Mutilated Loudspeaker Cones: The Ultimate Electric Guitar Distortion Effect?

Even though there are “insurmountable” logistical issues that preclude their widespread use in live performance situations, are mutilated loudspeaker cones the ultimate sounding electric guitar distortion effect?

By: Ringo Bones 

Tales of guitarists intentionally mutilating the loudspeaker cones of their combo amps by slashing it with razor blades, poking strategic holes using a very sharp pencil or by other means in order to obtain a “unique tone” seems to be as old as the history of Rock N’ Roll music itself. Back in 1956, guitarist Paul Burlison of the Johnny Burnette Trio “accidentally” discovered that a partially broken loudspeaker cone of his combo amp that was damaged during transport during one of their band’s tours resulted in a distinctive tone that Burlison and the rest of the band found “pleasing” – i.e. resulted in a two-tone sound that produced quite clean trebles but sounded really distorted in the low frequencies which the band likened to a horn section playing full blast – but music critics and reviewers at the time noted that the resulting guitar sound as “horrible”. 

During the late 1950s, guitarist Link Wray intentionally poked strategically placed holes in his electric guitar amp’s loudspeaker cones to further distort his tone. And by the way this was during the time when PP3 / 9-volt battery powered guitar distortion stomp-boxes were yet to be invented. In 1964, a fuzzy and somewhat distorted sound gained widespread popularity after guitarist Dave Davies of The Kinks used a razor blade to slash his combo amp’s loudspeaker cones to produce the distinctive tone in the band’s single “You Really Got Me” – an act which also got The Kinks dubbed as the grandfathers of Heavy Metal Music. 

Even though intentionally mutilating loudspeaker cones of electric guitar amps to produce a distinctive tone seems to be a still esoteric practice a few years later, the practice probably got more popular after Brian Eno slashed the loudspeakers of the guitar amp to ribbons using a razor blade that was used during the recording session of his Nerve Net album. Eno described the tone as a little bit like those African instruments called mbiras where you have little tongues of metal that you play with your thumbs and around the base of each tongue is a piece of wire that rattles and buzzes as you play. Eno liked the resulting sound which he described as “this kind of halo that you can get on a sound. And it’s a halo of distortion really.” Thanks to Brian Eno, the most widely known use of razor blade slashed electric guitar loudspeakers in a recording session in recent years was Sonic Youth’s remake of The Carpenter’s “Superstar” in the 1994 album If I Were A Carpenter. Given that intentionally mutilating the loudspeaker cones of your electric guitar amp – why isn’t it in widespread use? 

Setting aside a loudspeaker cone or a whole guitar combo amp’s loudspeaker cone  to be intentionally mutilated might seem viable in recording studio situations, but if you are a touring guitarist or yet a guitarist who carries his or her 40-pound combo amp to a gig night after night, the very exercise seems to engender some logistical nightmares. The most obvious of which - is the realization which sadly only dawns upon to anyone who had performed such a stunt for a long period of time – is that a slashed loudspeaker cone or a pencil-poked loudspeaker cone’s timbre changes over time, especially if you play it loud. The timbre may change for the better or for the worse but you can never go back to a tone that was produced last week or three days ago – unless of course you have recorded that in a recording studio and it is also the very reason why bass guitar players have not experimented with mutilating their loudspeaker cones by either slashing it with razor blades or poking holes in them using a sharpened pencil. It looks like “mutilated loudspeaker cones” are for recording studio use only and leading digital guitar effects manufacturers still haven’t perfected an electric guitar effect that consistently replicates a mutilated electric guitar amp loudspeaker cone that can be used in live gigs. 

Re-Amping: The Most Cost Effective Way To Record Killer Guitar Tones?

It may be a still relatively esoteric technique to most amateur or indie musicians, but did you know that re-amping could be the most cost effective technique to record killer guitar tones?

By: Ringo Bones 

Lets face it, recording studios with very good acoustics costs ungodly amounts of money for the musician who has yet to achieve commercial success and given that most – as in a little more than half – of hard rock and heavy metal guitar based music in current mainstream FM airplay have god-awful guitar tracks when compared to classic rock tracks – even those during the hair metal era of the 1980s and early 1990s. But can the “ham-and-egger” musician this day and age even manage to record killer guitar tones like they use to during the golden age of hard rock and heavy metal on a shoestring budget? Fortunately, there is such an electric guitar recording technique and it is called re-amping. 

Re-amping: Running final guitar takes off tape – or other digital recording media – into guitar amps miked in a live room and recording them back onto tape or other digital recording media is one of those electric guitar recording techniques that gives more bang for the buck and yet produces an inexplicably excellent result. Given that it is quite a simple and ingenious method to “fatten the tone” of anemically recorded guitar tracks, clean or distorted, it is quite a relatively esoteric technique and not-so-often talked about studio recording technique. I mean when was the last time a Billboard Top 40 rock guitarist ever mentioned re-amping during press interviews back when Ronald Reagan was still the elected emperor of the free world? It was probably Rollins Band guitarist Chris Haskett who revealed that he used re-amping to record the electric guitar tracks of his solo albums during an interview with EQ magazine that was published in their April 1998 issue. 

Legend has it that it was the funk maestro George Clinton who was the first one to have used re-amping in the studio around the late 1970s. After not being happy with a drum sequence sound during a particular recording session – i.e. it had an “anemic tone” – George Clinton allegedly ran 24-outs to 24 separate loudspeakers placed on chairs in a live room and then miked the set-up in stereo and ran it back into tape. It was said that it not only “fattened the tone” of the drum sequence but also made it punchier. I first heard this particular anecdote about George Clinton’s studio recording techniques back in 1995, but many amateur hard rock / heavy metal musicians since the mid 1980s noticed that live miking guitar amps resulted in a more punchier and fatter tone as opposed to sending electric guitar signals  directly into the mixing board and then to the recording device. 

Back in 1992 while testing the stage mikes for our band’s live rehearsal, out of curiosity I got a Casio SA-1 “pocket keyboard” and placed a Shure SM57 Beta directly in front of its itsy-bitsy speaker and clicked in the “tuba” setting. Unexpectedly, it resulted in something akin to a cross between an electric bass guitar tuned 2-frets down and a very large pipe organ. The resulting tone is so beautiful that it preoccupied my band and I for almost half an hour and an inflated band rehearsal studio bill. On recording acoustic guitars, re-amping tends to make them sound as if the amps and recording equipment as if it uses 1930s era vacuum tubes – i.e. 6SN7s, 6SL7s or even Type 85 vacuum tubes. 

Another advantage of re-amping is not only does it cuts down on your recording studio costs but also you don’t have to worry about blowing the vibe or the take, which, more often than not, happens when you over-obsess the mike placement during the actual recording session. It is almost like working with MIDI – the performance is already there. You have a little bit more leisure about guitar amp placement, and miking and tone so a that point you can do a lot of work very effectively in a small project room and make it bigger later.           

Can The Type 85 Vacuum Tube Be Used As An Audiophile Grade Fuzz Unit?

Even though it dates back from the 1930s Golden Age of Radio, but can the Type 85 vacuum tube work as a heart of an audiophile grade fuzz unit? 

By: Ringo Bones 

To some, an “audiophile grade fuzz unit” may sound oxymoronic because after all they are primarily designed to produce harmonic distortion at relatively low volumes in electric guitar amplifiers. But given that vacuum tubes and electric guitar electronics had been going hand-in-hand for over 60 years with exceedingly good sounding results, should electric guitar electronic effects designers explore underutilized vacuum tubes for possible use in the hopes of designing one that offers both versatility and good sound quality? 

Fuzz units or fuzz pedals as they are originally known were originally introduced back in the 1960s and were readily embraced by rock and Blues electric guitar players. It makes use of germanium signal diodes to clip the electric guitar signal originally produced by the magnetic pickups to produce a chainsaw-type distortion. Germanium semiconductor diodes have a lower voltage drop, Vf = 0.2 volts, in comparison to silicon semiconductor diodes at Vf = 0.6 volts. This means that the signal is clipped at a much lower level. The sound produced by this electric guitar effect / processor is quite versatile. It can sound warm and fuzzy to nasal and grainy. The most famous example of this effects unit is the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face. Originally, they are composed of solid-state semiconductor parts – i.e. germanium signal diodes and germanium transistors during the 1960s to operational amplifiers by the start of the 1980s, but will a better-sounding one be made around the Type 85 vacuum tube? 

The Type 85 vacuum tube is a duo-diode triode vacuum tube in a single enclosure designed for use as the first-stage detector, automatic voltage control and first stage audio amplifier in 1930s AM radios / AC line operated receivers. It was also used as the phase inverter in several 1930s era public address amplifier designs. It is electrically identical to the octal base 6V7. The Type 85S is a spray shield type made by Majestic. The Type 85 vacuum tube has a maximum plate voltage rating of 250 volts DC but it is typically run at 135 volts, a maximum plate current of 8-milliamperes but typically it is run at 3.7-milliamperes, a maximum grid voltage of -20 volts but it is typically run at -10.5 volts, a filament or heater voltage of 6.3 volts and a filament current of 300-milliamperes. The Type 85 vacuum tube has an amplification factor or mu of 8.3 and a transconductance or gm at 750 and it has a plate resistance of 11,000-ohms. 

The Type 85 vacuum tube is a multiunit vacuum tube that is it is a vacuum tube containing several independently acting tubes in one envelope. The electron stream is divided into several parts, each part being acted upon by one set of electrodes. The top metal cap is electrically connected to the ground and therefore does not represent a high voltage electric shock hazard. But can the two vacuum tube signal diodes enclosed in the Type 85 vacuum tube be used as “clipping diodes” for it to be used as an “audiophile grade fuzz unit”?

Even though hobbyists and DIY-ers well versed on how the Type 85 vacuum tube works are still relatively rare, Kara Chaffee of deHavilland managed to design and produced one in current commercial production called the deHavilland Mercury preamplifier. Although she didn’t use the two built in vacuum tube diodes and left them unconnected. But given the Type 85 vacuum tube’s robust tone and crystalline clarity, would it be a great vacuum tube not just for electric guitar preamplification and distortion work, but also for acoustic guitar amplification given its robust tone can make a typical acoustic guitar’s built in piezoelectric Fishman Transducers sound as if they were 3,000 US dollar Condenser Tube Microphones? 

Even if the Type 85 vacuum tube’s big size might intimidate the contemporary 21^st Century guitarists, there are now pack-of-gum-sized lithium polymer rechargeable batteries with nanostructured anodes sold in Airsoft shops that can hold enough juice to power a Vietnam War era AN / PVS-2 starlight scope with its 15,000 volt photomultiplier tube for 15 hours straight before recharging, so battery operated fuzz pedal units using the Type 85 vacuum tube is technically feasible this day and age. And given that the Type 85 vacuum tube was used as a automatic voltage control unit in AM radios during the 1930s Golden Age of Radio, with its built in vacuum tube diodes, it could also be useful as a gold channel or audiophile grade compressor-sustainer unit, noise gate and limiter. 

8-String Electric Guitars: The Ultimate Heavy Metal Music Guitars?

Though the idea is as old as the traditional 6-string guitar itself, does adding extra strings for expanded range the makings of the ultimate guitar for heavy metal music?

By: Ringo Bones 

Even though the idea of adding some extra strings to the instrument to expand its range is as old as the traditional 6-string guitar itself – indeed it is, in fact, much older than the one cobbled up by Andres Segovia. Renaissance and Baroque era lutenists often added extra bass courses to their advanced lessons to facilitate a more ambitious musical counterpoint. More recently, George Van Eps conceived a 7-string Gretsch in hopes of rivaling the piano’s harmonic richness. During the mid-1980s, Steve Vai created a 7-string Ibanez so that he could “shred” unimpeded across five-and-a-half octaves and Jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter employed 7-string and 8-string Novax guitars to play simultaneous bass and guitar lines. 

But the more recent 7-string and 8-string solid-body electric guitar mania springs fourth from a more visceral desire – to play heavy metal guitar riffs so low in pitch and lethal they make your fillings rattle. Ever since rap hip-hop and hardcore punk metal hybrid bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit got lucky enough to get regular mainstream FM radio airplay during the late 1990s, guitar companies have ever since issuing an unprecedented number of electric guitars with low B-strings (61.7 Hz). During the heyday of hair-metal, 7-string and 8-string solid-body electric guitars was usually an expensive custom item, but ever since the Y2K scare came and went, 7-string and even 8-string solid-body electric guitars in the 500 US dollar to 1,500 US dollar price range suddenly became something that any self-respecting progressive avant-garde 21^st Century era heavy metal band can’t do without. 

The most popular 8-string solid-body electric guitar in current manufacture is by Ibanez – as in their Ibanez RG8 8-string electric guitar, though the first mass-produced 8-string guitar was made by Ibanez Guitars in Japan – as in the Ibanez RG228 – primarily as a toe-in-the-water exercise to capitalize on the low-frequency-guitar-riffs mania of the late 1990s. And ever since, the 8-string solid-body electric guitar has been in widespread use by modern heavy metal guitarists who first got their major record label deals back in the mid-1990s. Such as Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström of Meshuggah, Dino Cazares of Fear Factory, Stephen Carpenter of Deftones, Justin Lowe and Trent Hafdahl of After the Burial and others. The 8-string solid-body electric guitar is particularly associated with the “djent” sound popularized by Meshuggah and other contemporary metal artists. 

The 8-string guitar’s standard tuning, from low to high, is F#, B, E, A, D, G, B, E. Other alternative tuning interpolations are available and, more often than not, 8-string guitar users chose other tuning permutations to suit according to his or her playing style. Many prefer to tune the low F# string to a low E (41.2 Hz) which gives the 8-string guitar the same range as a 4-string bass guitar and to provide the 8-string guitar with a fuller sound three different E-strings were used as “sympathetic resonance strings”. While some progressive metal and alternative metal guitarists tend to tune their 8-string guitars in either open-D tuning or a more exotic Jazz-based major-thirds tuning. 

Tweed Electric Guitar Amplifiers: The Ideal Electric Guitar Amplifier?

Even though heavy metal guitarists may beg to differ but are tweed electric guitar amplifiers the ideal electric guitar amplifiers when it comes to tone? 

By: Ringo Bones 

A full Marshall stack may be visually impressive to look at from the perspective of kids of all ages but seasoned electric guitar players more often than not that when it comes to “purity of tone” – at least from an electric guitar player’s perspective – tweed amps, or combo amps from the 1950s is where its at. But do seasoned electric guitar players know something that the rest of us don’t? 

Since they hit the market during the 1950s, tweed electric guitar amps – especially ones manufactured by Fender – had been sought after even before Ronald Reagan became president. They had been traditionally used by Blues and Country musicians and before the advent of those Marshall heads and stacks, also by rock n’ roll guitarists as well. Acoustically, tweed amps have a sharp treble roll off above 5,000 Hz and a bass roll off between 60Hz to 100Hz depending on the diameter of the loudspeaker used. The nickname tweed originally refers to the lacquered beige light brown fabric covering these combo style amplifiers but there are younger guitar players out there who think that tweed is short for traditional. 

Even though the timbral roar of Marshall heads and stacks was the dominant electric guitar tone of 1980s era MTV, some iconic MTV music videos had tweed electric guitar tones during the main guitar solo. An excellent example of which is the main guitar solo by Eddie Van Halen on Michael Jackson’s Beat It. And believe it or not, most stadium rock / metal guitarist of the 1980s and present want their stadium filling Marshall stacks to have a timbre of a mid 1950s Fender tweed combo amp which is easier said than done form a technical perspective. At least it keeps us vacuum tube electronic technicians gainfully employed since the late 1980s.