Yeah, the overall tone is sum-of-the wholes, so unless you have everything....EVERYTHING, you'll have something in the vacinity, but you will never have the correct tone and fuzz and glassiness and ghosts notes....gotta have the COMPLETE rig guys.
Yeah, it's amazing the DOD 250 is close to D+, but COMPLETELY different and not even close tonally! The DOD is more of a clean boost OD and D+ is a dirty fuzz distortion. The D+ is sort of a one-trick-pony as like I said, it's design is flawed in that changing the Gain acts like an R-C circuit and rolls off frequency depending on where set! It only opens up all frequencies when turned up almost to full! Anything lower and sounds like crap and honky and too much bass, but a large part of his tone to get the "Fizz" effect on top of the added gain.
It's funny that Randy's cascaded amp design fed the normal (bass) channel into the bright channel. Guitar amps typically and unless designed for it, sound like shit when too much bass is passed in the early stages and with Randy's that 820R and 330uF cap! He compensated by rolling off bass on the amp (set to "2") as well as EQ'd out. The speakers add a lot of sparkle and high end, but again, rolled off up front with EQ. If you play an amp thru speakers without EQing...it's gonna be nails on chaulkboard bright! Great for cutting thru a mix, but needs to be tamed and use of EQ is brilliant is voicing it.
Yeah, of course, I'll post good clips as time permits. Right now, I've just been demoing it and taking up to Open Mics and letting others get some time on it. I may let a friend in #1 Ozzy tribute (Crazy Babies) take it on the road for an even more authentic stage show. I've had more than one person hit me up to purchase it and told them, I just built the damn thing, let me put some miles on it, so not for sale, to which their feedback was "everyone has a price"! I'll probably be making a coupe for select people and who want to lay down some cash. There is a lot into it to get the correct old 1978-1980 pedals, pedalboard, custom looper/switcher, custom road case. Something like $4-5k in, so with labor and all...would probably need $10k to make it worth my time, fyi.
As far as what Randy used and when used Altecs....he used a Peavey Standard with Quiet Riot run into an Ampeg cabinet. Not sure what speakers, but don't believe Altecs (could be wrong, can't tell in YouTube live clips). Probably whatever Ampeg used?!?? He got the white cabinets built in late 1979/early 1980 and fitted with Altecs. I know only they suggest Pete "Pedalboard" Holmes built the unit in 1975, but I don't think that is correct (could be wrong). I don't think Randy had and used the pedalboard with Quiet Riot and wasn't until Ozzy he had it built. I think Bob Daisley pointed out the timeframe in For Facts Sake as well as cost, which was like 1100 pounds at the time! It wouldn't make sense the pedalboard being built in 1975 because uses the D+ and that wasn't made until 1979. Likewise, this makes sense of why Randy used Altecs in the white cabs, because in the recordings he said Celestion's sounded like shit when you ran a fuzz thru them, which the D+ is a fuzz/distortion! pedal
His live tone was great. His studio tone was processed, so not representative of his live tone, BUT since using the delay harmonizer and getting that "Halo" effect....makes sense why live he used the Chorus basically simulating that chorus and glassiness effect live, but again.....with better tone and without being over processed.
I have an additional Altec 417-8H, so I created a mini-Rhoads half stack! It has a 1x12 custom cab with the Altec in it and the amp is just a 1-input cascaded circuit. I put Randy's picture on the FRONT as well as added an FX loop on the back. It has Gain I and Gain II for still mixing between bass and bright gain stages (with 4.7n bright cap), but unlike the original, uses a post-TS master volume and I added a defeatable zero loss HV FX loop to it for some diversity! It is a 50-watt version with a pair of EL34's. The cabinet builder actually built it similar to the Tribute head and JCM800-style thick sides and top cabinet instead of Plexi, arrr, but whatever I should have been more specific and can always take the chassis out and put in a new enclosure.
Hope this explains some thing and enjoy!
.gif "dj :m4:")
