Glenn at the '83 US Festival (click to see it bigger).

Cool riff, cool tune, cool lead and a WET tone. That’s what I hear and have always heard in the Judas Priest tune “Another Thing Comin’,” off 1982’s Screaming for Vengeance.

While I of course know it’s a two-guitar band, I always think of the chords/riff and Glenn Tipton’s solo on this tune, hence the look at just his gear. Here’s what I found. First, some overall comments by Glenn from the book Gear Secrets of the Guitar Legends:

> “I’m like a mad professor in the studio. I like to try new processors and preamps, or even try out rackmount keyboard effects like the T.C. Electronic Fireworks. It actually works very well on guitar. I’ll try anything.”

> “The gear I use in the studio doesn’t differ greatly from my live rig….”

Guitars/Pickups

According to Glenn’s website, these seem to be the two guitars he used on Screaming for Vengeance:

> A ’78 maple necked, black and mirror-plated Fender Strat, customized with a Kahler Pro flat-mount tremolo system, and two cream-bobbined Dimarzio Super Distortion humbuckers. He calls it “a weighty beast indeed,” which implies it is northern/hard ash, and says “it’s very powerful.” He likes hot pickups (see below). He added: “I recorded the solo in Metal Gods with it.”

> A Gibson SG with a chrome pickguard and stock PAF humbuckers.

> Even though I could’ve sworn he played a Hamer in the “Another Thing Comin’” vid, turns out he didn’t (see below vid). He said that “around ‘84, I switched to a custom Hamer Phantom made for me by Jol Dantzig. This model was fitted with one EMG humbucker, a Kahler tremolo and one volume pot. A signature model of this was developed and sold to the public from ‘84-’86. I still use this guitar model.”

> On pickups for live work: “They’ve got to be hot! Most of my stage guitars are fitted with EMG 81s, which are of course active. All the EMG 81s are wired with the batteries in series so they run the pickups at 18 volts. That makes them last longer and the pickups sound hotter, with more edge and poke. This is partly for the signal-boosting active circuitry and partly so you’re not worrying about the danger of picking up the local radio station midway through a solo.”

> He prefers thin picks and light strings, 9s or Ernie Ball RPS 10s.

“Another Thing Comin’,” Official Vid

Amps/Effects

> From his website: “I used regular vintage [plexi] 50- and 100-watt Marshall heads without a master volume until 1982, when the JCM 800 head was developed. I then used the JCM 800 with Rocktron preamps….” [Not sure if he means a preamp.]

> He used a Pete Cornish custom pedalboard, the specs of which follow and are from Pete Cornish via the vintageamps.com forum:

I found the full details of Glen Tipton’s and Kenny Downing’s effects boards. I made these in October 1980 so they would have been used on the 1982 recording of Screaming For Vengeance.

The effects in the boards are as follows:

> PC [Pete Cornish] Input Isolator
> TB-83 (the original Pete Cornish Treble Boost)
> SS-2 (Cornish boost/OD)
> NG-2 (fuzz)
> Variable tone boost dual voltage 9/18 VDC, “an unreal EQ boost/shimmering pedal”
> ST-2 (gain/boost with Bass/Treble EQ)
> MXR Phase 100
> MXR Flanger
> MXR Analog Delay
> Echoplex EP3 Send/Return
> MXR 10-band EQ
> NB-2 (Linear Boost)
> Mute
> Four isolated outputs to 50w Marshall heads
> D.I. to PA.

Pete noted that “combinations [of effects] would have been used.”

Not even a chorus?! Does that argue for an Eventide Harmonizer? It was a ubiquitous studio effect, but “Another Thing Comin’” does sound more like a chorus. A tribute website also had this (all unsourced):

> Line boosters between each effect [on the Cornish pedalboard] to preserve the signal from input to output.

> A [Dallas] Rangemaster-based custom treble boost connected to the bass channel of Marshall 50- and 100-watt heads with no master volume [but JCMs had a master volume].

> Roland Chorus pedal.

Glenn also talks about using a Rocktron Intellifex unit, which has all kinds of chorus options.

That’s it!

“Another Thing Comin’,” Live, US Festival, 1983
> Here you get a good listen to Glenn’s tone, especially in the solo which starts around 2:33. He’s standing right in front of his Cornish pedalboard.

Notable

> Glenn says his mirror pickguards are, or at least were, “highly polished stainless steel,” not plastic!

> Here’s KK Downing’s 1980 Cornish pedalboard:

> PC [Pete Cornish] Input isolator
> TB-83
> NG-2
> ST-2
> MXR Phase 100
> PC-modified Cry Baby wah
> Echoplex EP3 send/return
> NB-2 (linear boost)
> Mute
> Four isolated outputs to 50w Marshall heads.

Here’s more about his experience, gear and techniques.

> On his early start, from a Guitar Player interview: “I was just really focused. I really knew what I wanted to do, and I think that was the main factor in everything falling into place for me. It was a pretty mind-blowing and jaw-dropping experience to be in Santana that young. I mean, what a great band! When I first joined up, I was a fired-up speed-gun blues guitar player who had studied a lot of Beck, Hendrix, Clapton and Page. I also loved Albert King, B.B. King, Albert Collins and Michael Bloomfield, and my goal was to put all those guys together in one style and then speed everything up and make it really accurate. I think I became more tasteful after touring the world with Santana.”

> On EVH, from the same interview:

What was it like having Van Halen open for you in 1978?
It was like getting your ass kicked every night by the best sword-swinging sushi chef in the land. I had seen a lot of guitar players by then, but I’d never seen anything like him. Somebody had given me that first Van Halen album and I remember sitting with my record player and a guitar trying to figure out what he was doing, and for the first time in my life I was stumped. I had no clue until I saw him and realized he had both hands on the fretboard. I’d met Harvey Mandel years earlier, and saw him do that a couple little tapping things, but Ed was taking everything to a much crazier level.

But it wasn’t just the tapping you dug about EVH, right?
It was everything. Ed is one of the greatest rock and roll guitar players of all time, and as far as being an innovator and taking it to the hilt, he’s right up there with Jimi and everyone else. And he didn’t come any better than on that first tour with us when we were touring Infinity – our first record with Steve Perry – and he was touring Van Halen’s debut. They opened every night, and Ed played with extreme fire and loose abandon. Ronnie Montrose was supporting, and he hated being in the middle slot. I would tell him, “Man, I’m glad you have to follow that and not me.” [Laughs.]

> Setup: “I usually use .009-.042 D’Addario strings, because I don’t like my guitar to be too hard to play, and your tone really lies between your guitar, your amp and your fingers, not your string gauge [interesting!]. But I do like the action to be a little more meaty than some players do. I went to one of Joe Satriani’s rehearsals recently. He let me plug in, and honestly, I couldn’t get anything out of his guitar because the action was so low. And when Ed [VH] showed me one of his new guitars, it was too easy to play—he had .009s tuned a half step below standard, and my fingers were just falling off the fretboard.”

> Salami: “Wes Montgomery used to say in interviews that he liked playing after eating a salami sandwich because the grease acted like Finger-Ease, and that that was one way he got such a smooth sound with his thumb and fretting fingers. I swear to God, every time I get a new guitar now, I take the strings off, get some sliced salami, and rub it up and down the fretboard, and let the grease soak in. Then I wipe off the neck and string it up. With new wood, it works really well. You’d be surprised. And sometimes [wipes forehead and then starts playing] I use my own grease. It’s organic!”

Here's the EJ Jazz III.

> Picking: “You know who I actually pick like? John McLaughlin. The crazy thing is that even though I was a huge Mahavishnu freak back when Journey first started, and still am, I never learned to pick from McLaughlin. But I caught up with him before a show recently in San Francisco, and when he started warming up, I noticed he was slicing the strings sideways with the pick, and that’s exactly what I’ve always done. I’ve never played straight on. On stage, I use Dunlop [483 Classic Celluloid] medium picks. Heavy picks feel kind of stumbly to me. But when I’m warming up, sometimes I use those pointy little Dunlop Eric Johnson [Classic Jazz III] picks. Those are really great to practice with, because they build up your accuracy. When I come back to my normal picks after that, it feels really easy because the other pick is so hard it’s like playing with a piece of bone or something.

Rigs Through the Years

Misc notes trolled up:

‘80s

At some point in the ’80s (Escape and Frontiers era) Neal was using modded Hiwatts, modded at Leo’s Music of Oakland, Calif. Apparently Jeff Watson of Night Ranger and and Paul Dean of Loverboy had similar amps.

The mods apparently were internally bridged channels and possibly more gain.

Do you hear Hiwatt in this clip?

‘95 Live Rig

A quote from Neal: “I’ve been using a Roland ME-10 [FX unit] powered by a couple of Marshall heads in stereo into two 4×12 cabinets.”

‘08 Live Rig

From the same Nov. ‘08 Guitar Player interview:

“My new Marshall JVM heads and Diezel VH4s are almost identical in the way they talk to each other and turn effects loops on and off for different settings. The TC Electronic G-System adds effects and changes everything at once. The Boss GT-6 is mostly for my in-ear monitors mix. The setup runs really smoothly, actually.

“Sure, the cabinet count has grown and grown because there’s only one guitar in the band – and sure, I could play through one Marshall in mono and just crank it on 10. But those five cabinets aren’t really that loud – they can’t be because honestly, my ears are fried and I’m constantly dealing with tinnitus. The extra cabs are really just there to simulate the ambience of a hall or a coliseum. We play a lot of sheds [amphitheaters] where the sound just goes out and doesn’t come back, so I have some cabinets set wet with effects so my area of the stage sounds like I’m playing indoors.

Gear notes from the article:

Here's his sig LP (click to see it way bigger).

> When Schon’s tech, Adam Day, is asked if he can think of a more complex stage rig, he can only cite the Edge’s famously elaborate U2 setup. Schon’s backline setup starts with a Lectrosonics wireless. From the receiver back in his amp racks, Schon’s signal passes through 45-foot Mogami cables to and from his pedalboard, which includes a Dunlop Buddy Guy Wah, a Boss compressor pedal used mostly for Strat solos, and Xotic AC- and RC-Booster pedals. (“Lectrosonics systems tend to run a little bright, so the extra capacitance created by all that long cable actually serves to balance out the sound a bit.”) A TC Electronic G-System controller at Schon’s feet handles all MIDI-implemented effects and amp channel changes, an expression pedal controls the overall delay level (the delay time seems to work nicely for most songs when set to 600ms), and Schon uses a Gibson Digital Echoplex to create the loops he solos over during instrumental interludes between songs. That’s the simple part.

> Things get more intricate back at the amp racks where Schon’s signal is split five ways [!] courtesy of Framptone Amp Switcher and 3-Banger pedals. One signal feeds a drawer-mounted Boss GT-6 processor that runs through a Demeter tube preamp into a Roland M-120 Line Mixer feeding Schon’s in-ear monitors as well as a Marshall Dual MonoBlock power amplifier driving two 1960B 4×12 cabinets in stereo. Schon’s signal is also split between two Marshall JVM half-stacks with G-System effects in their loops, and two Diezel VH4 heads running in stereo courtesy of an Eventide Eclipse processor in their loops (used primarily to fatten things up occasionally with “a little detune”). Each Diezel drives a separate 4×12. And because one is run flat out to get a full sound, its cabinet is turned backwards and miked up behind the stage, thus keeping Schon’s stage volume down.

> The only truly standard features on a Neal Schon Les Paul are the tuning machines and the Gibson BurstBucker Pro bridge humbucker. The neck heel has been heavily sculpted—almost erased—to grant easy access to the high frets, and the fretboard is angled more parallel with the body than those on standard Les Pauls so that the Floyd bridge sits flush. The neck pickup cavity is occupied by a single-coil-sized DiMarzio Fast Track 2 humbucker and a Fernandes Sustainer Driver. The knobs are widely spaced and have been rewired to include a master volume, a push/pull master tone (the pull position activates a Vari-Tone-type circuit that gives Schon “wah sounds without a wah pedal”), and a master Sustainer volume. The mini-toggle switches behind the tailpiece control the Sustainer settings. And if you take an MRI of Schon’s cherry sunburst Paul, you’ll discover it has been chambered for weight reduction.

Neal sure likes amps with a lot of knobs! (Cool seeing him play “Mother, Father, Sister” or whatever the name of that tune is!)

We are left to wonder why Neal cut his 'fro.

I have a few buds who still laugh at me for digging Journey. I think it’s the Steve Perry, Jonathan Cain-driven “Don’t Stop Believin’” stuff that gets them laughing because after the chuckle they’re always like, “Neal Schon, great player.”

“F-in A right!” as they say, or used to, in Patterson, N.J. Neal is a stellar player, possessed with the rare combo of chops and feel, not to mention the ability to write good pop and rock riffs and tunes. And the oldest Steve Perry-era Journey was rock and blues-rock, not pop. Great stuff. (Wait a minute…. Am I a Journey apologist?!)

The problem with tracking down what Neal used in 1980 (the Departure album) and before is that Neal is a known gear lover and tone-chaser. The guy would experiment with just about anything. I remember watching some very early Journey shows on TV – just after the advent of cable TV – where Neal changed guitars about 10 times.

From photos and videos, as well as his time with Santana starting when he was just 15 – according to Neal, Clapton asked Neal to be in Derek and the Dominoes a day before Santana asked him to come aboard – it’s obvious that Neal favors Les Pauls. Even now he uses custom-built Lesters.

So that was his preferred or most-used model of guitar (he used several), along with a ‘63 Strat, but certainly wasn’t his only one. In addition to Strats, he used other brands of guitars and seemed to play anything effortlessly.

Amp-wise, it’s tough to tell. He used a Marshall here and a Fender there – Hiwatts later – but it appears that his preferred amp on record and live in roughly ‘78, ‘79 and ‘80 was…the Peavey Mace.

The Mace, no longer produced, had a solid-state pre-amp and not two, not four, but six 6L6 power tubes, just in case anyone in that era still valued their hearing.

If the Mace sounds familiar, it’s the same amp used by the Skynyrd guys back in the day.

Check out these two vids that feature an early Neal with Peavey amps, though it’s hard to say for sure whether they are Maces. Great playing too.

End of “Feelin’ That Way,” Live, 1978

“Any Way You Want It,” In the Studio, 1980

Notable

From the July 1982 Guitar Player mag:

> Infinity album: ‘63 Strat, rosewood neck, Gibson PAF in the bridge. “Lights” was the Strat into a Marshall plexi.

> Departure album: ‘63 Strat on neck position for “Walks Like a Lady” through a Peavey Mace which was on very low; “Precious Time” was with a Peavey doubleneck, with the short-scale 12-string tuned regularly but an octave higher; “Line of Fire” was a black Les Paul through an Electro-Harmonix Hot Tubes distortion pedal into the Mace.

More on Neal coming up!

Jimbo in '73.

F the iPod, my brothers. Nothing sounds as good as blasting tunes out of speakers, particularly in the car. I don’t know what it is – the enclosed space, the audio engineering, the proliferation of high-end audio stuff in vehicles…. Don’t know and don’t care. The bottom line for me is that when I crank tunes in the car, it’s frickin’ awesome.

For the last couple of weeks my favorite has been the one and only “Black Dog” of the Zeppelonius bros. It is the bone-crushing sound of rock and roll. Tone everywhere. Wood! The guitar riff is amazing, the singing riff is cool, the bass part very cool (listen to it!) and the drums – forget it. Immense, powerful. We might even say, “pachydermic.”

Don’t know why recordings these days don’t sound nearly that huge, or why everyone isn’t trying to make them sound that huge. Maybe we need to put the English back in charge of rock.

Anyhow, do yourself a favor and crank the Blackest of Dogs in your bestest of wheels. And while you’re listening, bear in mind that the maestro, Jimmy Page – who as everyone “knows” went from using small Supro amps in the studio to Marshall Super Leads – apparently did not use an amp on “Black Dog.”

No amp.

Seriously.

Check this out, from a May ‘02 interview of Led Zep IV producer Andy Johns by the Universal Audio webzine. Here’s the applicable part:

Andy: Would you like the “Black Dog” guitar tone story?

UA: Absolutely – which Led Zeppelin album was that? [Doh!]

Andy: That is the fourth one, the really, really big one. “Stairway To Heaven,” “Levee Breaks” and “Black Dog.” It sold about 18 million – something bloody ridiculous. Who would have known, you know? I had been trying to get this sound from Buffalo Springfield for a long time and I met Bill House [producer? engineer?]. He said, “Just put two 1176s in series.” He didn’t really want to let me know what “they” were. It was a direct sound and I thought that I knew what to do.

There were three guitars on “Black Dog” so I triple-tracked it. When I mixed it, these three guitars were down here and the rest of the tracks were up here. Since the sound was so loud, it gave me much more room for the other stuff. Anyways, he meant two 1176s in series, one of which has the compression buttons punched out, so it is like an amp. You hit the front of the next compressor really hard and make the mic amp distort a bit with the EQ – a bit of bottom to make it sing.

So “Black Dog” has a direct Gibson Les Paul Sunburst ‘52 or something [Page's '59 'burst], going right into the mic amps on the mixer, which is going through two 1176s, and it sounds like some guy in the Albert Hall with a bunch of Marshalls.

I couldn’t have done it without the 1176s. There is not another compressor that will do that because you can take out the compression stuff.

What?

The 1167 is a Universal Audio non-tube compressor with a built-in amplifier (I think). So not only was the “Black Dog” guitar(s) not through an amp, it was solid-state!

But does it really matter? As user rynugz007 said on a gearslutz.com thread about this stuff, Page’s “guitar tones are all over the place – Teles, Pauls, Strats, Marshalls, Supros, Vox, direct, room mics, close mic, etc. The consistency lies in the special sauce which is Jimmy’s technique, his ear and the riffs.

“If you have a great riff played by Jimmy Page it really would be difficult to make it sound bad. He has that raunchy, drunken bluesy thing going on in everything he plays that completely drips with vibe.”

Well said, sir!

Notable

These items are from a July ‘77 Guitar Player interview (Zep IV was released in 1971).

> He used Herco heavy-gauge nylon picks and Ernie Ball Super Slinky strings (9s).

> The interviewer asked: Do you think that when you went from the Telecaster to the Les Paul that your playing changed? Jimmy said, “Yes, I think so. It’s more of a fight with a Telecaster, but there are rewards. The Gibson’s got a stereotyped sound, maybe – I don’t know. But it’s got a beautiful sustain to it. I like sustain because it relates to bowed instruments and everything, this whole area that everyone’s been pushing and experimenting in. When you think about it, it’s mainly sustain.”

Behold the power!

Different version w/ Jimmy and Robert.

The man, in '78.

Part 1

By now no one’s exactly sure what Edward Van Halen really said or didn’t say about his tone and technique over the years. Even though lots of folks on this-here Internet thingy act like they know fo’ sho’, they either don’t or are misremembering. You really have to go back to what the man said and evaluate it in light of what has trickled out since he said it.

Because there ain’t no Rosetta Stone for EVH tone, people!

So the only way to maybe get a solid clue is to read the old interviews.

Admittedly, however, everyone doesn’t have copies of old Guitar Player magazines hanging around. I don’t either (okay…I have some). But some of that stuff has ended up on the web – like the recent transcription of EVH’s first Guitar Player interview, in November 1978. That had Roy Clark on the cover, not Ed. The Ed cover was the second time he was interviewed for the magazine.

You can read the whole 1978 interview here at vhnd.com, but following are the tone-related parts, annotated by yours truly.

VH I

“For the first record,” Eddie recalls, “we went in to the studio one day and played live and laid down 40 songs. Out of these 40 we picked nine and wrote one in the studio–’Jamie’s Cryin.’ The album is very live–there are few overdubs, which is the magic of Ted Templeman. I would say that out of the 10 songs on the record, I overdubbed the solo on only ‘Runnin’ with the Devil,’ ‘Ice Cream Man,’ and ‘Jamie’s Cryin” – the rest are live. I used the same equipment that I use onstage….”

> 40 tunes?! I assume most of the other 30 made it onto further albums (even 1984 had some VH I-era material), but maybe not all.

> “The same equipment” – only thing we can take from that is that he played at the same volume.

Frankie

Eddie assembled his main guitar with parts he bought from Charvel. “It is a copy of a Fender Stratocaster,” he says. “I bought the body for $50 and the neck for $80, and put in an old Gibson PAF pickup that was rewound to my specifications.”

> “Was rewound to” means he didn’t do it himself. If, as some contend, Seymour Duncan did it, then it might’ve been rewound a little hot, something which EVH seemed to favor then and since. If so, then a low-output humbucker was not used on VH1! Also, it’s interesting to note that the Seymour Duncan custom shop pickup formerly known as the EVH is now called the “‘78.” Hmmmm. According to the Duncan website, the “‘78 Model” is slightly hotter than vintage PAF range.

“I like the one-pickup sound, and I’ve experimented with it a lot. If you put the pickup really close to the bridge, it sounds trebly. If you put it too far forward, you get a sound that isn’t good for rhythm. I like it towards the back – it gives the sound a little sharper edge and bite.”

> Moving the bridge pickup around definitely alters the tone from that pickup a lot. he found where he liked it and screwed it in place. Many guys – me included – still try to get VH tone out of a bridge pickup with standard spacing. Probably not wise….

“I also put my own frets in, using large Gibsons. There is only one volume knob – that’s all there is to it. I don’t use any fancy tone knobs. I see so many people who have these space-age guitars with a lot of switches and equalizers and treble boosters – give me one knob, that’s it. It’s simple and it sounds cool. I also painted this guitar with stripes. It has almost the same weight as a Les Paul.”

> Bang! “Almost the same weight as a Les Paul.” That means Frankie was northern ash, end of story. Swamp ash and alder don’t weigh that much and, to my ears, don’t sound the same.

> Supposedly the $25K EVH Frankie replica guitars have lightweight bodies. Some have speculated that this is because Eddie’s guitar aged over the years, dried out and got lighter. Others think it must mean that the Frankie was not northern ash. Well, it was northern ash.

Other Axes

Eddie’s other guitars include an Ibanez copy of a Gibson Explorer [an Ibanez Destroyer which was NOT korina], which, he says, “I slightly rearranged. I cut a piece out of it with a chainsaw so that it’s now a cross between a [Gibson Flying] V and an Explorer, and I put in different electronics and gave it a paint job. I’ve also recently bought a Charvel Explorer-shaped body and put a Danelectro neck on it and an old Gibson PAF pickup. And I also found a 1952 gold top Les Paul. It’s not completely original – it’s got a regular stud tailpiece in it, and a Tune-o-matic bridge. I have rewound Gibson PAF pickups in it, too. I use a Les Paul for the end of the set because my Charvel is usually out of tune, and the Les Paul’s sound is a little fatter.”

> “Different electronics” in the Shark. Does that just mean different pickups? Tone control not hooked up?

> “Rewound Gibson pickups” again probably mean hotter-than-normal. Remember that all of Eddie’s signature pickups, including on his signature axes, have been hot.

- End of part 1 of 2 -

So there I am at New Jersey’s infamous Starland Ballroom, in scenic Sayreville NJ, on Friday night. I’m there to see the band Wiser Time, with Jimmy Somma of Sommatone amps on lead guitar. I’m there because Wiser Time is a very cool classic rock, Black Crowes-ish band, because I rarely get to get away from the wife and kids and because I knew it would be fun.

Oh yeah: I REALLY wanted to hear Jimmy and Carmen – Wiser Time’s bandleader and lead singer – play through their Sommatone amps. And I really did not want to see or hear The Doors, for whom Wiser Time was opening. No offense, I know The Doors are a legendary band, but just never a band I got into. I always kind of thought they were the 60s version of grunge. So, in order of appearance:

Wiser Time

This is the only decent shot I got of Jimmy with my POS camera phone....

The band sounded stellar. The great PA, Ludwig Vistalite drums (per Bonham) and Fender P bass helped, but the bottom line was I was there to hear woody guitar tones and tasty playing, and was not disappointed.

I made sure to stand right where Jimmy’s amp was projecting so I have to confess that I couldn’t hear Carmen’s guitar so well. But I already knew what Carmen sounded like through his Sommatone Vibe 45 amp (killer) from hearing him play through it at the NY/NJ Amp Show two weekends ago. Mostly I was curious to see and hear what amp Jimmy would choose to play through and how it sounded.

Turned out Jimmy was running one of his Overdrive 35 6L6 heads into what I think was a 2×12 cab. He had what looked like a Roaring 40 combo next to it but he told me later he only played through the Overdrive 35.

A little about the Overdrives: Since I was already familiar with the Roaring 40 a bit, the Overdrive series – in particular the Overdrive 75 – really caught my ear at the Amp Show. That was the Sommatone amp I didn’t want to stop playing. Of course it sounded great, but it also had something I’m not sure I’ve ever heard with any other amp. At the Amp Show, I struggled to describe it to Jimmy. I think the closest I got is that the gain, or overdrive, seems to be “under” or “around” the note rather than on top of it.

You know with preamp gain or an OD pedal, the gain, distortion, overdrive or whatever you want to call it seems to surround or sit on top of the note. But with Jimmy’s Overdrive amps, you get this big woody note and the hair but in a different order somehow. I’m probably doing the amp an injustice by trying to describe it at all but it’s just one of those amps you want to keep messing with because it sounds so good and you know something with your name on it is in there.

(More on this amp coming soon on AmpGAS.)

Anyhow, as I said Jimmy sounded great through that amp and cab. He played a lot of slide, and the notes were big, woody and clear but still with a bunch of sustain and some hair. Jimmy says he loves that amp for slide, and after hearing him I can see/hear why.

I can also say that after hearing Robbie Krieger from The Doors play slide – though it seemed like it was more for effect rather than melodic lines – to my ears, Jimmy slide tone was way better.

So I’m happy to report that Jimmy’s amps sound good in a hotel room and on stage. Jimmy’s a heck of a player too.

The Doors

First of all, a band named The Doors makes communication difficult. Questions like, “When are the doors opening?” get responses like: “The Doors are opening?” I guess it’s tough to communicate capital letters verbally.

(Technically it was Ray Manzarek (keys) and Robby Krieger (guitar), not The Doors, but it’s as close to The Doors as you’re going to get so I’m going to call it that.)

Since I’m not a Doors fan I figured my buddy Alan and I would be out the door before we heard one note from The Doors. But Wiser Time only played a 30-minute set and we’d barely started on our tea and crumpets, so we decided to stick around. I have to admit I’m mostly glad we did. Mostly.

The Doors were a very good band, and it helped that they played songs that I pretty much “knew” from radio airplay back in the day. Ray and Robby were the only two original members in the band and sounded and played very well, as did the drummer (good player, did not dig the drum sound) and bass player.

But the real highlight of the band for me was the lead singer. He had a TON of stage presence, sung the tunes very well and generally brought up the level of the place to make that a gig to remember for the audience. Speaking of which, the audience had quite a few younger folks in their 20s – or maybe even younger (an all ages show) – and many were singing all the words. Pretty mind-blowing.

Robby's DeVilles.

So who was the singer? Miljenko “Michael” Matijevic, a Croatian guy who was and still is the lead singer for the ’80s metal band Steelheart and who also provided the vox for Mark Wahlberg’s character in the movie, “Rock Star.” Think this guy has some pipes?! I’m officially a fan. Love to have that guy in my band…if I had one.

Did he “sound like” Jim Morrison? Enough for me and the most of the audience, it seemed. He made the show, regardless.

In the harsh stage lights Kreiger looked every year of his 65, but so what – you couldn’t tell from his fingers. He played great and sounded good through Fender Hot Rod DeVille combos (he had a pedal board but I didn’t see it). He played old SGs, and we wondered whether those were the ones he played in the ’60s. They sure looked like it!

Just to give you a taste, this was the actual show I was at. Visuals not great, but sound okay.

Here’s a show from a few days before, better video.

More on Robby’s Rigs

From a recent interview with Premier Guitar:

You’re most known for playing a Gibson SG Standard. How did you come to use that guitar?

Before I played electric guitars, I knew nothing about them. But then I saw Chuck Berry and had to get one. I went to a pawnshop and all I could afford was a used Gibson SG Standard—it cost me $180. That was the guitar I used in The Doors. I played ES-335s and ES-355s also, but I always went back to the SG. It’s the most comfortable guitar for me. It does what I need it to do and always has.

Do you still have that original SG?

No, it was stolen a long time ago. I found a ’67 that’s almost identical to the one I had, and I still use that one all the time.

Tell me about Gibson’s recent Robby Krieger SG reissue.

I’m happy with it. They copied the ’67 SG I have now. I didn’t like that guitar’s original neck, so the neck on it is actually a copy of a friend’s ’61 SG Junior that I preferred. Gibson wired the front and rear pickups out of phase like a wah. It was a mistake, but a good one.

What other instruments are you using right now?

I have a Stratocaster that I use once in a while, and I still play ES-355s but only in the studio, not live. I also use an older SG Special with P-90s for slide – I believe it’s a ’75. I have about 30 guitars total.

Robby on his amps:

The first amp I used with the Doors was a Magnatone with two 12″ speakers. Then we got a deal with Acoustic, and I used their 260 model for a while. Ray was using one of their amps too, but we both grew disenchanted with them after awhile. Then I started using a couple of Twin Reverbs that were rebuilt with JBL speakers in them by my friend, Vince Traenor, a crazy genius who also works on pipe organs. He likes to sneak into cathedrals and play the pipe organs. My current rig is two Fender Hot Rod DeVilles, with either 2×12 or 4×10 speaker cabs.

On his board:

I use a Boss ME-10 multi-effect unit, which they don’t make anymore, and I use the gain channel on the amps too. That’s my basic rig. Very simple.

In Conclusion…

If you’re wondering whether I stayed for the whole Doors show, the answer is no. It was surprisingly cool and fun to watch, but then they played some song that sounded like a bar mitzvah tune (several folks backed me up on that), which isn’t the worst thing at all but didn’t seem to fit in a rock show. Time to bolt.

All in all a cool night. If you’re remotely into the Doors, go see Robby, Ray and company. If you ever get a chance to see Wiser Time in NJ or play one of Jimmy’s amps, do it!

Notable

> This is worth noting, from Wikipedia: Steelheart disbanded in 1992 because of a bad stage accident. Near the end of the tour that year, the band was opening for Slaughter in Denver, Colo. During the performance, Miljenko decided to climb a lighting truss, which was not properly secured and fell. He tried to get out of the way, but the 1,000-pound truss hit him on the back of the head. He fell face-first onto the stage and broke his nose, cheekbone and jaw, and twisted his spine. he managed to walk off the stage, but was immediately taken to a hospital. Wow. One tough MF.

Overall, it’s great. GREAT. What’s not to like? The songs are great, the singing is great, the band is great and Paul Kossoff’s tone is all old-school Les Paul into a Marshall – with judicious use of the guitar’s volume knob (more on that later). The video is sharp, the sound is excellent. And that is what you’re buying it for – to see and hear the band. Not for extras and whatever other frills may be on there.

(Thankfully, there’s only a little of the annoying-as-hell jerking around that plagues some ’60s-’70s music videos as well as concert DVDs – VH’s Right Here, Right Now and “The Immigrant Song” on the Led Zep DVD come to mind.)

But since this is a blog about guitar tones and read by fellow tone knuckleheads, the real gem of this DVD (though it’s hard to call Paul Rodgers anything but a gem) is Koss. His playing is great, his tone is great and it’s a treat to see him play these riffs, notably “All Right Now” – which isn’t like I and many other guit-players thought it was played. (Props if you figured it out right.)

It looks and sounds like the video was shot yesterday – the quality is that good.

Before getting into more about the songs and Koss, I’ll note the one negative (for me): It’s not a solid two DVDs of video performance. That’s unfortunate but it’s because there just wasn’t that much shot of the band, so much of disc 2 is just audio. Still, that’s far outweighed by the positives – which for me included drummer Simon Kirke (solid, good) and Andy Fraser, a killer bass player.

Here are my semi-random notes on the discs.

Disc 1

Beat Club, Germany, 1970

> Koss obviously wasn’t a big fan of trimming his string ends!

1. Mr. Big
> He’s playing through an Orange(s) on these tracks. Joe Bonamassa is a huge Koss fan, and as he has noted Koss clearly rides the volume knob, turning it up for the solo and outro. He’s playing a darker burst Les Paul of some kind, and stays with the bridge pickup the whole time.
> Sick bass playing! Bass solo over outro chords.

2. Fire and Water
> Totally different look here and Paul’s voice is a little raspier. Koss is playing a gold top, starts on the bridge pickup, cranks the vol knob for more snarl and is in the middle position on the solo. He clearly knows what he’s going for tone- and feel-wise every time.

3. All Right Now
> Same setup/era as Fire and Water.
> Stupid ’60s effects messing up the visuals! You can hardly see the band or Koss playing at all.
> Extended solo jam – KILLER performance of the tune – but can can barely see it! But you can see Koss ride the volume knob down after the solo to play the verse.
> Snarlier version than on the album.

Doin’ Their Thing – Granada TV, July 1970

> This stuff looks like it couldn’t been filmed yesterday – stellar!

4. Ride On Pony
> Burst-ish (tri-burst?) Les Paul, Marshall Major?, maybe an Orange – looks like another band’s stacks behind him.

5. Mr. Big
> Again he clearly rides the vol knob.
> I like the tone of the Oranges better! Maybe until he cranks the guitar vol.
> This lead is a finger-vibrato fest – wow!
> A rock star performance – in front of an English crowd that doesn’t move a muscle.

6. Songs of Yesterday
> Koss gets some wah-like sounds. Don’t know if it’s the recording or him playing with his tone knobs and pickups (likely), but I don’t see a wah!

7. I’ll Be Creepin’
> A lot of vibrato again .
> Lots of glorious midrange when he cranks.

8. All Right Now
> Lots of Marshall midrange – still not as nasty/sweet-sounding as the Orange!
> Top left input only, no bridging of the channels.
> I think I learned from watching this that I and I think everyone I’ve seen play this riff has gotten it flat wrong. Koss’ right hand never moves from frets 2 (A major chord) through 5. So how the heck can he play that G that descends to the inverted (or whatever) D chord? He doesn’t play it! He plays the F# both times, the first time with an open G and the second time he throws in the A on the G string (2nd fret). I’m serious!

Other

> On song #11 on disc 1, “My Brother Jake,” Koss is playing a white Strat with a maple board!

> In interviews about how “All Right Now” came about, Koss said he tried to get Townshend-like chords because Townshend was the chord master. Cool!

Disc 2

Isle of Wight (1970) Videos

> Seems like only three of the 10 songs were filmed. Bummer!

1. Be My Friend – Mellow tune, sounds like Skynyrd might have picked up on it.
2. Mr. Big – Crazy good performance. Koss goes nuts in the solo.
3. All Right Now – GREAT tone, classic Les Paul through a Marshall.

Here are the Isle of Wight audio tracks:
1. Ride On Pony
2. Woman
3. The Stealer
4. Be My Friend
5. Mr. Big
6. Fire and Water
7. I’m A Mover
8. The Hunter
9. All Right Now
10. Crossroads

On Koss

Some of the interviews with the band members and Koss’ brother were cool. A few quotes:

> Rodgers: “Paul was a lot more talented than people knew. He played a whole bunch of Spanish music one time…all fingerpicking and everything. I said, ‘That’s fantastic,’ and he said, “No it’s not, it’s crap. Let’s play a blues.’ So he had that in back of his blues talent…a classically-trained guitar player back there. And I don’t think many people knew that.”

> Koss’ brother: “At 9 [his parents] started him on classical guitar lessons. For a long time he fooled us all into thinking he was reading music, and…in fact, such was his gift, he wasn’t reading music. He was just imitating what [the teacher] did. He was watching her hands, and it was going straight into his technique. I think it was that point everybody recognized there was a real gift.”

> Rodgers: “He did all the driving as well. He drove 100s and 100s of miles and then walked in a did a show.”

> Kirke: “The more I think about it, the more I’m astounded that no one [took any real action on Koss' behalf because of the drugs].” He noted that addiction wasn’t treated then like it is now, where rehab is the obvious next step.

> Rodgers: “At the end of the day, Koss really is my guitar soulmate.”

Notable

> What a band. It makes me wonder if there ever was a better rock singer than Paul Rodgers. You know what I mean.

> Order it here: Free Forever DVD

What is Black Robot? If you guessed a Japanese comic book, you’d be…wrong. It’s an LA-based band, a new one but made up of veteran players who wanted to make classic-sounding rock. And they did, thanks in large part to producer Dave Cobb.

Dave is a kung fu master of old-school tones, in part through his relentless use of old gear – amps and guitars yes, but also mic preamps and mixing boards. In this case, he also played most of the guitars on the album, so he’s a great guy to interview. Interesting dude, too. Here’s my interview with him:

WoodyTone: Sounds like old-school AC/DC tones on the album – was that what you were going for?

Dave Cobb: Yes, we love those AC/DC records. They all had very loud, clean, aggressive guitar sounds.

Why was that the sound you wanted for this record? Did you want an older-school feel?

My heroes growing up were Jimmy Page, Angus Young, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend – they all had a lot of aggression with their playing, but it was never super-distorted. A lot of kids crank up the distortion and think it’s heavy, but in actuality when it’s cleaner it has more weight and power to it. It makes you work for it.

I don’t really like modern-sounding records – I actually kind of hate them for the most part. So we weren’t really going after the [tone of the] old records, we were just going after what I like – which happens to be old records (laughs).

It seems like it’s a tough tone to get. A lot of people have tried, but in the modern era, even with all this fancy equipment, I just don’t hear it. Is it a tough tone to get?

Now we might have more stuff available, but it’s not as high-quality. [Back in the day] the guitars were American-made and made at the height of American craftsmanship, the Marshalls were made with quality parts, and you had quality players – you couldn’t record a record unless you had a high level of ability. Plus studios had the best mics in the world [and] they had good consoles and tape.” [He is trying to mimic that approach.]

What equipment did you use to get those tones and why?

A Vox Tone Bender (click to see it bigger).

I used a 1952 Les Paul Gold Top conversion with PAF pickups, a 1967 Marshall 50-watt and a Fender 1960 Tweed Deluxe, a Boss DM2 [analog delay], a vintage Vox Tone Bender and Colorsound Super Fuzz [Colorsound Tone Bender?], 10-gauge Ernie Ball strings and Fender medium picks.

Are they real PAFs?

The one in the bridge is a real PAF from the late ’50s, and the other one is a Gibson T-Top. I tried PAFs – tried a bunch – [in the neck] but nothing could beat the T-Top in that position.

What model of Marshall was it?

It was kind of a transitional year. I also used a 65 Amps amplifier a lot, the Nash Vegas. It’s a one-off they made, a really good amp. They’re one of the only amp companies that do it right.

Did you use the Marshall and Deluxe separately or did you combine them?

I can’t remember what we used on what now, but I like it Marshally.

How loud did you record?

The Marshall was more than halfway pushed. A lot of the secret in getting that tone is to push the amp hard and back the volume down on the guitar. When you hear the solos on AC/DC records, you hear the amp going into overdrive. [Angus] uses the [guitar] volume knob. That’s kind of a lost technique now.

What were the amps running through?

Some were running through a ’70s Marshall 2×12 that had 20-watt Celestions. We also had a Marshall 4×12, a checkerboard with black-back Celestion 25s in it.

For “Cocaine” we used a Jeff Bakos amp [Atlanta, Ga. tech and builder]. It’s real hi-fi, kind of like a JCM800 and a JTM 45 – it really has it going on. It’s called a Plus 45.

What do you like about those old pedals?

The Tone Bender can get an amp at the point of breakup. You throw the Tone Bender on all the way up, then back guitar volume all the way off, that’s how you get this chimey thing. It’s a really cool tone. I used that a lot. I used the Super Fuzz for some crazy effects.

Why did I think you had a Tele thing going on?

It was probably that Tone Bender trick.

What mics did you use?

I used Sennheiser 409s and used a room mic a lot.

You played all the guitars on the album?

I played about 80% of them. Yogi played some as well, and Andy [Andersson] too.

What track is your favorite?

“Cocaine.” I thought the solo on that was pretty hilarious. You can’t get away with making that kind of solo anymore. When I was a kid I read all those magazines and was trying to play like that. It’s been uncool for so long, it was so fun to let it all out. It was kind of, Let’s see how fast you can go, you know (laughs).

Did you learned any new tone secrets working on this record?

I think a lot of the record is kind of plug and play. The amps sound like they sound. There’s not a whole lot of work getting them to sound that way.

The drums – I love that sound. You can’t play a modern kit. You need an old Ludwig snare. Same with the amps. That stuff is still around – you just have to chase it. You can buy a mid-70s 50w Marshall and still get those sounds, whereas you can buy a $2,000 amp and it might not sound as good.

Notable

> Dave Cobb was the producer and co-writer on the self-titled debut album from Black Robot. Dave has worked artists including Shooter Jennings, Waylon Jennings, Chris Cornell, The Oak Ridge Boys, The Strays, Michael Johns,
Jamey Johnson and Nico Vega. Prior to becoming a producer, Dave was the guitarist for the ’90s band The Tender Idols.

> Who’s Yogi? Not a bear. He played guitar in Buckcherry along with Black Robot’s Jonathan “JB” Brightman (bass). Currently Yogi is the touring guitarist for Fuel.

> More on JB and Buckcherry (incidentally, he coined the name Buckcherry after pioneer 6-stringer Chuck Berry) from the Lubbock (TX) Avalanche-Journal: Brightman left Los Angeles-based sleaze-rockers Buckcherry in 2002, just as the band was closing in on mainstream success, for reasons, as Brightman describes them, straight out of Behind The Music. “I wanted to continue what I’d started, but unfortunately for me, when I played with Buckcherry, I just couldn’t tolerate what was going on with the interband politics,” he says. “It wasn’t good for me. In a nutshell, I didn’t have any place to live and was living out of a storage unit, living on a tour bus while a couple of guys were buying homes in the Hollywood hills. [Buckcherry] kind of took what was part of my legacy and kind of redefined what that was all about and I think started making lower-quality music.

“There were three of us that left the band and then they (the two founding members) went and formed a new version of Buckcherry and had this massive hit.” The first time he heard Buckcherry’s Billboard-charting, Paris-Hilton-sex-tape-inspired song? The one with an unprintable title? “I was like, ‘This is a piece of junk,’” he says. “It just sounded like some throwaway track we used to do, but people really locked in on it….”

The Making of Black Robot
> At 2:36 you can see and hear Dave playing the Les Paul. A very cool tone – I gotta try that Tone Bender trick!

Viv in '08 with his "parts" Les Paul (Matt Becker photo).

Vivian Campbell has definitely left his mark on hard rock history, in Dio. For a while he sort of got a bum rap after being fired from Dio and then Whitesnake – even though many great guitar-players have been bounced from both bands.

Then he landed a plum gig in Def Leppard (1992), for which guit-slinger-wanna-bes have also criticized him – not enough hard-rockin’ riffs a la High ‘n’ Dry, as if the band would ever go back there!

He’s had an interesting career: A young guy plucked out of Ireland by an American singer who could’ve gotten any one of several hotshot LA guitarists, who has gone full circle from Les Pauls to shreddy axes (Charvels, Kramers) to Les Pauls, and who has been in one of the biggest rock bands of all time for almost 20 years. Some interesting stuff below.

Influences

His influences, from the now-defunct modernguitars.com:

“Marc Bolan, Rory Gallagher, Brian Robertson, Scott Gorham, Gary Moore, the classic Lizzy guys. I was very much a Gary Moore fan for several years. Michael Schenker was a bit of an influence. He’s a great, great guitar player. But I was devoted more to the Gary Moore vibe. He just has so much passion. I would always cop his licks. And the first time I heard Eddie Van Halen, that was pretty mind-blowing. And Rory Gallagher’s Irish tour record, he was peaking there.”

First Les Paul

Those are mostly Les Paul guys, so no surprise that’s the guitar he wanted, from a Gibson.com interview:

“T. Rex was the first one to turn me on. I remember Marc Bolan and his Les Paul. To me, Bolan was synonymous with a Les Paul, and with long hair! I was also really influenced at that time by Gary Moore and Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham, the guitar players for Thin Lizzy. They were all Les Paul cats. At one stage in my life, I could play the Thin Lizzy Live and Dangerous album note for note.

“So I bought that Les Paul when I was 14 [for more on that see part 1]. The serial number is 729****7. It’s the only serial number of a guitar that I have ever memorized. It just meant so much to me because I had to work like f*cker for many, many, many months to get that guitar.

“I wanted a gold Les Paul Standard, but this being Ireland in the ’70s it wasn’t like you could walk into Guitar Center and get what you wanted. I had to order the guitar and I had to wait for about six months. And every day on the way back from school, I’d stop in to the music shop. I walked in one day and the guy said, ‘Good news and bad news: The good news is we got a Les Paul. The bad news is that it’s not a gold Standard. It’s a wine red Deluxe.’

“So being an impatient teenager, I took it. First thing I did—showing my Rory Gallagher influences, I hate guitars that are shiny and new—I took sandpaper to it and I rubbed all the shine out of the finish. I eventually painted it a matte black. That was the guitar I used on the Holy Diver album and tour with Dio. So that was my first Les Paul.

“To me the Les Paul is synonymous to why I got into music in the first place. I go back to Bolan, and back to my earliest influences. They were all Les Paul guys. It is just such a rock ’n’ roll instrument. You can’t go wrong.”

Being Hand-Picked by Dio and Going to LA

On arriving in LA with that same Les Paul, and thoughts on why he was plucked out of Ireland by Ronnie James Dio:

“What I remember most about coming to LA is that I genuinely thought I was a good guitar player until I landed in Los Angeles and then it was a massive blow to my confidence. GIT [Guitar Institute of Technology] was going on. Everywhere I turned I was meeting other musicians. It wasn’t like in Belfast, where I knew maybe three other guys who played guitar. You come to LA and everybody is either an actor or a musician. And every musician was a guitar player and every one of them had these monster chops!

“Sweep arpeggios, alternate picking, it was mind-blowing to me. It was very disturbing. I couldn’t understand why Ronnie Dio had flown all the way to Europe and picked me as a guitar player, when he had all these technically gifted guitar players on his doorstep in LA. But it turned out that is exactly why, because Ronnie didn’t want that kind of guitar player, because they were everywhere.

“But I really wanted to play like that! And I was really frustrated that I couldn’t. I spent most of the ’80s spinning my wheels as a guitar player, just being really frustrated that I couldn’t play like Paul Gilbert or Yngwie Malmsteen. I really wanted to do that, but it was too late by then. I was entirely self-taught. I learned all my bad habits early on, and spent several years reinforcing them. But now I am very much at peace with the kind of guitar player I am and I accept it. I still have a bit of envy for guitar players who can do that, but you are who you are.”

The Gibson Thing

In an ‘08 issue of Guitar World (a guy I know calls it Guitar Maxim!), Viv had this to say about Gibson: “I’ve been playing Les Pauls, but I hate to give any press to the f**king Gibson f**king guitar company because they’re a pain. Gibson as a guitar company is really on the slide. They’re not really supportive of their artists. But I really love playing the Les Paul.”

I remember reading that and being like, Wow! Not surprised about Gibson, based on the many things I’ve read, but figured it must’ve been pretty bad for Viv to come out with it in an interview and give his permission to print it. Stumbled across the following, which is what Viv’s tech Dave Wolff said about it at the time on the mylespaul.com forum:

“This is Dave Wolff – I’ve been teching for Viv for 16 years now. To make a long story short, Gibson treated Viv great up to ‘94, then it ended. Parts here and there, the loaned guitar here and there (off the shelf stuff, mind you). I get [understand?] all the corporate crap, but Gibson has been dissing Viv for years behind their mama’s skirt. This [Viv's statement] was the truth long coming.

“Viv’s track record speaks for itself – he has done more TV/videos/shows blah blah blah than any other wanna-be boy band fly-by-nighters or one-hit wonders will ever think about, with a Les Paul hanging proudly off him.

“I know because I was there for all of it. I [have] emails after emails asking for guitars and parts, and got blown off. How would you like to show up to a radio show..(VH1 Rock Honors) and look at racks of new Gibsons in these boy bands’ gear and asking the tech how did ya get those, and their reply is, ‘Oh we just called and they showed up.’”

“By no means is [Viv] a multi-millionaire rock star. He has earned everything the hard way. He has kids and a wife, and a very modest lifestyle, and by far he is the nicest, down-to-earth person I’ve ever met. I don’t see Viv ever not playing a LP no matter what Gibson or anyone else says. [That recent] interview has stopped 10 years of at least trying to get stuff from Gibson. I will keep all Viv’s Gibsons up and running with the help of many other friends in all the great companies making parts, so no worries.”

_____

Here’s the second part of an electronic press kit about a pre-Def Lep band for Viv ccalled Riverdogs. Sounds cool.

As a tribute to the recent passing of Ronnie James Dio (RIP RJD), I thought it would be good to take a look back at the gear a young and fiery Vivian Campbell used on the classic early ’80s Dio albums Holy Diver and The Last in Line. Tone-wise not the greatest – also not the worst, compared to some modern metal stuff – but classic metallic hard rock nonetheless. Great tunes, great drumming and some great playing by Vivian, who was 20 at the time.

Let’s start with a quote from Viv’s website: “When I joined Dio in 1982, I had a very direct setup of a Les Paul through an overdrive pedal into a Marshall.” For tone-heads, that’s only marginally helpful. So with further investigation, here’s what he appears to have used:

Guitars

> 1977 Les Paul Deluxe (purchased new in Belfast in ‘77), wine red, sanded down and painted black (by Viv), jumbo frets, brass nut and DiMarzio pickups. The guitar meant so much to him he memorized the serial number, which I won’t put here in case some Far East LP-replicating troll runs across it.

> Re: pickups, it appears Viv never specified exactly what was in the guitar during the sessions. The DiMarzios were black with 12 shiny pole pieces, which likely means they were Dual Sounds (four-wire version of the Super Distortion) – Super Distortions were only available in cream. He then apparently changed to a Dimarzio X2N and then to a Seymour Duncan Full Shred – obviously he was into higher-output pickups.

> A few years on in his Dio stint, Viv got “LA”d and used Charvels with Floyd Rose bridges. Presumably he stuck with higher-output pickups.

L2R: DiMarzio Dual Sound, DiMarzio X2N, Duncan Full Shred.

Signal Chain

> Boss Super Overdrive SD-1 or a Boss GE-7 7-band graphic EQ (either, not both, to boost his signal) into a stock Marschall JCM800 (not sure if 2203/100w or 2204/50w), bought for him by Ronnie. No info on the speakers/cab, but a safe bet is that it was a stock JCM800 cab which I believe likely had Celestion G12T-75s – 75w speakers.

> One user on the Harmony Central forums quoted an old interview in which Viv apparently said his Marshall(s) had Groove Tubes rated at #1, for quickest break-up.

Also

> Passed on from Viv to his guitar tech to a poster on a forum is that at the time Viv also had “fast-as-f*ck fingers, Marlboros and a lot of coffee.” [What, no booze?!]

And there you have it. Another mostly successful tonal investigation.

Dio, Rainbow in the Dark, Rock Palace, 1983
> Here Viv has an X2N in the neck position and an unknown one in the bridge.

Notable

> Later in his career he used Randall solid-state heads (end of Dio), Marshall JCM900s, and for many years now has been using a Marshall JMP1 preamp into power amps/rack setup. On his website he said: “My setup with Def Leppard has remained basically unchanged for the last several years and consists of Marshall JMP preamps, various rackmount effects units, and Marshall and Mesa/Boogie power amps all being united though a Bradshaw switching system. This amount of equipment and the versatility of a midi-programmable switching system is very necessary in a band like Leppard, as our music is multi-layered with many delay-dependent program changes…” Lots of info about his current rig on the web.

> Re: his Dio work, he said: “Although I was unconvinced at the time, upon listening to my early work on the first two Dio albums recently, I can finally appreciate the fire that I played with. I didn’t have a lot of technique compared to most of my peers, but that’s not what music always calls for. Try telling me that at the time, however!” He added: “I didn’t get the chance to record with Whitesnake, with the exception of one guitar solo on “Give Me All Your Love Tonight.” I did have my favorite spots during the live show and one of those was playing the solo on “Is This Love,” which was a particularly melodic solo as recorded by John Sykes.

Dio, The Last in Line, Philadelphia Spectrum, 1984

Fund Drive

Since everyone doesn’t read every post, appending posts with this for a bit. C’mon fellas!

Doing a “keep the lights on and do more cool sh*t” fund drive. If you dig and look forward to WoodyTone, and find the info fun and valuable, please donate. Gracias!

$10 one-time