George has tone !

[chris lykins]

Man George was just killing it back then. Such a recognizable style

 

[neptoess]

Man George was just killing it back then. Such a recognizable style

He’s extremely humble about it all too. He’s building me a guitar right now, and the guy couldn’t be more down to Earth. When you talk to him on the phone, you don’t get any rockstar BS. If you didn’t know who he was prior, you would never guess the guy has multiple platinum albums to his name

 

[angelspade]

 

[Uzi Nein Millimetah]

This is a lot less gain than many people realize, and way less than most use today. I bet he played at a fairly loud master volume when recording these tracks, however.

When you saturate everything so much (preamp gain), you eventually lose all of the personality from individual players, ESPECIALLY with so many using little modeling boxes instead of real amps.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

This is a lot less gain than many people realize, and way less than most use today. I bet he played at a fairly loud master volume when recording these tracks, however.

When you saturate everything so much (preamp gain), you eventually lose all of the personality from individual players, ESPECIALLY with so many using little modeling boxes instead of real amps.

In the context of the mix it always sounds gainier than it is. Part of the problem now is too much preamp gain, nothing cuts.

 

[neptoess]

This is a lot less gain than many people realize, and way less than most use today. I bet he played at a fairly loud master volume when recording these tracks, however.

When you saturate everything so much (preamp gain), you eventually lose all of the personality from individual players, ESPECIALLY with so many using little modeling boxes instead of real amps.

His main amps were 4 hole Marshalls so “master volume” is effectively on 10 the entire time. It’s not a ton of preamp gain, but the power amp is compressing, the speakers are breaking up, and you have infinite sustain and harmonic feedback from playing that loud.

So it’s definitely a lot less preamp gain, but it also has two other things going on that most modern recordings don’t have. I assure you though, George could plug into an Axe Fx and play this song today with insane amounts of gain and you’d still love how it sounded, and you’d still be able to tell it was George playing.

 

[neptoess]

In the context of the mix it always sounds gainier than it is. Part of the problem now is too much preamp gain, nothing cuts.

Virtually every death metal recording proves this wrong. Cannibal Corpse has done multiple albums downtuned to A# or lower through mesa rectifiers on modern red, gain on 10, mids scooped, boosted with a boss metal zone (and the pedal gain was above 0), and it’s very easy to hear separation between the instruments and vocals.

I would argue that it’s almost impossible to have a guitar amp plugged into a Vintage 30 and make it _not_ cut.

Either way, it’s the recording engineer and mixer’s job to get the band’s songs to sound good. The Scott Burns book has a ton of stories of him having to intervene with what the guitar player was doing signal chain wise in order to get usable tracks. One example was a guy who was so mid scooped that his guitar couldn’t be heard in the mix no matter what was done EQ wise. Scott couldn’t convince him ahead of time, so he let him track one song, and proved it to him. The guy let Scott EQ his amp for him after that. Another example was a band trying a bunch of different new amps and not being able to get a usable sound out of them, so Scott drug out the studio’s 2203 and SD1 and asked if they would be open to trying that. The album ended up getting tracked with those.

tl;dr though is that gain alone won’t guarantee a bad sounding recording. It’s almost always multiple factors stacking up

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

His main amps were 4 hole Marshalls so “master volume” is effectively on 10 the entire time. It’s not a ton of preamp gain, but the power amp is compressing, the speakers are breaking up, and you have infinite sustain and harmonic feedback from playing that loud.

So it’s definitely a lot less preamp gain, but it also has two other things going on that most modern recordings don’t have. I assure you though, George could plug into an Axe Fx and play this song today with insane amounts of gain and you’d still love how it sounded, and you’d still be able to tell it was George playing.

I don't argue that at all..you might also be right that my complaint also sits with how stuff is mixed today then because it sure as hell does not cut like the stuff of old. I would say the rest of the argument comes down to taste. I find less gain just cuts way more in a diff way. More string detail and detail between the notes.

I have an old metalzone.. I will never understand how that pedal caught on! It sounded ok through my old stereo tower speakers but sucked into a good tube amp. (imo)

 

[neptoess]

I don't argue that at all..you might also be right that my complaint also sits with how stuff is mixed today then because it sure as hell does not cut like the stuff of old. I would say the rest of the argument comes down to taste. I find less gain just cuts way more in a diff way. More string detail and detail between the notes.

I have an old metalzone.. I will never understand how that pedal caught on! It sounded ok through my old stereo tower speakers but sucked into a good tube amp. (imo)

Yeah no argument about older records cutting more than modern ones. There are a lot of things that go into that, but playing with less gain is definitely part of it.

As for the metal zone, it’s a great piece of kit. It’s just not the most intuitive. Definitely one of those things where very small adjustments result in very big changes in the sound. You’d be surprised how easy it is to get 80s glam rock tones out of an MT-2W and a 1987x lol

 

[shar-vell Dan]

All George's amps especially ULAK era were modified by Tim Caswell, Lee Jackson & others. Anything but stock.