With the estate sale/ flea market season upon us, I thought it might be an interesting experiment to try a Tumblr account. I’ll be posting images, sounds, and videos of the various audio-historical related flotsam that I happen upon across this great land of ours.
You can check us out at: http://exploitandindustry.tumblr.com
…or follow us, if you are a Tumblr user – it’s super easy, fast+free to join. Just go to Tumblr.com.
Hondo II: the First Name In First Bands. Marketed as ideal beginner-instruments, Hondo II was the US brand name for certain guitars built by the Korean Samick corporation. According to wikipedia, Hondos were built in Japan between 1974 and 1983. Samick is among the world’s largest manufacturers of musical instruments, with much modern production of guitars taking place in Indonesia. Anyways… by the time I started playing the electric guitar, the Hondo II name was already retired and they were simply branded ‘Samicks.’ Not sure what was up with the awkward name Hondo. Was is supposed to invoke Honda, then known to Americans as a leading manufacturer of motorcycles? Here’s a look back at the company’s big push into the US market in the 1970s. 
The Hondo Longhorns circa 1981; updated versions of the circa 1960 Danelectro instruments.
The Honda II lineup circa 1981. We see copies of: Gibson’s THE PAUL, the Fender Lead II, an early Fender Telecaster, an EVH-style strat, as well as some generic-looking but original instruments.
The Hondo 781 EXP, a lurid instrument sure to inspire fist-pumping.
In 1979 Hondo offered Asian-made licensed-versions (not copies…) of the respected SD Curlee instruments.
Anyone out there using Hondos these days? Are any of the models worth recommending? Let us know…
For the next two weeks at PS dot com: we’ll be taking an extended journey through the 1970s. I was born in 1976, and according to a lot of very smart people, the early impressions that we experience become deeply imprinted on our minds.
As far as audio culture, sartorial style, musical taste, etc: which of these impressions formed my Hero paradigm? Which became sublimated to create my Shadow self? My Anima? How might these concepts be present as projections in my conscious life?
Perhaps a scan through the RocknRoll audio-culture of the 1970s will shed some light on these hidden operations. Join us for what promises to be an interesting journey…
DOD. The effects pedal brand that spanned the (original) MXR and BOSS eras, never having quite the cachet of either, but keepin’ on keepin’ on well into the 21st. They are solid products – I have owned many and nary a complaint. However… I would love to know what ever happened to their graphic design. Check out these circa ’80 adverts. Fantastic, clean-looking things, soon to devolve into a swirling mass of ill-advised colors and garrish type-treatments. Perhaps focus-group tested to appeal to a younger consumer? Anyone out there ever do art direction for pro audio gear? Drop us a line and weigh in…
Daion guitars were built in the Japan in the late 70s/early 80s. I believe that the model depicted here is the L999 Legacy. Note the stylized ‘tuning fork’ logo on the headstock; Yamaha has used a similar motif for a century.
For previous Ladies of Psychedelic Folk coverage on PS dot com, click here.
Flipping through some circa 1960AES journals I came across this pair: The Scott 140B preamplifier and 250B fifty-watt power amp. The 140B pre claims a response of 1hz to 3.5Mhz. This is absurdly good performance for a vacuum tube amplifier. I am guessing that this is a transformerless piece. Anyone have any experience with this unit? A schematic? Drop us a line. The 50-watt power amp likely does use an output transformer; it claims a response of 5hz to 60K hz, which is outstanding as well. Let us know if you’re using these in the studio..
Above: From DOWNBEAT magazine 1966: Bassist Ben Tucker discusses his home hi-fi system. Tucker played with a real who’s-who of the mid 20th century jazz world. I really like this idea of profiling the hi-fi systems of studio-savvy musicians; seems like a potentially good way of cutting through the audiophile obsessiveness, the marketing hype, and the bargain-hunting mentality that seems to inform a lot of sound-system purchases. Musicians tend to know what things are supposed to sound like and tend to respond intuitively to the emotional aspects of music reproduction, and they also tend to be on real-world budgets. Seems like a good sort of individual to take home audio advice from. Tucker used an Electrovoice 1177 receiver, AR3 speakers, Koss Pr-4 headphones, a Stanton Longhair cartridge, and a SONY 500 tape recorder.
Are any current publications/sites running similar features today on contemporary musicians?
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Do certain acoustic phenomena create universal psychological effects?
Does rhythm hold primacy in the hierarchy of musical elements owing to the ever-present heartbeat, with us since months before we are even born?
Do we have genetically programmed responses to such things as the doppler effect (captured via the Leslie speaker), surely a useful phenomenon for hunting animals to pay notice?
Are there other musical devices that could possibly be based in instinctual animal behavior?
Today: some excerpts from a piece by C.W. Vadersen as published in the AES journal. It’s a good thing to remember that early audio technology developed not out of the entertainment industry but from the communications industry: primarily, the telegraph. As important to us as music and art maybe, the need to communicate is primary (or at least secondary only to the 4 F’s: Feed, Fight, Flight, Sex).
How to we use our senses, and in what proportion? (in Vadersen’s opinon…)
Our interpersonal connections grown exponentially with each new ‘cable’ that we run
The arc of communications technologies circa 1962. It’s almost impossible to wrap the mind around the growth we’ve seen since then. How far down on this list would ‘Blog’ appear?
Above: the Electrovoice 643 super-directional microphone of 1961. The 643 was apparently developed by the same engineer who created the wonderful Electrovoice RE-20. Unlike the 643, the RE-20 is still in production, and still being used everyday around the world. As far as the 643…well… it was supposedly used in the 1960s for Presidential news conferences, but I can’t imagine seeing something like this aimed at a head-of-state today.
