Replica
Member
I'm trying to recreate the incredible amp melting guitar tones off of Damaged by Black Flag. In particular, Greg and Dez's chunky and fuzzy dirt-bomb sound on "Thirsty And Miserable" and "Police Story".
Research on the equipment used around that time revealed a few things. First, Greg Ginn used a Dan Armstrong Lucite Plexi with homemade highly wound humbuckers. His guitar then plugged directly into a solid state amp. The picture linked in the Reddit post below shows a Peavey 260 Standard on top of his stack, with what I think is a Peavey Musician 400 below that. I'm not sure if the amps were daisy chained, or if they were used in parallel. I think the amp channels are stacked in series, which might explain why the guitar amps sound overloaded and like they're about to explode. Obviously, there's also a lot of feedback going on and the amps are turned up super loud.
Despite all this, the tone is surprisingly dark. The image below is a fourier transform of the guitar intro to "Thirsty And Miserable". The guitars have clearly been hipassed to 100 Hz or so. The mids are pretty full, with a significant peak around 800 Hz to 2.5 kHz. Despite the peak, the guitars don't exactly sound harsh. The high frequencies roll off hard around 7k.
So here's the hard part. I'm really struggling to recreate this tone despite the information I've gathered. To start, I haven't found a good Dynacab setting to match the tone. I'm pretty confident that they used a cheap dynamic mic like the SM57 given that the band was broke as hell during their entire existence. They probably used exactly that microphone, since Henry Rollins' vocals were captured with the same mic on Damaged. However, I can't find any information on speakers. By the sound of the guitars, I'd guess bass speakers or greenbacks would get me the closest. However, even after putting Dynamic 1 all the way on the edge and pulled back from the speaker, it's still too edgy and bright.
Finding a suitable amp is also tough. The only solid state model in the Axe FX is the Jazz Chorus. Maxing out the input trim helps push it to that overloaded, zero headroom sound, but the overdrive sounds much different. The closest I could get with the onboard EQ is 0.50, 3.00, and 0.10, but this still sounds much bassier, treblier, and edgier than the record. I've also tried using parametric EQs before the amp and inbetween it and the cab, which still sound off.
I did use the tone match to get the frequency response much closer, but the tone is still majorly lacking. I've adjusted the parametric EQ blocks to get closer to the tone match curve, but the sound is still pretty off even with drastic moves. I have also tried running one Jazz 120 into another, which gets the compression better, but also makes the frequency response go way off. The biggest issue is feedback, or rather the lack therof. I'm trying to build this patch entirely in the box, so I don't have the option of standing in the room with a cranked speaker. The feedback send/return isn't helpful, as it sounds nothing like real amp feedback. Throwing a comb filter in the feedback path helps slightly, but it's still way off.
Any suggestions on how to get my patch closer, ideally without tone match? Is there a speaker that'll get me closer to this tone? Am I focusing too much on shaping the sound pre-cab? Maybe I should ignore the Jazz 120 model and use a drive block as an amp instead? Anyone have deeper knowledge of the guitarists' gear in this period?
Research on the equipment used around that time revealed a few things. First, Greg Ginn used a Dan Armstrong Lucite Plexi with homemade highly wound humbuckers. His guitar then plugged directly into a solid state amp. The picture linked in the Reddit post below shows a Peavey 260 Standard on top of his stack, with what I think is a Peavey Musician 400 below that. I'm not sure if the amps were daisy chained, or if they were used in parallel. I think the amp channels are stacked in series, which might explain why the guitar amps sound overloaded and like they're about to explode. Obviously, there's also a lot of feedback going on and the amps are turned up super loud.
Despite all this, the tone is surprisingly dark. The image below is a fourier transform of the guitar intro to "Thirsty And Miserable". The guitars have clearly been hipassed to 100 Hz or so. The mids are pretty full, with a significant peak around 800 Hz to 2.5 kHz. Despite the peak, the guitars don't exactly sound harsh. The high frequencies roll off hard around 7k.
So here's the hard part. I'm really struggling to recreate this tone despite the information I've gathered. To start, I haven't found a good Dynacab setting to match the tone. I'm pretty confident that they used a cheap dynamic mic like the SM57 given that the band was broke as hell during their entire existence. They probably used exactly that microphone, since Henry Rollins' vocals were captured with the same mic on Damaged. However, I can't find any information on speakers. By the sound of the guitars, I'd guess bass speakers or greenbacks would get me the closest. However, even after putting Dynamic 1 all the way on the edge and pulled back from the speaker, it's still too edgy and bright.
Finding a suitable amp is also tough. The only solid state model in the Axe FX is the Jazz Chorus. Maxing out the input trim helps push it to that overloaded, zero headroom sound, but the overdrive sounds much different. The closest I could get with the onboard EQ is 0.50, 3.00, and 0.10, but this still sounds much bassier, treblier, and edgier than the record. I've also tried using parametric EQs before the amp and inbetween it and the cab, which still sound off.
I did use the tone match to get the frequency response much closer, but the tone is still majorly lacking. I've adjusted the parametric EQ blocks to get closer to the tone match curve, but the sound is still pretty off even with drastic moves. I have also tried running one Jazz 120 into another, which gets the compression better, but also makes the frequency response go way off. The biggest issue is feedback, or rather the lack therof. I'm trying to build this patch entirely in the box, so I don't have the option of standing in the room with a cranked speaker. The feedback send/return isn't helpful, as it sounds nothing like real amp feedback. Throwing a comb filter in the feedback path helps slightly, but it's still way off.
Any suggestions on how to get my patch closer, ideally without tone match? Is there a speaker that'll get me closer to this tone? Am I focusing too much on shaping the sound pre-cab? Maybe I should ignore the Jazz 120 model and use a drive block as an amp instead? Anyone have deeper knowledge of the guitarists' gear in this period?