The flips side.."worst tones" of the 80's?

[boost]

Mick Mars - Shout at the Devil album

He did redeem himself on the Corabi album as that had some great tones.

As with Randy, wasn't his fault, mostly production. Kinda hard to screw up a Marshall and Les Paul you would think, but some engineers and producers managed to do it in the 80's. Cocaine probably.

 

[reverymike]

You guys are forgetting VERNON REID!!! Man, I hated his guitar tone on Cult Of Personality. He had like 4 20 space racks full of shit, and it sounded like it was ALL on. Terrible.

 

[paulyc]

I thought Vinnie Moore's tone on "Mind's Eye" was great ! Darren Housholder's was good too.

As far as Rhoads and the live album, listen to Gillis on "Speak of the Devil"...that's good live tone. Tribute's tone SUX !!!

 

[Sierra Voodoo]

Most, if not all, of the 80's glam band wannabe's.

I also agree with the Randy Rhoades references. Great player no doubt but damn that that tone makes me cringe sometimes. That said, in the context of listening to his music, I tend to forget the tone and thoroughly enjoy his style and abilities.

 

[thiswaythatway]

For me it was most of the Shrapnel guys from back in the day. Some of the albums had such bad tone that it's almost unlistenable IMHO

I saw Greg Howe live way back in like 1990 and his tone was ah.....as you say,, a barrel full of assholes. He had soo much reverb and delay you couldn't hear anything he was doing.

Michael Lee Firkins was one Shrapnel guy with great tones.

I forgot which Chastain album it was, but one of them sounded he had his mids on 20 and his bass on zero.

 

[thegame]

I think the Scholtz Rockman is the cheesiest, worst high gain distortion tone ever and it just epitomizes 80's tone.

 

[Gainfreak]

For me it was most of the Shrapnel guys from back in the day. Some of the albums had such bad tone that it's almost unlistenable IMHO

I saw Greg Howe live way back in like 1990 and his tone was ah.....as you say,, a barrel full of assholes. He had soo much reverb and delay you couldn't hear anything he was doing.

Michael Lee Firkins was one Shrapnel guy with great tones.

I forgot which Chastain album it was, but one of them sounded he had his mids on 20 and his bass on zero.

Danny,

When I first started writing this I was going to say all the Shrapnel guys had shit for tone but then I remember Michael Lee and changed it to most.

I know that tone is subjective, which is why Id never rip into anyone not liking something but damn a lot of those album sucked ass in the guitar tone department let alone the piss poor Mike Varney production lol

Chastain was just another great self promoter like Michael Fath(sp?) If I am being honest, both weren't the best of players but at least they put stuff out lol

 

[rupe]

First of all are you high? No one was down on his tone? Really, well Steve Jones (1977) had some killer mean and aggressive tones and I think Rainbow - Long Live Rock N Roll (1978) for more aggressive tones and even further back some pretty mean tones on Volume 4 and earlier Sabbath records. I agree the Randy's tone worked for the music but however you slice it dice it or wine, dine and 69 it the tone sucked then and now. Not knocking the guy he is my favorite guitarist ever, I even saw him live right before his death and I think Pete Willis (opening for Ozzy with Def Leppard) had a more aggressive and meaty tone than Randy.

I also saw CC back in the day and when he did that extended solo IIRC from "Something to believe in" I was pretty impressed with his tone and solo work. Just my 2 cents.

Sorry champ, would you feel better if I said most people weren't down on it? I'll try not to generalize since you apparently don't do well with the concept. Sure there were other aggressive tones (you mentioned some great ones), but nothing that sounded like Rhoads did on those albums. And to say the "tone sucked then" goes against what anybody was saying or thinking in the guitar playing circles that I ran in, or in the press at the time. The general consensus was not remotely what it is now, unlike many of the other examples in this thread who were never considered by anybody (sorry, I generalized again) to have had good tone...that's the difference that I'm trying to point out. And no, I'm not high...got anything for me?

 

[maddnotez]

You guys are forgetting VERNON REID!!! Man, I hated his guitar tone on Cult Of Personality. He had like 4 20 space racks full of shit, and it sounded like it was ALL on. Terrible.

The delay is actually still echoing

 

[maddnotez]

KIRK HAMMETT. /thread.

Sorry, but Kirk is one of my favorite metal players of all time. And he has KILLER rhythm tones. His lead tones fit his band and they are STILL gnarly.
Fast forward to 4:00 exactly.

totally fits the sonic vibe of the song, has gnarly fast leads with attitude. peaks valleys and some wah reprise at the end of the song.

I think Kirk Rules.

I agree Kirk kicks ass, however Metallica was the first thing I thought of when I read the title. His lead tone was always great but their rythym tone seems like it was always missing something.

I do keep in mind the quality of productions especially in metal between the decades which may have been a huge factor. They have always seemed to have kept their signature if you will with the piercing mids and rawness and the album quality just simply got better each time.

I have never seen them live so its hard to compare.

But hey its Metallica the most successful band ever so they must have done something right.

Not even close.

Actually.....Very close #32 OF ALL TIME as of Charted recordings.

And THE #1 Metal band, the only other bands even remotely close to metal above Metallica are Zepplin and AC/DC which imo are not metal at all.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Ok, I think I get it now bob, this is a topic that goes down a deep dark bottomless pit and never hits a bottom because everyone hears things differently. So far though, we all agreed look what the cat dragged in had absoluite shit tone. We are all good there. For everything else though, very interesting to see differing views.

Chorus and delay are the sound of the 80's man! I love it. That first skid row salbum has insane sounding guitars to me and I love the way the lead tone cuts. Randy's tone was a bit fizzy but I think it suffered more from production than anything else. His live work and tone crapped all over his recordings.

Total agreement with a lot of those shrapnel records..brutal metallic tones on a lot of those..

 

[Shark Diver]

Man, you guys are going before and after the '80s.

Anyway, quit blaming them, they didn't have the internet to tell them how bad their tone was...

 

[tiktok]

Aboslutely--watching those "Classic Albums" episodes--whenever they solo the guitar solos, the tone is horrible. Then they un-mute the rest of the tracks and it's suddenly brilliant.

 

[311boogieman]

I love Randy's tone. It fits the music as mentioned. What's scary is the fact of how much better it COULD have been.

The reason I liked Skid Row was the guitar tone.

Couldn't stand much of anything by Rush in the 80's

+1 to the Corabi album - that was some serious shit

 

[Anonymous]

i LOVED the first skid row album guitar tones. REALLY cutting and metal sounding...slave to the grind is one of my favorite guitar albums to date too...and the tone, again was killer to my ears.

 

[Chubtone]

I am so tired of this Rhoads tone sucked nonsense. How does Randy's tone sound in this clip? His tone is freaking monster. Just like when I saw him live, with Pete Willis in Def Lep opening. Def Lep was cool and at the high point in their career in my opinion. And Randy's tone was bigger than both the Def Lep guitarists combined..... live. High and Dry was a great record though. I can only imagine what Randy and Ozzy would have sounded like if Mutt Lange or Ted Templeman had been in the budget to produce Ozzy. They weren't though. Ozzy was a drugged out, washed up has been and the record company had no faith in him that he would make a comeback. They stuck him in a budget studio and the house engineer ended up producing the albums after the original producer was fired by Ozzy and they couldn't afford to get anyone else. Look at Max Normans producer credits. The very first two ever were the two Ozzy albums.

Anyway, in my opinion, you give the raw, uneffected guitar tone in this clip to Mutt Lange or Templeman or any quality producer from that time in a decent studio with a decent budget and this whole argument would not occur every 12 minutes on the forums.

Skip to about 1:10 and listen til the end. Can you tell me, for 1981, this was a bad tone and worthy of being called a worst tone of the 80's? Listen to the chords at around 1:28

And this is a horrible tone? Sounds like a cranked Marshall with a boost pedal. Again, this is Randy's sound. A great producer would have known how to capture it more accurately.

And here is the audio that became the Tribute album before Max Norman got his hands on it and in his own words re-eq'd it and added the AMS delay (in Normans words to add a hollow and grindy edge)to make it sound more like the studio albums. If this is an offensively bad tone for 1981 straight into the board with no intention of it ever being released, we must be living on different planets. And I like my planet better.

 

[jcmlespaul]

Thanks Curt for posting the unadulterated RR tone

 

[rupe]

I am so tired of this Rhoads tone sucked nonsense. How does Randy's tone sound in this clip? His tone is freaking monster. Just like when I saw him live, with Pete Willis in Def Lep opening. Def Lep was cool and at the high point in their career in my opinion. And Randy's tone was bigger than both the Def Lep guitarists combined..... live. High and Dry was a great record though. I can only imagine what Randy and Ozzy would have sounded like if Mutt Lange or Ted Templeman had been in the budget to produce Ozzy. They weren't though. Ozzy was a drugged out, washed up has been and the record company had no faith in him that he would make a comeback. They stuck him in a budget studio and the house engineer ended up producing the albums after the original producer was fired by Ozzy and they couldn't afford to get anyone else. Look at Max Normans producer credits. The very first two ever were the two Ozzy albums.

Anyway, in my opinion, you give the raw, uneffected guitar tone in this clip to Mutt Lange or Templeman or any quality producer from that time in a decent studio with a decent budget and this whole argument would not occur every 12 minutes on the forums.

Skip to about 1:10 and listen til the end. Can you tell me, for 1981, this was a bad tone and worthy of being called a worst tone of the 80's? Listen to the chords at around 1:28

And this is a horrible tone? Sounds like a cranked Marshall with a boost pedal. Again, this is Randy's sound. A great producer would have known how to capture it more accurately.

And here is the audio that became the Tribute album before Max Norman got his hands on it and in his own words re-eq'd it and added the AMS delay (in Normans words to add a hollow and grindy edge)to make it sound more like the studio albums. If this is an offensively bad tone for 1981 straight into the board with no intention of it ever being released, we must be living on different planets. And I like my planet better.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Not trolling and NO BULLSHIT my favorite guitarist of all time Randy Rhoads. Sacrilegious as it may be his tone was anemic as hell and had it not been triple and quadruple tracked it would have really been the end all sewer of tone. His chops are what made him awesome. Sadly I used to want that tone. Still have the old JMP's and Script Logo MXR Dist +. He also loved those EV speakers IIR that were really clean. Anyway that's my take.

Gary Moore used EV loaded Marshall cabs in the nineties starting with his "Still Got The Blues album and his tone did not blow. Granted a Soldano SLO-100 and a Marshall Guv'nor pedal plus a dynamite 1959 Les Paul Standard #9-2227 'Stripe' didn't hurt. He also used a JTM-45 head the #1 prototype and an original Bluesbreaker combo for the album.
His eighties tone supremely ruled the zenith being his "Wild Frontier tone in 1987.
Sure loads of eighties guitarists had sucky tones, but I try and concentrate on the positive these days, negative threads don't interest me with respect to the OP.
There is enough negative crap on the Interwebs these days.
Atomic Playboy

 

[Kevin11]

I think EVH started added chorus to his distorted sound around the Diver Down album, if you listen to Fair Warning that, for me, is his tone at it's very best and brownest. Maybe the best distorted guitar sound EVER! Sinner's Swing is an awesome example. Yeah, he was using flanger almost all the way through Hear About It Later, but that's more of an effect thing rather than the chorus he'd permanently add to his sound Diver Down and onwards.

Oddly enough, I think he started using an Eventide Harmonizer on Fair Warning. That album is a personal favorite. You hardly notice the detuning unless you're listening for it, but it makes his guitar sound huge.

To contribute to the bad 80s tone discussion, I used to love that notched Stryper/Icon tone, but that sound hasn't really aged well to me. I still dig those albums and I can't imagine them with any other tones, but it kinda' grates on me now every time I hear it...and it was used way more than I ever realized.

Also, listen to the opening riff in Warrant's "32 Pennies" on DRFSR. That to me is everything that was wrong with 80s guitar tones wrapped up in a nice cheesy package.