Figured Out Randy Rhoads Tone

[Kapo_Polenton]

If I am not mistaken, aren't a lot of the leads from Tribute taken from the Cleveland and Montreal shows? I swear I hear Ozzy say certain things in the MTL vid and the licks themselves are identical. Another thing I love about the Randy era is how badass he looked up there and that backdrop they used on the tour. Those huge stairs leading up to Tommy and the gothic theme. So cool.

As for the tone, those gritty MXR Dist + have a lot to do with how cutting he sounded.. a Marshall, an EQ and that Pedal are going to get you close enough in the ballpark. I don't really hear Greenbacks though, maybe something a little less crunchy like a G12t-75 would do in a pinch because nobody has those Altec (spelling?) speakers.

 

[metalmaniac93]

If I am not mistaken, aren't a lot of the leads from Tribute taken from the Cleveland and Montreal shows? I swear I hear Ozzy say certain things in the MTL vid and the licks themselves are identical. Another thing I love about the Randy era is how badass he looked up there and that backdrop they used on the tour. Those huge stairs leading up to Tommy and the gothic theme. So cool.

As for the tone, those gritty MXR Dist + have a lot to do with how cutting he sounded.. a Marshall, an EQ and that Pedal are going to get you close enough in the ballpark. I don't really hear Greenbacks though, maybe something a little less crunchy like a G12t-75 would do in a pinch because nobody has those Altec (spelling?) speakers.

Tribute is all Cleveland except for the guitar solo which was taken from the Montreal show and of course Goodbye to Romance and No Bone Movies which was recorded on the UK Blizzard Tour in 1980 with Daisly and Kerslake.

I heard the EVs work pretty good to replicate Randy's speakers as they do not break up easily and don't get muddied up with the MXR Distortion.

 

[Red_Label]

I don't care what anyone says some of the tones on Diary of a madman are Godlike

Love the heavy part coming out of the softer choir part in the mid-section of the title track. Was just playing that with my Smallbox the other night and loving it.

 

[Red_Label]

My favorite guitar tone of all time is Randy's tone on the Live Tribute album. What a tone. That reverb

His playing on that album is just incredible.

I read years back that he didn't like his tone on the blizzard album.

I wore DOAM out from day one, but never cared for Blizzard much at all. The material is just so much stronger on DOAM to my tastes. Would have been great to see where Randy took things over the next ten years. A lot of people seem to think that he was headed towards playing classical guitar seriously. I dunno about that. I majored in classical guitar performance and Randy's classical chops were FAR short of being concert stage worthy (not that mine were a lot better). That's just a whole different deal. Very few rock players are anything more than dabblers at classical. TAt any rate, Randy's rock playing and songwriting were something special and I would have loved to have seen where his peak was at. Sadly we'll never know...

 

[8len8]

My favorite guitar tone of all time is Randy's tone on the Live Tribute album. What a tone. That reverb

His playing on that album is just incredible.

I read years back that he didn't like his tone on the blizzard album.

I wore DOAM out from day one, but never cared for Blizzard much at all. The material is just so much stronger on DOAM to my tastes. Would have been great to see where Randy took things over the next ten years. A lot of people seem to think that he was headed towards playing classical guitar seriously. I dunno about that. I majored in classical guitar performance and Randy's classical chops were FAR short of being concert stage worthy (not that mine were a lot better). That's just a whole different deal. Very few rock players are anything more than dabblers at classical. TAt any rate, Randy's rock playing and songwriting were something special and I would have loved to have seen where his peak was at. Sadly we'll never know...

People who knew him said that before he died he was getting ready to quit Ozzy, and that he wanted to focus on classical guitar. Too much mayhem...

 

[Bishop5150]

Man, you nailed that! Excellent work. Not really a huge fan of his studio tone. More of a fan of his live tone. But you nailed that Blizzard tone.

 

[lll]

Man, you nailed that! Excellent work. Not really a huge fan of his studio tone. More of a fan of his live tone. But you nailed that Blizzard tone.

Thanks... turns out after listening to it again, I'm missing a bit of that "sparkle-fizz" on the top end.

Unfortunately I do not have any Altec speaker iRs, so I futzed with the EQ again.

I'll post that later.

 

[Racerxrated]

If I am not mistaken, aren't a lot of the leads from Tribute taken from the Cleveland and Montreal shows? I swear I hear Ozzy say certain things in the MTL vid and the licks themselves are identical. Another thing I love about the Randy era is how badass he looked up there and that backdrop they used on the tour. Those huge stairs leading up to Tommy and the gothic theme. So cool.

As for the tone, those gritty MXR Dist + have a lot to do with how cutting he sounded.. a Marshall, an EQ and that Pedal are going to get you close enough in the ballpark. I don't really hear Greenbacks though, maybe something a little less crunchy like a G12t-75 would do in a pinch because nobody has those Altec (spelling?) speakers.

Those shows were recorded before 75s were available. G12 80s, 65s, and greenbacks were pretty much it from Celestion.

When I was stationed in S Korea in 87 I played part (lol) of Randys solo from Tribute for a talent show on base. I was 19, worked on that damn thing for months....no tab. Ear only haha! Took forever.

 

[tripstan]

Sounds great! I think if you got more of the ambient room sound it's would dang near sound spot on. I can hear yours is close mic or cab sim DI recorded? Randy's I hear a little bit of room verb.

 

[Kapo_Polenton]

Did you change your settings at all? Just listened to Crazy Train again and it does sound very very close. Did you use Bias to sample the isolated guitar track? Bias does a great job of that it seems when it has a sample off which to work.

 

[lll]

Did you change your settings at all? Just listened to Crazy Train again and it does sound very very close. Did you use Bias to sample the isolated guitar track? Bias does a great job of that it seems when it has a sample off which to work.

I only kept the side-by-side comparison clip of the full tune; no changes yet. I deleted the other two partial clips
from my original post.

No, I actually don't like the amp sampling part of BIAS. What I did was research what he used, then
emulated it in my DAW as close as possible, and used my ears to tweak the rest.

In the future I'll be doing a vid showing this.

 

[paulyc]

If I am not mistaken, aren't a lot of the leads from Tribute taken from the Cleveland and Montreal shows? I swear I hear Ozzy say certain things in the MTL vid and the licks themselves are identical. Another thing I love about the Randy era is how badass he looked up there and that backdrop they used on the tour. Those huge stairs leading up to Tommy and the gothic theme. So cool.

As for the tone, those gritty MXR Dist + have a lot to do with how cutting he sounded.. a Marshall, an EQ and that Pedal are going to get you close enough in the ballpark. I don't really hear Greenbacks though, maybe something a little less crunchy like a G12t-75 would do in a pinch because nobody has those Altec (spelling?) speakers.

I have a quad of the Alnico version Altecs (word is Randy used ceramic versions...I've never seen those), and the Alnicos work and they're NOT hard to find...Jammin Jersey Music usually has them, and I've seen them for sale on my local CL.

The MXR Distortion Plus is a shitty sounding box no matter how you slice it, I have a block logo one and it sucks, there are way better alternatives now...although I've heard people say the original script logo ones sound pretty good, and I knew a local player years ago that used one and he sounded great so maybe it's me.

Also, Randy's Marshalls had the "one wire mod" done to them, which really makes his tone.

 

[sg guy]

-I'm glad I got to see him on the BLIZZARD of OZZ tour, I had no idea who he was, his tone live was ferocious!! of course they played the entire album, both randy & Ozzy were both hating on Sabbath,... thou Sabbath had cooler T-shirts,.. "Sabbath rules, Ozzy drool's" ......

 

[lll]

Here's a new one:

https://soundcloud.com/lefty-lounge-lizard/bias-rhoads-eq-reaper-test

Found out the chorus used on the album (aside from the double and sometimes triple [!] tracking) was the AMS DMX 15-80.

Emulated this with Soundtoys Microshift VST.

 

[phil b]

If I am not mistaken, aren't a lot of the leads from Tribute taken from the Cleveland and Montreal shows? I swear I hear Ozzy say certain things in the MTL vid and the licks themselves are identical. Another thing I love about the Randy era is how badass he looked up there and that backdrop they used on the tour. Those huge stairs leading up to Tommy and the gothic theme. So cool.

As for the tone, those gritty MXR Dist + have a lot to do with how cutting he sounded.. a Marshall, an EQ and that Pedal are going to get you close enough in the ballpark. I don't really hear Greenbacks though, maybe something a little less crunchy like a G12t-75 would do in a pinch because nobody has those Altec (spelling?) speakers.

I wouldnt say nobody has them.. I chased Randy's tone years ago and to truly nail it those speakers are a major part of his tone. No matter what dirt pedal you use those speakers will cut. Only thing is they are a really bright so unless you are going for a tone similar to his they dont really work for todays metal sound. They do sound fantastic for cleans though. I had 12 speakers at the height of my Randy days and now I'm down to 4. The lead in Mr. Crowley still gives me chills. 417 8H are the ones to look for.

 

[bog70]

By today's standards the MXR Distortion+ was a pretty raw-sounding box, but run into the MXR 10 Band EQ you were able to manipulate the tone into something much more pleasing.

 

[lll]

Turns out I wasn't using the AMS setting in the Soundtoys plugin (it was the Eventide H3000).

Here's a quick change doing the AMS setting on Soundtoy's Microshift plugin.

Also tweaked EQ ever so slightly and added a touch of EMT140 plate reverb.

BIAS Rhoads EQ Reaper Test 2 (AMS):

https://soundcloud.com/lefty-lounge-lizard/bias-rhoads-eq-reaper-test-2-ams

Next I'll do triple tracking with the above settings.

 

[lll]

The AMS 15-80s was supposed to provide a "shimmer" and/or "brightness"... and adds "grind".

The AMS 15-80s:

For anyone interested, here's what Max Norman had to say to Jas Obrecht in 1982 about "Blizzard of Ozz" (a la Woodytone.com

(original Jas Obrecht interview: http://jasobrecht.com/randy-rhoads-max-norman-interview/ )


...

http://www.woodytone.com/2011/05/04/a-few-belated-rhoads-insights-pt-1/

Max: On that album [Blizzard, but also used on Diary], the thing I used a great deal was an AMS 1580, which is a very clean British digital delay with a VCO [voltage-controlled oscillator] on it, so you can slightly flange and stuff like that. I used that for a lot of things. It’s got a real good sound.

Jas: Can you think of any cuts where the AMS 1580 stands out?

Max: If you listen to those rhythms on “Crazy Train,” you’ll hear there’s a real grind to them. That particular sound comes from the AMS. It’s almost like a flange, but not quite. It does these strange grindy things if you get it at the right setting. Plus, you can get this kind of hollow, tubey effect too – that’s the same kind of deal.

(Max)A lot of those tracks – especially the lead guitar tracks – are triple-tracked, in fact. So he would play them three times. He would play the whole solo three times.

> A lot of the reason for Randy’s particular guitar sound is the fact that he triple-tracked a lot of it, and that just made it huge. So I believe “Little Dolls” may have been one of the ones where we didn’t do that, and it may have suffered somewhat.

> Crazy Train solo – This is one of them that was triple tracked. If you listen to that track real close, you’ll hear there’s one main guitar around the center, as I remember, and there are two other guitars playing exactly the same thing, panned to the left and right, but back somewhat. And actually what happens is you don’t hear them – you just hear it as one guitar. He was the best guy at overdubbing solos and tracking them that I’ve ever seen. I mean, he used to blow me away. So on a lot of those things, when you hear a guitar that really comes out, that’s because there are three of them there. And it’s not like an ADT – he’s actually playing them three times, which means you get a very stable image. It really does sit there, rather than shift left or right, depending on where the delay is. That’s really the reason for that. Plus it’s a Charvel – they have an extraordinary top end.

> “I Don’t Know” solo – That was all doubled, that guitar. I think most of that was pretty much one take. We patched it up a little, and he went back and redid it once he had it down. See, the thing is, he would rip one down, and there would be a couple of little mistakes there. So instead of going back and patching those, he would go back and do the whole thing again once he knew what he was doing. He was extraordinary. He would know exactly what he played. I was really blown away by a lot of the stuff that he did. He’d play something, and I’d say, “Well, you want to try again?,” not really meaning it, and he’d go, “Yeah, I’ll do again.” And he’d play the same thing, but a little bit better! He was a very astute player like that.

> “You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll” – On that sort of slow-tempo thing, there’d be quite a few rhythm tracks there, apart from playing parts. There’d be a couple of power chord tracks, maybe one steel-string acoustic, and probably two or three other guitars playing parts.

Also mentioned in the interview:

> The “Flying High Again” solo was triple-tracked.

> “Steal Away the Night” – Rhythm and solo were double-tracked.

> “Dee” and “Diary of a Madman” acoustics were double-tracked, one with a steel-string acoustic and the other a nylon-string.

Interview continued:
http://www.woodytone.com/2011/05/06/belated-rhoads-insights-pt-2/