Ampeg: The Story Behind the Sound

Case.

From Newark to New York

1946-1954

Musical Passions

Invention and Musicianship

Chicago and Les Paul

Gigging

Born in Chicago: The Ampeg

Eastward Ho: Newark and Michael-Hull

Bright Lights, Big City: 42nd Street

Highs and Lows

Expansion

Tech Talk: Inside the Products

Milestones in Bass Amplification

The Hull Family, c. 1916. Left to right Everitt, Jessie Sherman Hull (mother), Bessie, Raymond, Alice, Charles Hull (father), Wilson.

Hull Collection

Musical Passions

Music must have been a solace and an inspiration for young Everitt Hull, a sensitive boy growing up in the farmlands and logging country of central Wisconsin in the early twentieth century, Here were the modest beginnings of the man who would eventually found the Ampeg Bassamp Company, changing the way the upright bass—and eventually the electric bass—would be heard in popular music forever.

As the firstborn son on the family farm, Everitt—he would later change his name to Everett—labored long and hard among the members of an extensive family, under the glare of his old-fashioned father’s gaze. But then there was his grandfather’s violin: what sweet sounds it could make! The vibrations of the wood, with the instrument cradled under the chin, were delicious—and partially made up for the angry beatings the boy sometimes endured at the hands of a stern, hard-drinking father.

At what point did Everitt discover his love of music? The precise moment is unknown. But the violin, the organ, the piano, perhaps the drums, and eventually the upright bass—and its amplincadon—would become his passions for life.

Here were the modest beginnings of the man

who would eventually found the Ampeg Bassamp Company

changing the way the uprightbass—and eventually

the electric bass—would be heard in

popular music forever.

Logging company at Whitcomb Landing, Wisconsin, 1925. Hull stands at center, with his hand on the tractor. Hull Collection

Invention and Musicianship

Charles Everitt Hull was born in the town of Morris, near Wittenberg, Shawano, County, Wisconsin, on January 17, 1904—in the year that saw the invention of the electron tube, the birth of radio, and the growth of recorded phonograph music. All of these technological developments would provide important opportunities for Hull’s future.

Young Everitt, in a classic pattern he would

repeat throughout his life, realized the technical need

and went on to invent a new hitch, a fifth wheel,

to solve the difficulty

Hull was an energetic boy who took an early interest in girls, clothes, and dance halls, according to autobiographical notes he made in the 1960s. He was handy, constructing his own toys, from whistles and wagons to skis. Hull was punished for swearing, no doubt by his father Charles, but Hull’s father also gave Everett his first taste of public performance on the organ, and later on the piano, at the Morris Club House. He began putting on musical shows with friends. Hull saw the first Ford motorcars drive out on the roads, and finally the family farm had its own tractor. Apparently the early tractor was a crude hauling machine in need of an effective hitch. Young Everitt, in a classic pattern he would repeat throughout his life, realized the technical need and went on to invent a new hitch, a fifth wheel, to solve the difficulty. Family lore has it that Hull’s father, in his cups, sold the patent rights to the Mack Motor Company, which young Hull could not forgive.

Everitt learned to cut logs and make maple syrup, hid his good clothes in a shack near his house so he could dress up for school, and then, after a brutal paternal beating that damaged his hearing, ran away to Oshkosh, where he learned the blacksmith mule. He started selling tractors for the Kellogg Lumber Company, demonstrating plowing techniques and entering plowing contests.

Reconciled with his family temporarily, Hull was treated by his mother Jessie to trips to Milwaukee and michigan. Another, bigger world must have opened in Hull’s imagination—a world of crowds and nice clothes and music, away from his harsh father. On returning to the county seat of Shawano, Everitt began selling Chrysler cars and playing music again, still on piano, in the Wisconsin Blues. The band played often at the Shawano Lake Pavilion.

Hull’s Orchestra in the 1920s, with Hull at the piano. Hull Collection

A business card from the Shawano days reveals Hull as star and manager of his own band: Everitt Hull And His Broadway Favorites—Seven Real Masters of Rhythm—Specialty Song and Dance Acts. Clearly Hull’s musical talent and leadership skills were beginning to flower.

At the County Fair in the mid 1920s, Hull met Gertrude Dietzler, who would encourage his first musical invention, and by the end of 1927 Everitt and Gertrude, a teacher and education professor in English and history, were married at the First Methodist Church. Hull was a successful car salesman and musician in Shawano until the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

Odd jobs during the difficult early 1930s included moonshining, running the whiskey—as Hull recalled—in used Chryslers with bullet holes and overload springs. Everitt did another stint at a lumber camp for one winter, while Gertrude taught school. Later he put together a homemade truck, and he kept playing music, on his own and with the Minnings Orchestra.

Then, as the economy started to right itself with the help of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, and with Prohibition a thing of the past, Everitt and Gertrude Hull set their sights on new opportunities in the big city to the south of Milwaukee, down Lake Michigan in Illinois.

Chicago and Les Paul

It was 1935, and Chicago—its reviling economic and cultural strength symbolized in the two previous years by the World’s Fair Century of Progress Exposition—was the place to go for jobs and jazz, despite the Depression and gangsters like Al Capone and an exodus of big-time musicians to New York. Hull’s autobiographical jottings state simply, with relief, Finally Chicago.

It was around this time, probably, that the seed of invention was

planted in Hull’s fertile mind.

Hull continued in sales and music, working hard as always, looking for opportunities. He played piano and, momentously, took up the double bass—playing with the Edgewater Beach Hotel orchestra and with several other combos and orchestras, including those led by Boyd Rayburn and Anson Weeks. Hull loved club life, the glitz and fun and musical networking; he hung out whenever he could.

In Chicago in the 1930s, one of the most popular musicians was Les Paul, alias Rhubarb Red, from Waukesha, Wisconsin. Already famous for his country & western guitar playing on radio stations WLS and WJJD, Paul met Hull, probably in 1936, before Paul left for New York the next year.

As Les Paul remembers it, he was jamming on an electrified guitar—so he could compete with the sax player’s volume—in the Chelsea Hotel bar, a popular musicians’ watering hole. Hull was fascinated by Paul’s amplifier, and after the show Paul explained the rudiments of the amp. At Cubby’s, another musicians’ bar, Paul recalls seeing the Rickenbacker broomstick electrified bass, one of the first portable uprights, and he remembers Hull there with him. Paul thinks he told Hull, You ought to make an electrified bass.

It was around this time, probably, that the seed of invention was planted in Hull’s fertile mind.

Hull and Les Paul remained chums, on and off, for most of Hull’s life. Hull would consult Paul for advice about major musical and business decisions, and Paul used Ampeg equipment some of the time. A Hull-manufactured bass amp, amazingly, would help save Les Paul’s life during his famous car accident twelve years later (see Eastward Ho: Newark and Michael-Hull, later in this chapter).

Everett Hull and The Topnotchers, Chicago, 1942. Clockwise from lower left Hull, Charlie Michaels, George Mitchell, and Leon Sash.

Hull Collection

Gigging

Hull continued his musical career in Chicago, performing both cowboy music and jazz, according to Les Paul—and branching out into comedy. He put together a music and humor routine that featured a modified upright bass, as he told the Newark Sunday News in late 1966: Once in 1938, in Chicago, I invented a battery-powered fiddle that would roll around the stage on wheels. Since I was a comedian at that time, too, the device came in handy during my act.

Les Paul remembers a bass on wheels, possibly decked out with signal lights, that Hull might have driven to work like a bicycle! This, apparently, was what Hull called in his autobiographical notes the building of the gadget. But the important invention that was to change Hull’s life, and the world of bass amplification, would take nearly eight years more.

By the early 1940s, Hull was playing bass at Chicago’s Sherman Holel—first with The Three Dons and Bea and then as band leader for Everett Hull and The Topnotchers in late 1942. Hull had reasserted his leadership talents, while changing the spelling of his first name, and he had polished his musical expertise on the upright.

Soon Hull was playing bass with Lawrence Welk, probably at the Trianon Ballroom in Chicago, and in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. Welk was another musician from the northern farmlands, in his case North Dakota, but the relationship didn’t last, and in 1945 Welk would take off for

Everitt Hull with his motorized bass on wheels, Chicago, 1938.

Hull Collection

California and, later, television fame. Perhaps Hull already had his eve on New York, the mecca of swing and bebop jazz in the forties.

Born in Chicago: The Ampeg

Although several writers on Ampeg history have suggested a New York origin for Hull’s breakthrough invention—the invention that would eventually lead to his founding of The Ampeg Bassamp Company—it seems clear that Everett Hull made his first upright bass pickup in Chicago, and later refined it in New Jersey and New York.

Hull anchored a microphone inside the bass, played several notes,

and announced, Gertie, we’ve got something here!

While working for Welk in 1945, Hull not only accompanied the band, but he also played numerous solos, according to The Ampeg Story, an Ampeg company press release dated April 1, 1968. Gertrude Hull mentioned that Hull’s solos should be heard with more clarity. Everett knew that using a standard microphone would result in his making a racket when he bumped the microphone stand with his bass bow.

It dawned on Hull that placing a transducer inside his bass on an extended support peg would solve the problem. One late night, he anchored a microphone inside the bass with coat hangers, hooked it up to a radio, played several notes, and announced, Gertie, we’ve got something here!

Gertrude named the invention the Ampeg, short for amplified peg, because the microphone that conducted the bass signal to an amplifier would sit atop the peg support of the bass.

Staying at the Windsor Wilson apartment hotel in Chicago, the Hulls had befriended the building’s handy superintendent. The super let Everett use his basement workshop and tools to refine the peg, and before long Hull was hand-making pegs for himself and his bass-playing buddies. Each time he built a new pickup he would improve the design, and it wasn’t long before his hours in the basement workshop were competing with his hours on stage.

Hull saw an opportunity, and on February 6, 1946, he filed a patent application for a sound amplifying means for stringed musical instruments of the violin family. The patent would be granted on November 11, 1947.

Everett Hull, 1942.

Hull Collection

804 Clinton Avenue, Newark, home of Michael-Hull Electronic Labs, 1946-48.

Gregg Hopkins

Eastward Ho: Newark and Michael-Hull

World War II was over. Welk had gone west, and the Hulls went east, to New Jersey. I was about fifteen cents short of having any change, Everett told the Newark Sunday News in 1966. But he believed that his amplified peg was just the beginning. I had this amplifier idea, and some of the big name bands bought it, so I decided to enlarge the scope of operations and build all sorts of amplifiers from scratch. Hull had been selling a Dynamo hi-fi amp with his pickups, but after the success of the peg, he wanted to produce an amplifier designed specifically for the low-frequency tones of the bass.

In New York Hull met Stanley Michael, an Electrical engineer and amp technician. Stanley could look at an amp and in two seconds he’d remember all the key points. Stanley Michael was a very, very clever man, recalls Don Russo, a hard-working New-York bassist who bought early Michael-Hull products and later was employed In- Hull. It seemed like a perfect match: Michael would provide the electronic know-how, and Hull would apply his musical and sales expertise.

Eddie Safranski, Everett Hull, and Chubby Jackson at a photo shoot for on ad featuring the original Michael-Hull Bassamp., c. 1946. Hull Collection

1947 Flyer for the Model 770 Bassamp and Ampeg. Hull Collection

The Michael-Hull Electronic Labs opened in 1946 at 804 Clinton Avenue in Newark. The product line was simple: Hull and Michael offered the Ampeg (invented by Hull) and the Michael-Hull Bassamp (designed by Michael). The Bassamp, in mahogany veneer or a pearloid covering, was promoted to guitarists as will as to bass players, According to the 1947 ads, Results as a Guitar amplifier are just as excellent as for the bass—both instruments can use the Bassamp at the same time. These amps, probably produced in limited quantity, are extremely rare today.

The peg, while intriguing, had limitations, some musicians felt—especially in the recording studio, where bass players often favored a mic wrapped in foam rubber wedged between the feet of the bridge. In recording they always had a terrible time with the acoustic bass, says guitarist Johnny Smith, a staff musician with NBC until 1958. I don’t believe that the microphone on a peg inside the bass ever really paid off. But the pegs continued to sell until the early seventies.

One of Ampeg’s earliest endorsers was Eddie Safranski, of the Stan Kenton Orchestra, who signed on with Michael-Hull to promote the pickup and bass amplifier in March 1946. Safranski, who received a royalty for every peg and bass amp sold, was responsible for personally introducing many New York bassists to the Michael-Hull—and later the Ampeg—sound, particularly after he became chief bass player for the NBC studio orchestra.

Les Paul, too, was an early user of the Michael-Hull amp, one of which seems to have saved his life during the 1948 car accident that broke Paul’s right elbow. It was February in Oklahoma during a terrible rain storm, recalls the master guitarist and inventor. While he was driving with his friend and musical partner, later his wife, Mary Ford at his side, the car skidded off an overpass into a torrent. Les Paul and Mary Ford might never have made their string of fifties hits if the Michael-Hull amp in the back seat hadn’t ripped through the roof, creating an exit. Says Paul, Ampeg saved my life.

But the partnership between Hull and Michael was unhappy. In autobiographical notes he made when he was in his sixties, Hull wrote tersely, Three and a half years of bedlam with Stanley.

LONGACRE 4-7184

Answer to the Bassman’s prayer

The Ampeg Bassamp Co.

214 WEST 42ND STREET

NEW YORK 18. N. Y.

214 W. 42nd Street, Manhattan. Here an the ninth floor, above The New Amsterdam Theatre, The Ampeg Bassamp Company got its start.

Gregg Hopkins

Bright Lights, Big City: 42nd Street

By 1949 the Hulls had moved across the Hudson River to Manhattan, where they took an apartment on 45th Street, and rented business space at 214 W. 42nd Street, above the New Amsterdam Theatre. The company was renamed The Ampeg Bassamp Company. At the time we started making these things, was virtually out of work, Hull told the reporter from the Newark paper in the sixties. I was playing in bands in New York two nights a week, and smelling the invention on other nights.

Ampeg’s ninth-floor space served as workshop, office, and showroom. It was so small you had to go outside to turn around, remembers jazz guitarist Mundell Lowe. There was just room for Gertrude, who kept the books; Everett, who spent much of his time out in the clubs and studios selling and servicing the amps; and a couple of assistants, who actually assembled and wired the amps.

Hull was not himself an amp designer. Don Russo—who worked with Hull part-time in the late forties and early fifties—recalls that after the breakup with Michael, Hull got some help from a consulting engineer named Don Sherrer, who was also involved with electronics for the United Nations. He was a very dignified, aloof kind of guy, and brilliant.

"All I can remember about the shop is wires all over the

place, says Johnny Smith. In those days every amplifier

was practically built from scratch, and the place was nothing

but a jumble of wires. It was just a little piecemeal shop, and

there was no showroom or anything like that."

Everett and Gertrude Hull, with amp, in the office on 42nd Street. Hull Collection

All I can remember about the shop is wires all over the place, says Johnny Smith. In those days every amplifier was practically built from scratch, and the place was nothing but a jumble of wires. It was just a little piecemeal shop, and there was no showroom or anything like that. Because the current in the building had a way of fluctuating during the business day, Hull and fellow musicians would often wait until after hours to test the amps.

The 42nd Street location certainly had its limitations, but it could not have been better situated. Carnegie Hall was fifteen blocks north. Rockefeller Center, home of NEW studios, was a moderate walk east. The Paramount Theatre, an obligatory stop on every Big Band itinerary, was just down 42nd Street.

Whenever a new band’s name went up on the Paramount marquee, Hull would drop by and set up a demonstration of his peg and amplifier. His direct-marketing methods worked: before long, bands from Tommy Dorsey to Xavier Cougat were beefing up their bass sounds with Ampeg amplification. The fledgling company had near-crippling money and credit problems, but it also had a small but strong product line. A musical evolution had begun.

Ever since the Big Band era in the thirties and forties, bass players had been fighting to be heard. Many bass players would put their instrument up on a small wooden platform in a primitive attempt to magnify its sound. For years bands have been trying to make the bass more prominent in the music, Hull said, again in the Newark News.

Highs and Lows

From the beginning, Hull played up his connections with well-known musicians. Sounds exactly like the bass!’ say 18 top band bass players read a 1946 Michael-Hull advertisement in Down Beat magazine. Among the names listed were Chubby Jackson, bass player in Woody Herman’s band; Johnny Frigo, with Jimmy Dorsey; Bob Leineger, with Les Brown; and Lou Skalinder, with Art Van Damm.

Although Ampeg was building a solid reputation around New York,

it was often a hand-to-mouth operation: there were times when the

Russos didn’t get paid, and times when suppliers wouldn’t ship

parts until their bills were settled.

After Michael-Hull dissolved, Hull cannily built the Ampeg name through well-placed ads in Down Beat and International Musician. Don Russo recalls, He told me, ‘I’ll starve before I stop running that ad, because I know it’s going to build and I want to be there.’ That was a very smart thing.

Russo and his wife Sandra worked for Hull at the 42nd Street location, in the evenings mostly. Although Ampeg was building a solid reputation around New York, it was often a hand-to-mouth operation: there were times when the Russos didn’t get paid, and times when suppliers wouldn’t ship parts until their bills were settled. Russo remembers when Hull asked him tor a loan to buy Jensen speakers. It was just after (christmas in 1951 and Russo had picked up some extra cash from playing Christmas parties. He recalls that he lent Hull $2,000 and was promised his money back with a share of the profits from the amps the speakers were going into—but he never saw his money again. Still, Russo has no regrets. He enjoyed working for Hull and learned enough about the business to set up a music equipment shop himself later on.

Don Russo and Frankie Carl at the Statler Hotel in Manhattan. Hull Collection

Ampeg used the union periodical International Musician to reach performers with these ads from the early fifties.

Not King Cole with bassist Joe Comfort and guitarist Irving Ashby, early 1950s.Popsie/Hull