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

Warren with his black Frenchie. Note the neck pickup.

Part 2 (Here’s Part 1)

Warren DeMartini is yet another example of the fact that much of someone’s tone is in the hands. I say that because Warren played an alder/maple/maple super strat with a Floyd Rose bridge and Seymour Duncan JB humbucker through a 100w Marshall head into Marshall cabs. A typical setup for the LA (or anywhere) ’80s.

Yet Warren didn’t sound like anyone else – except for stealing a few things from George Lynch! – and still doesn’t. Warren’s precise touch and fluid, melodic style distinguish him from anyone else. So a lot of it is in the hands – but not all, which is why I asked him to run down his gear. We talked about what gear he used on the new Ratt Infestation album, a little bit about his live gear and a few details about his Invasion-era gear. Details! Here we go:

WoodyTone: What guitars did you use on Infestation?

I had two Charvels, the black and [the] white ones with the French writing. [The writing] says “Too fast to live, too young to die” – it’s from a James Dean tribute I thought was cool. [Btw, even though the fans call these guitars "Frenchie, he doesn't!] I also had a Performance Guitar variation of a strat or [Jackson] Soloist made out of koa, and a Gretsch Nashville.

I used the Gretsch on a couple overdubs for textural stuff, so it was mostly the Charvels and the Performance guitar.

[Warren has been working with Performance Guitar in Hollywood for a long time. The company makes high-end, expensive replicas of some of Warren's guitars.]

Do all the guitars have your signature Duncan pickup?

The Charvels have that pickup with a Seymour Duncan Quarter-Pounder in the neck [everyone calls it that, but Duncan calls it a Quarter Pound]. The koa has JB [no neck pickup].

What’s the difference between your signature pickup and the JB?

They’re pretty similar except that I think the JB is around 17 ohms and mine is 18.5 ohms. I tried about 6 or 8 [prototypes]. I took the original crossed swords Charvel I recorded Invasion with to the Seymour Duncan factory in Santa Barbara. I spent an afternoon with Seymour and Maricela. We’d sink something in, tune up and try it. Four or five people were listening – it was kind of a consensus thing, and we always kept coming back to that one [pickup].

I’m getting into the subtleties of that stuff more and more, but I don’t know everything there is to know about wire and all that stuff. To me, if it sounds good, it is good.

[A few items:

> Duncan lists the JB at 16.4 ohms DC resistance and the WD signature at 17.6 ohms – but these measures can vary from pickup to pickup. DC resistance is often assumed to be an indicator of pickup output, but pickup manufacturers always stress that DCR doesn't tell the whole story. What's worth noting the most above is that Warren says his pickups are around 18.5!

> The JB has an alnico 5 (A5 or AV) magnet while the WD has an A2 (or AII). The A2 will sound more middy and the A5 will have more top and bottom.

> Maricela Juarez is the semi-famous Duncan custom shop pickup expert often better known by her initials, MJ.

> Warren doesn't use stock Floyd Roses. He upgrades the blocks and possibly other parts presumably to get a warmer tone, the main reason Floyds are altered.]

What picks and strings are you using now?

For strings I’ve been using Rotosound 10s, the nickel Roto Yellows, 10 to 46. For picks I use nylon 73 mm Dunlops.

So no more steel picks?

I don’t use steel picks anymore. It made sense at the time, but after a while it sort of solved one thing I was going after [quick attack] but created other problems. They’d actually shave the winds off the E, A and especially D strings so by the sixth or seventh song I’d have half a string. That doesn’t sound too good (laughs).

[A reader wanted to know if using the steel picks ever caused Warren any physical issues like tendinitis. He said no.]

You said you used Diezel V4 and Soldano SLO 100 heads on the new album, both through Diezel cabs. Why not the Marshall cabs you’ve always used?

I didn’t get to compare the Diezel cabs with a Marshall, which I’ve been using since high school, or junior high. So I can’t answer that thoroughly. I just thought [the Diezel cabs] sounded very good. It wasn’t something we had to mess with too much. I’d use them again, but I haven’t been able to compare them with Marshall 4×12s which I know best.

Can you share any amp settings?

The room is such a big player in the overall sound that [settings change] every day. The same system will sound completely different from one room to another. I have sort of noticed that I tend to set everything sort of in the middle, then adjust it from there depending on the room.

What amps do you use in your live rig?

Most of the time I use one head and have the other as a backup. I used Diezels when we toured in 2007, last year it was Soldanos, this year who knows. I usually Marshall cabs live [with 25w greenback Celestions].

Invasion-Era Gear Questions

Rumor is you had a grail [Marshall] plexi that you used to keep fans on in the studio because the plate voltage was so high. It supposedly blew every few hours. Is that true?

It is true. It’s a mid/late ’70s 100-watt. I used that amp on Invasion – I bought it just after the Out of the Cellar tour and before the Invasion of Your Privacy album. I used that plexi head with another, and on most of Dancing Undercover. Jose [Jose Arrendondo, the same Jose who may have worked on EVH's pre-VH1 gear] told me that something had happened inside one of the trannies – a seal had worn away, causing it to arc, so every third time we turned it on it would blow something up. He was able to inject it with something to solve that problem. It’s [still] working fine. The last thing I used that amp on was on Detonator, “Nobody Rides for Free.”

What guitar did you use on Invasion?

The crossed swords with a [Duncan] JB. Actually, for that record I might’ve had a Dan Armstrong pickup in the sword. I never wrote that stuff down back then, but now I’m actually curious to know. I had it in that guitar for a while. It was a different-looking pickup – completely flat. It didn’t have the [bobbins]. Thanks for reminding me – I’ll have to look that up somehow.

A fan wanted to know about your side-to-side vibrato, where you picked that up. Was it from George Lynch?

It was a George Lynch thing. I think he saw Jeff Beck do it, and he started doing it and it just sounded so cool I started doing it. It’s exactly like you would do with a slide, except there’s no slide. [George said in one interview that he started doing that to try to mimic a sound Hendrix made.]

Did you really use a Fender Super Champ to record the solo tones on Out of the Cellar?

Yes, a Fender Super Champ, and I disconnected the speaker and plugged it into an EV speaker that was loaded in an Orange cab. I had an orange cab with four 200-watt EV speakers – the thing weighed about a million pounds. We went directly into one of those speakers and mic’d that up.

Your lead playing seemed to shift after Out of the Cellar, from shreddy to more bluesy. What inspired the change?

I don’t know. I guess I hear a definite departure from Out of the Cellar, but it’s all connected. You know, you sort of grow with experience and the more you do it, and it kind of gets refined. When I listen back to stuff, I think I hear my playing changing but it’s connected at the same time.

Notable

> The May 2010 issue of Guitar World runs down Warren’s 2009 live rig. It states that he sometimes uses a modified Boss SD-1 overdrive pedal live, as well as an MXR Carbon Copy analog delay, but prefers not to use either.

> I’ll be interviewing Ratt’s other guitar-slinger soon, Carlos Cavazo. So if you have any questions for him – about gear, Ratt or even Quiet Riot – send them to me here.

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…

After two albums with Ozzy, Jake took a break – then came back with Badlands, a GREAT blues-rock band fronted by NJ’s own Ray Gillen (yes, I saw them in Jersey!). Ray’s death played a role in the breakup of the band, which released two albums (Bandlands and Voodoo Highway) before they broke up, and one after (Dusk). All three are great.

About the title of this post: Do you think Jake’s tone is woody? Though I still admire him as a player, I never have dug his tone. Just wasn’t “wide” enough (in an early EVH or Back in Black-era Angus way) nor distinctive enough for me personally, though his style definitely was distinctive.

I looked into his Badlands-era gear, and though there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly solid for the first album (point me to it if you have a reference), here’s what he told Guitar World magazine in 1991 about recording Voodoo Highway:

> Guitar – His white “Charvel,” actually a repainted mid-’70s Fender Strat (not sure if alder or ash) with a maple neck/rosewood board, and a Seymour Duncan Allan Holdsworth prototype pickup in the bridge (nearly identical to the Duncan JB) and two DiMarzio SDS-1 single coils.

> Effects – “I run into a Boss Overdrive [OD-1], but the drive is always on zero because I don’t use it for the distortion. I use it for the bass cut – it tightens up the bottom end.” But he also said, “The overdrive…in the studio, it varied between 12 o’clock and 8 o’clock, depending on how much distortion I wanted.”

> Amps – “I used three different Marshalls on the album. I had two 100 watts – a ‘69 or a ‘70 with the metal face, which got a grungier sound, and a ‘68 plexi-face one which is a little smoother-sounding. I also used an old 45-watt with the plexiglass logo, which is like a combination of the other two: dirty but smooth.”

> Cabs – 4×12 Marshall cabs with Electro-Voice EVM-12L speakers. “I like my EV speakers because they’re nice and clean when I play soft, but they get woofy when I turn it up. So whenever I play loud I hit the Boss and it cuts out some of the real low end and tightens it up.” [These are the same speakers Joe Bonamassa uses.]

To me, the combination of the Holdsworth/JB – a very high-output pickup – and the Boss OD-1 knocks his tone down a few pegs on the woody scale. Too compressed, too much bzzzzzzzzzzzzz in there. But my opinion hardly counts: Jake was awesome.

Is he still awesome? Lots of rumors, possibly more than rumors, on the ‘net about drug use. All I can say to that is, I sure hope not.

Here’s some cool footage of Jake and the band.

High Wire, rehearsal
> Not the greatest vid quality, but you can hear Jake loud and clear.
> Search for “Badlands rehearsal” on YouTube for many more.

Devil’s Stomp, studio?
> Short clip, but great close-up stuff.
> Can you tell what pedals Jake is using? Let me know!

Devil’s Stomp, live

Jake Jamming in the Studio

Here's a shot of it (SeymourDuncan.com photo).

In September we posted that a new Slash Les Paul was in the works, along with new signature pickups. Well, with the winter NAMM show just weeks away, details about lots of products are beginning to trickle out, including the new Slash pickups. Here’s what we know.

From the Seymour Duncan website:

“Though he has dozens of amazing guitars, since 1986 Slash has used pretty much one very special Les Paul for all recording [more on this below]. The Alnico II Pro Slash was designed to give Slash’s other Les Paul guitars – what he calls his “live guitars” – the exact tone of this legendary instrument.

“Like the standard APH-1 Alnico II Pro [a Duncan pickup, long Slash's favorite], this pickup uses an Alnico 2 magnet [warm, fewer highs and lows than an Alnico 5 mag]. However, the Slash model is wound with just enough boosted output to push a stock Les Paul toward the sweet sustain and rude crunch that characterizes Slash’s sound as heard on hundreds of tracks. In addition, it comes with some of the same appointments found on the Seymour Duncan pickups in Slash’s ‘86 recording axe, including single-conductor cable, long-legged bottom plate and wooden spacer. For the true fan, or the player who wants to capture Slash’s recorded tone, this pickup is a critical part of the tone chain. This is same pickup found in the newest Gibson Slash model Les Paul.”

So it sounds like a slightly boosted Alnico II Pro.

Here’s what Evan Skopp, who handles marketing for Duncan, said in a thread on the Duncan forum:

“Here’s the deal with the new Slash pickup. Virtually all the recordings you’ve heard Slash play on since 1986 were made with one guitar. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s not a Max: it’s a Derrig ,and it has stock Alnico II Pro pickups [Max and Derrig are two famous Les Paul clone builders]. The reason he uses that guitar, as opposed to any of his dozens of other Les Pauls, is because the Derrig just has a livelier, punchier sound. When he plays live, he’s less critical, but for recording, it’s almost always the Derrig.

“The new Slash pickup lets his other Les Pauls, what he calls his ‘live guitars,’ sound like the Derrig. That’s it. More details will be forthcoming shortly. But for now, we have to get the finishing touches on our NAMM presentation together.”

Duncan forum user “J Moose” also added these points:

> “The pickups in the Appetite guitar (the infamous [Derrig] copy) were stock off-the-shelf Alnico II [Pros]…. Nothing special, same ones that everyone else buys are the ones he’s been using for all these years. ”

> “The new pickup came about because the Appetite guitar sounded better than anything that Gibson has sent him….”

> “It’s said to have a hair more ‘body’ and bite.”

That’s all we know so far. Stay tuned!

Robbin back in the day....

Even though it’s the Year of the Tiger, here’s another Ratt post – this time on Robbin Crosby, who died some years ago of drug addiction. This info, from the April 1987 Guitar Player, is not comprehensive gear-wise but sheds some light on his sound and on what he and Warren used on Dancing Undercover.

All quotes are Robbin’s.

Amps

“First we tried plugging everything into everything, and running it through this, that and the other. On Dancing Undercover we went through about 20 Marshall heads and as many old bottoms as we had. We tried vintage Celestions, the 30-watts, and Electro-Voices.

“Finally we came up with three or four good amps and really only one cabinet – an old, beat-up, funky Marshall with 25-watt Celestions. It just has that twang to it, that classic Marshall sound.

“So rather than the high-tech stuff, we both plug straight into a good little Marshall amp for most of the album. We didn’t over-process, over-equalize or do anything to it.”

Guitars

“I own a lot of guitars, but only a few that are of any value. My ‘58 Gibson Flying V is my pride and joy. I got that last year.”

For recording “I use the same guitar that I use live. In the past and on this record, it’s always been that Jackson [Firebird shape]. I used to prefer my red Flying V-shaped one, but I switched over to the Firebird-style body. For some reason, it just sounds a whole lot better. [Many folks have noted that different guitar body shapes have different tonal characteristics.]

“I use Seymour Duncan’s Allan Holdsworth pickup [described on the Duncan forum as "similar to an Alnico 2 JB model with two rows of screws," but they don't make it anymore. It's got a double row of screws in it. If I can't get those, I use a regular Jeff Beck model.

"In the past I leaned towards wide necks, just for the spread of the strings [bear in mind that Robbin was 6' 6" tall]. But my new guitars have a little more standard neck size, and I think that I play them better.

“I don’t mind if a neck is a little bit flat, as long as it’s wide enough. I don’t like my action too low, and I only use Floyd Rose whammies. The Kahler is too flimsy for me. I have the Floyds butted down so they can’t go up. I rest my hand on the bridge sometimes, so I can’t really have it floating.”

Notable

> Influences: In the GP interview, Robin twice mentioned trying to sound like Billy Gibbons style-wise. He also noted that two shred guitarists in one band was not a good idea, in his opinion.

> Writing: “Stephen [Pearcy, singer] is a pretty good guitarist, so he comes up with some of the initial riffs. Warren and myself come up with them too. Usually either Stephen or myself will come up with the initial riff on guitar….”

I’ve always been curious about that particular issue, so as a fan of Warren’s playing, I picked up a copy of that issue (April 1987) on eBay. The interview is…eh…but has some decent info. Following are the tone parts. (It looks like Warren and Robbin Crosby were first interviewed by Guitar Player for the August 1984 issue, after Out of the Cellar but before Invasion of Your Privacy, which of course had “Lay it Down.”)

While reading, bear in mind that Warren was a big fan of George Lynch. And if you listen to Warren’s Ratt solos with that in mind, you can hear some George licks – and even some George tone.

All quotes below are Warren’s. Some info is also taken from the web, notably warrendemartini.net.

Amps

“…the best and only way for me is to just plug the guitar straight into the amp. I try to get as few things as possible hanging me up between the guitar and amplifier, instead of having a lot of effects going while I’m recording.

“I do work with the sound a lot, mainly with the EQ settings on the Marshall amps – the presence, bass, mid and treble. I bought quite a few Marshalls a couple of years ago, and of those I found three or four real nice ones that always worked pretty well in the studio.”

“Aside from the bass, I like to set everything anywhere from 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock. The bass is off, and presence is always pretty hot because that’s the least active EQ on a Marshall. The treble is anywhere from 0 to 10. I always keep the volume and master volume as loud as they will go without making it muddy.”

Talking about the Dancing Undercover album, the most recent Ratt release at the time of the GP interview: “I had been playing most of the tracks with two Marshall heads together. One was a newer 100-watt that has the larger letters, plastic switches and a master volume. I hooked this up with an older ’60s head that doesn’t have the same cosmetic look that most of them do. On the plate where the knobs [are], it’s got a plastic, plexiglass feel instead of a brushed-metal feel.

“It’s not very loud; it’s a 100-watt, but volume-wise it sounds more like a 50…. But it’s got a lot of warmth to it. So one of [the amps] was really loud, and the other was a little tonier.

“But then something happened to where this setup wasn’t working. I didn’t want to take a break and lose the moment I was in, so I just took everything apart, plugged straight into one head and one or two cabinets, and just finished everything out that way.”

Guitars

His guitars are alder-bodied with a maple neck and fingerboard, Floyd Rose trem and a Seymour Duncan JB pickup (a higher-output pickup originally made for Jeff Beck). The alder through the Marshall gives his sound that characteristic upper-mid honkiness.

The Charvel DeMartini signature guitars that came out recently have the same woods (the fingerboard is a 12-16″ compound radius with jumbo frets) with a custom Duncan pickup. Presumably that pickup is the Duncan Custom Shop DeMartini pickup, which is a lot like the JB, and is even more like George Lynch’s Super V pickup (more on all that in this prior post).

> You can also get high-quality (and super high-dollar) Warren replica guitars from Performance Guitars, the folks who built several of Warren’s guitars.

Favorite Setup

“Just the guitar with a clear, kind of high output active [the JB is not active like an EMG] pickup that has a lot of harmonics in it. That, a cord, about 20 feet, and a Marshall amp and one or two cabinets. My favorite speakers are 25-watt Celestions, the ones they haven’t made for a long time. My all-time favorite pickup is Seymour Duncan’s Jeff Beck model.”

Stage Rig

“My new Sony wireless…goes into the receiver, and that goes to a Marshall 100-watt amplifier. The output of that amp’s preamp section goes into a control board for the effects I’m using, which are a Lexicon PCM-41 delay, a PCM-42 delay, and the Yamaha SPX90 [multi-effects unit].

“From there it goes out to two Mesa/Boogie power amps and then two 30-watt Celestion cabinets. The volume is controlled at the Mesa.”
_____

Round and Round, 1984!

Here's the Custom Shop version (Gibson.com photo).

You may be aware that Gibson recently announced two new signature Angus Young Gibson SGs. One is a custom shop model – the Angus Young SG Standard – and the other is a Gibson production model that has the same name minus the Standard. We can learn about what kind of tone Angus is looking for by dissecting the custom shop model because that’s the one Angus spec’d out. So here we go.

Woods: Maple Neck

Naturally the body is mahogany – I’m assuming better-quality mahogany than used in regular Gibson guitars.

Gibson had this to say about the body wood: “Mahogany is a medium-dense wood with excellent resonance and superior sustain, and it offers a rich, round, warm tone, but with plenty of high-end sheen and good midrange presence. The mahogany of the Angus Young SG also lends a percussive snap and some added clarity to the tone of the guitar.”

Not sure about that last part, but real mahogany will have warm tone and good lower-mids. Re: “real mahogany,” manufacturers apply the terms mahogany, ash and others to woods that are not really those woods – a rant for another time, and one that probably doesn’t apply to this high-end guitar.

The SG Standard has an ebony fretboard (standard Gibson 12-inch radius). Ebony is harder than rosewood but not as hard as maple, meaning tonally it’s brighter and more articulate than rosewood but not as bright nor articulate as maple. In my experience it’s also faster (meaning your fingers move faster on it) than both rosewood and maple. It’s my favorite fingerboard wood.

Ebony is expensive now and not on as many guitars as it used to be. I should also mention that ebony is the fingerboard wood on the Les Paul Custom.

Worth noting is that this SG has a maple neck (quarter-sawn), not mahogany. Maple means a brighter sound – Gibson says, “outstanding string clarity and definition from the maple” – and a more solid structure. Maple also means less neck movement in climate changes, something Angus (or his tech) no doubt appreciates.

Gibson adds that maple “has the strength required for a thin carve as applied to this model.” Re: the neck profile: “The neck on the Angus Young SG is carved to Angus’ own requirements and models the super-slim yet extremely comfortable profile of his own original ’68 SG Standard” upon which this guitar was based – and which had to have a mahogany neck.

So Gibson implies that the maple is needed for such a thin neck. But the other signature Angus SG has the same neck profile and is mahogany. Go figure.

This all appears to mean that for whatever reason(s), Angus wanted a maple neck.

New ‘Signature’ Pickup

Last month I posted about how Seymour Duncan himself was helping Angus and his tech with a new pickup based on the Billy Gibbons-inspired Pearly Gates pickup. Looks like that’s exactly what happened since the new signature SG Standard has exactly those pickups, one of which has been customized. Here’s what Gibson says about them:

“The Angus Young SG is equipped with a pair of Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickups, which include a standard [Pearly Gates] in the neck position and a bridge-position [pickup] that has been modified for higher output.” The pickups “provide an authentic vintage-humbucker tone that Angus Young seeks in his guitars.”

Notably, the magnets in Pearly Gates pickups are Alnico 2s (aka, Alnico IIs). The Gibson Angus Young Signature pickup, which is in the bridge position of the other new Angus Young SG, uses an Alnico 5 (or V) magnet.

Alnico 5 magnets typically allow more highs and lows (tighter lows) through and to my ears have a fast attack. Alnico 2 mags will emphasize the midrange, and will have a softer attack.

The new Angus signature pickup is wax-potted to reduce feedback. Wax-potting supposedly reduces some of the perceived “air” around notes, but I’ll take no feedback over that anytime.

Seymour Duncan has said previously that it would not be selling the overwound Pearly Gates as a signature pickup (Seymour Duncan says the Pearly Gates is already “slightly-hotter-than-vintage”). Maybe Gibson will. Either way, I’m sure you can order one from the Seymour Duncan custom shop.

Other Items of Interest

Those are the most notable takeaways from Angus’ new axe: maple neck/ebony fingerboard, and new signature pickups. But here are a few more items of interest:

> Bone nut, 1.555″ wide (super-slim!).

> Chrome 12:1 Schaller tuners.

> Nickel-plated zinc ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge.

> Tailpiece is chrome-plated Zamak, or Zamac. Wikipedia says Zamac is “a family of alloys with a base metal of zinc and alloying elements of aluminum, magnesium and copper.”

> Average weight of the guitar is 5.65 pounds – light!

> Color = custom-designed “Angus Cherry.” Finish is a “pre-worn” nitro.

> Volume controls use CTS pots (no value given), tone controls are bypassed “as is the case with Angus’ original.”

> Gibson lists nothing about fret size or fret material – odd for such an expensive guitar.

> And of course the pearl Ace Frehley Les Paul-like lightning-bolt fret inlays (apparently Angus had them first).

The MSRP is $9,409!

The Other New Angus SG

Listed at almost $6,000 less, the other new Angus SG also is mahogany-bodied, but has a mahogany neck with the same super-slim profile. It also has an ebony fingerboard.

Other differences from the custom shop model:

> Corian nut, and plastic fingerboard inlays.

> Gibson Angus Young humbucker (see below) in the bridge, Gibson 57 Classic pickup in the neck.

> Tone controls are hooked up – 500K non-linear tone pots with a .0223mf capacitor “for a smooth and gradual roll-off of the pickup’s treble content.”

> Tune-o-matic bridge is chrome over zinc.

> Kluson tuners.

> Color = gloss black (aka ebony).

Things that may or may not be different (not mentioned in custom shop model specs):

> Jumbo frets.

> Linear 300K volume pots.

Here's the non-custom-shop model (Gibson.com photo).

Notable: Angus’ ‘Old’ Signature Pickup

Info from the Gibson website:

> Enamel-coated wire (43-gauge), Alnico V magnet, matched coils, nickel cover, wax-potted twice.

> “Somewhat akin to the [Gibson] 498T ‘Hot Alnico’” with “slightly overwound coils.”

Notable: Angus’ Other Gear

By now it’s a well-known fact that Angus uses old Marshalls and, occasionally, Wizard amps which are Marshall-like boutique amps. Here’s a brief overview from a Gibson.com article:

Angus “has run the gamut of [Marshall] models through the course of his career, from the JTM45 with which a lot of his recorded work is associated, to JTM50s and JMP50s, to the multiple-stacks of big custom JMP100s that are often used live. And…he always sounds like Angus Young.

“Angus has gigged and recorded mostly through Celestion speakers over the years, preferring G12H-30s for a time, and using Vintage 30s in more recent years, with a cab of G12M greenbacks thrown in now and then for good measure. Lately, however, in the live arena he often runs through an isolation cab under the stage, which is miked and fed into the massive house PA and monitor systems.

“Angus attacks his .010-.048 gauge strings with an extra heavy pick, and augments his technique with a lot of hammer-ons and -offs from a strong left hand.”

I thought he used heavier strings, as I believe Malcolm does.

Notable

> Angus’ number-one SG is an original 1968 Standard model that originally had a Lyre vibrato tailpiece that was removed by Angus and replaced with a fixed tailpiece.

> Re: AC/DC, don’t forget you are also hearing a lot of Malcolm, whose tone is huge, great and hugely underrepresented in discussions about AC/DC tone.

Seymour holding one of Angus' SGs (seymourduncan.com photo).

If you follow all things Seymour Duncan, you will have seen a couple weeks ago that the company announced that Seymour himself has been working on Angus Young’s guitars. Here’s what was said:

“We’ve been working behind the scenes with Angus Young for the past year. His tech, Takumi Suetsugu, contacted Seymour Duncan about dialing in the sound of Angus’ road guitars. Takumi had already been to a few pickup builders before he came to us.

“He worked with Seymour, Evan [Skopp] and Scott Miller, our technical lead, to come up a variation on Pearly Gates that really worked great in Angus’ performance guitars.

“Once AC/DC’s world tour ended, Takumi came up to the factory with Angus’ ‘Number One’ road guitar along one of the other road guitars in his arsenal. The problem with Number One is that it was recently caught in a torrential downpour at an outdoor concert and it wasn’t working right. Furthermore, the other road guitars didn’t sound as good as Number One.

“Our challenge was two-fold: get Number One up and running, and make the other road guitars sound as good as Number One. The first thing [Seymour] did was a complete set of measurements. Then [Seymour] started listening to pickups and winding special humbuckers.

“Meanwhile, [they] were doing repairs to Number One to restore it after the moisture damage. That’s it for now….”

The PG and Gibson Angus Pickups

The Pearly Gates pickup referred to above is a standard (non-Custom Shop) Duncan pickup made to Billy Gibbons’ specs and named after his famous Les Paul. Here’s what Duncan says about this pickup:

“Warm, slightly-hotter-than-vintage humbucker. Great for blues, classic rock, southern rock…. Originally designed as a recreation of the pickups in the ‘59 Les Paul Standard that defined the raw, rebellious sound of Texas blues-rock. The Pearly Gates is sweet, but slightly rude, with great sustain and a bright top end that make harmonics jump out of the guitar.” It also notes that the pickup is “for brighter-toned instruments.”

The Pearly Gates uses an Alnico II magnet (usually perceived as “warmer” than an Alnico V magnet), and its DC Resistance (bridge position) is 8.35K, which is right around “vintage” (PAF) level.

You may recall that Gibson makes a signature Angus Young SG which has an Angus Young Special Pickup in the bridge and a Gibson ‘57 Classic. Here’s all the info Gibson released about the signature pickup:

“With enamel-coated wire, special Alnico V magnet and matched coils, the Gibson Angus Young Signature humbucker provides a one-two combination of vintage-style punch and ripping tone that will sear through almost anything. Gibson wax-potted the Angus Young Humbucker twice to eliminate unwanted microphonics.”

No idea what a “special” magnet means.

In any case, “vintage” and “hot” appear to describe both pickups, with the biggest apparent difference being the magnet types – though I’m sure there are other differences.

Close-up of Angus' main SG (seymourduncan.com photo).

I’m not sure whether Angus has been using his signature Gibson pickups on his stage guitars, but Duncan’s Skopp had this to say about them: “The pickups Angus has been using in his touring guitars are very similar to the Pearly Gates.”

So there you have it.

Which Pickup Can You Get?

It looks like from Gibson’s website that it no longer sells the Angus signature pickup (though you can get one on sale at Musician’s Friend) – which may mean that it’s out of production.

Skopp said that Duncan won’t be producing a signature Angus pickup (which the folks on the Duncan forum dubbed the ‘Hells Bells’), BUT I’ll bet you a dollar that if you call the Seymour Duncan Custom Shop and ask them to build you a repro of the pickup Seymour wound for Angus, they’ll do it. They’re nice folks that way!

Notable

Skopp also said this about what Duncan is doing with Angus’ guitars

1) The #1 Black guitar squeals and had some other problems. We’re fixing that.

2) We’re doing a duplicate bridge pickup for the #1 Black guitar in case it goes down.

3) We’re matching the red guitars to the #1 so he’ll have more “go to” live guitars.

Hells Bells, Largo, MD, 1981
[Listen to how bell-like Malcolm's tone is here compared to Angus. That's true of the three live vids I listened to on this tune.]

I still love Molly Hatchet’s tune “Flirtin’ With Disaster”…and I know I’m not alone! A great song, fast tempo, some great guitar-playing, multiple leads – separated by the southern lead singer whistle which means “c’mon and play something” – harmony leads, it’s all there.

Tone of the woody variety also is there. It’s a little more distorted than vintage, but not buzzsaw-like. So I got curious: What was the gear – and specifically, what did Dave Hlubek (who seemed like the main guy, and who I believe came up with the Flirtin’ riff) play?

Turns out that with the possible exception of some old Guitar Player magazine interviews, precious little was written about Hatchet’s gear. And with the Guitar Player website being so lame and the lack of “unofficial” Hatchet fansites on the web, that means I’m piecing together hardly any info to form a coherent picture.

Guitars

Dave is probably best known for using Hamer “Explorers,” which were just known as Hamers – the only model was the Gibson Explorer shape – or Hamer Standards, a name Hamer still uses. (As a testament to the lack of Hatchet info on the web, I spent way too long trying to track down a decent photo of Dave with a Hamer. Couldn’t find one.)

But as you will see from the 1978 or ‘79 video below, it looks like he started out using a Gibson Explorer – and it looks in that video like he has the bridge pickup uncovered (since that pickup is black it can’t be a DiMarzio Super Distortion, which at the time only came in double-cream) and the neck pickup removed.

At some point in 1979, I’m guessing, he started using the Hamers. Here’s some info on Hamer Standards of that era from vintageguitar.com and hamerfanclub.com:

Hamer’s first catalog, dated Fall, 1975, showed only Explorer-shaped instruments. With no model name, they were referred to only as “the Hamer guitar,” and their handmade construction using the finest materials was stressed. This first production guitar, later named the Standard model, had a suggested list price of $799 without case. They had one-piece bodies of select British Honduras mahogany, available with or without a bookmatched, curly maple top.

The one-piece, set-and-glued necks were “carved from the same choice mahogany,” with a six-in-line “hockey-stick” headstock. The Inbound rosewood fingerboards had 22 frets, with pearl dot inlays, and were available in a variety of shapes and sizes. Scale length was 24 3/4. Grover Deluxe tuning machines were used, as was a tune-o-matic style bridge with stop tailpiece.

By the time the Sunburst appeared in ‘77, bound rosewood fingerboards with crown inlays were offered as an option, and these appointments begin appearing on some Standards. Custom orders were accepted, so there were also a few Standards with bound ebony fingerboards and block inlays.

Early Standards had Grover tuners, though these changed to Schallers in ‘79 or ‘80. In September of ‘78 a Standard would set you back $1,199.95, list.

The earliest pickups on Hamer Standards were actual Gibson PAFs obtained from Gibson. However, PAFs were designed for jazz players in the ’50s. By the ’70s, guitar players were cranking up much larger amps in large arenas. In order to better balance the pickups in this environment, Hamer began to de-wind the neck pickup to decrease the output slightly.

Very soon the supply of Gibson pickups was gone [and by 1978] Hamer gave its specifications to the young pickup maker Larry DiMarzio, who began making versions of his own DiMarzio PAFs to Hamer’s spec, with a de-wound neck pickup [hmerfanclub says some of these were also wound by Seymour Duncan]. This differed from the approach favored by most others at the time, which was to leave a PAF at the neck and add an even hotter DiMarzio Super Distortion to the bridge. Eventually, Hamer began to stamp its name into the baseplates of the pickups, and these would come to be known as Hamer Slammer pickups (they don’t rhyme!).

Early Hamers had black bobbins on the lead pickup and cream bobbins on the neck pickup. They quickly made a transition to zebra bobbins (one black, one cream) on the lead pickup.

A 3-way pickup-selector toggle switch, two volume controls, and a master tone control completed the electronics.

Standard finishes included tobacco or cherry sunburst, natural wood grain, or opaque black or white. Ebony fingerboards, Les Paul Standard-style “crown” inlays, and decorative fingerboard and headstock binding were available for an upcharge. By around ‘80, the Hamer Standard was also offered without the flamed maple top and in a variety of opaque colored finishes.

> Note that several custom Hamers also were made during this period and thus might have different specs.

Amps

Live, Dave used Peavey amps – apparently Peavey Mace amps, just like Lynyrd Skynyrd used. Performances in 1978 (or ‘79) on Don Kershner’s Rock Concert (Gator County here and Flirtin’ With Disaster below) clearly show the distinctive black and white of Peavey amps onstage.

What he used in the studio is anyone’s guess as small amps and, of course, Marshalls were sort of the rage back then. It’s also likely that Hatchet used the same or similar stuff that Skynyrd used as per this anecdote told by Dave in an interview. Although it’s about Hatchet’s first album (Flirtin’ was on the second album) it’s interesting:

“When Skynyrd’s plane went down, that wrote our ticket. It did. Also, more importantly than that, what people don’t know…Skynyrd had a hell of a following. If that accident hadn’t have happened, they would have been the Zeppelin of the South. Street Survivors was a great record. When you had Steve Gaines on it, he went in and replaced Ed King. They needed that Street Survivors record because their career had taken a lull like a lot of ours….

“When our first album came out…what people don’t know is that it is not by chance that Molly Hatchet’s first album sounds a lot like Skynyrd because we used their equipment in the studio. What you also haven’t heard is that Ronnie Van Zant was our original producer. He had arranged and gone ahead and rehearsed us. We cut our original tapes for that first album in Skynyrd’s studio, in their 8-track studio in Jacksonville. We were going to be Ronnie’s first project other than Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“I grew up with Ronnie. The only thing that he made us promise him is that we would give him gold and platinum [albums], like his band. What happened was, he said, ‘I’ll see you when I come back from this tour. We’ll finish the record and put it out there and see how it goes.’ That was 1977. What happened was that Ronnie never came back.”

Interesting, eh? I never knew that!

Well, that’s about it, except for this entertaining story Dave tells in the same interview about how he came up with the idea for “Flirtin’ With Disaster:”

“The song is about me almost being killed in a car wreck. “When the pedal’s to the floor and you’re lives are running faster…” That’s about a girl driving me to Atlanta to a mid-day talk show. We were headlining the Omni. This guy almost broadsided us. She was in her little Vega with four cylinders, probably firing on three. This guy in an El Dorado almost ran into my passenger door.

“She was taking a short cut through this neighborhood. I said, ‘Step on it.’ Her name was Lynn Hyland. She went ahead and put her foot to the floor. She was trying to get me to this television studio. They had wanted me there at 11:45 and my time slot was at 12:30. At 12:05, we’re in the suburb of Atlanta and this guy broadsided us. She wound up hitting the porch of somebody’s house. Her name is mentioned in the credits on the album. She was good looking! I wanted to f*** her so bad.

[The interviewer asks, "And did you?"]

“Of course! She was the one who gave me the title “Flirting With Disaster.” What she did was get us out of harm’s way. Both of us were kind of numb. She looked at me and said, “That son of a bitch is flirting with disaster. I’ll kick his ass. I’d never heard that term before. I said, “I’m going to title a song after that.” She said, “Son of a bitch?” I said, “No. Flirting with disaster.” She said, “Yeah, anything to get in my pants.” Well, it worked. That’s a true story.”

Notable

> Hatchet has a cool website in the vein of their album covers, but unfortunately not much is on it.
http://www.mollyhatchet.com

“Flirtin’ With Disaster” Live in 1978 or 1979