RR Rabbit Hole - BOSS OD-1 on his board here?

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Kapo_Polenton

Kapo_Polenton

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Now that I have this creme colored Edwards on the way, I am in full on RR mode. I pretty much bounce back and forth between him and Schenker so it's always a good time in my man cave. Anyway, I have not played a Distortion + before but I read a lot of complaints about how bloated they sound or wooly when people use them to goose a NMV. That or they just don't hit the sound. We know the Altecs are probably the biggest player in the whole sound but I have gotten pretty close with my 800's opened up or my Bugera 1960 and PAF equipped mahogany bodied LP style, DOD YJM to grey spec and my GE-7 for slight mid shaping and cut. I was just poking about the net and ended up going down the many RR threads and an interesting tid bit on whether or not Randy was trying out an OD-1 or using it temporarily when his board went down. Someone mentioned seeing it in the Palladium clips that are on youtube and I have to say that his tone there is incredible when stacked against some of the other bootlegs. I prefer these bootlegs to the Tribute album because it is clear they took an already cutting sound and then EQ'd it more. It isn't what was hitting the audience's ears.

What do you guys think? I can say that my OD-1 and DOD 250 style with a slight carving gets that cutting tone more than what I hear the distortion + doing. In this thread they also mention at the end that he might have double boosted because they had to keep the stage volume down so the amp couldn't be turned up. That or it is in fact a yellow DOD 250.

http://www.ultimaterhoads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=758
Also the recent Pete Thorn vid where he demo'd that 3rd RR Jackson prototype that never made it into Randy's hands. He mentions that the distortion + also wasn't doing it for him but running his SD-1 into his Plexi sure did. The BOSS stuff carves out those mids without the need for the EQ after it.

Anyways, enjoy! Ultimately I am happy to save my money and not buy a distortion + .. I have enough OD's as is :p.
 
yeah it certainly looks like he has an OD1 on top of the pedal board hooked up
 
man I just watched a vid about this somewhere....maybe it was that new documentary? can't remember...
 
I had read that some roadies dropped his pedal board and it got incredibly noisy. Maybe the MXR was damaged and he went with this. I also read some guys opened his pedals and they were gooped up and suspected modified. That’s all from a recent Guitar World article.
 
I couldn’t tell much from that picture.

The Distortion + was ised by a ton of people back in the day. The DOD250 isn’t too far off from one.

My Distortion + is an old block letter. I had one back in the early 80’s that was pretty good. This one is different.

Using it with a Micro amp and eq seems to be the way to get it to work. Mine doesn’t have alot of output on its own for some reason. Maybe it is messed up. I like my YJM DOD 250 better.
 
Greazygeo said:
I couldn’t tell much from that picture.

The Distortion + was ised by a ton of people back in the day. The DOD250 isn’t too far off from one.

My Distortion + is an old block letter. I had one back in the early 80’s that was pretty good. This one is different.

Using it with a Micro amp and eq seems to be the way to get it to work. Mine doesn’t have alot of output on its own for some reason. Maybe it is messed up. I like my YJM DOD 250 better.
Click to expand...

Is that a 308 yjm? I liked mine stock and then haf the outlier board put in and it is incredibly good. Almost feels like an extra tube stage kicked in. I am gonna stick with that, I rarely ( ever) see anyone post a thread entitled " MXR Distortion + RULEZ!!!!".

As for a modded pedal, were they doing much of that kn the scene late 70's?
 
JackBootedThug said:
https://metalinjection.net/video/ne...-scenes-look-at-the-making-of-blizzard-of-ozz
Click to expand...
I think this is the one that Sharon said they weren't allowed to play any ozzy songs for. Really takes the wind out of its sails out of the gates. You can hear it here in the trailer where you'd expect to hear the crazy train riff. If they had been smart they would have pulled from Randy's old QR gigs where you hear parts of songs that later became crazy train, suicide solution etc. But I'm guessing they are small time and didn't want to chance a lawsuit. Once again Sharon being who she is. Such a nasty vile woman.
 
Kapo_Polenton said:
Is that a 308 yjm? I liked mine stock and then haf the outlier board put in and it is incredibly good. Almost feels like an extra tube stage kicked in. I am gonna stick with that, I rarely ( ever) see anyone post a thread entitled " MXR Distortion + RULEZ!!!!".

As for a modded pedal, were they doing much of that kn the scene late 70's?
Click to expand...
Yes the 308. Bought it used for cheap. Wish they would have used a Boss style pedal power connector, ugh. Even on the Digitech DF-7 the DOD 250 setting is pretty cool. I like it, alot brighter and hard edged than the MXR.

as for the Distortion +, the early Maiden and Accept stuff used it so it can sound decent. And if you have Amazon Prime that Randy documentary is on there. It is mostly QR era, but some good live footage using an old Peavey head with most likely the Dist +. The tone on there is pretty good. It was really good when I saw him on the Diary tour. I was right down front getting all stage volume, very cool.

My first one, script logo, did sound very good not really sure why I got rid of it. The current one with the Micro amp and eq sounds good. It also sounds decent on its own thru a semi distorted amp, but not a clean amp. I have seen the micro amp, eq and dist + on Randy’s setup in pictures. Hard to say how they were used though.

Kinda fun to get it out once in awhile to mess with.
 
I never knew Randy used a Micro Amp.

The Distortion+ is quite difficult to get a good sound out of. I was just listening to a bootleg of the board tapes from the show that became the Tribute album before Max Norman messed up Randy's tone (again) with eq'ing. Max Norman in an article from back then talked about EQ'ing Randy's live tone on the Tribute album to sound more like his studio tone. Really dude? How about you go back in a time machine and make Randy's studio tone sound more like the live tone we hear on the good bootlegs and the After Hours show? I don't know how Max Norman took what sounded so huge live and made it sound so small in the studio.

Anyway, sorry... back to the Distortion+. You can hear the D+ raging on that bootleg. It has this big-toothed saw blade type of jagged gain. It sounds great on there, but every time I pull my old D+ out of the closet to try and get some Rhoads tones, I unplug it so quickly. I can't stand the thing.

Here is the bootleg. I recorded this show off of the radio when it was on back then and wore that tape out. When I got the Tribute album I was so disappointed in what Norman did to the guitars.

 
Chubtone said:
I never knew Randy used a Micro Amp.

The Distortion+ is quite difficult to get a good sound out of. I was just listening to a bootleg of the board tapes from the show that became the Tribute album before Max Norman messed up Randy's tone (again) with eq'ing. Max Norman in an article from back then talked about EQ'ing Randy's live tone on the Tribute album to sound more like his studio tone. Really dude? How about you go back in a time machine and make Randy's studio tone sound more like the live tone we hear on the good bootlegs and the After Hours show? I don't know how Max Norman took what sounded so huge live and made it sound so small in the studio.

Anyway, sorry... back to the Distortion+. You can hear the D+ raging on that bootleg. It has this big-toothed saw blade type of jagged gain. It sounds great on there, but every time I pull my old D+ out of the closet to try and get some Rhoads tones, I unplug it so quickly. I can't stand the thing.

Here is the bootleg. I recorded this show off of the radio when it was on back then and wore that tape out. When I got the Tribute album I was so disappointed in what Norman did to the guitars.

Click to expand...

I am probably wrong on the Micro amp. I was thinking I had seen it in pics of that little zeus board. Can’t seem to find any good pics of it now.

My Dist + is pretty low output so the Micro amp boosts that signal up. Mine could be screwed up.
 
Chubtone said:
I never knew Randy used a Micro Amp.

The Distortion+ is quite difficult to get a good sound out of. I was just listening to a bootleg of the board tapes from the show that became the Tribute album before Max Norman messed up Randy's tone (again) with eq'ing. Max Norman in an article from back then talked about EQ'ing Randy's live tone on the Tribute album to sound more like his studio tone. Really dude? How about you go back in a time machine and make Randy's studio tone sound more like the live tone we hear on the good bootlegs and the After Hours show? I don't know how Max Norman took what sounded so huge live and made it sound so small in the studio.

Anyway, sorry... back to the Distortion+. You can hear the D+ raging on that bootleg. It has this big-toothed saw blade type of jagged gain. It sounds great on there, but every time I pull my old D+ out of the closet to try and get some Rhoads tones, I unplug it so quickly. I can't stand the thing.

Here is the bootleg. I recorded this show off of the radio when it was on back then and wore that tape out. When I got the Tribute album I was so disappointed in what Norman did to the guitars.

Click to expand...


Funny you mention that about Tribute because before all these bootlegs were out and all most of us had was Tribute, I thought it was great. But now that I can listen to soundboard recordings or bootlegs from those shows on youtube, I 100% agree. What the hell was he thinking? Those live tones are the perfect blend of cutting yet beefy and huge. That's what should have been on Blizzard. Diary is much better in that respect at least but the leads aren't as engaging because i think they were rushed for a lot of it. the rythm playing is kick ass though.

Coming back to the distortion +, I had a buddy who had an old script one and he said the same thing. He said it sounded like total shit and he hated it into his Marshall back in the early 80's. Couldn't get rid of it fast enough. I might be going out on a limb here but maybe it is a perfect match with those altecs and that's where it worked great. Or he ran it with the gain down and volume up most of the time. Hard to say but no question a DOD 250 with or without EQ is probably going to satisfy more people. Micro Amp is a cool idea too as I recall that adds some sparkle and grind to the tone.
 
Greazygeo said:
Yes the 308. Bought it used for cheap. Wish they would have used a Boss style pedal power connector, ugh. Even on the Digitech DF-7 the DOD 250 setting is pretty cool. I like it, alot brighter and hard edged than the MXR.
Click to expand...

I hear ya, I also think any TS using that dumbass power connector should also rethink it's existence. I don't know what my TS - 808 is thinking... that it is special or something? Screw that, I just use the JHS Bonsai now and flip between what I want.
 
This guy did a respectable job with the wrong OD pedals and wrong speaker but I dig it and would get into the zone with that tone. EQ pedal over the TS probably would have gotten closer but who cares. Bit too much bass. Plenty of bite there though thanks to the on the verge of exploding NMV.

 
Chubtone said:
I never knew Randy used a Micro Amp.

The Distortion+ is quite difficult to get a good sound out of. I was just listening to a bootleg of the board tapes from the show that became the Tribute album before Max Norman messed up Randy's tone (again) with eq'ing. Max Norman in an article from back then talked about EQ'ing Randy's live tone on the Tribute album to sound more like his studio tone. Really dude? How about you go back in a time machine and make Randy's studio tone sound more like the live tone we hear on the good bootlegs and the After Hours show? I don't know how Max Norman took what sounded so huge live and made it sound so small in the studio.

Anyway, sorry... back to the Distortion+. You can hear the D+ raging on that bootleg. It has this big-toothed saw blade type of jagged gain. It sounds great on there, but every time I pull my old D+ out of the closet to try and get some Rhoads tones, I unplug it so quickly. I can't stand the thing.

Here is the bootleg. I recorded this show off of the radio when it was on back then and wore that tape out. When I got the Tribute album I was so disappointed in what Norman did to the guitars.

Click to expand...

Is this the same recording that was on the King Biscuit show? I recorded that off the radio on a reel to reel back in the day. Still have it somewhere.
 
I have said this before but the ONE thing you ABSOLUTELY need to cop that tone is Altecs. You can take pretty much any older stock Marshall thats cranked to all hell and run it thru a cab full of Altecs and that is the core tone. Everything else that he used was to shape that tone. The MXR D+ from the 70's definitely sounded different than the newer ones and seemed to cut much better, but still sound musical which the newer ones didnt.
 
Chubtone said:
I never knew Randy used a Micro Amp.

The Distortion+ is quite difficult to get a good sound out of. I was just listening to a bootleg of the board tapes from the show that became the Tribute album before Max Norman messed up Randy's tone (again) with eq'ing. Max Norman in an article from back then talked about EQ'ing Randy's live tone on the Tribute album to sound more like his studio tone. Really dude? How about you go back in a time machine and make Randy's studio tone sound more like the live tone we hear on the good bootlegs and the After Hours show? I don't know how Max Norman took what sounded so huge live and made it sound so small in the studio.

Anyway, sorry... back to the Distortion+. You can hear the D+ raging on that bootleg. It has this big-toothed saw blade type of jagged gain. It sounds great on there, but every time I pull my old D+ out of the closet to try and get some Rhoads tones, I unplug it so quickly. I can't stand the thing.

Here is the bootleg. I recorded this show off of the radio when it was on back then and wore that tape out. When I got the Tribute album I was so disappointed in what Norman did to the guitars.

Click to expand...

I am not sure if this is the same show that was released on vinyl as Bats Heads Soup back in the day but his sound was so much better on that bootleg than the Tribute album. Its almost like the Tribute album had the mic full front on the cone vs. Bats Head Soup which had it maybe 18 inches to the side of the cab. LOL I really wish they would re-release that album with a proper mix of his guitars. I dont even think Max' EQ even sounds like his studio tone. Upper mids are different and then you have double tracked rhythms to boot. I was really dissapointed when that album came out.
 
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