Norman Greenbaum's "SPIRIT IN THE SKY" tone

I clipped and saved this some time ago; can’t remember the source.

According to one source, Norman Greenbaum himself used a Fender Telecaster with a fuzz box built into the body to generate the song's characteristic guitar sound.

However, guitarist Russell DaShiell explained how the tone was created:

"I actually played the lead guitar parts on Spirit, using a 61-62 SG Les Paul, a 68 Marshall Plexi 100w half stack and a home-made overdrive box in front of the Marshall. Regarding the 'beep beeps' as I call them, when the producer asked me to play some fills in between the verses, as a joke I said how about something spacey like this and I did the pickup switch/string bending thing. I saw him stand up in the control booth and he said "that's it! let's record that!" so we did. (There was no slide involved, just my fingers, and I used the bridge humbucker and the pickup switch). The fuzz part is Norman with a built-in overdrive circuit built into his Tele pickguard."

"I've been asked a lot over the years how I did the 'beep beep' guitar parts on Spirit, so for any guitar players out there who would like to learn how, try the following: Using a 2-pickup Gibson, set the neck pickup volume to zero, bridge pickup volume to max, with the pickup switch in the middle position (with Gibson wiring this gives you silence in the middle position). Do a string bend, picking the B & E strings together with one hit, just ahead of the beat, then use the pickup switch to kick in the bridge pickup in triplets (6 per bar) as you let the B string bend down two frets."

"I mainly used two positions on Spirit, which is in the key of A. For the low position, fret a stationary C note (8th fret) on the E string while bending the B string up to an A note for your starting-position, then pick the two strings together once while the guitar is silent and work the pickup switch as you let the A note bend downwards to a G. For the high position, do the same thing at the 15th fret holding a stationary high G note on the E string while bending down from E to D on the B string."

"I must give credit to Jimi Hendrix as my inspiration for this technique (as well as for the double-string riffs I did at the beginning of the Spirit solo tail section). I saw him perform live in a small club in Madison, Wisconsin and loved the way he used his Strat pickup switch to create staccato feedback on songs like Voodoo Child. The difference is, on a Gibson you can start from silence and create the on/off effect, which worked well with the downward string bending thing I did on Spirit."
 
When I think of fuzz, I think of that song. The fuzziest fuzz tone ever recorded IMO.
 
Whoa. I love this song and that tone. Cranking this on a sunny Saturday morning brings back memories of being a kid and waking up to my dad having this just cranked on his beloved McIntosh system and the house shaking as he danced around the kitchen making coffee and flapjacks for weekend breakfast.

Good memories.

What better way to start my Saturday morning than chasing this tone dragon, right?

Fuzzes are notoriously hard to emulate. Each one is a unique snowflake. The tiniest changes in components, variance and circuit topolgies can create huge differences in how they feel to play and how they sound.

Copping something close to this tone was a real capital-j Journey. I'll try and bring you along with some of my notes.

I rolled through a few fuzz models and tried to mutate some of them using the bias settings and clipping settings in the block. Nothing really gave me that almost mono-only quality that you hear on the track. He's getting this drop out in the tone when he brushes more than a single string that really gives it a bunch of character and, if you're playing a pedal that does this, makes playing it a real experience.

The Octave Distortion was doing something kind of like that -- where you get it to almost fart out when you play more than one string at a time. So I played with that for a bit and wasn't happy with the overall tone. It was missing something. There's a horn-like quality you hear in the track that reminds of a Jordan Bosstone pedal. But it's not a Bosstone tone. It's...something else.

I tried combining the Octave Distortion in parallel with a Bender Fuzz. The Bender is a super squirrely circuit that does ripping quality tones really well. I thought I'd hit upon a passable facsimile with the paralell approach here and was about to record my sample clip when I stopped and decided to look through my stash of DIY fuzz pedals.

And there it was.

Staring right back at me on the very top of my home for wayward pedals (aka the plastic rubbermaid bin).

Mark Hammer's Green Stinger pedal. A pedal he gifted me many years ago that I thought was quirky, but never really made much music with. I was using it like QOTSA use it in Little Sister -- as an octave up on a solo sound. Piercing. Quirky. But not that flutey, synthy thing.

The Stinger wasn't the sound here. But it was the right idea.

A ring oscillator is fanastic in a fuzz pedal. It turns it into something barely controllable and accentuates mid-frequencies. We don't have a fuzz model in the drive block that includes an oscillator component to the circuit you can control. But we do have a ring oscillator block!

I dropped an oscillator in front the drive block running the Bender model and....

...nope. :D

What was I missing???

TRACKING!

Fuzz osciallators track the frequency of the input signal. Poorly. Which is what makes them do silly things when you play more than one note at a time like fart out as they mistrack or jump between oscillating dominate frequencies in the signal.

I flipped the oscillator to frequency tracking mode and it was there!

I spent another 20 minutes tuning the frequency response of the fuzz and the osciallator content in the signal.

The end result isn't exactly Spirit in the Sky, but I don't think you'll ever get it precisely there without knowing exactly what fuzz he was using and what the circuit topology it was. It's not quite a flutey as his tone.

But this is Pretty Damn Close. And stupid amounts of fun to play.

I take no responsibility for the neighbours you're going to annoy when you crank this and jam along. Clip was made with my Silver Sky -- I don't own a single coil Telecaster.



The preset is on Axe-Change here and was made with the latest Cygnus public beta: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=8727

Screen Shot 2021-03-13 at 10.46.27 AM.png
 
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When I think of fuzz, I think of that song. The fuzziest fuzz tone ever recorded IMO.
This one and Revolution by the Beatles. Such a raw and nasty sounding breakup. I believe Revolution was guitars straight into the console with the preamp gain cranked up all the way. Just nasty hard clipping from the preamp tubes of the console, yet still rockin' and musical.
 
... Cranking this on a sunny Saturday morning brings back memories of being a kid and waking up to my dad having this just cranked on his beloved McIntosh system and the house shaking as he danced around the kitchen making coffee and flapjacks for weekend breakfast ...
:)
 
Listen to Gary Clarke’s Numb. It’s fuzzier and wuzzier.
I'm always surprised by his ability to control feedback with those kind of tones using a hollow Epiphone Casino. Seems like it would be a howling nightmare on stage with that kind of gain and breakup going on. He does seem to use an SG a lot on stage too though.
 
One quick memory – United Airlines once used Spirit in the Sky in a TV commercial, and I still remember the shot of a beautiful airborne 747 sweeping slowly past the camera, sunlight glinting off the upper deck, while Russell DaShiell’s “beep beep” pulsing string bends matched its motion perfectly. Gave me chills … still does.
 
The end result isn't exactly Spirit in the Sky, but I don't think you'll ever get it precisely there without knowing exactly what fuzz he was using and what the circuit topology it was. It's not quite a flutey as his tone.

But this is Pretty Damn Close. And stupid amounts of fun to play.
Damn that's sweet. Great idea to use the RingMod.
 
Whoa. I love this song and that tone. Cranking this on a sunny Saturday morning brings back memories of being a kid and waking up to my dad having this just cranked on his beloved McIntosh system and the house shaking as he danced around the kitchen making coffee and flapjacks for weekend breakfast.

Good memories.

What better way to start my Saturday morning than chasing this tone dragon, right?

Fuzzes are notoriously hard to emulate. Each one is a unique snowflake. The tiniest changes in components, variance and circuit topolgies can create huge differences in how they feel to play and how they sound.

Copping something close to this tone was a real capital-j Journey. I'll try and bring you along with some of my notes.

I rolled through a few fuzz models and tried to mutate some of them using the bias settings and clipping settings in the block. Nothing really gave me that almost mono-only quality that you hear on the track. He's getting this drop out in the tone when he brushes more than a single string that really gives it a bunch of character and, if you're playing a pedal that does this, makes playing it a real experience.

The Octave Distortion was doing something kind of like that -- where you get it to almost fart out when you play more than one string at a time. So I played with that for a bit and wasn't happy with the overall tone. It was missing something. There's a horn-like quality you hear in the track that reminds of a Jordan Bosstone pedal. But it's not a Bosstone tone. It's...something else.

I tried combining the Octave Distortion in parallel with a Bender Fuzz. The Bender is a super squirrely circuit that does ripping quality tones really well. I thought I'd hit upon a passable facsimile with the paralell approach here and was about to record my sample clip when I stopped and decided to look through my stash of DIY fuzz pedals.

And there it was.

Staring right back at me on the very top of my home for wayward pedals (aka the plastic rubbermaid bin).

Mark Hammer's Green Stinger pedal. A pedal he gifted me many years ago that I thought was quirky, but never really made much music with. I was using it like QOTSA use it in Little Sister -- as an octave up on a solo sound. Piercing. Quirky. But not that flutey, synthy thing.

The Stinger wasn't the sound here. But it was the right idea.

A ring oscillator is fanastic in a fuzz pedal. It turns it into something barely controllable and accentuates mid-frequencies. We don't have a fuzz model in the drive block that includes an oscillator component to the circuit you can control. But we do have a ring oscillator block!

I dropped an oscillator in front the drive block running the Bender model and....

...nope. :D

What was I missing???

TRACKING!

Fuzz osciallators track the frequency of the input signal. Poorly. Which is what makes them do silly things when you play more than one note at a time like fart out as they mistrack or jump between oscillating dominate frequencies in the signal.

I flipped the oscillator to frequency tracking mode and it was there!

I spent another 20 minutes tuning the frequency response of the fuzz and the osciallator content in the signal.

The end result isn't exactly Spirit in the Sky, but I don't think you'll ever get it precisely there without knowing exactly what fuzz he was using and what the circuit topology it was. It's not quite a flutey as his tone.

But this is Pretty Damn Close. And stupid amounts of fun to play.

I take no responsibility for the neighbours you're going to annoy when you crank this and jam along. Clip was made with my Silver Sky -- I don't own a single coil Telecaster.



The preset is on Axe-Change here and was made with the latest Cygnus public beta: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=8727

View attachment 79959

Gnarly!
 
I just picked up the EHX ripped speaker fuzz pedal. With its bias control it can do a super gated/dying battery type of sound perfect for Spirit...... really fun typical EHX pedal with good bang for the buck and a bit of a unique sound

check it this clip at about 2:50 in

 
Whoa. I love this song and that tone. Cranking this on a sunny Saturday morning brings back memories of being a kid and waking up to my dad having this just cranked on his beloved McIntosh system and the house shaking as he danced around the kitchen making coffee and flapjacks for weekend breakfast.

Good memories.

What better way to start my Saturday morning than chasing this tone dragon, right?

Fuzzes are notoriously hard to emulate. Each one is a unique snowflake. The tiniest changes in components, variance and circuit topolgies can create huge differences in how they feel to play and how they sound.

Copping something close to this tone was a real capital-j Journey. I'll try and bring you along with some of my notes.

I rolled through a few fuzz models and tried to mutate some of them using the bias settings and clipping settings in the block. Nothing really gave me that almost mono-only quality that you hear on the track. He's getting this drop out in the tone when he brushes more than a single string that really gives it a bunch of character and, if you're playing a pedal that does this, makes playing it a real experience.

The Octave Distortion was doing something kind of like that -- where you get it to almost fart out when you play more than one string at a time. So I played with that for a bit and wasn't happy with the overall tone. It was missing something. There's a horn-like quality you hear in the track that reminds of a Jordan Bosstone pedal. But it's not a Bosstone tone. It's...something else.

I tried combining the Octave Distortion in parallel with a Bender Fuzz. The Bender is a super squirrely circuit that does ripping quality tones really well. I thought I'd hit upon a passable facsimile with the paralell approach here and was about to record my sample clip when I stopped and decided to look through my stash of DIY fuzz pedals.

And there it was.

Staring right back at me on the very top of my home for wayward pedals (aka the plastic rubbermaid bin).

Mark Hammer's Green Stinger pedal. A pedal he gifted me many years ago that I thought was quirky, but never really made much music with. I was using it like QOTSA use it in Little Sister -- as an octave up on a solo sound. Piercing. Quirky. But not that flutey, synthy thing.

The Stinger wasn't the sound here. But it was the right idea.

A ring oscillator is fanastic in a fuzz pedal. It turns it into something barely controllable and accentuates mid-frequencies. We don't have a fuzz model in the drive block that includes an oscillator component to the circuit you can control. But we do have a ring oscillator block!

I dropped an oscillator in front the drive block running the Bender model and....

...nope. :D

What was I missing???

TRACKING!

Fuzz osciallators track the frequency of the input signal. Poorly. Which is what makes them do silly things when you play more than one note at a time like fart out as they mistrack or jump between oscillating dominate frequencies in the signal.

I flipped the oscillator to frequency tracking mode and it was there!

I spent another 20 minutes tuning the frequency response of the fuzz and the osciallator content in the signal.

The end result isn't exactly Spirit in the Sky, but I don't think you'll ever get it precisely there without knowing exactly what fuzz he was using and what the circuit topology it was. It's not quite a flutey as his tone.

But this is Pretty Damn Close. And stupid amounts of fun to play.

I take no responsibility for the neighbours you're going to annoy when you crank this and jam along. Clip was made with my Silver Sky -- I don't own a single coil Telecaster.



The preset is on Axe-Change here and was made with the latest Cygnus public beta: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=8727

View attachment 79959

Thanks for this preset... It reminds me of how a fuzz can oscillate and feedback with a cranked tube amp. How would you tweak this to give it more of that crazy feedback? Tried a tape delay before the amp, but the level of oscillating\feedback didn't really change.
:cool:
 
Thanks for this preset... It reminds me of how a fuzz can oscillate and feedback with a cranked tube amp. How would you tweak this to give it more of that crazy feedback? Tried a tape delay before the amp, but the level of oscillating\feedback didn't really change.
:cool:
Well, osciallation occurs when a feedback path returns enough signal to the entry point of the circuit to cause the circuit to self-regenerate, right? Add a feedback path. Use the send and return blocks to re-inject the signal into the chain before the fuzz and see what happens. You need to be VERY VERY careful with the feedback block's output level. A little goes a looooong way here as the drive block is running with a ton of gain.
 
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Well, osciallation occurs when a feedback path returns enough signal to entry point of the cruit to cause the circuit to self-regenerate, right? Add a feedback path. Use the send and return blocks to re-inject the signal into the chain before the fuzz and see what happens. You need to be VERY VERY careful with the feedback block's output level. A little goes a looooong way here as the drive block is running with a ton of gain.
Thanks! I am thinking you mean to place a compressor block before the fuzz blocks, which is running parallel to the ring mod chain. Using the comp mix, I can mix in some of the input signal to the fuzz block.
 
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