At the risk of sounding like an uber-fan, King’s X is one of the best American rock bands ever. And although it seems like there’s some sort of record-industry conspiracy to prevent that fact from getting out, it’s out!

Ty is the band’s guitarist and occasional lead singer, and has always had a unique style and tone – hallmarks of every great guitarist.

Many guit-slingers have tried to figure out how Ty got his early tone, and some of them have – see the vids below for a great example. Aside from Ty’s fingers and style, his early tone appears to have two main components: a Lab Series amp – solid-state, but unusually so – and a Fender Elite Strat (and a chorus, Marshall cabs, etc.).

If you’re not familiar with Lab Series amps, they were made by Norlin, which apparently was owned by an Ecuadorian company (can someone check me on that?) that bought a controlling interest in Chicago Musical Instruments, which owned Gibson. Eventually, Norlin picked up Moog, and the Lab Series amps were a solid-state creation of both Moog and Gibson – not! That seems to be conventional wisdom, but it was all Moog, according to this authoritative site: “Norlin used Moog’s resources to release Lab Series in a response to Gibson seizing its amplifier production. Gibson did handle the distribution of these amplifiers, though.”

It makes makes sense too – what did Gibson know about those kinds of amps?

To this day, Lab Series amps – production of which began in 1977 and appears to have stopped in the early ’80s – are revered for great tone and tube-like response by players like BB King (he still plays through one every night), Joe Bonamassa (he snaps them up whenever he finds them) and Ty, who no longer plays through one live, but has a custom module for his current Egnater rig that was designed to sound like a Lab Series preamp.

Back in the late 80s/early 90s, Ty apparently went straight out from his Lab Series L5 preamp to a power amp. In the May 1996 issue of Guitar Player, according to this excellent Ty gear page, “Ty said he used the ‘LO’ input on the second channel and did not use the compressor or the bright switch. Ty basically left the distortion of the L5 on at all times, and to have a clean sound he would roll back the volume knob on his guitar.”

[More on Lab Series amps coming in a future post!]

Here's an L5 (click to see it bigger).

Never heard of an Elite Strat? Me neither, so I looked into it. Apparently it was an ’80s, CBS-era (CBS owned Fender at the time) Strat model designed as an “improvement” on the basic Strat design. It had a ‘Freeflyte’ trem, which apparently wasn’t liked a whole lot; active pickups (to eliminate hum); an onboard preamp; and instead of a five-position pickup switch had three buttons that allowed the pickups to be used in any combination.

An example of an Elite Strat and Ty with his signature Zion (note the pickup 'buttons').

Don’t know how many people liked that preamp + pickup flexibility, but Ty sure did. He liked it so much that his first signature guitar, made by Zion, had the same electronics.

One Fan’s Quest for Ty’s Tone (Part 1)

One Fan’s Quest for Ty’s Tone (Part 2)

- End of part 1 (of 2) -

Doyle Bramhall II is one of the best blues guitarists walking around planet Earth. He can play old-school blues and newer-school stuff a la SRV, but to my ears he also does the amazing, which is take this loose, cool, Strat-inflected, semi-psychedelic style and inject it with an original blues-rock, vocal-delivery thing, much like — Hendrix. Yes, Hendrix, and I don’t say that lightly.

So far, the Hendrix analogies I’ve read have involved African-American guitarists — notably the very talented Eric Gales (he’s a lefty too, as is Doyle) — and singers, notably Doug Pinnick of King’s X (wait — he’s a lefty too). They have voices that are more similar to Hendrix, but to me, Doyle has that “thing” — that whatever it is you can’t exactly put your finger on, can’t exactly put into words unique “thing” Hendrix had.

It might not hit you at first. It didn’t for me. But just keep listening. If you’re into that style of music, or good music, you probably will feel compelled to.

Eric Clapton, Roger Waters and a bunch of other big names in the biz must agree because they’ve hired Doyle as an axe-slinger/singer.

Doyle is the son of Doyle Bramhall. Never heard of DB1? If not, you still might have heard him. Here’s the first part of the DBII bio off his website: “Doyle Bramhall II was raised in a home filled with the blues and rock and roll sounds that are indigenous to his birthplace: Austin, Texas. His father, Doyle Bramhall Sr., was the drummer for blues legend Lightning Hopkins and a regular collaborator with Jimmie and Stevie Ray Vaughan. When Doyle was 16 years old, he toured as second guitarist with Jimmy Vaughan’s band, The Fabulous Thunderbirds.”

Obviously a pretty good early education. I’ll leave the rest of the Doyle-discovery voyage up to you, but here’s his signal chain followed by some required listening (good amount of stuff on YouTube):

Signal Chain — Woody!

> ’60s left-handed Fender Strat strung upside down, lots of pedals (Octavia, fuzz, wah, Univibe, Line 6 delay, others), ’60s Marshall Super Bass. Here he talks about his pedal board, and Clapton’s reaction to it (starts at 4:00):

Other Doyle Stuff

> Doyle Bramhall II & Smokestack, Welcome (CD)

> First single off that CD was Green Light Girl

> Arc Angels, with Charlie Sexton and Double Trouble, partial vid of Living in a Dream, done many moons ago although I believe they still play together.

More music is available on Doyle’s website, here. Good variety. Also heard he does well on the 2007 Crossroads Festival DVD, but I haven’t watched it.

Gales and Pinnick

Eric Gales doing Little Wing

King’s X doing Manic Depression

King’s X opened and they were awesome as usual. What a great, musical, unpretentious, unique band — if that’s enough adjectives for you. They played for an hour, a few new tunes, the rest “old.” I have not heard the new XV CD yet but hear it’s good — and the new tunes they played were good.

If you’re unfamiliar with the venue, Irving Plaza is a small place. The show was sold out and I’d be surprised if even 1,000 people were there. I mention this because the best part of the King’s X set was, for me, Doug singing Music Over My Head with the crowd, nobody in the band playing. It was like being part of gospel music, very organic. Doug was off the mic, but you could clearly hear him. he also took out his in-ear monitors to hear the crowd. Very cool.

It also really struck me this time (I’ve seen them several times before) how Doug has that rock star presence and the other guys, whom I like and are good, sort of are in the background by comparison. Don’t know if it matters, but I felt it and so did my buddy.

Guitar gear-wise, Ty had some kind of two-humbucker Tele-shaped guitar with a Les Paul-style hardtail plugged into Egnater amps. As usual, he had a heavily processed signal. He mostly played chords — not much riffing or lead work. But when he did fire a few shots, they were head-turners. More, Ty, more!

Extreme was great, and in saying that bear in mind I have high standards — meaning ’80s standards! They were tight as hell — vocals, harmony vocals, new drummer is better than the old one to my ears, and Nuno hasn’t lost a thing. In fact he might be even better.

It was great to see a guitarist who is so rhythmically oriented and who has EVH-of-old-like chops. One time during a nutty run Nuno faked yawning, just having fun. It was amazing to see again how tough some of the Extreme stuff is to play — last time I saw them was in the ’90s.

And how about playing that stuff and singing flawless backing vocals?! Holy crap!

It was almost a relief to see that getting older doesn’t mean you have to lose or tone down your chops. Thanks Nuno!

Gary sang great (even though he was sick, apparently), Kevin Figueiredo is a good drummer and in a year of unsung bassists (Michael Anthony, anyone?) Pat Badger deserves a big shout for being a hell of a musician. He plays some of the same runs as Nuno does and is a damn good singer too.

The band played about five songs off the new CD, which I bought there and have now listened to about four times. It’s good, and somewhat diverse, which has been a calling card for Extreme. “Saudades de Rock” has funk-rock, ballads (couple piano or acoustic guitar tunes) and even a country quick-pickin’ tune.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of Saudades — bear in mind that Nuno is of Portuguese heritage: “Saudade (singular) or saudades (plural) (pronounced [sawˈdade] in Galician, pronounced [sawˈdadɨ] in European Portuguese) is a Galician and Portuguese word for a feeling of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.”

At the show, Nuno played only his N4 through what I take it are his new signature Randall amps, not yet out on the market. The sound was very good, old-school, very raw — Plexi-like instead of JCM 800-like. One could, and would, say: Woody! Couldn’t see his effects, but his favorite was a flanger. Heard what sounded like an MXR Blue Box-type effect a time or two.

If Nuno isn’t on the cover of one of the guitar mags soon, it will be a crying shame. I’ve read stories about Satch and Slash and Zakk being the “last of the guitar heroes.” Nuno better be on that list too.

Hear clips from the new disc by going to the bands’ official site, http://www.kingsxrocks.com, and clicking on Audio.

Now, whither the wood? Ty Tabor’s tone hasn’t exactly caused tonewoody’s over the years, even though he is a heck of a player. But Doug Pinnick, bass and vox — that’s a-nuther storee.

Pinnick’s pipes are legendary, as is his woody bass tone. His tone is “there” — round and full, not muddy at all, big but not overpowering. It fits perfectly in the three-piece, and probably would sound great in other bands too, assuming someone could cop it. But as with all great tone, it’s tough!

Here’s what he uses, courtesy of bassplayer.com. Note that he tunes down to C, but still gets that tight sound, I guess through EQ and the 10-inch speakers:

Basses: Two custom Yamaha 4-strings (tuned CGCF) with Seymour Duncan pickups; custom Yamaha 12-string with EMG pickups; vintage Fender Precision with Seymour Duncan pickups; medium-gauge DR strings.
Rig: Ampeg SVP-BSP preamp, Ampeg SVT-4PRO and Ashdown ABM 900 EVO II heads, Ampeg 8×10 cabinet.
Effects: Behringer EQ700 equalizer pedals.

Have to mention King’s X drummer Jerry Gaskill. Very good. I’ve always liked drummers that play with the guitars (e.g., Gaskill, Alex Van Halen) instead of just locking in with the bass. The music and beats are much more interesting that way.