MusicPlayerNetwork.com Forums Featured Craig Anderton's Sound, Studio, and Stage The Doors......What instruments and set-up did they use?

Can someone tell me what instruments the individual Doors members used? Which Guitar,Drumset and Keyboard etc etc,...Amps,effects....

Boosh

Krieger - Gibson SG & Les Paul (Custom?) guitars

Manzarek - Vox Contnental organ (He also played a Hammond some in the studio) and Fender Keyboard Bass. I believe he also played another organ as well, but I'm not sure what kind. Do a Google search if you want to get details. I believe he also played a Rhodes electric piano on the LA Woman album.

They both used Acoustic 260 amps. Solid state rigs with big-old horns on 'em.

Densmore - I believe his main kit was a Rogers 4 piece. I'm not 100% certain on the brand though.

Someone at the HC forums told me this :
Ray Manzarek started off using a Wurlitzer electric keyboard. He then switched to a Vox Continental organ. He put a Fender Rhodes Piano Bass on top of the Vox. He used the Vox for about two and a half albums and then started using a Gibson Kalamazoo.

Robby Kreiger started with a 1964 Gibson Melody Maker. This guitar was stolen so he then used a Gibson SG Special. For bottleneck playing, he used a Gibson Les Paul.

John Densmore started off with Gretsch drums. One tom-tom on the bass, one floor tom and a snare. He then switched to Ludwig for the third album. He used a basic four-piece setup of snare, bass, and two tom-toms. He used Zildjian cymbals for the first three albums and then switched to Paiste 605s

I'm doing some research now,.... on the net to get the truth out.

BTW,...your avatar man,.... a wet dream,....

This Tennessean's not mine, but I have one very similar.

What you're hearing from HC sounds right to me. I now remember reading about Manzarek's Wurlitzer.

I think Densmore did use Rogers drums somewhere along the way.

I also believe Krieger used some Fender amps in the studio as well.

Those Acoustic amps! Ice pick through your skull man! You could actually get bruises on your back from the pinpoint beam of death.

In the studio, they used a real bass player. Onstage, keybass.

When I saw them play in 1967, they were terrible. Those Acoustic 260 amps were horrible..the horn about blew your ears outs. They had four or five of those amps onstage.

Plus, they were using a wall of Acoustic Pa cabinets the night I saw them..which also seemed only capable of putting out 1000watts at only one frequency...3k. It hurt. Plus, it was a bad show with bad song performances. The worst concert I ever saw. Even the Monkees were better live than that.

I was going to buy a 260 for myself in 1967, but after hearing the Doors obliterate sound with them, I forgot it. I tried one a few times out on gigs but the 260 was pretty much unuseable as far as I was concerned.

Those were such weird amps. No overdrive, but they did have a "fuzz" circuit that was really really bad. With no overdrive ability...and with that blue plastic horn...all you could get was "clean shrill" and "lucicrous speed shrill". I always liked the gimmicky "tuning fork" on the 260. That was a funny one. It had no reference point...just a free turning dial that would put out goofy therimin tones. I never got the gist of how anyone was supposed to tune anything to that "feature".

I met Ray at a Doors video thing I was hosting about twenty some years ago. He was/is a cool guy. Very down to earth. He sat around talking for hours about various Doors things (Robbie and John were kinda quiet). One interesting story he told was how he and a roadie worked out the bending organ effect in the studio during the recording of "Unknown Soldier". Makes one appreciate the lowly synth pitch bend wheels/levers we have today.

I love that Key Bass,... I have a video with a performance they did on tv in Denmark,... It sounds very cool,..

Everyone knows that Ray used a Nord Stage.

Quote by Bookumdano:
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When I saw them play in 1967, they were terrible. Those Acoustic 260 amps were horrible..the horn about blew your ears outs. They had four or five of those amps onstage.

Plus, they were using a wall of Acoustic Pa cabinets the night I saw them..which also seemed only capable of putting out 1000watts at only one frequency...3k. It hurt. Plus, it was a bad show with bad song performances. The worst concert I ever saw. Even the Monkees were better live than that.
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At lot of the equipment was scrap in those days. About the only thing you could really depend on was Fender. I didn't care for the sound of Fender amps that much, but at least you knew when you turned it on it was going to work.


Mike T.

There were only three guys in the Doors? Who played harmonica? Was it a Hohner Marine Band thru a Champ?

One can only hope.

Henry

Gibson G101 was his main organ. Often misidentified...

During one of those days back in early 1967 when I was standing in a music store plunking on the Acoustic 260 amp, there was a big Sunn 1000 setup on one side and a sparkly blue naugahyde Kustom something-or-other on the other side (with those weirdo platinum ports in the speaker cabinet). Those two actually sounded really good compared to the 260 as I was plugging in between the three sets of amps.

In fact, that blue Kustom reminds me of Creedence Clearwater. When I saw those guys in 68 or so, it was just about the best party concert I'd ever seen. I was amazed at how good a show those guys put on. And the piles and piles of Kustom stuff onstage really sounded good.

Info from "Vintage Synthesizers", by Mark Vail (highly recommended for anyone interested in this stuff!):

Manzarek played a Vox Continental on the first 2 Doors albums & part of the third.

He then replaced it with a Gibson G101 (NOT a Farfisa) which came out in 1967 (originally called the Kalamazoo K101 during the first half of that year); among other things because it had a flat top where he could put the Fender/Rhodes piano bass. The author points out that, even though Manzarek is shown playing a Vox Continental on the cover, the Doors album Absolutely Live prominently features this Gibson organ (as did the following Doors albums).

Book:

Those Kustom amps with the big horns on top shared some of the shrilly sound that the Acoustic amps did. Absolutely horrors. Maybe they were OK for guitar and vocals, but not KB's. I owned one with two of the big speaker cabinets. Sunn had some decent amps because they went with JBL speakers. The amp tops were nothing to write home about. Both our bass player and me had a 200s. He had trouble with his amp head, I didn't. But I didn't like the sound of it all that much and dumped it. I knew a bass player that a Sunn 2000s with dual cabinets. You needed SERIOUS equipment trucks to haul that size gear around in. Other players in bands stopped complaining about hauling around Leslie cabinets when bass players started buying those big cabinets. They were bigger than refrigerators.


Mike T.

under etc. etc.

Jim was wearing underwear of the brand "NONE" !

That's what my ex-girlfriend told me, she was quite impressed that i used the same brand!

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