Any tips on dialing in George Harrison's tone for his solo on SOMETHING?

David777

David777

Member
I'm working up a cover of SOMETHING by the Beatles, and would like to get close to George Harrison's tone on the solo.

Any advice/guidance would be appreciated!

Thanks!
David
 
Well that knocks my preconceptions out the window.
Sounds nothing like I expected.
In context it's wonderful, "sensitive".
Solo it's close to ugly IMO, more overdriven than I thought, and not in a super pretty way.
Double tracked at minimum, which I "knew".

Which just goes to show I have no idea how to make records on that level.
At.
All.
 
David777 said:
I'm working up a cover of SOMETHING by the Beatles, and would like to get close to George Harrison's tone on the solo.

Any advice/guidance would be appreciated!

Thanks!
David
Click to expand...
Yeah, this is a tough one. Here are some thoughts that could possibly help:

  1. Play with the Speaker tab on the amp. Try a lot of speaker drive and compression, and boost the cab resonance
  2. I also tried boosting the input trim a ton and added a bunch of pedal boost and input boost to slam the front of the amp for that crackle. I didn't get enough of it, but it's an idea.
  3. I used a heavy dose of some full res IRs for that room vibe
  4. I used a 140ms slap tape delay to get some of that doubling effect.
It came out more like Brian May (too smoothly saturated) than George Harrison, but perhaps it's a start:

 
I’ve read he used his Les Paul and they had Fender amps at the time. According to The Beatles Recording Reference Manual, the amp options were:
85-watt Blackface Fender Showman
22-watt Fender Deluxe Blackface
22-watt Fender Deluxe Silverface
50-watt Fender Bassman Silverface
100-watt Fender Twin Silverface

It is one of the most perfect guitar solos ever made. It sounds like nothing else.
 
I think it sounds like a small Fender combo. Out of the choices above I would go for blackface deluxe, but really I think it sounds like a tweed deluxe or even a tweed champ.

If it's humbuckers, I would guess low output far from the strings
 
In an interview I read years ago, he said he did about 50 takes at that solo, but it just wasn't working. He took a break, smoked a joint, and tried again and liked what he'd done.

I'll see if I can find that interview.
 
Sounds like a punch around the 16 second mark based on the somewhat cutoff note. Regardless, clips like that remind me that context is everything. One of my favorite songs and solos.
 
Dave Merrill said:
Well that knocks my preconceptions out the window.
Sounds nothing like I expected.
In context it's wonderful, "sensitive".
Solo it's close to ugly IMO, more overdriven than I thought, and not in a super pretty way.
Double tracked at minimum, which I "knew".

Which just goes to show I have no idea how to make records on that level.
At.
All.
Click to expand...
A fair bit of the 'hair' on mildly overdriven guitar gets masked by the other instruments, particularly the cymbals....
 
That sizzle sounds more like the mic pre is overloaded. Try over driving the mic pre in the cab block.(try vintage between 6 or 7.)
 
One of the full res IR sets would help nail that ‘near a wall’ sound for sure.
Asides from that, probably a fender amp, just before breakup, with the standard old school compression that was big in the day may also help.

Thanks
Pauly
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom