My Pete Townshend Rig

jproxu

Member
image.jpeg I had the privilege of sitting in with The Who Revue Saturday night. The guitar player from the night before wasn't ready to move his "Citrus" cabs so we put up a rather unique stack. Guess which three of the components were actually used to get Pete's classic sound?
 
Don't forget that most of that stuff on the great Who albums was recorded with a Gretsch 6120.

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I've spent a lot of time (too much...) trying to emulate the classic Hiwatt sound Pete got from his CP103 amps during the 1969-1970 touring years. A few weekends ago I think I finally made a breakthrough.

One key aspect to his tone that I've never seen talked about anywhere on the web (not even on http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/ptgear.html, surprisingly) is his use of the volume of the guitar. In order to play the acoustic-like rhythmic passages of Pinball Wizard, Captain Walker, etc I believe he keeps his guitar volume whisper quiet.

As in, turn your guitar volume all the way to OFF, then ever-so-gently roll it up to you get faint volume (at 1 or below on your volume pots). Then, dial up your amp tone and settings from there. Once you get the tone dialed in, you'll notice with your guitar volume set this low that the amp will have an incredible amount of dynamic response to your playing. Distortion comes naturally as you really dig into the strings, whereas playing gracefully has a chimey clearness to it (think the opening chords of I'm A Boy). Rolling up your guitar volume a bit more now allows you to easily achieve a distortion with decent feedback for heavy leads (think the heavy instrumental jam on Shakin' All Over, in A-major before the Spoonful section). Put a fuzz pedal in front of the amp for the chaotic in-your-face leads. Even with your guitar volume whisper quiet, the volume boost that the fuzz pedal provides will drive your amp into crazy amounts of distortion, tastefully laden with feedback.

I spent a lot of my teenage years and early twenties trying to emulate his tone with little to no success. Only after playing with the guitar volume as described above do I think I've stumbled on the secret. I believe if you watch videos of Pete playing from this era you'll see him messing with his volume a lot throughout the set. I think I can even recall moments where you hear his volume completely drop out then gently rolled back in, which furthers my suspicion.

I'm not at my Axe FX II right now, but when I am I'll post my preset. I spent some time adjusting the character frequency on the DR103, and I paired it with the Fane-loaded Ultrares cab that comes in the samples folder when you download a new firmware (the stock Fane cabinet just didn't sound right to me).

Hope your set went well--I've always wanted to play some Who stuff live, but have never had the pleasure. If you have any recordings of your performance, please share! I'll chime back in on this thread once I'm able to share my preset.

EDIT: Only just noticed after posting that this original thread was started years ago. Oh well, I'll still post my preset soon enough.
 
The other trick with the Fractal Hiwatt amp model is to add the 10db boost (set to ON) inside the amp block. Then just like you said, control everything tonally from clean to breakup using the guitar's volume control. The Hiwatt is a very clean amp and that boost is necessary to get some amp breakup happening like Pete does. Cool stuff!
 
One key aspect to his tone that I've never seen talked about anywhere on the web (not even on http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/ptgear.html, surprisingly) is his use of the volume of the guitar. In order to play the acoustic-like rhythmic passages of Pinball Wizard, Captain Walker, etc I believe he keeps his guitar volume whisper quiet.

As in, turn your guitar volume all the way to OFF, then ever-so-gently roll it up to you get faint volume (at 1 or below on your volume pots). Then, dial up your amp tone and settings from there. Once you get the tone dialed in, you'll notice with your guitar volume set this low that the amp will have an incredible amount of dynamic response to your playing. Distortion comes naturally as you really dig into the strings, whereas playing gracefully has a chimey clearness to it (think the opening chords of I'm A Boy).
You’ve just discovered why some people are diehard fans of low-output pickups. :)
 
FYI, at this link:
http://www.thewho.net/whotabs/gear/guitar/soundcity-hiwatt.html
Townshend says this about his guitar volume:
GP: What is your amp volume setting on a ratio of ten?

Entwhistle [sic]: Five or six, full treble. I use two amps: full treble and full base. The cabinets are split, so the treble comes out on top of the amp. I set my guitar about two-thirds on, and then at the end I turn it full up.

Townsend [sic]: Mine’s on about five. I always have the guitar flat out; otherwise you lose top.
 
I have been a volume knob player for as long as I can remember. I must confess that I am a tone knob player as well. Not a lot twiddling on the tone knob. Just a slight tweak to put some bite on or roll it off.

I learned how useful those knobs are when I was just a kid. I would sit in my bedroom and blast my ventures records, and try to work them out. I drove my parents crazy. Finally, in exasperation, my mom would come into my room and say “Johnny, can you please turn that down?” I would say sure mom. Then with great dramatic flair I would turn the tone knob and ask her, “ is that better?“. She would smile and nod her head. Once she left I would go back to blasting. Love the knobs.
 
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