Another one, this one is “You Shook Me All Night Long”
Same settings as for the solo, guitar on 6-6.5
Slightly different equalization, moved towards 3khz
You Shook Me All Night Long…?
Okay, before I dance like a native American (an Indian, that is) in happiness,I need YOUR ears. Mine are almost fired already at 11:30 am.
Is it this? It sounds so much like it. Listen to the G chord during the chorus; listen just how it “crashes” onto itself because of the compression. Getting closer to the sound you hear from Angus.
This MP3 has me on the left, Angus in the center. Malcolm was muted.
Are we not there, at least really really almost?
I had to change slightly the settings, and here it is them:
- Guitar: 1970 Gibson SG Standard (I Just used this one, my first one, as it is one I know inside out).
- Amp: 1978 Marshall 2204 stock
- Head settings: Presence 0; Bass 6; Mids 2; Treble 5; Master 6; Preamp 5
- MXR DynaComp Compressor; output Max; sesnitivity half (might be too high)
- SECRET-1: gain 0; Tone 3 o’ clock; Vol Max
- Guitar: on 7 (for the rhythm)
The Solo is just a by-product of these settings, driving the AMPLIFIER more than this, leaving the settings basically unaltered, but I’ll have to give it a go later.
Back in Black Nailed?
Here’s the solo. May need some minor adjustments (and should be played better) but you get the idea. I really think it’s there for the main flavor. Even the euqlization was easier to find now (very similar to rhythm).
The ONLY change was the amp driven the master and pre amp, respectively at 8 and 6.
Back in Black Solo?
Yes, it is definitive now. I don’t have anything to show you or let you hear right now, though. Sorry.
It’s not a joke though: today I spent the whole day – apart some work that had to be done – trying to play the solo for Back in Black.
I wanted to shoot the tutorial, and I wanted the solo tone to be exactly spot on, like never before.
The whole morning went away, and I wasn’t happy at all. I tried using the 1987 for it, as we know solos were played mostly with a 50watter. Though it didn’t cut it.
I have a special pair of tubes on it since yesterday (was retubed and rebiased) it was an experiment but it didn’t work out. Will put new tubes in.
So I grabbed the 2204 (came back from the shop, it was just a fuse blown) and started tying things out.
Naturally, the SECRET-1 was inserted in the main input. I tried at first with the Master at 8 and the preamp at 8 as well, plus the SECRET-1 fully blasted. A bit too much; it didn’t work.
I could always hear – in the solo specifically – a snappy guitar sound, almost clean at times, though still overdriven and massively so at times. It had always – for decades – bugged me how possibly this kind of sound might have been obtained. For decades I thought it had to be the guitars. Then, I bought the guitars. Then I thought it was the amp. And I bought some amps of that era.
Still, no sound. Maybe it’s the playing, but how close can one get to his actual style?
You understand that my process through the years has been to eliminate progressively all the things that didn’t work out, weren’t accurate etc. And now we’ve come down to knowing almost exactly what was used.
In fact, the Schaffer Vega had a boost and a compressor. Wait wait… did I say compressor? Compressor?
Okay, let’s try one. I have been having a Dyna Comp for ages. It’s one of the most famous ones, from MXR. So I plugged it in.
Still a mess. too much, but there IS something there. I am starting to hear things…. what’s going on?
So let’s clean up things. Less master: goes to 4. Less pre amp: goes to 5.
SECRET-1 still at full blast, as it pretty evident Angus has been boosting massively the input channel.
IT’S THERE. There it is: the missing link was the compression.
I put the compressor in che part of signal chain where I think it belongs: the Schaffer Vega compresses the signal while transmitting to the receiver. So the compressor went AFTER the SECRET-1.
It’s there, it’s really there. This DyanComp has two knobs only: Output and Sensitivity. I put Output to the Max and Sensitivity slightly more than half. It’s really there.
It’s IT!!!
I can’t tell you how excited I am. I will try to post some soundclips asap.
Love,
Fil
