In a previous post, I mentioned that Maxon was the company which made the Tube Screamer and other pedals for Ibanez in the 70s/80s. They are now producing pedals under their own brand and they have just released two new models which will bring memories of the past.
The SM-9 Pro+ Super Metal is not an exact reissue of the 80s Ibanez SM-9. I own an original one and it sports 5 knobs as opposed to the new one which has 4. Also, the 2010 version can be powered with a 9V power supply as well as 18V. In the latter case, it apparently increases “the headroom, frequency range, and dynamic response of the SM-9 pedal”. This new arrival in the Maxon line is clearly geared towards all metal genres, even the most modern, as the sound examples suggest. The old Ibanez SM-9 was also a metal pedal at the time but in an eighties way of course. It was interesting though as it did have some “tube screamer” DNA which does not seem to be the case with the new model.
The "new" SM-9
As to the ST-9 Pro +, ST stands for “Super Tube” to emphasize its Tube Screamer ancestry, not the fact that it is tube based because it is not. As with the SM-9, the ST-9 Pro+ is not an exact reissue of the 80s Ibanez model. Maxon claims it is based on the circuit of the good old TS808 Tube Screamer but with added flexibility and more gain options. On top of the usual LEVEL, DRIVE and TONE knobs there is a 4th knob to choose the frequency of the “mid range hump” as well as a switch to choose between a classic tone and a “low boost” tone which will fatten your sound. The ST-9 Pro+ can be powered with a 9V or 18V power supply, the latter mode increasing the “headroom, frequency range, and dynamic response of the” pedal. Listening to the the sound clips, I must say the ST-9 does seem to sound like a super charged Tube Screamer.
Question: what do David Gilmour (Pink Floyd), Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) and Jack White (the White Stripes, The Raconteurs) have in common?
The Big Muff Pi
Answer: they are all avid users of the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff pedal and a lot of their recordings would not have been the same without the raunchy, dirty, gritty, fat tone of “the muff”. I will demonstrate in two videos the tone of the Big Muff but first, let’s go briefly over the troubled history of this famous distortion pedal.
Short history
The Big Muff originated in the 70s. It is often called a “fuzz” but I rather think it is a distortion pedal as it is quite a departure from the fuzz pedals of the time. Two versions came out in the 70s: the “triangle” Big Muff (triangle because of the shape formed by the knobs) and the “Ram’s head” Big Muff (because there is a little picture of a ram on it).
The maker of the Big Muff, Electro-Harmonix, went bust in 1983. Mike Matthews, its founder, went on to build Big Muff pedals under the Sovtek brand starting in the early 90s (on a side note, Sovtek had a killer line of amps at the time). Electro-Harmonix were “rebooted” later on in the US and they are now very much alive. Their current range of pedals is huge. If you are looking for a brand new Big Muff, you will have to go for the current Big Muff Pi or maybe the little Big Muff which has a smaller casing: those are closest to the “muff tone”. A lot of other pedals currently made by Electro-Harmonix have “Muff” in their names, like the Metal Muff, but they sound quite different from “THE” Big Muff.
The connoisseurs think that the current range of Big Muff is quite inferior sounding to the 70s gear and even to the Sovtek Models. This explains why a number of clones exist like the Ron Sound Hairpie, clone of the US 70s stuff or the Absolutely Analog Green Russian, clone of the Sovtek models. As to the BYOC Beaver, it is a highly regarded kit for you to build your own 70s US Big Muff clone (good luck to get it outside of the US).
If you would like a much more detailed history of the muff, check out this post on Gilmourish. It also tells you which Big Muff version David Gilmour used on the different Pink Floyd albums and tours. You can also visit this awesome site for more details and schematics.
How to get that Big Muff Tone
First of all, let me tell you that the Big Muff is an animal that is difficult to tame. You might try it and think that it sounds really harsh. Know that you really have to use the right amp and will have to play quite loud: don’t think you will get a big smooth tone out of a Big Muff at low volume, especially if you use it on its own.
Used with Humbuckers, the tone goes into “big indie riffage” territory. For this video, I use only the Big Muff with my SG and my little 5W all tube Fender Champ miked with a Shure SM-57 (some reverb was added afterwards in Cubase). The settings on the muff were VOLUME at 10 o’clock, TONE at 10 o’clock and SUSTAIN at 11 o’clock.
The good thing about the Big Muff is that it plays quite well with other pedals. For instance, a compressor placed before will really smooth out the tone whereas an overdrive placed after can remove the relative harshness of the tone, especially at low volume. Use single coil pickups and add a delay to the mix and you might reach the lead tone nirvana, Gilmour style. Here is a video made with a Stratocaster showing the muff interacting with an overdrive or a compressor:
In case you are wondering, the Big Muff I use is a standard current US Big Muff Pi model, no fancy clone or vintage model. As to the Stratocaster, it is a Custom Shop American Classics Stratocaster with Kinman AVn Blues Pickups.
The Settings were as follows:
1974 Fender Silverface Champ (BASS on 10, Treble on 2.5, Volume on 3).
Big Muff settings: VOLUME at 10 o’clock, TONE at 10 o’clock and SUSTAIN at 11 o’clock
BB Preamp Settings: GAIN at 8 o’clock, VOLUME at 1 o’clock, TREBLE at 12 o’clock, BASS at 2 o’clock
Dynacomp settings: OUTPUT at 10 o’clock, SENSITIVITY at 10 o’clock.
DD-3 Settings: LEVEL at 10 o’clock, FEEDBACK at 12 o’clock, TIME at 2 o’clock and MODE at 800ms
I have received some feedback suggesting I should do more “beginner” posts about guitar tone and effects. I have also noticed some interesting questions in the google keywords leading to this site. One grabbed my attention: “What is the difference between the Satchurator and the Ice 9 overdrive?”. These two pedals are designed by VOX in collaboration with Joe Satriani and the answer is: the Satchurator is a distortion whereas the Ice 9 is an overdrive.
So what is the difference between a distortion and an overdrive? To put it simply, an overdrive pedal aims at simulating the creamy sound of an overdriven tube amp whereas a distortion does not try to simulate reality and usually offers more gain and is more aggressive.
The BOSS DS-1 distortion (left) and the Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer (right)
Way back in the sixties, the only way to get any kind of overdriven tone consisted in just cranking the volume of your tube amp to 10 or 11 if you could. And these amps had no master volume so they were really really loud. Fuzz pedals were the first attempt to reproduce this tone without having to crank your amp. They were really popular in the late sixties but they kind of missed the point and are really a different breed of effect. I will dedicate a post to fuzz pedals very soon!
Later on, talented electronics wizards invented “overdrive” pedals which provided a less harsh tone. Some of them truly approached the singing sound of an overdriven tube amp, so loved by blues and classic rock players. The Ibanez Tube Screamer released in the late 70s is an example of overdrive pedal which became really successful (see my post about it).
Around the same time, other wizards invented distortion pedals which generally offered a raunchier, dirtier, “gainier” tone. The BOSS DS-1 used a lot by Joe Satriani or the Proco Rat are two famous examples.
Then as they did before with fuzz pedals, guitarists combined the tube saturation of their amp with overdrive or distortion pedals, creating entirely new tones… but this is a story for later…
After Robert Smith and Jeff Beck, I thought it was time for some virtuoso action with the almighty Joe Satriani. If you don’t know who Joe Satriani is and you play the electric guitar, you probably have been abducted by Aliens in the 70s only to be returned to earth last week (go get “Surfing with the Alien” right now).
In this post we will look into his gear and learn how to recreate the same kind of lead tone using just a few common pedals that I will demo in a video. Although his studio albums – especially since the late 90s – feature a lot of different pedals and textures, Satch has a simpler approach on stage. 90% of the time, he uses the same recipe for his tone and the rest, as always, is in the fingers.
Photo by CodePoet taken on 2008-10-26 @ Variety Playhouse, Atlanta
Guitars
Although he played a Kramer Pacer on “Surfing with the Alien”, Satriani quickly became an Ibanez endorser in the late eighties and remains one today. His Ibanez signature JS family of guitars has not stopped growing. The “classic” workhorse model is the JS1000. There is a more affordable version named JS100 and more esoteric models like the newly released JS2400 with 24 frets or the JS1600 without tremolo. The JS1000 that he uses the most has a bolt on neck, 2 Di Marzio custom humbuckers and a floyd rose type of blocking tremolo system with fine tuners.
As such, it is very representative of 80s “guitar technology” after Eddie Van Halen took a Stratocaster-like guitar and put a humbucker and a floyd rose on it, making it a bit of a cross between a Fender and a Gibson. The pickups were specially designed for this line of guitars and I must say I especially like the neck pickup which has a very “glassy” almost Stratocaster-like quality. On the JS1000, the humbuckers can be split to sound like single coils, pretty versatile. The blocking tremolo system allows for much abuse and Satch is a great abuser, he can get the wildest effects out of it and still stay in tune.
Amps and Effects
In the eighties, unlike many other fellow metal or rock guitarists, Satriani often did not get his big distortion tone from a super cranked Marshall boosted by some overdrive pedal. He used (and still does) distortion pedals in front of a clean amp. The BOSS DS-1 orange distortion was a very important part of his tone from the eighties all the way to about 2009 when his own VOX Satchurator distortion pedal was released. I went to his “Super Colossal” tour show in Paris in 2006 and I distinctly remember seeing him switching from clean to his signature lead tone by pressing on the little orange pedal in front of him. I am 99% sure it was a DS-1. This surprised me because it was not long after his own line of amplifiers (the Peavey JSX) had been released and there were quite a few behind him on stage. Although these amps are highly capable of providing lots of gain, he was obviously just using them clean and getting his distortion from the DS-1.
Now on the topic of the DS-1, it is loved by some and loathed by others. Some find it synthetic sounding or thin, etc. Let me tell you that it is not the kind of pedal that will sound great through any rig, it works well with some guitars and amps but can sound horrible used with others. Also, it does not have 100 sounds but one so if you love it, you’re in luck, if you don’t, you will be tempted to throw it out of the window. That said, a lot of pros use it and get great tones out of it and it has been in the BOSS catalog for over 30 years now! This controversial aspect of the DS-1 tone explains why it is one of the most modified pedals on the market. There are great mods by Analogman, Robert Keeley, Monte Allum, etc. It seems that in more recent years, Satriani was using a Keeley version (like his pal Steve Vai) although I am not finding any hard evidence of it. Update Feb 2012: in this awesome interview on musicplayers.com. Satch answers this question: “Well, I would use clean channel of the JFX. I’d get a slightly altered, vintage Boss DS-1. I can’t tell you the alteration, though, that’s a secret!“. That settles it but as far as what the alteration is, the question remains.
The BOSS DS-1 Distortion: love it or loathe it
It is funny to see that tone purists on forums are quick to qualify Satriani’s tone as bad, you know the “he should use a Les Paul 59 and a bassman from 1756 instead of an Ibanez and a cheap BOSS distortion” kind of remarks. Let me tell you that I have seen lots of great guitarists on stage and Satriani’s tone is one of the best I have heard. It really serves the songs and compliments his playing.
There are two other effects that are an important part of Satriani’s tone: delay and wah. He has used up to 3 delay units in series in the 90s. He has never been a fan of rack mounted gear and all his effects were usually pedals placed in front of him. The exceptions were two rack mounted chandler delay units that he would use on top of an old BOSS DM-2 analog delay or DD-2 digital Delay (see this guitar geek entry). His settings for the three delays were interesting: the first delay was quite short, the second delay longer and the third even longer. The blending of the three gives a very spacious tone. If you don’t have three delays you can try this with your favorite recording software, this sounds a bit like a reverb without using a reverb.
In the last decade, he went back to using one good delay pedal, often an old BOSS DM-2: see photos of his 2010 experience Hendrix tour pedal board. Of course, Satch now has his own delay pedal made by VOX, the Time machine. As to wah pedals, he used an old VOX model in the early days and a few years back he was using a Jim Dunlop 535Q, but he now has his own model made by… VOX: the Big Bad Wah. This is no coincidence that the first three pedals he designed with VOX are a distortion, a delay and a wah because these are the basics of his tone. An overdrive called Ice 9 has just been announced by VOX in the same range.
On the subject of amps, as I mentioned before, he rather uses them clean. In the 90s, he was using a Marshall Anniversary head and later on switched to his own line of Peavey JSX. Apparently, he is going back to Marshall after his short stint with Peavey.
To summarize, a good wah, a distortion and a delay plugged into a good clean amp is the basis for Satriani’s tone on stage. I am not saying that it is all you need to reproduce Satriani’s every tone, I am saying that this is the recipe for the lead tone he uses live about 90% of the time, especially on classics like “Surfing with the Alien”, “Satch Boogie”, “Ice 9”, and so on. Amongst the remaining 10% of the songs, some can be heavily reliant on one particular effect like the Digitech whammy used on “Cool #9”; the Electro Harmonix POG used on “Super colossal” for that super fat tone; or the Fulltone Ultimate Octave for several other numbers. I must also mention the use of modulation effects like a BOSS CH-1 chorus, a BOSS BF-2 Flanger or a univibe clone such as the Fulltone Deja Vibe. This is especially obvious on his clean tones although his pedal board has not been consistent in that respect. Pedals come and go with the different tours and albums.
Let’s redo Satriani’s Lead Tone
For this endeavor, I have used a RMC1 Wah pedal, a stock BOSS DS-1 distortion and a BOSS DD-3 delay plugged into my trusty Fender Silverface Champ set fairly clean. I don’t have an Ibanez-style guitar so I have used my Gibson SG 61 Reissue since humbuckers are a must for Satch’s lead tone (I accept donations in the form of JS1000s 😉 ).
A pity I don’t have a floyd rose kind of tremolo, I should not have sold my shredding guitar. If there is one thing that I have discovered, it is that Satriani has an extremely clean technique (emphasis on extremely clean) that my gruff style cannot match in a million years. Also, I am not able to reproduce the super smooth legato runs that Satriani is a specialist of as I am used to picking every note. Nevertheless I sure had lots of fun getting my old DS-1 out of the closet!
The settings were:
BOSS DS-1: DIST almost on max but not quite, LEVEL at 12 o’clock and Tone quite low at 8/9 o’clock
BOSS DD-3: LEVEL at 10 o’clock, FEEDBACK at 12 o’clock, TIME at 2 o’clock and MODE at 800ms.
On the amp: Volume at 3, BASS at 10 and Treble at 2.5 (the amp is fairly bright as a lot of fender amps are)
