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

[sahlomonic]

I think a lot of albums from the early 80's had either terrible amp tone, or terrible production. Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken - pretty much all of those early Sunset Strip bands just sounded terrible in terms of guitars when they first had albums. Could be small budget, terrible recording, or just terrible tones. Bands from the 70's sounded HUGE but maybe that's because they had bigger budgets and were more established. Mid 80's things got better, then by the end of the 80's/early 90's everything was drenched in chorus, delay, Rockmans, and Eventides, so back to terrible tone lol. Grunge was the best thing to happen to hair metal, because by the mid-90's rock tones were stripped down an top freaking notch.

On the current front, there's a few videos of this guitar player out in LA that has a Bogner XTC full stack and a Marshall stack behind him, with the whole Malmsteen keyboard lead-in going on, and his terrible playing makes those amps sound no better than Gorilla practice amps. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

 

[Tonelover]

What's funny is that none of us though that the tones were bad at the time.

Anyway, my vote goes for Queensryche on Operation Mindcrime. Love the album, it's one of my favorites, but that whiny sounding lead tone of theirs leaves much to be desired.

 

[sahlomonic]

What's funny is that none of us though that the tones were bad at the time.

Anyway, my vote goes for Queensryche on Operation Mindcrime. Love the album, it's one of my favorites, but that whiny sounding lead tone of theirs leaves much to be desired.

And I can understand that. I was born in '81 so I didn't get to experience the growth of the 80's until it was time for radio stations to play 'throwback' tunes.

 

[electrophonic.tonic]

Worst sound of the 80s?

Anything with Distortion and Chorus used together, so pretty much half of all of it

Yep
Hate any flange-y/phase-y/chorus-y crap in my metal. Leave that shit for other genres (Billy Duffy on the Love album sounds pretty sweet)
-Judas Priest Turbo. WTF?
-Bark at the Moon
One of the greatest metal records of the 80's and perhaps the most iconic solo of Jake's in the finale of the title track, but man that production is under water. Seriously horrible.
related- I thought Rhoads' tone was great live. I'd blame the compressed recordings more than anything.
Sounds like they vacuumed up the thickness.

-Anything by Ratt other than Out of the Cellar
-Tooth and Nail and Breaking the Chains both sound kinda weird, though I do like them. TaN was dry and muffled, the other just dry, which sounds cool at times.
-5150 (especially given what we were used to from Ed). Could be the production, but that album just sucks.
-Twisted Sister. Shitty band, shitty tone . Shitty.
-Stryper is reprehensible
-CC Deville most of the time
-anything by Baylon A.D.
-Done with Mirrors
-Most of the new wave crap
-Craig Goldy

The thing about the 80's that killed me was the awful drum sounds, not so much the guitars (though drums for a lot of bands now are even worse).

That + the minimalization of bass guitar on many recordings = audio boredom.

Agreed there too

 

[Atropos_Project]

The thing about the 80's that killed me was the awful drum sounds, not so much the guitars (though drums for a lot of bands now are even worse).

That + the minimalization of bass guitar on many recordings = audio boredom.

 

[AmpliFIRE]

Vinnie Vincent for sure

 

[zuel69]

What's funny is that none of us though that the tones were bad at the time.

It's because the tones weren't-aren't bad. Playing an Arion metal master pedal into the aux input of a sears stereo, that's bad tone. Threads like this are the online forum version of a knitting circle.

 

[Death by Uberschall]

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.

I have to agree. I think I read somewhere that his tone was a product of the producer they had at the time.

Queensryche on Operation Mindcrime. Love the album, it's one of my favorites, but that whiny sounding lead tone of theirs leaves much to be desired.

I agree that Operation Mind Crime had horrible buzzy "Dist Pedal straight to the board" tone.

 

[jcm800x4]

Mick Mars (other than doc feel good) very annoying tones to me. CC....couldn't even listen to him. Ugh.....sounded like a male cat getting his balls caught in a mouse trap. And the ultimate fizz...traci guns...just don't get it.

I love RR. And the first two ozzy albums are probably my favorite albums of all time but wow....not an mxr distortion fan.

 

[Death by Uberschall]

Oh, and how could I forget Michael Angelo Batio during the Nitro years, horrible.

 

[petejt]

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.

I'm listening out for it right now, and I can't hear it all the way through.
I can definitely hear a delay on one channel which would definitely add some depth.

I do hear some modulation on the rhythm guitar during the outro for Mean Street, but I reckon that's the MXR flanger used on a really slow setting and no resonance/feedback, to get a chorus effect. There's a similar effect in Sinner's Swing.

The intro to Hear about it Later is like an MXR take on an Andy Summers type of chorusey flanged clean tone. Doesn't seem like a harmoniser. There's a 'lower range' version of this effect on Push comes to shove.

Of course the flanger comes into full swing on Unchained!


But his tone definitely got super washy and over processed with the rack gear in the late 1980, which is when Bradshaw's modular rack mount system for guitarists really kicked off. Became VERY shrill and washy.
Steve Lukather was early with the rack system in 1985 (correct me if I'm wrong), but I'm wondering if he used that gear back in 1982 for Michael Jackson's Thriller album.

 

[Mr. Willy]

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.

First, I LOVE Rhoads and that live clip sounds a lot better than the Norman produced one, but his tone here still sounds tinny and brittle to me. I think it's the Altec speakers that are the culprit. I wish I could hear Randy's tone through some Greenbacks.

 

[ChadVanHalen]

I don't really want to hate, but I'm just going to qualify a lot of these statements with a lot of guitar tones alone from that time are weak and thin and shit, but within the band it works for some reason (Listen to iso tracks from anyone, it really opens your eyes to how the guitar sounds and how a band format changes it)

So I'm going to say most first album tones or tones in the early 80's are absolute shit and that's because of the tech, the producer and the lack of funds. CC, Priest, Twisted Sister, Leppard, Randy, etc. but live they sounded a lot better more times than not.

You know sitting here thinking about it, I can't really come up with a bad tone. All these tones are just what I associate with the album and don't sound bad or out of place... I think the only tones I can think of being truly bad are Kirk's leads on Kill Em All, I went back to that album recently and really listened to it and was shocked at the dubbed solos', I don't know how to describe it, fairyness? Sounded so weak and out of place on such a great heavy album