When I was first starting out, Lay It Down was the #1 song in my mind of what I wanted to sound like. Just killer tone. I know it sounds counter-intuitive but it's one of the reasons the first Marshall I ever bought was a TSL, with the built in reverb and bass rolled way down, I thought (and still think) it does a damn good Ratt impression.
From what I've read, the Laney's were never used on recordings, and even live they were just backups at best. I have had both an 8-knob AOR and the 6-knob Pro-Tube and unmodded at least, there's no Ratt tones in them to my ear. They have a distinctly fuzzy gain tone especially on low palm mutes - like the D's in Lay It Down - that would make them easy to identify. Bass heavy, or fuzzy/loose bass, are certainly not terms I'd ever use to describe Ratt's sound.
The usual story is that there was one late 60's Superlead that just had a crapload of gain, but was really quiet. Then there was a metal face super lead with less gain but louder. I've heard people say they were both unmodded, but then the next sentence is that they ran the 60's SL preamp into the 70's SL power amp. These amps didn't have effects loops or line outs so at least *something* had to have been modded along the line, I mean, there's no way they ran a speaker output into the next amp's input. Right?
Anyway, as usual there's a bit of mysticism around it but here's what I think, and to be clear I have no insider info so this is just speculation: I think it was a 70s Super Lead modded with Zener's which is what made it quiet, and he turned the bass knob either completely off, or nearly off. Possibly boosted with something from the time, like a DOD250, Parametric EQ in front, Space Echo in front above unity gain, or a combination of them. It sounds absolutely sick recorded, but kind of meh "in the room," which is why if you listen to videos of them playing live around that time, it's good sounding but it's not quite the same ultra-sharp tone from the record. Remember that intro has a high pass reverb sound on it which is really distinct, plus delay, and double/stereo tracked.
As for speakers, I really have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear it was 60s greenbacks or blackbacks to further enhance the brightness, as opposed to something else from the time like a G12-65 or G12-80... but there's definitely a part of me wondering if he used something less normal, like Jensens, Fanes, Altec, McKenzie, or EV's. Kinda like how we have a bunch of cool speakers to choose from these days like Scumback, WGS, etc, there are quite a few speakers from that 70s/80s era that don't come up in conversation much anymore, but they definitely got used on stuff.
