Interviews with Allan Holdsworth
For the collectors amongst you here are a few from our archives. They include plenty of kind quotes from Allan during the time he used the Hartley-Thompsom amps.
Here is a link to a wonderful Guitar Player interview from 1980 and a few carefully selected questions that we liked.
Link - Guitar Player Interview 1980
"What kind of amps are you using now?
I had Marshalls all the way up through U.K. and with Bill Bruford. Since then, I've gotten two [Norlin] Lab Series amps and a British amp called a Hartley-Thompson. The trouble with the Marshalls was that they only gave a suitable sound for single-note solo stuff. They always distorted the chords; if I wanted to get a clean sound for chords, I had to push the amps too hard. I often ended up with a horrible square-wave, fuzzbox sound.
What functions are assigned to each amp?
I use the Labs for chording with a Dynacord digital delay between them to add some depth. The Labs are very clinical sounding - extremely clean. The Hartley-Thompson is a bit warmer, even though that and my other amps are 100% transistorized. And that's really unusual. Normally, transistor amps are clean up to a certain point, and after that they go into a horrendous type of distortion. The Hartley-Thompson doesn't do that. All my amps have 12" speakers, too."
Link - Guitar Player Interview 1980
"What kind of amps are you using now?
I had Marshalls all the way up through U.K. and with Bill Bruford. Since then, I've gotten two [Norlin] Lab Series amps and a British amp called a Hartley-Thompson. The trouble with the Marshalls was that they only gave a suitable sound for single-note solo stuff. They always distorted the chords; if I wanted to get a clean sound for chords, I had to push the amps too hard. I often ended up with a horrible square-wave, fuzzbox sound.
What functions are assigned to each amp?
I use the Labs for chording with a Dynacord digital delay between them to add some depth. The Labs are very clinical sounding - extremely clean. The Hartley-Thompson is a bit warmer, even though that and my other amps are 100% transistorized. And that's really unusual. Normally, transistor amps are clean up to a certain point, and after that they go into a horrendous type of distortion. The Hartley-Thompson doesn't do that. All my amps have 12" speakers, too."