Al bought my Super Sonny. Hey, that amp sounds great, didn't know Magnatone made a 4X8. Walter, cleaner amp? No way! This is the right tone for the tune.
I have that exact amp with a 15'' speaker put in. There is a harpsucker video of it if any one is interested. It has to have the most solid cabinet in the universe. Without exaggeration you could easily stand on it while playing. It is a tone monster. d ---------- Facebook
I guess this is okay considering the audio is compressed on the Q3 and then again by youtube. I can't help but wonder how this would have sounded live and uncompressed.
I saw on facebook that they didn't move forward. It's too bad. The silver lining is that Memphis can be cold in February.
Nic would sound good through a toilet paper roll. I remember the first time that I saw him. He must have been 13 or 14. It was obvious he had stumbled onto a sound that is quite special. He has spent a ton of time listening to music and practicing.
Capturing the Maxwell Street sound is hard. It was not the "tone zone". Everything sounded so cheap and cheesy down there. Most of the bands down there ran cheap vocal mics into a spare channel on a guitar amp. Half the time, you couldn't understand the vocals because the quality of the sound sucked so hard. From what I remember, the goal was pure volume, not tone. Quite often, the tone was sacrificed. The goal was to attract people and to remove as much money from their wallets as possible.
Greg, here is the amazing part: They didn't win. Two solo/duo acts advanced from this IBC prelim to the Colorado Blues Society finals, and Al & Nic did not make it. It is inexplicable. Nic's playing is James Cotton-level. Al is solid. There is just no rational explanation. The acts that advanced were, uh, pedestrian at best and did not include any harp.
Joe, the audio was not compressed in the Q3, at least not much. It was recorded in PCM stereo 44.1kHz 24 bit, with the levels way below clipping. I did not use the autogain setting.
Youtube certainly compresses audio, but it sounded substantially the same when I was standing in front of Al & Nic. The Magnatone amp was highly compressed -- Nic had it cranked. I was too close to get good sound from the house PA speakers (they were wide to my left and right), so I was getting indirect vocals from the monitors you see in the video.
The room is a bit boomy, so it is what it is. But I think it is a pretty good representation of what Nic sounded like from where I was standing.
As I said, Nic was very loud. That was the Maxwell Street vibe you describe. I thought they sounded great.
Joe, in Memphis this year I saw a few strong harp players, in particular Mikey Junior from the Jersey Shore (location, not TV show). He played great Chicago blues and advanced to the finals. A very impressive player and entertainer.
