My Personal trick to get 70s Sound

Joe Bfstplk said:
Terry Kath had an old Bogen PA amp he ran into the input of a Fender Showman, IIRC. Not sure what was done to load the Bogen and pad the signal down to a reasonable-ish level. People used Fender Champs as boosts, too. Pretty sure that is the basis of the Garnet Herzog booster....
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Greg Ferguson said:
From what I remember from an old Guitar Player article, Randy Bachmann would run a Champ, or Champ-style amp into the front of his Sunn or Acoustic amp, it was solid-state and BIG, to get that super-thick overdrive, which he called the "Herzog". Snooping around I saw mentions of Garnet designing the Herzog for him to be a little kinder and gentler to his amps, then found this, which is "supposed" to be the schematic.

https://www.thegearpage.net/board/i...nal-cause-damage-to-amp.1461506/post-22458775
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A friend of mine has one of the last ever Herzog's that was hand wired by Gar himself, and man, it's really....a beast lol.

It is pretty much a Champ at heart, with padding circuitry and a resistive load IIRC (I had to pull the chassis and have a look). Nasty device, really noisy, buzzy, tons of output, a bit of a wild animal, but it is pretty much the only 'fuzz' that I've ever heard make that sound...the American Woman, No Time, etc. 'bumblebee' fuzz. A pretty distinctive sound and feel.
 
Denny99 said:
Uhm. How did they stack amps in the old days exactly? Assuming amps didn't have FX loops.
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In the case of Deep Purple, in the 70's Blackmore tapped his AC30 after the preamp stage and fed it into his Marshall's (before he modded his Majors to replace the AC30/preamp). I've also seen pix (as mentioned above) and a video with an AC30 in behind Blackmore's Marshall, and you can see the connection lead from the AC30 to the head clearly. He even built an AC30 into a 4x12 cabinet at one time apparently.

Jon Lord did a somewhat similar thing; he tapped his B3 organ before it's power amp and ran it into Marshall's as well so he could get even more grit.

In both cases the amps were modded to get the taps, set the proper level, etc., and both bypassed the power amp to only use the preamps as 'drives'.
 
yek said:
Never heard of it...
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In the old days, Mike Oldfield used to stack amplifiers in series
Guitar > Amp > Mike > Mike Preamp > Amp Input > Mike > Mike Preamp > Amp Input ...
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I've also been using Amps in series at the Axe-FX. Sometimes with the Tube Pre, or to simulate the Alembic preamp
 
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Cool idea! Another thing that I would take into consideration is, that many guys back then used darker channels like the normal channel and got their Highs out of a Treble Booster. I really love settings like:
Class A30W-Bright Switch off - Tone Cut 15:00 or Brit JM45 Jumped, Presence down Treble Drive 9:00, Normal Drive 15:00 and Bass 12:00-13:00 - then a Treble Booster in Front!
 
One of my old studio “tricks” (courtesy of Smilin’ Deaf Eddie) was to use a Crown D60 amp as a bass preamp — P-Bass to D60 to Studer multitrack balanced input. “Gain is gain” (especially if it’s high current) and this setup had plenty of it. Everybody thought I was a crazy f’ing genius, but it was just another case of “the best artists are the best thieves”…
 
yek said:
Never heard of it...
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I remember back in the early ‘70s playing at a “Battle Of The Bands”. It was mostly high schoolers, but one older band (college guys) had a guitarist who plugged into a Princeton, then went out of that into a Bassman. Glorious tone.
 
Thanks for the preset. Just played around with it and it is certainly a darker, more ominous or brooding sound than say the default factory Plexi 100W preset! I am usually not into the whole eyes not ears philosophy, preferring to use the real models associated with certain player's sounds except when it comes to using the Axe in new ways (or relatively new as there does seem to be some who did this with real amps). Having some fun switching the amps out - for instance the 59 Bassguy Bright into the Plexi 100W Jumpered you have there. Again, great idea.
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Terry Kath had an old Bogen PA amp he ran into the input of a Fender Showman, IIRC. Not sure what was done to load the Bogen and pad the signal down to a reasonable-ish level. People used Fender Champs as boosts, too. Pretty sure that is the basis of the Garnet Herzog booster....
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I think I remember reading somewhere, Ace Frehley used a Princeton in front of a Marshall on "Alive". It probably wasn't a loaded down speaker out, but who knows?
 
Many years ago Jeff Beck used to use a Fender Champ to preamp his Marshall. My tech made me a little box so I could into the Champ then go from the speaker out of the Champ into the input of my Marshall. It worked great. Kind of like a Butler Tube Drive.
 
Denny99 said:
Uhm. How did they stack amps in the old days exactly? Assuming amps didn't have FX loops.
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I used to play through 4 stacks. I plugged my guitar into input 1 of the first Marshall Plexi, and took another cable out of the lower input and run than into channel one of a second Marshall Plexi, and did the same with the second Marshall going into a Hiwatt 100, etc, then out of the Hiwatt into an Orange. It just jumped them all so I could use them all at the same time. I still have all of the amps except for the Orange. It caught on fire and literally burnt up on stage. The good old days.
 
trancegodz said:
I saw Ritchie Blackmore playing live with Rainbow where he used a tape recorder as a preamp into Marshall 200's. This photo looks just like it.
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yes - I only found that pic - was actually looking for a clip of some live concert footage I'd seen at one point of him wailing away and the reel to reel next to him. I remember seeing that long before I started playing guitar, but being kind of a rock head at the time I remember wondering what was up with the reel to reel - even my guitarist buds at the time (early 80s) who all had the requisite Marshall JCM 1/2 stacks in their basements (just the 50 watt head, y'know for quieter practice lol) didn't have any clue at the time what Ritchie was doing with the reel to reel.
 
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