A Lesson In Tone: Master Of Puppets

Philhouse said:
Both James and Kirk specifically mention 65w speakers in interviews around the time of the album. Seems like they both recall that same detail regarding the cabs.
I get that the studio notes say 300w, but I'm thinking that the notes are in error perhaps, esp considering the amount of other tone hunting people over the 40 years that have also researched and came to the same conclusion that it was most likely 65w speakers instead, esp after playing the two types and hearing the difference as VES has shown here.

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YYIjMDBXFPks2fKm7xuGOkRSpvvZ0H0G ('Metal Monsters' pg 97 Hammett Interview)
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Yeah they probably owned and used cabs with 65’s. But you’ve got to remember that Puppets was recorded in Denmark. I doubt they flew over a bunch of cabs from the US. The cabs used were most likely property of Sweet Silence. Flemming has stated that they had about a dozen cabs in the studio. Probably why he wrote down the serial numbers of the two they ended up with.
 
The key to the MOP tone is the G12-65 speakers were the bass version. In the studio pics you can see the larger dust caps.
 
NeilOConnor said:
The key to the MOP tone is the G12-65 speakers were the bass version. In the studio pics you can see the larger dust caps.
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Indeed: https://boogieforum.com/threads/metallica-speakers.66082/page-3

And to belabor the point further, all G12-65s have large dustcaps, relative to Greenbacks and V30s. Those particular bass version 65s have even larger dustcaps which is a rare oddity from that era of Celestions. Some oddball G12-80s have those huge dustcaps as well.
 
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Techdeth said:
I love the album . Just thought the tone was bland . They made it better as they went
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Yeah their tone seem to keep getting better as a trend even as the music itself started getting worse from the Black Album onwards. That iic+ sound part of MoP must've been quite distinctive for the time, but other aspects of the sound I didn't care for as much. AJFA has always been my favorite album and to me where they reached their pinnacle and most distinctive version of themselves
 
thegame said:
Indeed: https://boogieforum.com/threads/metallica-speakers.66082/page-3

And to belabor the point further, all G12-65s have large dustcaps, relative to Greenbacks and V30s. Those particular bass version 65s have even larger dustcaps which is a rare oddity from that era of Celestions. Some oddball G12-80s have those huge dustcaps as well.
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Interesting.

I had my 79 Marshall cab, with the T3120 Marshall label 65s at the same time as an 82 800 cab with the 444 cone bass versions. The speakers looked identical to me. Wonder if the larger dust cap thing was pre 82 or post?

Those two cabs BOTH sounded killer; with the bass cones...you guessed it....had more lows. The 3120s were brighter but you could almost match them with a little treble bump with the bass cones.
The net would have you believe the Bass cones are garbage. Far from the reality that I heard with my own ears in my jam room.
They're both killer.
 
braintheory said:
Yeah their tone seem to keep getting better as a trend even as the music itself started getting worse from the Black Album onwards. That iic+ sound part of MoP must've been quite distinctive for the time, but other aspects of the sound I didn't care for as much. AJFA has always been my favorite album and to me where they reached their pinnacle and most distinctive version of themselves
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We totally agree here . Justice just sounds like pure metal and the tone is perfect , I miss bands going extreme on tone
 
Techdeth said:
We totally agree here . Justice just sounds like pure metal and the tone is perfect , I miss bands going extreme on tone
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Yeah to me that was Metallica at their best. I love MoP and RTL still, but AFJA was another level. The intro to Dyers Eve and Blackened were especially memorable for me and of course One, but there were moments in almost every song on that album that did something for me. As a teen that was the only tone that really made me go woah and go after the mark amps, eventually a iic+
 
braintheory said:
Yeah to me that was Metallica at their best. I love MoP and RTL still, but AFJA was another level. The intro to Dyers Eve and Blackened were especially memorable for me and of course One, but there were moments in almost every song on that album that did something for me. As a teen that was the only tone that really made me go woah and go after the mark amps, eventually a iic+
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Hell ya . Sane fr . Dyers eve tone is a top tone .
 
NineShallDie said:
The cabs used were 300W according to Flemming’s notes. So the speakers had to be G12T-75s. Which would be era correct for a JCM800 cab from 1985.View attachment 365354
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And there it is right from the horses mouth.

Although I believe there is a general consensus that Marshall cabs have been known to be mislabeled in this time frame.

The vented Celestion 75s from this era sound very similar to the Celestion 65s...

I remember Flemming saying in some interview he didn't care what speakers were in the cabs at Sweet Silence. They used the ones that sounded the best and he obviously wrote those 2 down in his notes.
 
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heres a cool thread with flemming answering questions, he a little vague on a lot of things though..

https://gearspace.com/board/so-many...e/908069-master-puppets-guitar-recording.html



"The numbers for the cabs are serial numbers as we had about 12 cabs in the studio at any given time, and Yes they do all sound different."

"As for the amps. We just used what sounded best on any given day."



It's been long rumored that on "Master of Puppets," you guys ran the Mesa Mark IIC+ head unit into a Marshall JCM 800 as a power amp. Is there any truth to that?

"Yes - we did a lot of stuff like that. So YES is the answer."
 
braintheory said:
Yeah to me that was Metallica at their best. I love MoP and RTL still, but AFJA was another level. The intro to Dyers Eve and Blackened were especially memorable for me and of course One, but there were moments in almost every song on that album that did something for me. As a teen that was the only tone that really made me go woah and go after the mark amps, eventually a iic+
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Apart from the first time I heard Fast as a Shark, there was something about the first time I heard RTL and especially FFWF & Call of Ktulu that just said, this IS metal...and it is good. I like a lot of the music on AJFA but it's my least favorite guitar tone of the first 4. First time hearing Orion on headphones from my Boombox at 16, instead of doing homework, was a revelation. Didn't know metal could be like that.
 
skoora said:
Apart from the first time I heard Fast as a Shark, there was something about the first time I heard RTL and especially FFWF & Call of Ktulu that just said, this IS metal...and it is good. I like a lot of the music on AJFA but it's my least favorite guitar tone of the first 4. First time hearing Orion on headphones from my Boombox at 16, instead of doing homework, was a revelation. Didn't know metal could be like that.
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RTL as an album has the highest number of songs I liked by them, but never liked the tone itself of that album much. To me it always sounded way too bloated in the midrange, way overdone with the reverb, just dated overall and I feel like a lot of ‘80’s thrash bands had a similar sound to that, but better, while with MoP and AJfA they got something truly different and that scooped iic+ they had actually gave them a tone that sounded metallic to me like the name they gave themselves lol. My revelation would’ve been more with the Dyers Eve intro. That plus Blackened and the machine gun parts of One are imo the most metal (and certainly metallic) they ever sounded. MoP can sound dated to me too, but I don’t hear that with AJFA. Probably not for everyone since it’s a very dry, harsh sound, but for me their best and most distinctive and also their most interesting rhythmically
 
RaceU4her said:
heres a cool thread with flemming answering questions, he a little vague on a lot of things though..

https://gearspace.com/board/so-many...e/908069-master-puppets-guitar-recording.html



"The numbers for the cabs are serial numbers as we had about 12 cabs in the studio at any given time, and Yes they do all sound different."

"As for the amps. We just used what sounded best on any given day."



It's been long rumored that on "Master of Puppets," you guys ran the Mesa Mark IIC+ head unit into a Marshall JCM 800 as a power amp. Is there any truth to that?

"Yes - we did a lot of stuff like that. So YES is the answer."
Click to expand...
Only for solos

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There is two cabs behind James in this pic, and two heads, one on each, we can only clearly see the Crunch Berries though. There is another cab just off to the right of the pic almost totally out of shot. No idea is that has a head on it too from the pic.
We can also see the settings on the Crunch Berries in this pic are nothing like written in any of the settings notes. Who knows if they were trying multiple heads with different settings and blending them? It's possible. Flemming had mentioned in interviews he liked to layer/stack tracks with various gain settings on the amps, maybe he was doing that with different heads simultaneously? Maybe the other heads was just there as a ready back up? Just throwing out ideas, I don't think the notes Flemming released are the whole story.
The King V indicates this was most likely the TTSNB session.

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