paul mccartney

Unlike the interior of your first car, the vinyl on this 172 still looks sharp.

Photo courtesy of L’instrumenterie, Baptiste Zermati, Villeurbanne, France (https://linstrumenterie.com)

Dig into the weird wiring of the Hofner Beatle Bass and 172 guitar.

Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage! In this column, we will have a look at the famous HA2B control-panel wiring from the German Höfner company (often written as “Hofner” without the German umlaut). The control plate became famous on the Höfner violin bass—the model 500/1 that was released in 1956 and is often referred to as the “Beatle Bass” because of Paul McCartney.

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Visitors to the Library’s website will get a rare glimpse of music’s biggest stars in unguarded moments.

Washington, DC (November 28, 2012) -- The Library of Congress announced today that it would make interviews recorded with music icons available for the first time. The interviews are from the archives of Joe Smith and were recorded over his 40-year career in the music industry. Here's the details and some selected quotes from the Library of Congress press release:

In 1988, John Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono gave a candid interview to record-label president Joe Smith about the Beatles’ split: “For John, it was a divorce. I think he was feeling very good about it, as if a big weight was off him.” Ono was among more than 200 celebrated performers, producers and industry leaders whose words Smith captured on audiotape more than 25 years ago in an effort to document the oral history of popular music.

In June 2012, Smith donated the collection of recordings to the Library of Congress—a tremendous assembly of primary-source oral histories covering perhaps the most important 50 years of popular music, nationally and internationally. On Wednesday, Nov. 28, the Library will make a series of these revealing, unedited recordings available for listening free to the public on its website at www.loc.gov/rr/record/joesmith/. The first group of recordings posted on the site will consist of 25 interviews. These include interviews with Tony Bennett, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Ray Charles, B. B. King, Bo Diddley and Linda Rondstadt. More recordings in the Smith collection will be added to the site over time.

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Paul McCartney and Vox combine their efforts to help communities unearth undetonated mines.

Melville, NY (May 27, 2008) -- Two of music’s biggest players have collaborated again; Vox Amplification and Paul McCartney. This time they are looking to give back to the community by putting up a VOX AC15H1TV amp signed by the music legend onto eBay to be auctioned for charity. The duo’s efforts were combined to benefit a UK-based charity called No More Landmines.

The hand-wired AC15H1TV offers players an outlet to experience the golden tone of Vox. In addition, the engineers at Vox added a few modern ton shaping control enhancements to make it a tonally flexible AC 15.

The charity, that Paul choose, specializes in providing assistance to help communities throughout the world from the threat of unexploded weapons of war.

Make sure you have your calendar open and your internet connection solidified because the auction goes live June 9, 2008. Bidding will last ten days.

To view the auction page, please visit Vox-McCartney bid page.