Joe with a dark Les Paul....

I was fortunate to grab some time with Joe Bonamassa today, and got to ask him a few questions about Black Rock, Black Country and black Les Pauls, among other toney things. Sounds very dark, but Joe called that coincidental.

I asked about things I hadn’t already read about, about half of it focused on gear. Hope you enjoy.

WoodyTone: It seems to me that Black Rock has a darker, heavier sound than John Henry.

Joe: You’d be right about that. Definitely. It was purposely done – to be a heavier album in that sense.

Why?

We had a big year, and I didn’t want people to think we were kind of resting on our laurels. I think we could’ve done the John Henry thing for a while, the Royal Albert Hall thing…. But I wanted to do something fresh and current, and a bit heavier than before.

Why heavier?

Because I wanted to make a youthful album. It was like pretending you were making your first solo album again. Like you had something to prove, the “conquer the world with a guitar” kind of vibe.

Tone-wise, you seem to be going that way (heavier), with your transition to Les Pauls a while back and now the Bogner.

The Bogner comes and goes [in his American rig]. I didn’t use the Bogner for Black Rock. That was my European live rig: two Marshalls and two Van Weelden heads. [The Marshalls are EL34s of course, a Silver Jubilee and a hand-wired Super Lead plexi reissue. The Van Weeldens are 6L6 Dumble Overdrive Special-style amps.]

But I’m definitely not a huge fan of treble. And it’s weird because it’s obviously not that my ears are failing me: I keep taking treble out from the guitar instead of putting it in there. [Hearing loss hits the high frequencies first, which prompts older guitar players to add in treble to hear what they want to hear – but not necessarily what the audience wants to hear!]

Switching gears to Black Country – can you describe the sound the band is going for, and what tone and gear you have in this band?

For me personally I’m using two Marshall amps – two Super Leads – and a Les Paul. I wanted it to be more of a Marshally tone than what I use for my solo band.

The band – it’s a straight up rock record, all original. We’re going for a very organic, back to basics rock record. But it has a very English flair to it – it sounds very English, both the style of playing and the production of it.

Fans, me included, kind of hope it’s Zeppelin-ish. Is it?

Anytime you do kind of these ‘all-star bands,’ people will theorize – it will be like Led Zeppelin 1 plus Come Taste the Band plus Dream Theater plus whatever Bonamassa does. It won’t be that, but it will be its own thing. It has some progressive elements. It definitely is a sum of its parts band.

[Come Taste the Band is the '75 Deep Purple album with Glenn Hughes – and Tommy Bolin on guitar. Glenn plays bass and sings in "Black Country." Dream Theater is a reference to Derek Sherinian, who played in that band and is on the keys in BC. The Zep reference is of course a nod to Jason Bonham, drummer for BC.]

- End of part 1 (of 2) -

Alex with 'Al.'

I’m a Rush fan, particularly since I came of guitar age during the Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures era, still two of my favorite albums. I did fall away from Rush a bit over the years as they got more into synths and Alex Lifeson got more into washy, ultra-chorused, ambient sounds instead of riffs.

But last night I happened to accidentally catch Rush live on DirecTV’s 101 channel. Turned out to be an hour of tunes from the Snakes and Arrows DVD, and it was freakin’ outstanding! Tight playing, great tones, good singing, well-filmed, good sound.

Alex’s tone was good – I was surprised! It sounded quite a bit more raw than what I’d become used to from him. Almost sounded like the sound really was being mic’d from an overdriven amp and speaker, rather than from a line out right into the PA or whatever.

So naturally I had to chase down his gear.

Conveniently, England’s Guitarist magazine posted a video run-down (with Alex) of Alex’s gear from that tour (2007). Here are some highlights of it with more details, I believe from a Guitar Player magazine interview from around the same time:

Guitars

> In the video he runs through his guitars, but the only guitar I saw on the hour of tunes on TV last night was the one he calls “Al,” the burst custom shop Gibson Les Paul with a Floyd Rose bridge. It’s interesting that in the vid he says he tried a Bigsby and Kahler on the LP before deciding on the Floyd.

> From the pre-tour GP interview: “I’ve got a couple of Gibson Les Pauls with Piezos in them. I also have a Gibson Howard Roberts that has a Piezo and is tuned G G D G C E (low to high) for ‘The Way the Wind Blows.’ My white ES-335 is back out again this time around. That’s my baby. It’s just so deliciously great-sounding. I have an SG with a whammy – it’s in standard tuning. i have my Gibson doubleneck here at rehearsals, but I’m not so sure if it will make an appearance. I’m bringing Garrison 12-strings in D A D A A D tuning for ‘Hope’ and ‘The Main Monkey Business.’ I’m also bringing a Garrison G-50 9 [acoustic] that I did most of the recording on the album with. I run my acoustics though Fishman Auras. Those really help the Piezo tone – they’re very acoustic-sounding.”

Amps

Here's a pic of the amps and rack (Life magazine photo).

> Here the video and the pre-tour interview agree: Two Alex Lifeson model Hughes & Kettner Triamps run in stereo (the two middle heads in the video), plus two H&K Switchblades “for peripheral sounds. They’ll have various effects on them, and they’ll be panned hard left and right. I kick in those two amps to create the presence of another instrument.”

> The Switchblades replaced the H&K ZenTaras, which he had used. They were super-expensive (I believe $3K U.S.!) solid-state modeling heads.

> He added: “In two of my monitors there’s a 15ms delay between the two Triamps so I can get a left and right sound, leaving the middle monitor open for vocals, drums and bass.”

> The H&K website has no specs that I could find on the signature cabinet, but recommends a 4×12 with Celestion Vintage 30s.

Rack/Pedals

Because the video quality isn’t good, and the interviewer doesn’t appear to be asking any probing questions, Alex glosses over his rack and pedals. But here’s what he said in the GP interview:

> “My rack is pretty straightforward. I don’t have a lot of stuff in there, but it’s really effective. The main things are a Dunlop DCR-1SR Crybaby Rack Wah, a T.C. Electronic 1210 Spatial Expander + Stereo Chorus/Flanger, and the T.C. G-Force [delay] – I use three and one is a spare. I use the 1210 for chorus. I may add a second one or use a Loft chorus. The Loft chorus is on the ‘Limelight’ solo. I have a couple of Behringer mixers that I run into the Voodoo Lab GCX switchers. ”

> “At Lifeson’s feet are an Ernie Ball volume pedal, a Dunlop DCR-12FC foot controller, an Axess Electronics FX1 MIDI controller, a set of Korg MPK 180 bass pedals for triggering keyboard sounds, and a lone Boss TU-12H tuner.”

Now to get that DVD….

Notable

Here’s a very cool pre-Moving Pictures version of ‘Tom Sawyer’ – Alex goes nuts on the solo!

I’m surfing around, minding my own bidness, when I come across this line: “What do you call an amp that has 10 tubes, five transformers, user-controlled variable feedback, variable bias and a built-in Variac?”

I’m thinking, I don’t know…a science experiment? The last act of a tone-desperate man? A hernia?!

Then I read the next part: “You could call it INSANE! Unbelievable! The first of its kind or the only amp of its kind. You would be right on all accounts. But we call it: The Dirty Boy.”

Turns out the amp is the newly-launched creation of Mojave Amp Works and Blues Saraceno – and presumably Blue’s father Alex, an electronics expert who has designed built many of the pedals Blues uses (including one Seymour Duncan makes, the Tweak Fuzz – a great pedal – I have it – but has to be modded to compensate for a volume drop). Judging from Blues’ website, Alex may have created the first Dirty Boy amp many years ago.

Blues back in the day.

You remember Blues? He’s a guy who came up at the end of the shred days, and I distinctly remembered that his thing was plaid guitars. Not that he wasn’t a good player (he still is), just plaid was his visual gimmick. (His full bio is here. He played in Cream! And…Poison.)

Take a look at this old vid. There’s the plaid guitar, and hey…what’s that amp in the background? Apparently the Dirty Boy is an amp Blues has messed with for a while.

Anyhow, I haven’t been following Blues’ career, but the Dirty Boy amp got me to his website. That amp isn’t on there yet, but there were a couple vids of Blues demoing a Hiwatt amp, which I thought sounded killer.

The amp is a Hiwatt Studio Stage combo. Here’s what the Hiwatt site says about it:

“Classic Class A design. Studio setting uses two EL-84 tubes in the power section to give you the sustain and overdrive you need at more manageable levels (like the Custom 20 Head and Combo). Switch to Stage setting and use all four EL-84’s together with our special wound transformer, giving you all the power and sustain you need. Still not enough, then pull out the gain switch for serious overdrive, but yet still hear the tone of your guitar. How a classic British valve amp should sound. Now dial in the all tube design Accutronics spring reverb, back off your guitar volume and you have the coolest sounding amp on the planet. All this and useable ‘musical’ 3-stage tone network, this amp does it all. Equipped with two Fane 12″ speakers all assembled in an 18 marine ply cabinet.”

Sounds good! (Blues’ chops help.)

Hiwatts – all I can come up with is Pete Townshend. Where are all the Hiwatt users? Do you know any?

Even Blues has moved on. From his website: “My constant search for true amp greatness has led me to Mojave amplification. I was originally approached by Mojave to do some sound clips for their line of amplifiers, After having a chance to play four different models of their product line (Plexi 45, Coyote, Scorpion and Sidewinder…. each one stellar in it’s own right), I came to the conclusion that they were the best-sounding modern amps that I had heard! What started as a work for hire turned into an endorsement situation based solely on the merit of their product.

“I really feel that the Mojave product stands out from the pack. I found it refreshing to finally play on a non-master-volume amp that gave me that shade of ‘old-school’ classic tone with just the right amount of that newer ‘edge’ that you need in order for it to compete with what is going on in music today.

“After getting familiar with the Mojave product line, I settled on the ‘Sidewinder’ model as my personal first choice. It’s a 4xEL84 power section, around 30 watts. I tend to favor the sound of cranked up power section over the typical fizzy preamp sound that a lot of players go for, so the Sidewinder suited my requirements perfectly. Another added bonus was that the Mojave responded well to having fuzz/fizz and boost pedals driving its front end.”

Four EL84s. So his pre-Dirty Boy Mojave amp of choice had those, the Hiwatt he plays in the vid has those and it just so happens that my amp of choice right now, an old Bedrock head, also is a 4xEL84 amp. I love the Bedrock, but it doesn’t quite get the Marshallesque upper-mids I love – though the Hiwatt seems to get there, and there’s that Mack Amps head I’d love to hear….

So to close this out, here are my questions:

> Do you own any 4xEL84 amps, and if so how do you like them?

> Do you know anyone who actually owns a Hiwatt? These amps can’t be that numerous because hardly any are on eBay. And in 30 years of playing guitar, I’ve never owned one nor run across anyone who did – at least not in a playing situation. If you own one, tell me about it, man! I’m curious now…

Here's the real deal, the EVH Wolfgang.

This cool post was submitted by WoodyTone reader and avid EVH tone-chaser Trev Morson. More about him and his band is at wolfscrossing.net.

How many of you want to own a new EVH Wolfgang but can’t afford the $3K asking price?

I saw a guitar in Guitar Center a few weeks ago that in looks, and for all intent and purposes, was an EVH Wolfgang – but the asking price brand new was only $540. It was the Music Man Sterling AX40. These are low-priced guitars made in Indonesia, and I knew instantly that it had potential.

By default, the Sterling AX40 does have some issues, but to be fair, you would expect that for such a low asking price. But still….

The Issues

You may remember the debacle with Fender Stratocasters made in Japan in the early ’80s: Fender’s concern was that they were actually manufactured with a higher quality in Japan than they were in USA at the time. (I happen to know because I own a 1983 ‘62 Strat reissue made in Japan.) You’ll find a somewhat similar situation with the Sterling AX40 in that the basswood body [it only has a maple veneer top] and maple neck are very well made in Indonesia. But there are some issues:

> The wiring is sub-standard and should be replaced. When I got mine, I found the toggle switch loose, and upon tightening it, it snapped off the neck pickup wire from the switch pot.

> The frets are medium-jumbo, but are not sanded very well. The high E can get stuck under the frets at the side of the neck.

> The Floyd Rose licensed trem is not set up correctly (even though these are quality-checked in the U.S.). The strings by default are tuned concert pitched with Ernie Ball 10-gauge strings, and I was not convinced the intonation was set exactly as it should.

It does not by default have a D-Tuna installed on the low E, but I have heard that for gigging musicians, the D-Tuna may not be a good idea: I heard that once these are installed, you can no longer fine-tune the low E string on the Floyd Rose.

One other thing I noticed is that the default pickups are not only screwed directly to the body, but are glued as well. By default they are hot and kind of okay, but a replacement bridge pickup is a good idea. However, replacing the pickups is tricky: I found that the routing was not as deep as it should be for a replacement.

The Potential

Don’t let all of the negatives put you off, though. Again, the asking price is $540, so you would expect some issues. The key is recognizing this guitar’s potential.  I have noticed that many reviews on the web are given by bedroom guitarists, and I find myself always asking the same question: Is the gear being reviewed ‘gig tested?’

I decided to upgrade my Sterling AX40 so I can use it with my band for gigs. Having the $3K Fender EVH Wolfgang in mind, I made the following upgrades and I was astonished on how much money I saved.

Custom work I had done:

> Completely rewired.

> New pickup toggle switch.

> New pickup selector, added tone pot.

> New linear 500K volume pot.

> Replaced volume knob with MXR volume knob, added MXR tone knob.

> Installed Seymour Duncan SH12 Screamin’ Demon bridge pickup, pole pieces adjusted.

> OEM neck pickup and pole pieces adjusted.

> All frets filed and sanded, top and sides.

> Floyd Rose trem-stopper installed, another spring added, Floyd set flat and level.

> Floyd Rose sustain block installed.

> EVH Wolfgang decals applied (original 5150 decal coming soon).

> Intonation set for Elixir NanoWeb 9- to 42-gauge strings tuned to Eb.

> Swapped out strap nuts for EVH loop types.

> String/fret, nut and bridge oil applied.

The Result

The cost of the new AX40 was $540. The cost for upgrades was $250. Total = $790, still a bargain at today’s prices, and it plays, sounds and feels like a real $3,000 new EVH Wolfgang. Total Savings = a whopping $2,200.

Note the ENORMOUS cost-savings. I just knew this guitar had a lot of potential.

On the left is the Music Man Sterling AX40 when I got it new. On the right is the same guitar after I customized it – it is now my EVH custom.

Here's an early shot with early Marshalls.

You probably know that Pete Townshend had an important role in Marshall Amplification becoming what it is today. You probably have heard that Pete is responsible for the Marshall stack.

That’s all true, but you may not know the details (I didn’t). So here goes.

In a Premier Guitar-filmed video tour of the Marshall factory (below), Paul Marshall (son of founder Jim), had this to say about the history of the 100-watt stack:

“The company’s history goes back to 1962, when Mr. Marshall, my father, had a music shop in London. He used to play [in bands] with Pete Townshend’s father, so Pete Townshend used to go into the shop to have his guitars repaired…and buy his own musical instruments from there.

“When he was in there, he obviously asked about the amplifiers. He wasn’t happy with the amplifier he was using, and so Mr. Marshall built an amplifier for Pete Townshend with [engineers Ken Bran and Dudley Craven] at the back of the shop.”

Actually, Marshall built Pete several prototypes and still has the one Pete okayed. Starting from about 20:11 in the video: “Right here we’ve got what is referred to as the ‘number-one’ amp. Back in 1962, Pete Townshend plugged into that amplifier – that was the prototype – and said, ‘Yep, that’s the sound we want.’ So the first amplifiers were built to that specification….”

In the August 1996 issue of Guitar magazine, Pete said he told Jim Marshall, “‘I want to be louder, but I want my sound,’ which was at that time a Fender Pro amp, with I believe a 15-inch speaker, and a tweed Fender Bassman [combo], which was another 15-inch speaker cabinet. The two were linked together with a split cable. I said I wanted that sound, exactly that sound, but just a bit louder, a bit bigger. [Marshall] managed to achieve that.

“And then I went back and said, ‘No, I want it even louder, even bigger. What’s happening is very, very interesting.’ There were harmonics happening that were very interesting. And I got very angry, very frustrated — I kept pushing them. I said, ‘You’d better f***ing do this, there’s something happening here which is really interesting.’

“The guitar kind of starts to sound like a symphony orchestra. You get up to a certain pitch, and something happens between the pickup and the amp. I knew that in distortion there was music of a much higher harmonic order than anything that I could play, so I started that whole trip off.”

Why So Loud, Pete?

Two answers. The first, five words: John Entwhistle and Keith Moon.

In the October 1994 Guitar World, John Entwistle was asked whether he was the first one to introduce the Marshall 4×12 to The Who, and he said: “Yeah, but I didn’t buy the very first one. It was a guy in a band called the Flintstones who got that. I bought the second one…and the fourth and the seventh and the eighth. Pete bought the ones in between. It was great. I’d buy one, he’d buy one, I’d buy one, then he’d buy another. And I went, “Is it loud enough? F**k, I’ll buy two more.” And I started using the two-amp system — bi-amping.”

Here’s the second answer. In the August 1994 issue of Guitarist magazine, Pete said: “Before John, Keith and I got into personal volume competitions, one of the first reasons I went to Jim Marshall to say ‘build me a big Marshall amp’ was because I wanted to shut the f***ing audience up. I was sick of standing playing in the Oldfield Hotel only to get Reggie Kray-types in suits coming up during numbers to say…’It’s my girlfriend’s birthday, play the Tennessee Waltz.’

“So we’d be…looking at one another thinking, F*** this…. We had to do something. Johnny McLaughlin [yes, him] had sold me my first Fender amp – a Pro – when he worked at Selmers, and it was a really great buy. I eventually took the Fender Pro and a Bassman head to Jim Marshall and said, ‘I want this sound but I want it 10 times louder.’ When he asked why, I said, ‘Because I don’t want to hear any heckling, I don’t want to hear any requests. All we want to hear when we’re in a hall is The Who — that’s all.’

Jim Marshall was amazingly inspired…. He built a big, powerful amp, but I kept going back and saying, ‘Bigger, bigger,’ and Jim would turn to his backroom bloke and say, ‘Bigger, Pete wants it bigger,’ and so the amps would come back with yet another couple of big valves in the back.”

The Stack

Here’s how Marshall remembers the development of the stack – which is different than how Pete and John remember it.

Paul Marshall, starting at about 8:20 in the video: “In those early days, bands were playing larger and larger venues, and you didn’t have the PA systems that you now have so they had to create their own sound and send that sound across the vast audiences. So they wanted bigger amplifiers, larger speaker cabinets and many more of them.

“So in 1965 we built the 100-watt amplifier with initially an 8×12 [cab], which Pete Townshend thought would be a good idea but his roadies obviously didn’t like carting that around and soon complained. So he brought it back, and that is when the first stack was born. Mr. Marshall cut that in half [into] two cabinets and fixed them together. hence the 100-watt stack was born….”

Pete, from an October 1989 Guitar Player magazine interview: “John was the first person to use a Marshall stack on its side [in 1964]. He used two 4×12 cabinets, and I bought a single 4×12 and used it on a waist-high stand so my Rickenbacker would feed back. Then it seemed a logical extension to stand a top 4×12 on another 4×12 that was actually a dummy, and then eventually to do what John was doing and have two amplifiers.” [John agrees with this version.]

Why the Black Stack?

It was just John’s preference – from a November 1975 Guitar Player interview:

“When we first started calling ourselves The Who I used a Marshall 50-watt amp with a 4-12 cabinet. I had the first 4-12 cabinet that Marshall made. We more or less forced them to make 100-watt amps by changing to Vox, who already had one out. Marshall decided that if they were going to keep us, they’d have to make a 100-watt amp.

“They used to make their amps with speaker material [? not sure what he means] on the front, and they looked completely different. I said, ‘I don’t like that – I want it all black,’ so they changed them.”

And there you go.

Notable

> Pete, from the October 1989 Guitar Player interview: “I never, ever used a stack with one amplifier until I got into Hiwatts, and I didn’t use Marshalls very long. In fact, I never used Marshall in the beginning at all. I used to use Fenders. I had a Fender Pro and a Fender Vibrasonic and a Fender Bassman top, and I used to drive Marshall 4×12s with those amplifiers. I thought Marshalls were awful, and I’m afraid I still do [!!], although that’s just a personal opinion. I don’t mean it’s bad stuff: I just mean I didn’t like the sound. And when I heard Hiwatt I was over the moon because they sounded to me much more like a really good, top-line mid-’60s Fender amp. I still think it’s hard to beat Fender amps – they’re astonishing.” [I guess that's why Pete is all Fender these days.]

> Jim Marshall (from “The Father of Loud” book) on Pete’s switch to Hiwatts: “It was unfortunate, but simply a misunderstanding. The group used to come in my shop, and at one time we were waiting for a check. The check was put in, but my son sent them another bill, thinking they still had a balance due. Pete said they had paid, but Terry swore, ‘No, you haven’t paid, you haven’t paid.’ So Pete was upset and went to Hiwatt. And Hiwatt was one of the first copies of us! It was a complete misunderstanding.”

> Jim Marshall from the same book: “We made a prototype first then we made three heads just for [Pete]. We were so proud of them when they were finished. They were sitting on a bench in the workshop with us thinking they looked wonderful, and then Pete’s roadie came along and just threw them into the bloody truck! I remember thinking, Oh my God! I can’t believe he just did that.”

> The first Marshall stacks had four KT66 power tubes, not the EL34s Marshalls are known for. Hendrix also used KT66-powered Marshalls, as have the Young brothers (Malcolm and Angus).

> Some of these quotes came from this AWESOME site on The Who gear: thewho.net

Joe Walsh isn’t a tone king, he’s a tone emperor. A couple examples: He insisted that Jimmy Page take (buy, whatever) the Les Paul that became Jimmy’s No. 1. And he hooked Pete Townshend up with what to this day is one of Pete’s favorite rigs. (More details on both of these below.)

I’m sure there are more unreported examples, but the bottom line is that Walsh has GREAT ears…which is why it might be surprising to learn that one of his favorite amps is the solid-state Roland Cube 60. Yes, solid-state!

This is the guy who sounded KILLER with Marshall and Hiwatt heads through 4×12s, who obviously digs vintage gear and…is a tone emperor! Solid-state?!

There have been instances of tone fiends loving certain solid-state amps – though Joe Bonamassa’s (and BB King’s) love of Lab Series amps is the only one that comes to mind, and Joe doesn’t play live through those amps (but BB does). Maybe also Billy Gibbons using Marshall Valvestates as power amps. But mostly it’s tubes, for good reason.

Anyhow, here’s some of what Joe has said about these Cube amps through the years.

From an interview on the Boss website (Boss is a division of Roland Corp.) around the time of the Eagles reunion tour (2007?):

Roland: You have a small Roland Cube amp between your monitor wedges. How is that being used?

Joe: “That’s driving the talk box [used on “Rocky Mountain Way”]. The speaker isn’t hooked up – it’s driving the talk box. It’s an old 60-watt Cube — an orange one that’s been painted black.

“Those Cube amps are so great. I used to play with four of those in the early Eagles when Hotel California came out. In fact I used a Cube to play slide on “The Long Run.” I liked to stack ’em too. That’s what I did in the old days. I even made a stand so I had two and two stacked. The top ones drove the bottom ones. I’d like to try out the new Cube-60.

“I used to play a pair of [Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amps]. I used those when I played the second Us Festival [1983]. That was during the So What [solo] album. There’s film footage of that out there.”

[Boss/Roland noted that shortly after the interview, Joe received a new Cube-60, and Joe's manager said: "We took it to his dressing room and it’s a killer to say the least! Joe loves it big time." Bear in mind that that is the manager talking to the manufacturer, so maybe add a grain of salt....]

From a 1983 issue of Musician Magazine:

“Walsh’s onstage amplifiers include a Roland JC-120 driving two Peavey 4×10 speaker cabinets instead of its own enclosed speakers, a Mesa/Boogie Simul-Class combination amp also driving two Peavey 4×10 cabinets, and another Mesa/Boogie combination driving its own 12-inch Celestion speaker [undefined], as well as an extension cabinet also containing a 12-inch Celestion [ditto].

Here you can see the JC-120 on-stage at the ‘83 Us Festival – but it looks like only the Vox amps are mic’d.

Joe also used a Roland Micro-Cube amp backstage in his dressing room on the Eagles reunion tour.

Notable

Why this stuff was in Keyboard Magazine I have no idea – other than reusing content from its sister publication, Guitar Player – but here it is:

More on Page and Townshend

> “Walsh may have significantly altered rock history by giving his pal Jimmy Page a ’59 Gibson Les Paul sunburst—yes that sunburst, the one that became the Zepmeister’s number-one go-to guitar. ‘At the time, [Page] didn’t have that kind of money, so I gave him mine,’ says Walsh with typical modesty.”

> “After receiving an ARP 2600 synthesizer from Pete Townshend in the ’70s, Walsh reciprocated with what he called the Neil Young setup—a ’59 orange Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins model hollowbody paired with a ’59 3×10 Fender Bandmaster and an Edwards pedal steel volume pedal (the rig that would provide Townshend’s signature tone for most of his post-“Tommy” recordings up until 1993). One can only imagine the good karma points Walsh earned by such generosity!

Joe’s Favorite Gear

> “Walsh once told GP that his all-time favorite setup was a ’58, ’59 or ’60 Gibson Les Paul, a wah pedal, a tube-model Echoplex, and a pair of Fender Super Reverbs, and that he prefers a Les Paul with raised action for slide work.”

Joe Helps It Sound Good

> For the “it’s all in the hands” crowd: “Walsh performs his own mods, tricking out guitars and beefing up amps with countless tweaks that range from simply screwing down a stop tailpiece for increased sustain to switching capacitors in a Fender Twin to boost gain and treble response.”

PremierGuitar.com had an article on its website titled “The Science of Tone.” Caught my eye, read it, turned out to be only semi-interesting. The bottom line of the article is that there really isn’t much of a science because it’s all in the ears of the beholder, and everyone’s ears are different. Duh.

Having said that, the article did have a few interesting tidbits – don’t think the article is worth a full read.

> Quote from Scott Waara, product manager at Line 6: “Everybody hears differently, and the frequency response of everyone’s brain is different, so some things that are cool to some guys are not going to be cool to other guys. You can put it on a scope and see what’s happening on a frequency graph and you’ll see some tendencies and trends and so on.”

> PG: “The trends seen by the Line 6 staff seem to indicate that warmer, fuller tones are more generally accepted and considered ‘good.’”

> “Tone that emulates the human voice is always more accessible,” Waara continues. “Otherwise, purely electronic music would have taken over, and we wouldn’t be making guitars anymore. There are some absolutes in human DNA about wanting to feel connection and that’s probably a fuller frequency tone, that’s tone that is more reminiscent of the human voice. Or, for instance, a violin or organic instruments that have been around for hundreds of years. When we talk about guitars having an organic quality, it’s because that’s rooted in what human beings know. Which is air moving, wood vibrating, people speaking.”

Comments

Interviewing someone from Line 6 is very interesting since they work on tone modeling. “Warmer, fuller” is interesting too, and makes sense, but to me makes less sense for guitar tones in a band situation because a bassier guitar tone often gets lost in the bass and drum frequencies. An extreme example of this is uber-detuned metal junk.

I’m reminded of this quote from John Suhr on his website: “For years I played a solid guilt maple [guitar] with a rosewood board neck and a Floyd. Bright you think? Not really. The Floyd isn’t very bright [!!]…sort of neutral, and the rosewood warmed it up. I used a hot-dark bridge pickup.

“All this equaled a combo that was a killer shred guitar and never got lost behind the keyboards. The only disadvantage was the price of the wood and the fact it wasn’t the lightest guitar in the world. Sometimes a guitar or a sound will sound killer in your living room but just not cut properly with a band. ”

What We Think We Hear

Here’s another quote from the article, this time from Dr. Andre Millard, a professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and editor of “The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon.”

“We don’t hear what’s out there. We hear what we think we hear. It’s the psychological or neurological way we hear. To think we hear what sound is out there is so naïve and so wrong.”

Comments

I get this in theory, and I am sure we’ve all been exposed to it – where someone swears that so-and-so has “nailed” the tone or even playing of a certain tune, and we listen and are like, “Uh…yeah. Not really.” But you can’t convince the other guy.

Still, a LOT of people can hear subtle differences in tone and, when mimicking well-known axe-slingers, can tell when they or someone else really do nail it. So a lot of us must “think we hear” the same thing. Here’s an example, or test: Those of you who don’t think this is Tone Woody-inducing, raise your hand:

The Hands

The PremierGuitar.com article concludes with an obvious point when it comes to tone-chasing: It’s in the hands.

> From the article: “As part of his Alien Music Secrets course…Steve Vai often talks about a day when Eddie Van Halen paid him a visit. EVH stood in Vai’s home studio, picked up Vai’s guitar, played it through Vai’s effects, through Vai’s amps, and out came the classic Van Halen tone.”

> A guy named Clive Brown is quoted talking about Hendrix: “He played an SG, a Les Paul, a Flying V as well as a Stratocaster, but he always sounded like Hendrix. He didn’t suddenly sound like Jimmy Page because he played a Les Paul. That’s where everybody’s perception seems to go wrong. It’s the playing, and not necessarily the guitar.”

> John Suhr says on the same page of his website: “I was never as so convinced as one day listening to Eddie Van Halen record at his studio. The sound was fat, articulate and every bit his signature tone. When I looked to see what he was playing I was stupefied to see a headless, woodless Steinberger. Not only that but when I checked out the guitar later, the strings were very rusty.”

Comments

It seems the above comments are partly about style, so I’m not 100% on-board with them.

> I believe EVH sounded like “EVH playing through Vai’s rig.” I highly doubt that it sounded like Ed’s brown or Sammy-era Eventide sounds.

> Hendrix played those different guitars through his same rig. So his hands, effects and amps were constants – the only thing that changed was the guitars. So of course he sounded the same.

> The Suhr story is cool, but again, it was EVH playing through his rig. If it was a Steinberger, that meant it was the Sammy era so it wasn’t the brown sound – it was the fatter Eventide Harmonizer sound. So John might have been shocked that Ed was playing a plastic Steinberger, but it was still Ed’s hands through Ed’s rig.

Conclusion

Somewhere near the end of the article, the PG writer notes that tone “ultimately [is] not a question that science can solve.”

Duh.

The article also seems indicate that tone is entirely subjective – which it is, but again, that doesn’t mean that people’s ears are so different that only 50% of guitar players (50% = random chance) will like a killer tone and the rest don’t. To use an easy example: If that was the case, Line 6 wouldn’t have a business.

And it neglects to mention that you can educate your ears (and brain) to recognize good tone, or what you consider good tone.

I think I’m done writing about that article….

What do you think about all this?

Notable

> The article notes that “our templates of what we consider to be great tone are not simply a formula of instrument + amps + musician. Recording studios also play a vital role in the creation of those sounds.” Yes! An often-overlooked point, especially when it comes to vintage-like tones.

I mention that because today’s post involves the cover interview with Joe, specifically the last question of the interview which was: “There’s a video on YouTube of Aerosmith jamming on ‘The Immigrant Song’ with Jimmy Page. What did you take away from that?”

Huh? Aerosmith jamming with Jimmy Page on “The Immigrant Song?” Never heard of it, had to check it out.

The vids are below, but first here’s the first part of Joe’s response to the question (edited for brevity) – which I found funny and revealing:

“I remember when we first started rubbing elbows with…the English guys back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I always asked them about their tone or I’d say, ‘How did you play that?’ They kept that stuff very close to the vest. They keep their tone secrets to themselves.”

I found that funny because it’s Joe Perry and they wouldn’t even tell him what they were using? It’s not like they had a million gear choices back then – which I guess might have been why they were so coy, like getting an extra 5 mph out of a race car.

It’s interesting because it’s possible that just like rock ‘n roll started with “the English guys,” I guess the rockstar secretiveness about tone started with them too.

Next in his answer, Joe talks about that “weird” chord in “The Immigrant Song:”

“For me, that chord has the kind of mystique that the first chord on a ‘Hard Day’s Night’ has, where you go, ‘How the hell – what chord is that?’ You can get close, but I don’t know anybody who really has it down. So I asked him. Jimmy was very much like, ‘You should play it the way you want to play it.’ On the one hand you could go, ‘Wow, that’s great. He wants me to play it my way.’ And on the other hand I thought, Well, he’s really not going to give that chord away.”

I include that part of Joe’s response here because it shows Jimmy’s secretiveness even with a fellow rockstar, and because you can see it happening in the first video below. Joe is clearly asking Jimmy, Jimmy seems to be showing him something and saying something, and also seems like Joe never really nails the chord – though Brad may be a different story….

Below are the videos but before getting into them I want to say this: Spend enough time on Internet forums, and you’ll run across people who say tone-chasing is a waste of time, it’s all in the player’s hands, etc. Bull. Yes, the player’s hands are a large part of the next. But if the rest of the tone chain – that hard-won gear knowledge – wasn’t important, don’t you think Jimmy and his fellow guitar gods would’ve had no problem spilling the complete and truthful details decades ago?

Take 1
> Joe, Brad at 3:45 learning chord from Jimmy.

Take 2
> Best take of the whole tune.

Take 3
> Working on the ending, shows Steven’s control of the band.

Here's the DVD cover (click to see it bigger).

Some people might think an Ace Frehley instructional DVD is an oxymoron. I can understand that. Ace is not a technician and his style isn’t complex in 32nd-note, finger-gymnastical, “hyperlodian” ways.

But that is precisely what makes Ace’s style unique, and the fact that it’s relatively easy to cop is one big reason he’s influenced many thousands of kids to pick up a guitar.

Plus he freely (Frehley?) admits he can’t read music and doesn’t know a lick of theory – and he’s a rock star – so it’s not like anyone out there can hurt his feelings about this stuff.

Still, for the aforementioned reasons, an Ace instructional DVD was unexpected – and is unexpectedly cool. Well, even as an adult (in age only, people!), I knew it would be cool because it’s Ace…but you know what I mean.

The full title of the DVD is “Behind the Player: Ace Frehley” and was shot and produced by IMV, which stands for Interactive Music Video. Is the DVD interactive? Technically no, but that doesn’t really matter.

The DVD has four sections:

Behind the Player – Basically an interview with Ace about his guitar-playing history and some cool old photos.

Cold Gin – Broken up into three parts: the lesson, jams on the tune with other musicians and video tab.

Shock Me – Ditto.

Special Features – Three: A long Anomaly trailer (the DVD was apparently shot before Anomaly was out); a jam on the Anomaly tune “Pain in the Neck” (no singing); four amateur-shot Ace solos.

More on each below, starting with the lessons.

‘Cold Gin’ and ‘Shock Me’

Yes, just two tunes. For me, “Shock Me” was worth the price alone. But first, “Cold Gin.”

‘Cold Gin’

> The best part of this for me was seeing a close-up of how he plays the outro from the bridge back into the main riff. It’s a combination of parts – Ace’s and Paul’s – and Ace shows them both. Also cool were the fill before the solo as well as the solo itself.

> Interestingly, in this segment he says in the early days he often used to work out the structures of solos, which is contrary to his reputation of sort of showing up, blowing through a few leads and having the producer pick which one he liked the best.

> At the end, Ace plays the whole tune while listening to the song on headphones. Maybe I’m 13 again, but it’s pretty cool to jam along with him.

> The first jam on this tune (no singing) is with John 5. The first thing I noticed here is that so many cuts are in this segment that it might give someone a seizure. John 5, a self-described huge Ace fan, mostly lays back and lets Ace do the playing, but adds a few notes that any KISS fan will instinctively recognize – which to me means he’s a true fan.

> Next up is George Lynch, who unfortunately has delay on his guitar (John 5 sounded raw). George throws in a bunch of fills, but once again Ace is the main attraction – as it should be.

‘Shock Me’

How many people wanted to be in the first row of an classic KISS show to see Ace play this tune up-close? I did. Now I’m seeing it.

> He starts out telling the well-known story that the song was inspired by, then a little about the song’s construction: It’s funny to hear that Ace “stole” the staccato chords in the chorus from The Who song “Can’t Explain.”

> I still love this riff and this tune.

> Seeing the solo worked out up-close is too cool.

> Man, Ace has some killer vibrato. Always knew it – guess took it for granted – but this reinforces it.

> He does a lesson on bending – he has one of the best slow bends in rock. He notes, “Developing a good vibrato is crucial for playing lead guitar, especially in rock ‘n roll.” When’s the last time you heard something so simple and yet so true on an instructional DVD?

> No special-guest guitar players jam on the song. Ace just plays it through with a drummer and bass player, no singing (kind of a bummer).

Notes on the Lessons

> Each lesson is 20+ minutes.

> Sure some of the stuff Ace plays is “simple,” but that doesn’t make it any less cool or less good. I’ve been playing for 30 years and still got something out of it – more than just joy/fun, I mean.

> It’s interesting to see Ace-isms like using his pinky to play the fifths of bar chords, and using his second finger (a lot) where some people would use their third and fourth fingers.

> The video tab is kind of cool if you’re into tab (I’m not). It shows the tab notes sort of streaming at you, in real time as Ace is playing them.

Other Stuff

Also in note form:

Behind the Player

> Ace mentions we might be familiar with some of the work he’s done “with the rock group KISS.” Self-deprecating, which is cool, but hell yeah we’re familiar with it and it’s kind of a bummer (but understandable) to hear Ace talk about KISS in a former/distant way.

> He first picked up a guitar when he was 13.

> Matt Sorum, Velvet Revolver drummer and former GnR drummer, calls Ace “one of the rock ‘n roll greats” and a “gunslinger,” which is a great term for Ace in many ways.

> Ace says he used to practice for “hours and hours” because he was so excited by the instrument.

> John 5 says Love Gun literally changed his life. Ace was his favorite guitar player. John also says Anomaly is Ace’s best album since the 1978 album, “and it might be even better.”

> George Lynch says just the visual impact of KISS inspired him and his bands.

> Ace briefly talks about the recording of Psycho Circus and how it was “weird.” He mentions the well-known fact that Gene and Paul only accepted one of his songs (”Into the Void”), and says they wouldn’t let Peter play drums. Ace notes that it took him a while to detox after being in KISS again.

> One of the coolest parts of this was Ace talking about how he triggered the smoke bombs in his guitar with the volume and tone knobs. And it’s very interesting to hear people talk about the smoking guitar and how innovative that was in itself – something we just take for granted.

Ace Solos

The Ace solos in the special features are really cool. They’re long, amateur-shot and YouTube quality but with good sound.

The first three are Frehley’s Comet era. In the first he’s playing through Laneys (someone reading this will know the exact year!) and is using a three-pickup cherry sunburst Les Paul. In the next one, which I think is better although the footage isn’t as good, he’s using the three pickup black Les Paul Custom that smokes – literally, of course.

The first vid is almost 5 minutes, the next one is about 4 minutes and the third one is about 2 minutes. The guitar is using for the third is a black Les Paul Custom that has a whammy bar (!).

The last 2 minutes are Ace in his makeup, presumably on the reunion or farewell tours. This one has the most pyrotechnics, but the least guitar-playing.

Ace’s Gear

Ace does talk about his gear a bit, but not in great detail (bummer), presumably because whoever was prompting Ace with topics didn’t know enough to ask. But Ace does say (beyond a Les Paul into a Marshall):

> “I always wanted a Gibson Les Paul because Jimmy Page played them.” And the first Les Paul Ace got was a tobacco sunburst.

> He used to use 9-46 gauge strings, but said in the last couple of years he’s been using heavier strings: 10-52. He feels they stay in tune a little better and they’re a bit ballsier, but wouldn’t recommend them for beginners because they’re harder to bend.

> In the studio he uses “pretty much” all Marshalls and Fenders, and “occasionally” a Peavey 5150. It looks like he’s using JCM 900s on the DVD but I couldn’t be sure.

> In an old Guitar Player magazine interview, Ace famously said that his amp settings were everything on five. But in this DVD he says the bass and mids are about halfway up, and the treble is all the way up.

> Ace plays his blue-sparkle signature prototype Les Paul in the video. The more I see that guitar, the cooler it looks. Over the top for sure, but in a cool way.

Bottom Line

If you’re an Ace fan, this DVD is worth getting even though Ace only goes through two songs. The set is good, it’s well-shot, the sound is good and at 124 minutes a lot is on there.

Ace says he can’t read music and doesn’t really know the notes – it doesn’t matter! That’s part of what makes him a Ace, and no doubt has contributed to his unique style.

And to Ace’s credit, he plays his parts raw: just his guitar into a Marshall. No effects, no butt-saving delay, not even any reverb. That’s honest, and takes nuts.

Notable

> No word on all the places the DVD is available, but you can get it on amazon for $14 US.

> Here’s a link to DVD clips.

> The DVD contains a few trailers for other IMV instructional DVDs. Most won’t be interesting to WoodyTone readers, except for George Lynch’s, and maybe John 5’s (although neither the Ace nor Lynch DVDs are on the IMV website – doh!). If you know any bass players, Duff McKagan’s and Mike Inez’s DVDs may be interesting for them.

Montrose, the 1973 self-titled debut album by the band of the same name, is one of those tone-pillar albums – “a pillar of tone that holds up the house of rock” (or pick a different metaphor). It likewise stands on its own as a monument of great tunes and great tone.

I heard “Rock Candy” on satellite radio the other day in the car, and just couldn’t get over how great it sounded. BIG drums, BIG guitar, simple riff, rip your head off vocals by Sammy Hagar who at that time was pretty much unknown.

So I had to find out: What was Ronnie Montrose using on that album – the default thinking is that it was a Les Paul through a Marshall, but was it? And that overall sound, that “hugeness” across the full audio spectrum, something that’s largely missing in this digital recording/playing age. How?

Nose to the ground, and here’s what I found out.

Ronnie’s Gear

It was NOT a Marshall: It was a tweed Fender Bandmaster, a 3×10, apparently a combo.

> Amp builder and tech Mark Cameron from the metroamp.com forum: “I asked [Ronnie] what he used on this and it’s a 3×10 Bandmaster. He found it at a garage sale the day before he went in to record, bought it for almost nothing and used it as is, he said. Also I think a regular [Fender] Champ on 10 for some stuff – Ted Nugent did this too.”

> Ronnie confirms use of the Bandmaster when talking to vintageguitar.com about his tone on “Bad Motor Scooter” off the same album: “…the one amp I wish I’d never got rid of, a three-ten tweed Fender Bandmaster. I’d gotten it for $90, and when I bought it, it was covered with woodtone contact adhesive paper! The contact paper peeled right off – it didn’t leave any residue and the tweed looked brand new. I used that amp so much I blew it up several times before I finally got rid of it.”

In the ‘74 video below, you can plainly see tweed Fenders behind Ronnie. Also, in the video below that – an in-studio track to promo the ‘74 release of the Paper Money album – it looks like Ronnie is playing through a small mic’d Fender combo (anyone know what amp that is?).

In case you’re curious, Fender Bandmasters have 6L6 power tubes. To my ears, 6L6s sound less wide and warm than the EL34 tubes used in Marshalls. Small Fender combos I believe usually use lower-power 6V6 power tubes, which sound similarly less-warm (but still good!) than EL84s to my ears.

Guitar-wise, Ronnie favored Gibsons at that time, notably Les Pauls. I couldn’t find any info on exactly which Les Paul(s) may have been used for that recording, but it appears that the ‘59 ‘burst that was allegedly stolen and which he wants “back” from Gary Moore wasn’t one of them: In the lawsuit, it states that that guitar was stolen in 1972 at an Edgar Winter Group concert, which I believe would’ve put it before the Montrose recording sessions.

The Sound and the VH Connections

A big part of the Montrose album sound was Ted Templeman (producer) and Don Landee (engineer). If those names sound familiar, that’s because that’s the same pair of guys who produced and engineered the first six Van Halen albums (through 1984). After that, Donn helped through some of the Sammy-era VH albums (while Ted produced David Lee Roth’s band) and Ted came back to co-produce For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge with Andy Johns.

So Ted, and notably Don, helped Van Halen – and particularly Ed – sound huge on those albums:

> User Ross Hogarth on the prosoundweb.com forum: “I just worked with Ted and talked to him about that record [Montrose]. I asked him if the guitar sound was his template for Van Halen [and] he agreed. He also gives big props to Don Landee.”

> From a 1991 Guitar World interview with Ted: “Donn Landee is such a great engineer, he really took a major part in capturing that raw guitar sound [on the Van Halen albums].”

Ed has also been quoted as saying that Don and Ted made his guitar sound much bigger on VH1, and that he liked the hugeness of the Montrose record.

However, Ted says in the same GW interview: “Edward pretty much had that sound of his at the Starwood. As far as I was concerned – and Donn would probably tell you the same thing – recording him was pretty much a question of sticking a mic in front of his amp.”

So here are the Montrose-VH connections:

> Sammy was in both bands;

> Ted and Donn produced and engineered both bands;

> One of Ed’s favorite cranked-amp sounds was a Fender Bandmaster. That allegedly was his home practice amp.
_____

Here’s “Rock Candy,” from the original album: