Vinnie Bell's "Underwater" Guitar Sound - Has Anyone Figured It Out?

[Teasing the Korean]

Maybe @sgcim has some insights.

[JSngry]

It sounds like there's a Leslie involved.

c/f the track "Pet Sounds" by the BB. Add a little/lot of extra reverb to that and maybe you get Vinnie Bell.

and once you get him, you can have him!

[Teasing the Korean]

44 minutes ago, JSngry said:

and once you get him, you can have him!

And I'll take him! One of my fave guitar sounds ever!

[sgcim]

After hearing the album "Whistle Stop" by VB on You Tube, I don't even want to know that the guy exists. Corny, unmusical arrangements, playing and choice of tunes- If he were playing somewhere, I'd pull a Max Roach/ Ornette Coleman on the guy, and lay him out with one punch, and then like Max, I'd wait for him at his mansion in Westchester, and finish the job.

Back then, all they had was vibrato, tremelo, and maybe a wah wah, so he probably combined them. He was an electronics wiz, so he could've invented his own thing.

[Teasing the Korean]

35 minutes ago, sgcim said:

After hearing the album "Whistle Stop" by VB on You Tube, I don't even want to know that the guy exists.

Please at least listen to his amazing version of Burt Bacharach's "Nikki."

 

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, sgcim said:

Back then, all they had was vibrato, tremelo, and maybe a wah wah, so he probably combined them. He was an electronics wiz, so he could've invented his own thing.

People were running any damn thing through a Leslie that they could figure out a way to run through one. This sound of his seems to me to be very much rooted in a Leslie.

Vinnie Bell was the same guy who popularized (or did something with, maybe even invented?) the Coral electric sitar, right?

oh, look here: Help me figure out this famous but mysterious effect | The Gear Page

My dad used to be a big Vinnie Bell fan. The sound Vinnie is using is his Coral Sitar through a wah pedal and then some kind of rotary speaker effect combined with tape delay. Since he was making this sound before 1970, the rotary effect would most likely have been a Leslie or a Univibe, since electronic phasers didn't come around until the early 70's. The wah is rocked back on the attack of each note to give it the choked, drippy sound. 

 

[sgcim]

22 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Please at least listen to his amazing version of Burt Bacharach's "Nikki."

 

It's a great tune, and he starts to get into a groove at the end, but I really dislike his stupid f/x , the underwater sound , and the organ guitar.

The guy was a total sell-out on his records. I knew some guys that played with him on gigs, and they said he could play, but I can't listen to his records.

They used to use that song as the theme song for the Movie of the Week on channel seven way back when.

[JSngry]

I read that it was Bell playing that really distinctive/aggressive CHANK on Dionne's "WalkOn By". I wonder if that was his idea or Burt's.?,? 

[Teasing the Korean]

41 minutes ago, sgcim said:

They used to use that song as the theme song for the Movie of the Week on channel seven way back when.

Yes, but a different arrangement, which I posted in the Bacharach RIP thread.

[Daniel A]

23 hours ago, JSngry said:

oh, look here: Help me figure out this famous but mysterious effect | The Gear Page

My dad used to be a big Vinnie Bell fan. The sound Vinnie is using is his Coral Sitar through a wah pedal and then some kind of rotary speaker effect combined with tape delay. Since he was making this sound before 1970, the rotary effect would most likely have been a Leslie or a Univibe, since electronic phasers didn't come around until the early 70's. The wah is rocked back on the attack of each note to give it the choked, drippy sound. 

 

A later post in that thread quotes an article written by the son of the founder of the firm Danelectro:

 

Dad’s reverb used crystals and circuitry to turn mechanical vibrations in long springs into electrical signals that could be modulated to produce varying degrees of reverberation—depending on how far up you turned the dial. While Dad developed the reverb effect to mimic the rich sound heard in a concert hall or large room, Vinnie discovered that if you daisy-chained multiple reverb units together, you could produce an “underwater” sound—something you’d never hear in a concert hall.

Together, Dad and Vinnie worked out how to produce this effect with a single device housed in a box topped with an array of pedals that enabled Vinnie to produce as much or as little of the “underwater” sound as he liked, controlling it with his feet while playing.

 

[Teasing the Korean]

16 hours ago, Daniel A said:

A later post in that thread quotes an article written by the son of the founder of the firm Danelectro:

 

Dad’s reverb used crystals and circuitry to turn mechanical vibrations in long springs into electrical signals that could be modulated to produce varying degrees of reverberation—depending on how far up you turned the dial. While Dad developed the reverb effect to mimic the rich sound heard in a concert hall or large room, Vinnie discovered that if you daisy-chained multiple reverb units together, you could produce an “underwater” sound—something you’d never hear in a concert hall.

Together, Dad and Vinnie worked out how to produce this effect with a single device housed in a box topped with an array of pedals that enabled Vinnie to produce as much or as little of the “underwater” sound as he liked, controlling it with his feet while playing.

Thanks for this!  My question was prompted by the fact that this sound has never, to my knowledge, been accurately replicated.  I assumed that there may have been some custom effects involved.

[sgcim]

On 2/11/2023 at 3:48 PM, JSngry said:

I read that it was Bell playing that really distinctive/aggressive CHANK on Dionne's "WalkOn By". I wonder if that was his idea or Burt's.?,? 

Burt wrote it, but that's how VB interpreted it. The guy could play (he never seemed to go beyond Django/Les Paul), but he chose the route of the gimmick/commercial studio player. More power to him.

[JSngry]

Burt must have liked it, he kept it in. The guy had an ear for texture, it's fun to listen to the insides of his records 

[JSngry]