Cranked and ranked! (best heavy distorted tones?)

[MWJB]

Hi Chuck,

Yes, looks like a deluxe, but this photo is claimed to be taken in '55 (the year after "I'm gonna..."). Also note the guitar cord seems to loop up behind Hare & plug into some kind of amp behind? Hare had that buzz saw tone on James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" some years before "I'm Gonna...". It's perfectly feasible he did use a Deluxe at some point, but linking it to these 2 tracks might be a bit of a leap?

[Chuck H]

Right. I just thought it was a cool photo. The recording sure doesn't sound like a Deluxe.

[MWJB]

Pat's also featured on Muddy's "Live at Newport!" from '60 there is film footage too...I must admit to being very remiss & not spotting the amps on that one as yet (apart from Cotton's bassman). ...everyone's got to have a hobby I s'pose...something to do over the weekend & delay any chores/real work :-)

Not that I suspect we'll see the aforementioned Sun amp...

[jfutral]

Steve Morse on the Dregs' Bring'em back alive album has this crazy, really distorted with LOTS of harmonics sound. I think I read somewhere that he plays mostly through 5150s, but that is not an EVH type of overdrive sound.

Joe

[Sweetfinger]

I like Pantera's tone for example. Don't know how to get it tho.

Buy the Krank "Krankenstein" Dimebag head. When Tony designed this head for Darrell, he analyzed Darrell's entire rig including the pre-amplifier EQ. Part of Dime's sound comes from overdriving some of the solid state circuitry. Tony built that into the Krankenstein- Darrell said it was the first(and only) time that an amp builder had really listened to him and figured out what he wanted and then actually delivered. Tony didn't care for the sound of the amp. He said it had a grating quality that got right into your ears no matter where you were in the room- you couldn't get away from it, BUT, that IS Darrell's sound and if you want it, either buy the Randall SS amp plus the outboard gear or buy a Krankenstein. As for pickups, I remember seeing a couple different Lawrence pickups in his Dean, but really, the current Lawrence 500XL or the Duncan Dimebucker will get you there.

[überfuzz]

Spoiler
There are no good heavy distorted tones, they're all crap! Ops...

[Steve Conner]

Hey! Just because you like to twang your Hagstrom Viking through a JC120, doesn't mean metal isn't a valid genre. OK, so maybe it isn't any more.

[kg]

blasphemy, steve!

meshuggah and mastodon are groundbreaking bands. with meshuggah especially there are multiple songs where i have no fucking clue where they are in the measure, and i'm usually pretty good at following the 1. it's like a syncopation orgy.

[Steve Conner]

I used to be in a band with a lead guitarist who was a Meshuggah fan. I can't stand to listen to them for more than about 10 seconds, but in a good way.

They use polyrhythms, so the drummer might be playing in 6/8 while the bassist plays 9/8 and the guitarists are riffing in 5/4. It's quite funny to see people try to transcribe tabs of their songs, assuming the whole thing fits a single time signature somehow. It takes huge effort and they end up with the lowest common denominator of all the time signatures used, something crazy like 51/13.

[overtone]

oh, I need to check some of these wierd names out, never heard of these people!

As I mentioned earlier I really liked Blue Oyster Cult in the 1970s...

Re. getting the sound again, like on the recording, I dimly remember reading an interview with the guitarist of the Blue Oyster Cult, (sorry forgotten his name too...) where he said that the famous guitar on the reaper single was done on an ES-175 belonging to the studio and that he always found it a challenge to get that sound again live with his solid body.

...Years ago I was experimenting and trying to get that Metallica chugging guitar sound at a usable volume...

For a nice old chug-a-lug I really like to use an old beaten up ES-295 with those old noisy P90s. It is a bit of a beast to tame though. Probably the grinding-mill master of that guitar is Geordie Walker. I think he was a quite an influence on Metallica and Co. The first time I saw him play, back in 1980, he was using a 60's Junior into two Bell ADTs > two Burman 2000 heads > two 8x10" stacks, and I couldn't hear for five days after!

[überfuzz]

Off Topic, completely off topic actually, both in genre and tone.

During the sixties there was a band called the Beatles. On of the members John Lennon used to write songs in weird measures. Here are some examples; Good morning, Love is all you need.

Steve Conner I do play a Hagström amp, an old BT-100. But I only use it to play fuzz guitar... Them Tyrants - check out That's Cheesy.

[tedmich]

supposedly Morse plays his sig model from Engl ( E-656) and Ron Thal gets some good gain from his Engl too, I like MIA Eklundh's Laney tone too

For me I love my 2 modded PV Ultra's (212-60 and PAG 120) , my PV Bravo and will be finding a XXX soon

[anthillrich]

I think I remember reading something about Buck Dharma using an Aspen Pittman designed amp, like a GT Soul-o?

I could be way off, but I think I may have read it in "The Tube Amp Book".

of course, It may not have been for "Don't fear the reaper", which has a great guitar tone, but I wouldnt call that a heavy sound (actually kinda clean sounding).

The super saturated sound is not really my thing, but I did own a 5150 combo that I thought was pretty heavy sounding. I actually miss it at times, because it did that high gain sound so well IMHO.

I just tend to get bored with that sound after a little while, even when Van Halen plays thru it, it sounds one dimensional.

I remember as a kid buying 0U812 and thinking " what the hell happend to Ed's guitar?"

I have played thru triple rec's and thought " wow, impressive sound", but then again being bored with the tone after a short while.

I'm not meaning to knock the high gain amp crowd, but if there was a scenario where I could only play one type of amp for the rest of my days, it would be a Marshall.

Not the marshall trying to be a Triple rectifier and such, just an old JCM 800.

[Chuck H]

I can fully get behind this. In fact my own amp (my design) needs to be cranked for gain, but at that point IS capable of gain bordering on modern metal. Truth is that for me it just becomes an atonal mash that doesn't hold my interest very long. As much as I enjoy the sensitivity, easy tricks and harmonics of the uber gain sound I just can't get into it unless I can still hear some wood and steel crashing like thunder and lightning. The modern sound is SOOO square, clipped and pureed that I hardly see the point in an all tube amp anymore. I can get "THAT" sound from a couple of transistors and no one could ever tell the difference on a recording. For tubes to matter you need to preserve some semblance of the instrument being played. There is a point where high gain becomes a purely square wave form and it ceases to matter what guitar you have plugged in. I think I'm dating myself in this preference.

[Csquare4]

Steve Morse on the Dregs' Bring'em back alive album has this crazy, really distorted with LOTS of harmonics sound. I think I read somewhere that he plays mostly through 5150s, but that is not an EVH type of overdrive sound.

Joe

Steve Morse used to play with Marshall's exclusively in the late 70's-80's. He added a Peavey 5150 in the 80's and would run them both simultaneously through volume pedals to control clean and overdrive levels. Generally, what you hear, and I am pretty sure it was such at the Bring 'em Back concert is both amps, cranked all the way, with a volume pedal in front of each one controlling the mix of the two. He also used to (and still did last time I saw SMB) have all his effects going through their own volume pedal that he used to mix dry and wet into his signal chain. Volume pedal heel down, no chorus...toe down 100% wet chorus, etc. His rig included a lot of volume pedals, feeding his amps and his effects, which gave him a lot of control of his tone at any given moment. Pretty slick if you ask me, it was like his own mixer board on the floor in front of him controlled by his feet.

Now, about that particular "Bring 'em Back Alive" album, I was sitting about 3rd row when they recorded it at the Center Stage Theater in Atlanta. If you listen to Kashmir you can hear a whistler...a loud as hell obnoxious whistler. Well, shamefully, that is yours truly. I had no idea that it would end up on the record at the time or I would have shut up...I am sure the guys doing the mixing later on were not too happy with me. Like..."damn! shut the hell up already!"...so if you ever listen to that album and find the whistling irritating, well...I am sorry. But, I guess - I should say - how many people do you know personally that have made an appearance on a Dixie Dregs album?

Now he plays exclusively through his signature ENGL's, still with two hot amps and volume pedals controlling the mix, with one amp on active standby that he can switch in should either of the primaries go down.