Billy Squier’s WoodyTone

In case you need a reminder, dust off your Don’t Say No album or CD, or click here to go to last.fm and give those tunes a listen. THAT, my friends, is WoodyTone.

Dang. You can clearly hear the vintage gear and analog recording equipment, even on laptop speakers. (This is making me wonder whether digital gear is able to record sweet WoodyTones.)

I heard one of my favorite Squier tunes (naturally a heavier one) on Internet radio the other day, the Stroke, and had to go gear-exploring. What did Squier use at the time? Surely he couldn’t get this tone just by luck — could he?

I dug up a few-years-old interview with Billy at vintage-guitar.com where he sho-nuff talks about his collection of, and love for, vintage gear. Here’s what he used on Don’t Say No:

• A 1960 Fender Tele Custom on “In The Dark,” “My Kinda Lover,” “You Know What I Like,” “Too Daze Gone,” and “Lonely Is The Night.” On “The Stroke” he played a ’57 Strat, and on “Whadda You Want From Me” a ’56 Gibson Les Paul Special.
• The amp was a Marshall “Lead 100,” with a “single cabinet with a combination of Altec and Celestion speakers.”

Other interesting tidbits from the article:

I split up my cabinets with Celestions and Altecs, which gave me a bit more punch and definition without sacrificing the warm distortion characteristics of the Celestions. When I ran out of Altecs, I switched to EVs.

I did follow Clapton’s route through the SG and from there into the double-cutaway Les Paul Special, of which I had two. After Derek & The Dominos, was released, I tracked down a ’57 Strat without a tremolo. It was then that I came up with what I believe to be the original expanded wiring design for this guitar. What happened was, I didn’t like having to jockey the toggle switch into those in-between positions for the out-of-phase funky sounds that Clapton was using, so I went to a couple of hot-shot guitar techs to see if they could help. The catch was I didn’t want to alter any of the original knobs or introduce anything new that would disturb the integrity of the instrument. When they couldn’t sort me out, I came up with the idea of converting the second tone control into a volume control for the neck pickup. I then wired the middle and lead pickups to the toggle switch in a normal two-pickup configuration. This enabled me to play any combination of pickups – seven in all – with no alterations to the body or pickguard. The Strats I have today are wired this way.

After reading this, I’m ready for some “new” vintage gear-driven Billy Squier. Where’s Bill Aucoin when you need him?

Here’s Billy’s current website — unfortunately devoid of any pics of that luscious gear: www.billysquier.com

Category: Billy Squier, Marshall, Speakers