Help on Rust Never Sleeps/Rockin' in the Free World sound

funny_polymath

Fractal Fanatic
Any advice? I know he uses a Fender Deluxe close to meltdown, but any ideas most welcome. I am not really looking to 'clone' this sound, just get into the same general zone. Thanks.
 
NEIL : Well actually my amp is a sort of custom assembly. It has may different elements and controls to it. That amp has a gadget that nobody else has got. It's unique...totally original, and I'm really happy with it. It's called a Whizzer, and it's on top of my Fender Deluxe Tweed, which is the backbone of my sound. The pots on my amp are motorized and linked to the Whizzer. I adjust my settings on the digital controls of the Whizzer, which sets of the motor which actually physically turns the pots, to set the position. This setting pushes a button that, once it's set off, turns all the dials on the amp to the desired setting. I've got four of them, so there's no interruption in the sound. My whole system is fairly complicated. I have an effects rack -- actually not a rack, it's a box full of effects. They're all very old: echoplex, analog delay, Mutron octave divider, a Boss flanger that must be from 1969. I start them all from a set of metal switches -- NASA quality stuff...I have some remotes to start them from a distance. I can't use the small Boss pedals. Each time it's the same thing: «Oh, we're sorry» and the whole thing smashes to bits...

Q : Could you have recorded Weld with equipment from the Sixties?

NEIL : No, not without the Whizzer, because it's the only way to have that immediate change in sound. The volume on the Deluxe goes up to 12. If you go from 12 to 10 and a half, suddenly the attack is different. At 12, the amp saturates completely and gives the sound after the attack. But at 10 and a half, the attack stays the same. So I have a button for just for that change of volume position. On a Deluxe, there's one tone button and two for the volume. The volume for the channel you're not using affects the channel you are using, even if you're not plugged into it, because of the amplification stage. Being able to control the channel I'm not using or to adjust the highs here and there -- that's the sort of thing I couldn't do without the Whizzer. It's technology that doesn't affect the sound, just the control of the sound.

Q : Where do you get your feedback? From the gain of the amp, or a pedal?

NEIL : The volume. There is no gain on the amp. And we don't use distortion pedals. Just the Fender Deluxe.
 
Rust Never Sleeps was most likely the Deluxe turned up to meltdown, but I think for much of the Freedom album, including Rockin' in the Free World, he was using a Marshall of some kind. The fact that they sound similar has more to do with Neil Young than any particular gear.

I've actually gotten a tolerably good trashy Neil Young-esque sound with the '59 Bassguy model. The most important thing is to play like you absolutely do not give a f**k. :)
 
The FAS Super Tweed with a 1x12 speaker gets me the closest.

Huge Neil Young fan here btw. :)

Neil's rig breakdown in available pretty easy online via Google. His Deluxe has been modded for more watts of output and the bridge pup of his black les paul is very odd and unique. I believe it came out of a firebird? Anyway, that pup is very microphonic. That definitely contributes to the tone when he is cranked.

The deluxe is mic'ed and the output of that goes into a Magnatone amp. That amp is mic'ed and goes into a small PA and onstage PA cabinets.

He is really picky about tone and his guitar / amp tech says that using a Fender tube reverb first in the chain before the amp is also key.

I prefer putting the reverb block before the amp in Neil preset on the Axe. It's a darker more vibey reverb.
 
A friend joked about how could he get an uglier sound?

Playing around with a Ring modulator one day I played that infamous riff and was convinced that is close to the raunchy distortion sound. Give it a try
 
The deluxe is mic'ed and the output of that goes into a Magnatone amp. That amp is mic'ed and goes into a small PA and onstage PA cabinets.
Seriously? Wow. So let me make sure I understand this correctly- Guitar->deluxe->mic->magnatone->mic->PA? So he sort of sends it through two separate amps in a serial fashion? He must've been stoned when he came up with that! But hey, he's Neil Young, and I'm a high school science teacher, so what do I know about how he sets up...
 
A friend joked about how could he get an uglier sound?

Playing around with a Ring modulator one day I played that infamous riff and was convinced that is close to the raunchy distortion sound. Give it a try

lol

Neil is an "acquired" taste :)

The first song I learned was a Neil Young tune (from the end of the hippie era here). His electric guitar work has always moved me. Big influence on my style.
 
Seriously? Wow. So let me make sure I understand this correctly- Guitar->deluxe->mic->magnatone->mic->PA? So he sort of sends it through two separate amps in a serial fashion? He must've been stoned when he came up with that! But hey, he's Neil Young, and I'm a high school science teacher, so what do I know about how he sets up...

IIRC, the magnatone and the on stage pa are for stage monitoring only. The rig is mic'ed separately for FOH too :)

The whole Whizzer thing is pretty out there too. The pedal board itself is made of wood and it somewhat oddly shaped. The Whizzer is bunch of motors in a box. The box sits on the Tweed, the controls face up on the Tweed, and the motors are attached to the amp pots.

Neil hits a "preset" and the motors spin the knobs.
 
Funny you mention that, but much to my surprise, I saw a whole bunch of marshalls in the famous SNL clip of rockin in the free world. Agreed about not giving a fuc%. You have to allow yourself to be transfixed, and become a conduit for a supremely primal energy.
Rust Never Sleeps was most likely the Deluxe turned up to meltdown, but I think for much of the Freedom album, including Rockin' in the Free World, he was using a Marshall of some kind. The fact that they sound similar has more to do with Neil Young than any particular gear.

I've actually gotten a tolerably good trashy Neil Young-esque sound with the '59 Bassguy model. The most important thing is to play like you absolutely do not give a f**k. :)
 
I don't know how he gets his tone but I'm a massive fan of Neil's playing. I often play along to Rockin' in the Free World and for me any high gain tone will do, it's all about getting in the groove.
 
I could be wrong, but I think there is also a whole lot of guitar/amp interaction going on there; the kind of thing you get when you are standing in a room with a ridiculously loud amp. This is not going to happen tracking direct and monitoring with headphones. It's a subtle part of the sound to be sure, but if you are looking for that "last 10%" you might want to try splitting your signal off to a super loud amp and blasting it right at your guitar as you track. Don't damage your hearing though!
 
Boy - I'll probably start (another) flame war here - albeit without meaning to - I'm a child of the 60's rock era, and Neil was a pivotal part of that. However, there are two artists that I go out of my way to avoid listening to for ACADEMIC reasons: Neil Young and Jimmy Vaughn. I am actually afraid that if I listen to these gents that I may pick up some of their characteristics/stylings subconsciously. I find that Neil is the owner of the one-note-solo realm, and that Jimmy Vaughn is so simple that it's hard to believe that he's taking it seriously. I think both of them should be collared by the 'tone police'. At least Jimmy seems to bend and intonate his notes properly. These guys both remind me of the old Playboy music polls, where Eric Clapton always won best guitarist (did Neil also win?), Billy Preston won best keyboard player, etc. simply because of name recognition and the low musical IQ of the general readership.

Oddly (to me), John Lennon and others loved him. Go figure. Could he sing? With CSNY certainly! With his solo work I tend to hear an imaginary Randy Jackson in my head going "it's pretty pitchy". Could he play? Well 'Harvest' and other albums showed that he was FUNCTIONAL on an acoustic. So was Cobain, sort of, but that's a separate can-o-worms.

I guess the thing that surprises me most is that here, in this forum, where we have a majority of truly gifted guitar players, and some out-and-out guitar gods, why would Neil be singled out as someone to emulate/model/copy/tonally clone/be an inspiration/etc. ? As if it's not already obvious, I don't get it.
 
I guess the thing that surprises me most is that here, in this forum, where we have a majority of truly gifted guitar players, and some out-and-out guitar gods, why would Neil be singled out as someone to emulate/model/copy/tonally clone/be an inspiration/etc. ? As if it's not already obvious, I don't get it.

Ha! I vividly remember being at a show where I said something like, "Neil Young is my hero!" and a guy I knew turned to me and said, "But... you play guitar so well...?"

It's not for everybody, but both Young's tone and playing style are viscerally satisfying to me. I can listen to and appreciate Eric Johnson or Marty Friedman or George Benson or whoever on some kind of intellectual level, but Neil Young's playing is a gut punch. It bypasses all that 13-over-8 polyrhythm played over a Cdim5flat9 cerebral stuff and hits me emotionally right where it hurts. I enjoy it on a totally different level. If anything I ever played could be as satisfying as the one-note guitar solo in Cinnamon Girl, or the horrifyingly ugly stuff at the end of Southern Man, I'd die happy. I like Billy Corgan for some of the same reasons.

I think if somebody playing simply indicates to you that "it's hard to believe that he's taking it seriously," there's just a broad swathe of music that doesn't speak to you. Nothing wrong with that. For me, though, there are times when simple and even ugly can say some things better than any amount of technical wizardry.

Put another way, I don't look at a Picasso and chide the artist for having screwed-up proportions in his figures. The value of that art is appreciated along an entirely different axis than, say, hyperrealism.
 
Wow - I think you did a great job of capsulizing it with '"broad swathe of music that doesn't speak to you". Nicely done. You're 100% on - oddly there are other simple sounds, riffs, bands that sound great-but-primitive to me, but oddly Neil was never one of them.

BTW you hurt me with 'Southern Man'
:lol Actually - confessional moment here - that solo seemed to make sense to me somehow! Shows how widely tastes swing. But Cinnamon Girl? That's actually a cool tune - really - except the amps at the outset sound hyper-farty, only to deliver us to Dante's ninth ring of hell with that single note solo (I'm sure that's where I'm going, and what I can expect when I get there!). I mean there's only so long a D should be played, right?

All that aside, Picasso was wrong - all things should be done according to engineering specs! (can you guess what I do for a living?)

Thanks for the insight and the comeback!
 
Anyone that says Neil is the master of the one-note solo A) has not learned to play Cinnamon Girl (its more than one note and is about a girl not about a guitar solo :)) B) Is not familiar with the body of Neil's work.

Neil is an extremely accomplished guitar player. Solo he has that Rev. Gary Davis style of bass, rhythm, melody all at the same time. His electric solos are very melodic. Almost Gilmour'ish in that they invoke epic melodies. Check out the solos in Powderfinger from Live Rust.

I'm not really sure why Neil got tagged as a one-note guy? He is anything but.

He is completely rooted in folk, folk rock, bluegrass and hillbilly blues though. And he is definitely not for everyone for sure. My wife can't stand his whiny voice.
 
Yes, I agree completely. I will be tracking live, with earplugs, with my FRFR right in front of me.
I could be wrong, but I think there is also a whole lot of guitar/amp interaction going on there; the kind of thing you get when you are standing in a room with a ridiculously loud amp. This is not going to happen tracking direct and monitoring with headphones. It's a subtle part of the sound to be sure, but if you are looking for that "last 10%" you might want to try splitting your signal off to a super loud amp and blasting it right at your guitar as you track. Don't damage your hearing though!
 
Hard to adequately respond to your post here. You either get neil or you don't. As I said before, neil is the consumate primal player. If you are a technique freak, then he blows. If you are a 'feel' player, and you like his feel, then he is unmatched at what he does. Though I love some 'technical' players (Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck) the VAST majority of realy techy players, the vais and satrianis of the world leave me utterly cold. For me, their stuff is largely soul-less empty gymnastics. And more to the point: they can't write songs, not like Neil Young does. The story is where it's at, and from Needle and the Damage Done to Southern Man, he tells rich stories. I predict that his music will still be listened to a hundred years from now. Vai, Malmsteen, Buckethead, etc.... I bet they'll be long forgotten.

So, why would I want to emulate his sound? Because I have a song that calls for it. It is a song about things falling apart, about chaos, and it calls for that kind of solo, which is not really my 'go to' place - I am not, in general, a neil young kind of soloist, but two tracks on this project will have a taste of his primal mayhem - because the songs call for it. The song plays me, I don't play it. And that's even more so for neil young.
Boy - I'll probably start (another) flame war here - albeit without meaning toH - I'm a child of the 60's rock era, and Neil was a pivotal part of that. However, there are two artists that I go out of my way to avoid listening to for ACADEMIC reasons: Neil Young and Jimmy Vaughn. I am actually afraid that if I listen to these gents that I may pick up some of their characteristics/stylings subconsciously. I find that Neil is the owner of the one-note-solo realm, and that Jimmy Vaughn is so simple that it's hard to believe that he's taking it seriously. I think both of them should be collared by the 'tone police'. At least Jimmy seems to bend and intonate his notes properly. These guys both remind me of the old Playboy music polls, where Eric Clapton always won best guitarist (did Neil also win?), Billy Preston won best keyboard player, etc. simply because of name recognition and the low musical IQ of the general readership.

Oddly (to me), John Lennon and others loved him. Go figure. Could he sing? With CSNY certainly! With his solo work I tend to hear an imaginary Randy Jackson in my head going "it's pretty pitchy". Could he play? Well 'Harvest' and other albums showed that he was FUNCTIONAL on an acoustic. So was Cobain, sort of, but that's a separate can-o-worms.

I guess the thing that surprises me most is that here, in this forum, where we have a majority of truly gifted guitar players, and some out-and-out guitar gods, why would Neil be singled out as someone to emulate/model/copy/tonally clone/be an inspiration/etc. ? As if it's not already obvious, I don't get it.
 
Fantastic. I did not say it nearly as well. It's odd and sad how 'simple' is an epithet to some people. I fervently believe that 'LESS IS MORE" is something that every musician needs to internalize. I am much more impressed by John Lee Hooker or Howlin' Wolf killing one note than I am with a 'stunt guitarist'.
Ha! I vividly remember being at a show where I said something like, "Neil Young is my hero!" and a guy I knew turned to me and said, "But... you play guitar so well...?"

It's not for everybody, but both Young's tone and playing style are viscerally satisfying to me. I can listen to and appreciate Eric Johnson or Marty Friedman or George Benson or whoever on some kind of intellectual level, but Neil Young's playing is a gut punch. It bypasses all that 13-over-8 polyrhythm played over a Cdim5flat9 cerebral stuff and hits me emotionally right where it hurts. I enjoy it on a totally different level. If anything I ever played could be as satisfying as the one-note guitar solo in Cinnamon Girl, or the horrifyingly ugly stuff at the end of Southern Man, I'd die happy. I like Billy Corgan for some of the same reasons.

I think if somebody playing simply indicates to you that "it's hard to believe that he's taking it seriously," there's just a broad swathe of music that doesn't speak to you. Nothing wrong with that. For me, though, there are times when simple and even ugly can say some things better than any amount of technical wizardry.

Put another way, I don't look at a Picasso and chide the artist for having screwed-up proportions in his figures. The value of that art is appreciated along an entirely different axis than, say, hyperrealism.
 
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