Secret80'sTones - YOUR LOVE by The Outfield

Secret80'sMan

Experienced
Those of you that know me know that I am obsessed with replicating iconic 80's guitar tones as part of what I do in my 80's tribute band The Reflex. For a long time John Spinks legendary tone for the song "Your Love" elluded me but with the advent of Tone Matching I am finally able to approximate this tone and even impress some concertgoers with how close it sounds to the original.

When tone matching first came on the scene I put this tone together and was getting ready to upload it to share but it got corrupted and I thought I didn't have a backup but when I did a recent firmware upgrade I restored sounds from onboard and there was my patch. The TM info was corrupted so I redid that and presto here it is.

A little background first: We know that The Outfield's Play Deep record was recorded at AIR in London. We also know that The desks were Neves which I'm sure imparted some of the legendary tone as well. William Wittman (Cyndi Lauper, Joan Osborne, The Fixx) recorded the record and IMHO captured some of the most legendary pop trio sounds ever created on this album. Amps were Marshall JCM 800's for most things and mic'ed the cabs with a Neuman u87. I believe the guitar was a Telecaster.

They made stereo rhythm guitars by double tracking and panning left and right and sometimes using an Ibanez Dual Chorus pedal and feeding it's 2 outputs to two Marshalls side by side. Since we don't know exactly which of the two methods was employed for this particular song I chose to use delay on each side and do a chorus up the middle which sounded the closest to me to the record.

I then looped a piece of the intro before the vocals several times to be able to capture enough isolated track to accurately tone match it. I also inserted an intelligent pitch shifter so it can be kicked in during the bridge for those harmonized lines. On record it is two guitars but this sounds pretty good if you're the only guy on stage with a guitar as I am most of the time. I am using a Strat with a Lace Sensor Hot Dually Humbucker split into true single coil mode. If your pickup isn't a single coil or doesn't actually split to single (most don't in the true sense of the word) the patch won't sound as good.

I am no Chef, Groovenut, Java, or Simeon when it comes to tone cloning, matching, patch tweaking or creation but I'm kinda proud of this one so wanted to share it with everyone. Here is a sample of it in action at a gig. Enjoy!

 

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Dojo, keep your thumbs to yourself but feel free to keep the compliments coming! ;-P

Chef, I appreciate the kudos from you, the Gordon Ramsey of tones so it means a lot. And yes, Martha is hot. She'll probably steal most of my thunder but whatcha gonna do right? She was on season 3 of American Idol (Fantasia's season) and yes she made it to Hollywood.

The singer on this track is not Martha though, it's our singer Mike (not saying you thought that but in case you did since it's pretty high). He can get up there although you can hear him crack a little at one point(The Outfield is hard to do, especially in the original key).

Which reminds me, you need to do the song in the original key or the harmonizer won't work correctly as it is right now in the patch. Your first chord needs to be an E chord and all will be well.
 
Dojo, keep your thumbs to yourself but feel free to keep the compliments coming! ;-P

Chef, I appreciate the kudos from you, the Gordon Ramsey of tones so it means a lot. And yes, Martha is hot. She'll probably steal most of my thunder but whatcha gonna do right? She was on season 3 of American Idol (Fantasia's season) and yes she made it to Hollywood.

The singer on this track is not Martha though, it's our singer Mike (not saying you thought that but in case you did since it's pretty high). He can get up there although you can hear him crack a little at one point(The Outfield is hard to do, especially in the original key).

Which reminds me, you need to do the song in the original key or the harmonizer won't work correctly as it is right now in the patch. Your first chord needs to be an E chord and all will be well.

No way, that's a he? :eek: What's his vocal range and is this his falsetto?
 
No way, that's a he? :eek: What's his vocal range and is this his falsetto?

I don't know what his range is, just that he's a freak! This is full on chest voice just like the guy from The Outfield, no falsetto.

Boogieman, I too thought it was a Vox but heard it directly from Will Wittman himself that it was a JCM800. I can confirm this too because my original patch had the AC30 in there instead of the Marshall and I got it close but as soon as I dropped the Marshall in there the seas parted.

I appreciate the compliments gang, thank you all.
 
Originally Posted by Secret80'sMan
Chef, I appreciate the kudos from you, the Gordon Ramsey of tones so it means a lot.

This made me LOL! :lol

Like others have said, I thought they used an AC30 for this. Maybe Spinks just used the Vox live? Anyway, great tone match! Love it!

All signs pointed to Vox but sure enough I tried them both and the JCM nailed it. The Vox got the general vibe but the JCM is the ducks nuts and the real thing, at least on the record.

Sounds great! I may come out to see you guys tomorrow.

Come on out man, and come talk shop with me. I need a break from all the groupies anyway. :lol
 
I was just gonna 'like' it, but can't not say congrats on hitting the tone and applaud your singer. Agreed - it's a tough band to cover with those vocals. It sounded great.
 
Had compliments last night from the sound guy and a few others that the tone was right on the money. The club had a nice EAW system with Crown power amps.

TFC, missed ya man, hope you can make it out to a show soon.
 
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