindley's chorus sound? Curious to know what chorus you'd use and what settings - speed, depth, mix. Particularly the "Playing Real Good" era.

Thanks!

Here's one previous discussion. You can use a Boss Chorus pedal to get close to the sound he got from his Roland JC-120 amp.

I was looking for info on this and read somewhere that the effect was a Roland/Boss CE-1. That's totally unsubstantiated 4th-hand info.

CE-1 and he loved Alex Lifeson from Rush way back when I read that.

Matthew Dawson wrote:I was looking for info on this and read somewhere that the effect was a Roland/Boss CE-1. That's totally unsubstantiated 4th-hand info.

i was told the same, for the electric El-Rayo X stuff.

depth and rate both off, as i remember.

acoustic stuff, JC120.

For acoustic, it's JC-120. He puts mics in front of each speaker. They are stereo.

When I listen to Lindley these days I hear a doubled low octave in the bass lines in his Weissenborn tunes. I'm thinking there is an octave device adjusted to track just the lowest octave of the range (or less), so his thumb essentially adds a bass instrument. This is in addition to chorus.

Hmmm... I don't think so.

Could you attach an example of what you're hearing?

I suspect what you might be hearing is his 7 string weissenborn which in tuned in low bass G and has a G below the low D, so (low to high): G, D, G, D, G, B, D so that low G (only a minor 3rd above a low E on a bass) is probably what you're hearing.

The main thing I was hoping to get from this thread was the settings of his chorus. I listened to "Play it All Night Long" from "Playing Real Good" and I think the Speed oscillates at around 300 - 350 BPM and the Depth is maybe 1/8 of a tone on either side. Anyone else care to weigh in?

I have not heard recordings that sound like what I'm talking about. The last 3 times I saw DL he played alone with maybe 6 or 7 instruments including 3 Weissenborn style, one of them a baritone scale. The three were open tuned in three different keys with (I think) the root on the bottom. The bass notes were so low that I wouldn't think they'd be viable on a guitar. The baritone was audibly different in some respects, but the others sounded in a similar way, awesome low.

I'm not a student of Lindley or Weissenborn setups, so I could wrong. That last show a few weeks ago I had heard everything before, so I spent the whole time trying to figure out what was going on.

john, i think you're probably just hearing the subs picking up a bit of the low end. i don't think he does any tunes where the Weissenborns are tuned up to E, even, I believe it's all D, C, lower for the baritone.

even a D can get pretty damn bassy when it's put through the subs, especially if it's the only instrument onstage, and you're not having to shelf that bass to make room for the bass guitar, kick/floor tom, etc.

the octave pedal is certainly a possibility, but i'd be surprised.

Thanks Jamie and Tim, this is fascinating to learn where these giant sounds come from. DL has managed to channel the El Rayo X material into an effective solo act, and after the first minute or two you're listening to a whole band.

"Lindley's tunings include F (F C F A C F); G (D G D G B D); an open-G variant, G G D G B D (used on "The Jimmy Hoffa Memorial Building Blues"), with a mandocello sixth string tuned an octave below the fifth string; C6 (C G C G C A); and D6 (D A D A D B)."

http://www.weissenborn.es/g_history_art ... ndley.html

When I saw David with El Rayo-X back in the '80's, he was using a Boss CE-2 chorus with the first knob at about 10:30 and the second at 2:00. I went out and bought a CE-2 right after that and have used those settings to this day on the same CE-2.

Peter, I have studied Lindley's playing pretty closely and I can say with some degree of certainty that he does not use the last two tunings you mentioned, C6 and D6. He uses C with an E on top CGCGCE - perhaps that's the one you were thinking of? The only time I've heard him use a D6 tuning was on "More Than Eva Braun", in which he tunes his weissenborn (low to high) DADF#BD - so the B is on the 2nd string.

Paul, that is very interesting. Slow speed and deep depth. Listening to his solo stuff closely (the ending open chords on "Play it All Night Long" for instance) it seems the opposite; fast speed but shallow depth.

Just copied the comment from the site re Lindley's tunings and certainly not based on scholarship on my part. Mostly added for the bit about the mandocello strings and low G, which Lindley explained on stage when he played our little town two summers ago. Can't remember what the song was, though.

Tim Tweedale wrote: Paul, that is very interesting. Slow speed and deep depth. Listening to his solo stuff closely (the ending open chords on "Play it All Night Long" for instance) it seems the opposite; fast speed but shallow depth.

That was one night and one gig around the time of his second solo album. But that's how he had it that night.

I first saw Mr. Dave with Kaleidoscope in San Francisco in the late '60's. Also on the bill was Freddie Roulette. I've heard that night had a big influence on David.

The new Boss CE-2W Waza Craft has a CE-1 mode which is supposed to replicate the original Roland JC-120 stereo Chorus.

Good to know! Thank you, Mitch!