Yesterday at the Cincy Guitar Show, the was a vendor from Indiana that had one of Lonnie Macks's Roland JC-120. It was his because it had Lonnie Mack's name stenciled in the inside, plus Lonnie had a custom D/I box built into all his JC-120s.

The reason I know this is because I know Lonnie personally and have examined all his gear over the years.

I first met Lonnie in the early '80s when he played at Gilly's http://www.gillysjazz.com/ here in Dayton, OH. Of course, by that time, I knew about him from hear 'Wham' and 'Memphis' on the radio. When I went over to talk to him at that first gig, the first words out of his mouth were; "Do you know Robert Ward?"

"Yes.", I told him. I had auditioned with his sons' band but they couldn't quite get their 'stuff' together. Ward had asked me about playing in a band he was starting, but at that time I was playing Piney Brown.

Lonnie gave me a card with his personal number and asked me if I would give it to Ward, which I did later. Ever since than whenever he played Gilly's he always had me sit up front and allowed me in his dressing room.



One of Lonnie's JC-120, I'm guessing that Roland sent him a newer one and he sold one of his older ones. The vendor only wanted $350 for it!

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Tony Houston

Very cool, Tony...

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

Oh, the reason I played thru the amp is that my son brought my 8yrs grandson his first guitar, a 'Maestro' branded by Gibson for $50 http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Divisions/Maestro/. I really wanted my son to buy a nice Squire Strat that was $90 for him, but he wanted to first make sure that my grandson would keep playing.

I brought it home, polished the frets, put on new strings and set the action. It actually played really well, but the neck is a little to wide for his hands. So what I did was tuned it to open 'G', pulled out my slide, showed him the fret positions and away he went.



Oh, and don't think he just 'picked' this up, he plays drums and composes songs using my keyboards and DAW here and at home.

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Tony Houston

That is a very worthwhile price on a JC120. They regularly fetch £900 plus.

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No no and no

That is one of the coolest stories (and pics) I've seen for a while*..thank you for sharing it...it made me smile.



*(besides SuperKid's pics, of course! )

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

Thanks for your kind words! They only live about 15mi from me, and it's spring break, so my son asked if both my granddaughter and grandson could come over. He is really having fun playing guitar. I had him watch a few YT videos as well, Muddy Waters, Duane Allman, Derek Trucks and Son House, just to name a few.

My 13yr granddaughter & I recorded a original song too. First I had her sing the lyrics acappella to a 'song' she wrote, than I found her vocal 'key', and worked out on a chord progression.

I than recorded a rhythm guitar, bass guitar & drums track(s). She sings at church and school plays, but still had 'mic fright'. It took about ten takes, I was just about going to quit when she finally relaxed and started having fun with the song and we had a good take.

I mixed it, exported the master stems and made her a CD, she was really excited, and proud of our efforts.

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Tony Houston

I just found a YT clip of Lonnie Mack & SRV. You can see the JC-120 in the background sitting on two speaker enclosures, this is an example of the mod that Mack had installed in his amps.

'WHAM' with SRV
http://youtu.be/IbfgBlkSoqc

'Stop' One of my favorite Mack songs.
http://youtu.be/SDmVmw41I2k

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Tony Houston

Nice anecdote Tony. That seems like a bargain basement price for such an amp... especially considering its historical signifigance.

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Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancin'

Hey Tony,your grandson seems like he's quite the little prodigy,you have good reason to be proud of the young fella.I liked the Lonnie Mack amp story-it really is a small world,the JC-120 is a killer amp and one of my buddies still uses the one that he bought new and regularly gigs with it.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.