Django's electric guitar

frater · June 2009

I don't know: if you listen to some '49/'50 takes (C jam Blues, for example) there's a lot of distortion in Django's guitar... but in any case I think Dorado nailed perfectly the spirit. Not so many players around who can play that way presently, IMO...

Jonathank · August 2009

Hi All

I'd hate to cast doubt on the wisdom of Ted or Teddys view that those last recordings are using a Selmer with a Stimer

, but Pierre Michelot (the bassist on all of those last recordings 1951 - 1953 is quoted in the notes to the Jazz in Paris - Nuages cd (which covers the March and April 1953 sessions) thus:

"He liked this session. I think , but when it was released almost everyone was indifferent. Yet he was at a turning point in his musical expression , and open to everything new. Changing his famous sound, he was using an electric guitar which was nothing like the makeshift instrument he had at the end of the forties, and his mastery of it was perfect".

Me thinks the "makeshift instrument" he refers to is the Selmer plus Stimer, unless anyone has any evidence that Pierre is a dodgy source (theres also an excellent quote from him in another of the Jazz in Paris CDs about Django going to Hubert and Raymond Fol's flat and being turned on to the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, Parker and Bud Powell.

To my relative amateur ears I'd say its the Selmer plus Stimer on the earlier 1947 recordings like Peche a la Mouche and Topsy et al. However the Jazz in Paris notes by Alian Tercinet for those sessions are a little confused; at one point saying "Django chose to express himself with an amplified guitar... he'd had occassion to experiment with an instrument belonging to his brother Joseph"; and at the next referring to his fitting the selmer with a microphone. Could be that amplified just = Semer plus Stimer.

I love those last 1950 sessions where he's transformed him self once again, easy listening GJ it is not.....

So to go back to the original thread question - what was that guitar and amp he was using in 19501+ - the Epiphone plus Stimer amp? (I thought the Gibson rumour was just that a rumour due to Django's picture being taken with a borrowed Gibson in the USA).

Ciao

P.S Michael - you have the Selmer, Stimer p/up and Stimer amp combo in the store, couldn't you do a YouTube test for us to see if you can get the tone on Topsy or Deccaphonie?

Jonathank · August 2009

Just as an add on to the above and for those following the thread interested in Django's electirc guitar experiments who haven't seen th various articles that exist, try this link, which brings together various articles/sources and pictures

http://www.paulvernonchester.com/DjangosEpiphone.htm

I wonder if the 1950's amp was the Epiphone Electrar?

Teddy is there a date for that clip of Django with the Epiphone?

scot · August 2009

The issue of the Epiphone etc was covered in detail on this thread viewtopic.php?p=21581&highlight=#21581. I don't think there is much to add except that a lot of the information on the Epiphone posted elsewhere isn't all that accurate.

Regarding Django's electric sound, the first thing to consider is that with an acoustic guitar, his sound was the same no matter what guitar he played. It would have been the same with an electric guitar, too. As with the acoustic guitar, that's largely his unique technique. Technically speaking, all the electric guitars Django played used a wide-bobbin single coil pickup, all similar to the DeArmond. Pickups of this design have a characteristic sound. And as with tube amps today, the tube amps he used had either class A (Stimer) or class AB (Epiphone and Gibson) final stages. These amps have a vaguely different sound, mostly because the class A tube conducts all the time and AB tubes only conduct through 180 degrees of the signal - it uses two tubes in a push-pull arrangement. The response is thus a little quicker on the class A amp. The AB amp has a higher harmonic content. Many of the older amps (through the 60s) also had tube rectifiers, and most modern tube amps have solid state rectifiers. A lot of guitarists think this make a big difference to the sound, too.

I know there are guitarists today who can hear the difference in slight changes in plate voltage or minute changes in grid bias. But it's impossible to imagine Django being concerned with that kind of thing. I'm sure he used what was at hand and made the best of it.

For us mortals, I'm sure the best thing to get that sound is a Stimer/Stimer combination, but an excellent sound can also be achieved with a Stimer and a small Fender amp. I use a late '60s Princeton Reverb, but the modern Blues Jr is nearly as good. Fenders are class AB amps. I don't know who makes class A amps today, though the Stimer reissue is surely class A.

Teddy Dupont · August 2009

We will never be 100% certain what guitar Django used to record at any time unless there is documented proof because he tended to use whatever was at hand and, as Scot said, could make them all sound equally good. However, we should not place too much emphasis on Pierre Michelot's use of the term "electric guitar" rather than "amplified guitar" because for may years, these terms were interchangeable particularly amongst non-guitarists.

I must have over 30 photographs of Django playing in the fifties and I can recall only one where he is not using his Selmer with Stimer amplification when playing an amplified/electric guitar. There are several pictures from the February, 1953 recordings with Tony Proteau, immediately before his classic final sessions, showing Django using the Selmer/Stimer combination. So all the photos taken immediately before and after those sessions show him with this combination and I think it would be very odd if he used anything else when recording.

I do not believe Django owned any of the true electric guitars we see him playing and I rather doubt whether he ever owned one for any length of time, if at all.

Here is the sequence of him with the Epiphone in May 1946 that was wrongly claimed to have been given to him in America amongst other things:-

...and here he is playing his Selmer with some form of mic amplification in 1944/45:-