Best Marshall Sound Laid To Tape?

[RickyLee]

OK I am in LOL.

One that comes to mind is such a simple tone and hardly any gain and saturation. But is a tone that I can only get remotely close to all these years.

I am thinking part of the magic on this tone might be a speaker breaking up a bit.

 

[BillW]

Vinnie Vincent (2nd Kiss guitarist)'s first solo album is totally over-the-top, with a killer guitar tone and insane playing. I read back in the day that he auditioned dozens of Marshall heads to find the "perfect" ones:

 

[Georgiatec]

Blackmore on "Made In Japan" will, for me, always be the bench mark.

 

[hpharley90]

My favorite is The Humble Pie performance Rockin the Fillmore.
Steve and Peter with Les Pauls and Marshalls.

 

[rrguitar1]

Extremely difficult to answer, way, way to many great recordings...

This ^^^^^

Once you think of one, another pops in your head right away, then another, and another...etc

Very hard.

 

[slagg]

My favorite is The Humble Pie performance Rockin the Fillmore.
Steve and Peter with Les Pauls and Marshalls.

I have to agree with this one."I don't need no Doctor"=AWESOME.

 

[RCM]

I've been out of this thread for a while, but Gary Moore's Victims of the Future had some vicious tone.

 

[kook]

Ace frehley kiss alive..you can close the thread now...haha

 

[Kinkless Tetrode]

To me, it is Duane's slide tone on "Statesboro Blues" from the live At Fillmore East album by the Allman Brothers Band. Dickey Betts gets great slide tone on a live version of "Ain't Wastin' Time No More" that I have, but even that isn't as good as Duane's tone on "Statesboro Blues".

We all know that the sound of compressed video files on youtube isn't great but, since I cannot post vinyl here, this will have to do:

Yup for me too, but I like Dicky's tone just as much-I think Betts epitomizes the best Marshall tone from any time period, even when he played Soldanos. The Fillmore recordings are the gold standard of Marshall tone in my opinion.

 

[kook]

Early KISS. Any of it. I know "Alive" was doctored heavily to amp up the performance but the guitar sounds on that record are high on my list of Marshall reference tones.

The hottest band in the land:

Was may #1 choice as well the sound on kiss alive

 

[kook]

Weak tonally?? Aces guitar sounded great on of my favs of all time

 

[Australian]

One of my fav recorded Marshall tones. ZZ Tops first album.

 

[jimmyjames]

Young dude at work was quizzing my thoughts on various old school stuff, at lunchtime today. I told him that I still try to nail the total feel of Billy's older songs, that he was nailing down in his early 20's

 

[thunderstruck507]

Revisited "Let There Be Rock" by AC/DC recently after reading an interesting article on the album. Glad I did. The guitar tones on that album are fantastic.

The article discussed how the album was made with an effort to capture the live potency so tracks wound up recorded with Angus running around the studio and flailing on the floor like he does live, guitars would still be recorded if they went out of tune, and there is even a possible true myth that Angus fried at least one Marshall head during recording. A couple times you can hear the speakers distorting on the record.

I'm too young to know but I'd bet some of the tones captured there were pretty wicked for the time which is 1976 I believe.

 

[ibmorjamn]

First Rush , UFO Phenomenon , Scorpions / Roth years .

 

[slagg]

Vinnie Vincent (2nd Kiss guitarist)'s first solo album is totally over-the-top, with a killer guitar tone and insane playing. I read back in the day that he auditioned dozens of Marshall heads to find the "perfect" ones:

No offense but I'm glad those day's are over.

 

[colchar]

Yup for me too, but I like Dicky's tone just as much-I think Betts epitomizes the best Marshall tone from any time period, even when he played Soldanos. The Fillmore recordings are the gold standard of Marshall tone in my opinion.

Dickey is my favourite player (my avatar is a bit of a hint eh?). He played 100 watters so that he could play clean at the same volume as Duane when he was using cranked 50 watters.

Their tones on songs like "Stormy Monday" from the Atlanta Pop Festival recordings (should be available on youtube) are amazing. There are also a couple of versions of "Statesboro Blues" out there from the same recordings and their tone is great, but not quite as good as the famous version from the Fillmore recordings.

And then there is the live version of "You Don't Love Me/Soul Serenade" (the one during which Duane talks about the murder of King Curtis before they start playing), which also features some of their best recorded live tones.

It doesn't matter if they don't like the band or their music, or even the style of music, but every Marshall lover should take the time to listen to live and studio recordings of the original incarnation of the Allman Brothers Band. Their tone is usually amazing, and epitomizes everything that is great about Marshalls. I love other classic rock, and '80s metal, much of which was recorded using Marshalls but, to my mind, nothing beats a Marshall being used for the blues or blues rock and the ABB did that better than most.

And I completely agree with you regarding the Fillmore recordings.

Although it is a compressed youtube file, here is the version of "You Don't Love Me/Soul Serenade" that I mentioned above:

 

[Kinkless Tetrode]

Dickey is my favourite player (my avatar is a bit of a hint eh?). He played 100 watters so that he could play clean at the same volume as Duane when he was using cranked 50 watters.

Their tones on songs like "Stormy Monday" from the Atlanta Pop Festival recordings (should be available on youtube) are amazing. There are also a couple of versions of "Statesboro Blues" out there from the same recordings and their tone is great, but not quite as good as the famous version from the Fillmore recordings.

And then there is the live version of "You Don't Love Me/Soul Serenade" (the one during which Duane talks about the murder of King Curtis before they start playing), which also features some of their best recorded live tones.

It doesn't matter if they don't like the band or their music, or even the style of music, but every Marshall lover should take the time to listen to live and studio recordings of the original incarnation of the Allman Brothers Band. Their tone is usually amazing, and epitomizes everything that is great about Marshalls. I love other classic rock, and '80s metal, much of which was recorded using Marshalls but, to my mind, nothing beats a Marshall being used for the blues or blues rock and the ABB did that better than most.

And I completely agree with you regarding the Fillmore recordings.

Although it is a compressed youtube file, here is the version of "You Don't Love Me/Soul Serenade" that I mentioned above:

Excellent version. They played that whole session, with running commentary by Butch, last year on satellite radio.

The thing about Dickey and Duane using Marshalls live are the picking dynamics and subtle tone shifts. The touch response of the amps really stand out-even on youtube.

Dickey's typical Marshall rig was a bit unconventional. He used JBL speakers in his 4x12s. He also set his amps bright, but he plays almost exclusively on the neck pickup (LP or strat). I read some interviews and he knows his Marshalls. He talked about how he likes the bias set to fine tune his tone once.

 

[colchar]

Excellent version. They played that whole session, with running commentary by Butch, last year on satellite radio.

The thing about Dickey and Duane using Marshalls live are the picking dynamics and subtle tone shifts. The touch response of the amps really stand out-even on youtube.

Dickey's typical Marshall rig was a bit unconventional. He used JBL speakers in his 4x12s. He also set his amps bright, but he plays almost exclusively on the neck pickup (LP or strat). I read some interviews and he knows his Marshalls. He talked about how he likes the bias set to fine tune his tone once.

He primarily used LPs and 335s (he used an SG for a long time until he gave it to Duane for slide playing because he was tired of waiting for Duane to retune) and I've only seen a few videos of him using a Strat and those were mostly later on, after Duane had died.

But yeah, he lives on the neck pickup. In addition to his Marshalls he also likes the Fender Pro Jr. and uses that in the studio when he doesn't want to take his Marshalls out.

As for Duane, I think part of his secret was the fact he used a bass amp. I seem to remember reading something about Duane using JBLs too but could be remembering that incorrectly.

I have an old interview with Dickey from back in 2003 saved on my computer that contains some interesting info about amps, guitars, etc. PM me your email address and I'll send you the file if you'd like to read it. If I remember correctly, it is about 8-10 pages long.

 

[mulletmule]

I would agree Back In Black and Fair Warning are hard to beat. Great Marshall tones!! Gary Moore always made a Marshall scream!