That Led Zep II sound...

[Steben]

Yeah, you all know what I mean, maybe it's all kitchen-and-garden-knowledge to you guys, yet... :

What the h... made that sound on that fantastic second Led Zep record?!?

Marshall plexi, treble booster, hmm yes, but what else?
Its fat, dynamic yet raunchy raw, like a cluster "butter" bomb.
I'm talking about the beginning of "Whole lotta love", "Lemon song", and the chorus of "What is and what should never be" and of course "Moby dick" sounds,...
It's the only album I ever heard this thing on and I adore that sound.
Is it just a colorsound Mk II? I don't believe it.

[petemoore]

Hafta say Tonebender or DIST+,
 Tonebender totally gets it for me, DIST+ basically is alot different, works real good tho.
 Purportedly, Page used these Distortion devices. Tonebender on the earlier recordings, if my chronology is correct.
 What amp has alot to do with it, as well as working with settings.
 Tonebender is a tweeky circuit, with Ge's it's prone to bias drift, some 'adjustments' may be necessary, or trying different units.
 FWIW, my interpretation of 'what he used' is: "How could I possibly ever know for sure, if I wasn't there?". I read someone may have been secretive of the devices used, or may have forgotten, when one figures in temperatur conditions etc...who really knows? My guess is that like many guitarists with 'stellar tone' he may have had his chain tweeked by an expert or two...IIRC there may have been echoes or even compressors used in the recording processes...he probly chose amps and guitars from the cream of the crop of English amp producers of the day.
 Achieving Page Recordings Tone in a box, if you could bottle that up you could sell it...I get nice chewey chord grind, and sweet sustaining leads using the MkII, the DIST+, [well it has a DIST+ is in it] is more stable, easier to work with, I use alot...
 I find having a highpass filter cap on the Vol control of my guitar really opens up new gain settings on the boxes with retained high end content

[gorohon]

So, when, or rather, what songs did Page use the Supro amp for recording?

[RDV]

Small Supro amp(either a "Super" or a "16T"), a Rangemaster, a Sola Sound Tonebender MarkII, an Echoplex, a Telecaster, and a whole lot of innovative miking techniques.

Believe it or not.

RDV

[Danny G]

He also knew his way around the studio.  Their engineers would get pissed at him because Pagey knew more than they did.  He'd say do something, and they'd say "That's impossible, can't be done."  And he'd prove them wrong.  Quite often.

[Ed G.]

Small Supro amp(either a "Super" or a "16T"), a Rangemaster, a Sola Sound Tonebender MarkII, an Echoplex, a Telecaster, and a whole lot of innovative miking techniques.

Believe it or not.

RDV

Telecaster and Supro is a big chunk of it. It's hysterical that Gibson is now cloning his famous Les Paul to the burn marks and scratches and charging ridiculous sums of money for it, what was originally a second-hand guitar given by Joe Walsh. Sure, Page played it live, but in the studio, most of the magic was recorded on that Tele.
Page sure sold a lot of Les Pauls by playing a tele.

[jsleep]

yes, by all accounts (if they are true) he didn't use a marshall or any "big amps" in the studio, at least not on the II album.  

3-knob tonebender has a pretty good sound like on the Zep II album.  at least it does with my guitars and amps.

Small amps use to rule rock in studios!  Layla was recorded on Fender champs, both Eric and Duane.

JD Sleep

[Jim Jones]

Hey Steben,

I agree - to me Led Zep II is the Sgt. Pepper's of heavy rock.  I was born two years after it was released, discovered it when I was in high school in the 80's and after all these years it still blows my mind.

It's the first Zep album where Jimmy used a Les Paul and also the first time he used Marshalls on record.  Heartbreaker is obviously Marshall, but I believe Whole Lotta Love was a little combo - perhaps even solid state.

My favourite tones on the album are the obviously Marshall/LP ones like Heartbreaker, Bring It on Home and of course The Lemon Song.  It'd be tough to choose one Zep tune as my all-time favourite but if I had to I'd pick What Is And What Should Never Be.  Absolutely brilliant.

Jim

[AL]

He's been quoting as saying he used a Tonebender quite a bit (not sure on which album and I can't point you towards an article - so much for researching techniques). And, as said earlier, he knew his way around a studio. He used all kinds of crazy mic placements to tune his sound.

AL

[Chris R]

heh.. i just saw this thread.. and i was actually listening to LZ II on my mp3 player at work ;p

have you guys seen the latest box set dvds.. wow.

C

[StephenGiles]

I expect he used a tonebender, I was quite near the back of the London Marquee when I saw the New Yardbirds/LedZep gig in Oct 68. There wasn't really much else around then in England. Aren't there any articles about this on the net somewhere?
Stephen

[EdJ]

Believe it or not but i can nail those sounds with a 2x Seymour Duncan`59 guitar and my ax84 renegade with 6v6PP through a 12inch LAB speaker.
Greetings,Ed

[brian wenz]

Hello Hello--
  First album was all Telecaster and Tonebender MK II  [3-tranny, 2-knob]
and Supro amp.  Second album was when the Les Paul and Marshalls came on to the scene...I seem to remember that both the Telly and the Paul are on that album [with and without the Tonebender...].  I don't have a copy of that album so I can't double check what tracks had what.
Brian.

[Fret Wire]

Page always seemed to enjoy being slightly vague about his exact gear set ups. Guys like Page and Blackmore had a lot of session work under their belts before they made their own albums. So Page knew alot about mike placement and recording techniques.

[BD13UK]

Saw Page with Yardbyrds in Glasgow just after Jeff Beck left after squabbling about solos and he used a Tele several Vox amp heads either 50's or 100's a pile of cabs and a Tonebender and that was it, and yes it was LOUD.

[javacody]

I think there are probably several ways to nail Page's sound. I've never tried, but as a 17 year old (that was a while ago) I was able to nail Tony Iommi's sound with a Boss OD1, a Gorilla Practice amp, and a Washburn equipped with an EMG 86 in the bridge. Go figure.

[black mariah]

When I worked for Jackson Guitars the VP of the company was a guy named Donnie Wade. He's now the head of Gretsch, which is a much better position for him than Jackson ever was. Anyway, he's one of those guys that knows EVERYONE.

I'm coming back from lunch one day and I hear someone out in the warehouse blasting blues riffs louder than f--k. I go out to see who the hell it is, and it's Donnie playing though one of those tiny-ass Supros. It was the exact same model that Page used on the early Zep albums, and Donnie knows this because he played on Page's(!) when he worked for him. I can tell you firsthand, that is the majority of the sound right there. Those little bastards have tone for days.

[soundguy]

As mentioned, if you've ever played on a supro thunderbolt, the one with the 15", you know that the sound is right there.  A friend of mine has all the models supro made (dont ask) and theres nothing too too special about them if you look at the designs, really lots of low wattage amps will get you more than half way there  I'd have no problem recording that kind of guitar sound with an amp with a similar circuit.  On some of the songs, like Whole lotta love, you can imagine that there is something like a rangemaster with real low gain, just using the transistor bufffer, and then on other stuff like moby dick, if you listen to the high end that the limiter is pumping on the pick attack on the strings, its easy to imagine a higher gain fuzzbox working there, same for the end part on the right side of bring it on home.  

Led Zeppelin 2 is a mess of a record, it was done primarily during breaks on a very busy tour schedule, tracked in six different studios by four different first engineers on presumably VERY different consoles considering it was tracked on the helios at olympic and then in rooms in NY and LA.  Mixed by the same engineer in one room.  Its doubtful that JP dragged around a supro combo on that tour considering that they had like one roadie in a van.  Its pretty easy to see how on SOME of the stuff recorded in America would have been tracked on whatever their backline consisted of for that tour, which if you look at pictures, page had the paul and a plexi on that '69 tour.  I wasnt there, hell I wasnt even born yet, so who the @#$% knows.  I cant remember what I did on sessions last week, Im sure if you asked page how he did something 35 years ago one afternoon on a day off on the road during his second or so American tour in the midst of a big fat party, he might not remember either.

the point?  Looking at the above, thats intense testimony to the dude's consistency as a player, the tone is in the guys finger.  Yeah, its like the ultimate anti-answer and as cliche as it gets, but that sound came from that guys hand and thats the end of the story.  You can hear what a transistor or two between his guitar and the preamp is doing, but at the end of the day, its really not ruling on the guys tone to the point where if you were to play the exact same rig on the day youd get a similar sound or in the same breath, if you took the box away, his tone would disappear.  Hell, we cant even hear a big difference between a Tele and a LP (although loving loving maid sounds like a tele to me and it was tracked in london so that would make sense...)

As far as engineers getting pissed at Page, thats kind of hogwash, Page PRODUCED every Led Zeppelin record.  The engineers were there to serve him, not the other way around.  If you listen to the echoplex on the guitar return on the first half of Bring It On Home, the guy that did all the hendrix records mixed that song and despite all the innovative thinking that was happening on the Hendrix stuff to date (summer-ish '69), Kramer had never patched an echoplex like that before and you can bet that shit was Pages idea.

I'll tell you, the most outrageous and huge guitar sound Ive ever recorded was with a single ended 5 watt amp.  A friend of mine gets a lot of gigs recording metal bands and is pretty world reknown for getting the biggest guitar sounds on the planet, to the point where he won a grammy for it and you'd fall over and drop dead if you saw the signal path he used for guitars.  Low wattage amps are the way to go in the studio, especially if you are working with transformer balanced front ends like they were then.  The word on the street is that the first Zep record was a thunderbolt, not that it matters at all really, but thats what the street says.  The thunderbolt was a single 15" and probably 18 watts.  I dont know what the hell amps they used to record, but I have heard the master tapes for Led Zeppelin 2 and it seems like the guitar cabs were isolated from the drum kit in a different room and the shit was LOUD, with the snare mics isolated, the opening lead on whole lotta love is rattling the hell out of the snare...  

anyhow, dont tweak too hard on that tone, it's so much the player and so little the gear in a low gain recording like that.  I used to think all that was bullshit until I started recording amazing players and wound up getting amazing tones with the same setup I had used the day before on a different player (same rig!!) and got a lousy sound...  Its all the player.

new forum is awesome btw, havent posted here in a few years.

cheers!

dave

[black mariah]

Are you the same soundguy from the Tapeop board?

Low wattage amps for big sounds... grammy... this sounds familiar, but I can't put a name to it. :oops: Anyone to do with Soundgarden, by chance? I remember Kim Thayil used a lot of small amps when recording Down on the Upside.

The Supro that Donnie was playing, which he swears is the same type used on the first couple of Zep albums (he's not the kind of guy to talk out of his ass on subjects like that, either) was one of those tiny lunchbox sized ones with about an 8" speaker. Either 3 or 5 watts, I can't remember which. That's a LOUD 3 to 5 watts though. :lol:

[soundguy]

Im like the return of the son of soundguy, actually...

Wattage and decibels are pretty freaky, I have this 5 watt amp, as I mentioned, plugged into an ampeg cab, @#$%er has NO trouble keeping up with an ampeg v4 on 10.  Its pretty crazy.  Its very loud.

The details of my friends grammy (which he keeps disassembled in the box they gave it to him in) will remain, like the location of my cats shaven fur, a secret.  I wouldnt want to screw with his guitar voodoo.  Youve heard his records.

I have to record a band coming up with two marshalls, Im not looking forward to it...

dave