hi all
i know these two legends have about ZERO in common, but i have a few qs on each.
first up, what distortion pedal does tony use? i seem to remember something about a big muff, and playing sabbath through my friends vintage muff sounds pretty convincing, but i just wanted to check.
secondly, i got a DiMarzio YJM for christmas YEEHAAAA. i read the installation instructions, and turns out theres about a billion different ways to wire it. i went with standard humbucking (shock - im a single coil fan) after dad tried long and hard to get me to send it to the 'professionals' just because i am young and inexperienced. i think 15, and 9 months of experince is plenty old, and plenty experienced mwahahaha sorry dad.
anyhoo, it works, and its AWESOME but i was just wondering how yngwie had his wired up, because i checked the fender wiring diagrams and they are no help because they are in black and white.
cheers
Jim
iommi used a trble booster into his amps oriignailly and later used laney heads.
yngwie i am assuming you are tlkin about the pickups.. are in fact wired in humbuckin
When I was 15 (15 years ago), I would nail the black sabbath sound with an an EMG pickup into a Boss Overdrive (OD-1, the good ones) then into a Gorilla practice amp. I'd play along to We Sold Our Soul For Rock And Roll for days at a time. :D
i found using a old guitar like 60's or 70's. and using the bridged version of the lm386 straight inot the amp.
using the middle settings works realy nice on a sg
Tony used SG's with custom wound pickups into a modified treble booster into Laney 100 watt heads in the early days. Those Laney's were essentially the same circuit as the Marshall Superlead, so similar sounding to old Marshalls. By the mid-70's he'd switched to the Laney Klipp heads and sadly his tone went entirely for crap by the late 70's.
Tony's early tone is one of my absolute favourites - "Volume 4" being the apex for me.
Jim
hello
jim!
Yeah, not to mention that Iommi uses REALLY light guage strings on his guitars. [.007 and .008 high to something in the .030's for the lows..!!]
The Treble Booster was an essential part of his tone.
Brian.
You guys can't discount his metal finger tips. :lol: I'm not sure even with his exact rig, you can nail his tone!
Quoteas the left handed Iommi
had lost two finger tips on his right hand in an industrial accident at work, necessitating the use of some ingenious
thimbles to enable Iommi to play guitar
From http://www.taker19er.netfirms.com/sabbs/files/bio/1970blacksabbath/1970blacksabbath.html
i cant believe he used a treble booster!!! his sound is so bassy!! o well ive been wondering about these miracle massive-distortion producing treble boosters. anyone have a schem?
tony iommis fingers - now thats another story :D turns out they arent metal, theyre made out of detergent bottles he melted down. its all on that dvd, the last supper. i got it for christmas, its AWESOME.
ive also wondered about those laney amps. strange that he would use them over marshalls.
well i think ill dedicate the rest of my holidays to designing a circuit to try and make a good attempt at cloning the iommi sound. wish me luck!!!
cheers
Jim
Hello Hello--
Build a Dallas Rangemaster [with a good germanium transistor] and you'll be able to see for yourself how it affects your sound. When played through a cranked Marshall or Vox [or Vox-type] amp you can hear all the old Queen and Sabbath tones [as well as Rory Gallagher]. It all depends on the guitar you use, too. Fender amps don't react so well with the Rangemaster, though, so stick to British [EL-34 or EL-84 powered] amps for the "classic" sounds.
A good treble booster adds all kinds of upper-mids too, so be prepared for a big increase in "honk" !
If you can't find a good germanium tranny there are a couple of good silicon circuits that'll get you pretty close.
There are schematics for treble boosters all over Aron's site.
Brian.
Quote from: javacodyYou guys can't discount his metal finger tips. :lol: I'm not sure even with his exact rig, you can nail his tone!
Quoteas the left handed Iommi
had lost two finger tips on his right hand in an industrial accident at work, necessitating the use of some ingenious
thimbles to enable Iommi to play guitar
From http://www.taker19er.netfirms.com/sabbs/files/bio/1970blacksabbath/1970blacksabbath.html
his finger tips were plastic.
Originally, they were metal, I assure you. Not like I was there or anything, but I've read in quite a few articles, including the online article I linked.
hmmm. must have been something he left out when i met him.. oh well.
it was only for a minute anyway
Well Ansil, what do you suppose the difference would be tonewise between metal and plastic fingertips? :lol: Just bein silly buddy. I need to get some sleep!
actually i tried doin something different when i was a kid as that i really thought it was inventive. plastic did wear out quicker but it was more natural feeling than metal.. felt like some whacked out slide
but you can do some weird overtones with the metal
Keep in mind that a Rangemaster circuit absolutely depends on the tube amp following it for it's sound. A somewhat dark and dirty Marshall like tone is a great place to start. I did try my RM into a Music Man 110 (solid-state preamp) , and while the tone was interesting, it was not at all the trademark sound. Also, the RM in general does not *play well with others* especially any kind of buffered pedal in your chain. Germanium Fuzz Face is about the only thing that I combine the RM.
Kerry M
Hey guys! Its quite a surprise that Tony used a treb-boost! No wonder he and Brian May are close friends!... BTW I get a really cool Volume 4 kind of tone using a clean amp + my Tonebender clone, it works fine depending on the amp used because the thing has so much gain and output that eats amps alive, specially Marshall SS ones which are useless. It has Ge trannys, 2sb175 and 2sb22 if anybody wants to know. Happy new year!
I've read a few articles of interviews with the man so:
Tuned down a whole step then drop the new low string which is now D to C so you have a dropped C tuning. Read about Orange treble booster, Dallas Rangemaster and Univox Superfuzz being in his rig plus use of Orange amps and Laneys later. I have a collection of old Black Sabbath videos from the real early days and one that I can remember right off the top of my head is Sweet Leaf video. Iommi has a SG with humbuckers and an Orange amp and on top of the amp between the guitar and the input of the Orange was a small square box more shaped like an old MXR flanger not a Rangemaster. It was clearly not a Rangemaster. The box had only one knob and I saw no stomp switch, so maybe it was a full time job. I've also seen many old footage of him with a SG equipped with P-90s. Maybe he got the idea from Page to get humbuckers and coil tap them for single coil type sounds so then you see the HB SG. You can pull a world of tricks just by dicking with the wiring of the guitar.
I've seen some footage of Black Sabbath with an Orange backline too - but I believe those performances are from a German TV show called Musikladen (not sure on the spelling.) Orange were the "house" amps for that show - you've probably also seen footage of Free and other bands on that show - and they're all playing through Oranges. :)
As for using Laney's over Marshalls... Sabbath is from the Birmingham area of England and so is Laney so I imagine it was just a good fit for both parties.
Jim
Hello Hello-
Yeah, Iommi had his treble booster "on" all the time. He started using the SG Special [2 P-90's] after his Strat took a dump during the first album. If anybody has a copy of the "Rolling Stones' Rock n' Roll Circus" show, check out the Jethro Tull spot and you'll see Iommi playing his white Strat.
Yep, EVERYBODY used Orange gear on that show.......I've got video of Ike and Tina Turner with the Orange backline!
Brian.
In My GW issue tony said at first he used some sewing thymbls untill he made some beter ones and replaced them with plastic.
"Tuned down a whole step then drop the new low string which is now D to C so you have a dropped C tuning."
I think the entire Masters of Reality album (oops just showed my age) is in drop C?? It sounds HUGE !!!
AL
Hey Al, Early Sabbath (with Ozzy) is timeless. I started listening to it in the late 80's when I was a teenager. What was up with that Masters of Reality album cover? If its the one I'm thinking of, it has a guy with a motorcycle helmet on the cover?
Quote from: javacodyHey Al, Early Sabbath (with Ozzy) is timeless. I started listening to it in the late 80's when I was a teenager. What was up with that Masters of Reality album cover? If its the one I'm thinking of, it has a guy with a motorcycle helmet on the cover?
Hehehe, no that was "Paranoid", one of the cheesiest album covers of all time! What the hell were they thinking with that helmet? :)
"Master of Reality" was the third album and the cover obviously cost them even less - just big blue (or purple) words. That's the album where Tony started tuning down - C sharp I believe. If you were going to have a "sludgiest Sababth" poll, "Master of Reality" would win hands down - DOOOOMMMMYYY! :)
Jim
That one's "Paranoid"-looking at that guy on the cover, it's like "Hey-get outta my back yard!" Sorry, OT The NKT275 transistor (Hfe in mine is 79) does give a pretty good sound in a Rangemaster clone. Follow GEO's Austin Treble Blaster article with special attention to biasing and you should be able to make a really good sounding one with a variety of alternate germanium devices if you can't get a NKT275 (had to rip mine out of a Fulltone Soul Bender)
WWWOOOOOOOWWWWWW ansil you met tony iommi!??!?! thats insane. apparently (according to ozzy) he has some kind of all powerful presence about him.
apparently hes also got a reputation for beating people up hehe. once when a crowd of christians followed sabbath back to their hotel waving bibles around, ozzy ripped a bible up and threw it out the window so tony smacked him in the nose haha.
yeah the paranoid album was originally gonna be called war pigs and thats why theyve got that funny looking guy on the cover. id say it suited paranoid pretty well too.
yeah i havent been listening to anything but sabbath for a few weeks now. im thinking of ditching all ideas of writing original songs and forming a sabbath tribute band.
ive made some progress with the iommi sound circuit. its bassically a vox treble booster into and lm386 stage with a few clipping diodes on the way. it squeals alot. ill fix that later and put a schem up.
cheers
Jim
a Sabbath tribute band would rock. You'd have to do the hair and facial hair too!
im workin on the hair as we speak. ive had two haircuts (as in trimmimng 3mms off the ends) in the past year and a bit :D
cheers
Jim
Tony is currently using my Derangemaster RM clone...he tried a few of the other available units and his tech told me he was looking for one that sounded like his original RM (that was modded by somebody) that he lost long ago...
I talked to him about the differences and then built him one with an especially strong and aggressive-sounding Mullard OC44 and a slightly higher than stock inout cap value, and he loves it I'm happy to say!
When I plugged that box (boost-set knob on 1/2) and my 59 LP Junior into my friends Laney Supergroup cranked (and detuned), the tone was there right away :)
VERY VERY COOL AMMSCRAY! 8)
Quote from: aronVERY VERY COOL AMMSCRAY! 8)
Thanks! :)
I also managed to get them into the hands of KK Downing and Glen Tipton from Judas Priest, R Blackmore, B May, and Slash...the only one I missed was R Gallagher, and he was really the main one I wanted to get one to...
:(
thats awesome. i hope one day, some superstar will be using one of my pedals...
cheers
Jim
Quote from: AmmscrayQuote from: aronVERY VERY COOL AMMSCRAY! 8)
Thanks! :)
I also managed to get them into the hands of KK Downing and Glen Tipton from Judas Priest, R Blackmore, B May, and Slash...the only one I missed was R Gallagher, and he was really the main one I wanted to get one to...
:(
very cool indeed it is cool just to get someone signed and famous like that to play them let alone actualy use them all the time. having reached the first one. i am hoping to reach the second level there. i got lucky my buddy when he lived down in florida he used my boost pedal and jack from canibal corpse checked it out and said he dug it.. i was like your kidding me. so far thats two magor bands that have looked at them anyway. i am hoping to get an order for one from Trey Azagathoh's tech. (i think thats how you spell his name.)