I just discovered the video Todd was telling me about. He remembered watching a performance of Terry McMillan playing the blues and just wailing on his harps. Somebody uploaded the whole episode featuring that segment onto Youtube.
Terry playing “Stormy Monday” is at 46:14. Bb and D Hohner Golden Melodies
What fascinated me about this clip was that Terry wasn’t using his usual vocal mic for the harmonica part. Instead, he was using a bullet mic. More specifically, it was pointed out by a few people on Facebook to be an Astatic JT30 radio mic. I knew Terry occasionally played amplified, but I didn’t know what gear he was using for that specific sound until I saw this video.
The issue with recreating that sound is a lot of the stuff he’s using in that clip is vintage and extremely expensive. A refurbished JT30 from Dennis Gruenling is usually around $300 and new Fender tube combo amps are over $1K. Now I’m looking into ways that I can get this sound on a budget (with items under $300) so I can use it for whenever the band I’m playing in goes for songs like “Train Train”. I got the acoustic tone and the playing style down.
