01.19
I would like to welcome you all to my very first gear blog! This is where I will be talking about some different gear that I come across and really like. I’ll have a chance to talk about everything from vintage guitars to new effects… basically anything and everything that sounds good!
So far in my history as a guitar player I’ve had a chance to play some pretty cool set-ups with some wicked vintage guitars and amps. I must say though, that some of my favourite tones I’ve ever been able to muster up came when we were recording our album “Born This Morning” this spring at the Sonic Temple. There were two reasons why this was possible. The first reason was because we spared no effort or expense to get the right amps and guitars for whatever song we were working on. The second was a man named Darren Van Niekerk. He was our engineer and as much as I’d like to take 100% of the credit for everything you hear, that’s not entirely true. We had a blast working together, trying different guitars, amps, reconfiguring amps and cabs, tweaking effects and EQs. So a big thanks to him!
Before I get to specific configurations, why don’t I tell you about some of the gear that we had to work with. There were a plethora of guitars ranging from Teles to hollow bodies to SGs and everything in between. There were two guitars that ended doing most of the work on the album. First was my go-to workhorse guitar – a Fender ’72 Thinline re-issue. It’s got a semi-hollow body, two split single coil pickups and is extremely versatile. The other guitar was an Epiphone Emperor II Joe Pass hollow body. It’s got 13 gauge flat-wound strings which do two things; give it an incredibly fat tone, and make you work for every single note. This guitar proved to sound really good with a bright clean tone and with a ton of gain.
We used some really cool amps too! I borrowed an Orange Rockerverb 100 from a friend (thanks a bunch Pete!) which paired with his Mesa 4/12 cab sounds really great. If you’ve never played an Orange amp, do yourself a favour and try one out. They break up in a really cool way, sort of a cross between the Marshall fuzzy overdrive and the Fender crunchy overdrive. Another cool amp we used a bit was a vintage HiWatt Custom 50. We actually put this head through the cab of my ’73 Fender Twin. There is no amp I’ve ever heard that sounds like this. It’s got such a bright distinct tone even when the gain is cranked to the max (which it usually was). Now imagine the Joe Pass running through both of these amps at full volume… That’s the sound you here on the track “Give It Back”. This was the loudest guitar I’ve ever heard! It was making the strings on the other guitars in the room vibrate so vigorously they were buzzing against the frets and coming through the mics we had on the amps. If you stood in front of the amps you could feel your insides rattle… It was awesome!
I think another favourite was the tone we got for “Claws In Deep”. We put a Univox head through the 1×12 cab of a Fender Super Amp. The next step of course was to turn the amp up as loud as it could go. Although this was an interesting step since the Univox was on its last legs. The tubes were hanging on by a thread, but that made it sound even dirtier! It did mean that we could only leave it on for about 6 minutes at a time. For most of the track I was using my Fulltone Clyde Standard Wah. It’s by far my favourite Wah I’ve ever used. Then for the end of the track I got to use a vintage Morley Wah. That thing was wild! It had a gain control right on the Wah which I cranked up as much as I could get away with and still hear notes through the feedback.
Those are a couple of my favourites. If you’re curious about anything else you hear on the album let me know because I sure do love talking about guitar tones!
Cool stories Bobby! I hear ya on the Epiphone hollow-body, Epiphones are much closer to Gibsons than Squiers are to Fenders, and I love how hollow-bodies ‘complain’ when you lean into them
One thing I strive for is that rich amp-about-to-die tone at *lower volumes*. Smaller amps can have great tone when cranked too, but the holy grail is that cranked big amp sound at reasonable levels. One of the key components to that big amp sound is a big-ass output transformer, so there’s no avoiding an actual big amp unless you spend $600+ hacking a big OT into a small amp. The easiest and cheapest big amp to trim down in output is one with 4 EL34 power tubes that can drive a 4 Ohm load.
First you can yank two of the power tubes to cut the output in half, output impedence must be half of the speaker’s actual impedence, so switch the amp to 4 Ohms for a typical 8 Ohm cab. This can be done with any amp with 4 power tubes.
Then you can drop it down to about 18W by swapping the EL34’s (not other tube types) with 6V6’s, but you now need 4x the speaker impedence compared to the output impedence of the amp. While you’re at it, Alnico speakers offer wicked vintage tone and have lower efficiency, and the Jensen P12Q handles 40W and is available in 16 Ohm. 18W cranked will still keep up with all but the loudest drummers.
So now you’ve got lots of overhead on the expensive parts, so you can drive the snot out of it every night without worry, plus you keep that fat big output trani tone. While the 6V6 has a different tone from an EL34, it’s no stranger to guitar, i.e. the Fender Champ, Garnet Herzog, and lots of other vintage amps. All of this can be done without visiting the repair shop for rebiasing etc (though you best double-check, different models are wired differently).
As a sound tech, best guitar amps I’ve worked with are a 1959 Fender Super Amp 2×10″ (super-clear chiming tone) and Gordie Johnson’s Garnet Herzog and Ampeg SVT powerhouse (huge ripping raunch). Lots of honourable mentions, but none so distinct.